In the Shadow of Christmas

 

An unexpected gift from a Secret Santa arrived late Tuesday night and started Emiala’s anxiety-ridden Christmas nightmare. Anyone else receiving a Secret Santa gift would have felt joy, or amusement, maybe a sense of wonder and excitement, but not Emiala. The gift was approached with apprehension mixed with a little contempt, but as she held the box in her hands looking for a return address that was missing her curiosity got the better of her and she peeled back the paper assuming there must be a card inside. The box revealed a small shadow box showing a Christmas scene eerily similar to the one that had unfolded when she was 13 years old. There was a miniature tree covered in garland and lights straight out of an 80’s sitcom. Along with two small children with their backs to the viewer, one with the long-braided ponytail that Emiala had worn in 8th grade, the other wearing the same He-man pajamas her brother had been obsessed with that year. There was even a small cut out of the dog they had when she was younger, a rescue named Roxie that was part beagle, part shepherd, and part Heinz 57, no one really knew what. The mother in the scene stood a little apart from the children, a cup of dark liquid in her hand and though you couldn’t see her face, the figure standing there in her bathrobe seemed content.

Emiala nearly dropped the strange gift when she opened it. Memories came flooding back, that was the last Christmas before everything went terribly wrong, for Emiala and everyone else in her family. Who’s idea of a sick joke was this? It was almost like someone had recreated an old photograph in 3-D and sent it to her. She thought about trashing it, but then something stopped her. She decided she must be overreacting, maybe a friend or distant relative had seen an old photo not knowing what it meant, and thought to give her a little piece of Christmas magic. Whoever had sent it, it was clear that someone had put a lot of time and effort into the gift so she placed the shadow box back in the packaging and left it on a chair, she would take it to the post office in the morning and try to have it returned to sender.

The next morning there was a surprise gift under the tree, which would have been unusual if Emiala had bought a tree to have any gifts under, let alone a mysterious gift. But she hadn’t, she never decorated for Christmas, she hadn’t since she was a child. After first getting up, brushing her teeth, and pulling her long black hair into a loose messy bun just above the nape of her neck, Emiala stumbled past the tree and into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. She had just sat down at the ancient Formica kitchen table when she noticed the sparkling little tree in the corner of the living room. There was silver and gold garland wrapped around the real freshly cut tree as well as tinsel, the type she had grown up with as a child, the silver strands you were supposed to put up one by one but in the end threw on in chucks just to be finished decorating. She didn’t think they even sold tinsel like that anymore since it was dangerous for pets and the environment.

She got up coffee in hand and walked over to inspect the tree further. The pine smell was stronger and she wondered how she hadn’t noticed it earlier. As she got closer, she recognized the old big bulbs that would get hot if left on too long winding around the tree as well as the bubble lights that were supposed to look like candles and instead just made her think of mini lava lamps and fire hazards. There were mismatched glass bobbles all over the tree the kind her grandmother had and they looked old enough to be her grandmothers. Candy canes hung from the branches as well, including a small bunch in the bottom right corner where her brother Adam had always created his stash, hogging all the cherry-flavored ones.

The tree looked exactly like the one in the shadow box, only bigger and in her living room. She walked over to the chair where she had left the shadow box the night before, only now it wasn’t there. Fear started to creep in and Emiala slammed the coffee onto the table, grabbed her gym bag, purse, phone, and threw on a sweater and a pair of shoes. She had to get out of there immediately. Lastly, she grabbed her keys and reached to unlock the bolts on her door, they were still in place. She didn’t take time to wonder what was happening. She quickly undid the locks, and raced out the door, taking a few seconds to lock the door after herself before racing down the steps and outside.

Outside in the cold gray air of a brisk December morning, things felt less surreal she walked quickly to the gym for a run and a shower. Running always made things better; as she ran on the treadmill her mind started to calm down. Maybe she has dreamed the tree and shadow box, surely someone didn’t break in just to decorate. Besides most of the ornaments were easily available at Target as part of their retro line, so they couldn’t be originals. The doors had been locked, even the deadbolt, who could have done that? She started to feel a little foolish, the new medication her doctor was trying her on to help her sleep was strong and it did warn of intense dreams and possible hallucinations. That had to be it, mystery solved no tree, no shadow box just a mild hallucination.

She didn’t have time to go back home and check on her delusion as she had planned to come in early to get things done before the obligatory Christmas party this afternoon, thankfully she kept a spare outfit in her gym bag for emergencies. Emiala had ordered her coworker's gifts and had them shipped to the office earlier in the month and had them stashed in the back of her filing cabinet. She would pick up a veggie tray on the way to cover her part of the potluck, something that she knew would be safe for her to eat, unlike last year when Gloria had given half the staff food poisoning with her crab dip surprise. The surprise was Gloria didn’t know how to cook or keep seafood safe.

She walked to the bus stop, but decided it wasn’t too cold out, and instead headed towards Marcos for a veggie tray before walking the three miles to work. The brisk winter wind blew away the chaos of this morning, and she found herself able to focus on her plan to survive the Christmas party.

The rest of Emiala's day went by slowly but uneventfully, at least until the party. She hated office parties, and their annual Christmas potluck was the worst. They all had cheap Santa hats and dollar store stockings with their names awkwardly spelled out in glitter glue across the top, her name was always misspelled, and they stood around drinking coffee and tea or soda and nibbling on the dishes everyone had brought in, pretending they wouldn’t rather be anywhere else but there. This year Emiala vowed to only eat from dishes brought from the store to maintain her delicate GI balance.

“Okay everyone, now that you have all gotten your stockings, it’s time for the Secret Santa gifts. Has everyone dropped off their special someone’s gift to the tree at the front entrance? You did have all week to do it.”

At the mention of gifts, the events from last night and this morning barged through the haze of normalcy Emiala had wrapped herself in and once again she felt the tinge of anxiety start to rise. A soft murmur rustled through the breakroom and the general consensus was, yes, everyone’s gift was out there. Surely her gift had been delivered last night and then she would know who sent it because it would just be a process of elimination.

They all slowly filed out of the breakroom and headed towards the main entrance. The sign on the door read closed early for Christmas please call back Dec 27th for any emergency call and listed Ralph Roberts's cell phone number. However, who would be having a data entry, accounting, or tax emergency over Christmas was beyond Emiala's pay grade. Ralph started them off by calling names and handing each gift out from under the artificial tree with its fake snow.

Gloria got a scented heat-up stuffy, a cross between a heating pad and a weighted blanket, though Emiala thought it was more for her son than her, she seemed happy with it. Rolland received a gift card for the local gas station, nothing too personal but practical as Rolland had an hour commute one way. And so, the gifts were given, some were funny and others thoughtful and a few like Emalia’s gift to Traci last year, a candle, scarf, and gift card to the local coffee shop showed she had fulfilled the objective, but didn’t know anything about her Secret Santa recipient.

“Emiala there’s one here for you,” Ralph called out holding up a small gift bag with a preposterously large bow on it.

Emiala’s pale face blanched as she stepped forward and hesitantly took the gift. If this was her Secret Santa gift, what was the package that had arrived last night? She held it up carefully trying to see through the red and green bag afraid of what might be inside. Lydia sidled up close to her, “Aren’t you going to open it? We all want to see what’s inside.” She said slyly.

All the staff not eagerly awaiting their gifts stood around her trying to get a peek. “Come on open it up.” Lydia coaxed.

Emiala reached into the bag and pulled out an overly large coffee mug filled with slipper socks, chocolates, ChapStick, and a gift card to Marcos’s market. Lydia gushed over the gift, making it beyond obvious that she was the Secret Santa. Emiala held it up dutifully for all to see how generous her Secret Santa, aka Lydia, was.

“And last but not least, Rubert,” Ralph called out handing a small package to Emiala’s recipient. She hadn’t known Rubert very well but she saw him come in every Friday with a pastry from Juliette's bakery, so she had gotten him a pastry ornament as well as a gift card from Juliettes.

“Oh, wow a gift card to Juliettes!” he exclaimed “My favorite. Thank you, Santa.”

“Lydia, did you get me anything else?” Emiala asked her.

“Who me, no one knows who their Secret Santa is.” She mockingly protested.

Emiala was starting to get flustered. “Seriously fess up.” She hadn’t wanted to do any of this, she tried to avoid Christmas and just lay low until New Year's. But she had been roped into the Secret Santa party and since she had run out of vacation days, she had to attend the office Christmas party, and now Lydia was goofing around about her gift. She knew Emiala didn’t like Christmas, not for years now, so why was she playing stupid games?

“Em, I promise this is it. You know we had a limit and besides I know your feelings on Christmas. Why are you freaking out?” Lydia pouted the fun vibes fading from her pixie-like face.

Emiala had been pretty blunt when it came to her feelings and Lydia had been her friend since high school. “Okay. Okay, it's just some weird stuff been happening. Someone sent me something and said it was from my Secret Santa. I figured it had to be someone from the office since I don’t know anyone else who would be a Secret Santa.”

Lydia’s blue eyes lit up even more if possible. “A true Secret Santa. Maybe an admirer? Tell me more!” She said grabbing Emiala by the arm and pulling her away from the group. The gifts having been distributed, the office workers milled about talking and glancing at their watch trying to see when it would be okay to leave. Lydia pulled her into one of the empty offices. “Okay tell me everything!” she demanded.

Emiala related the previous evening's events, the shadow box that recreated the last Christmas of her childhood when she and her family were all together. Then the mornings redecorating of her apartment to resemble that last Christmas.

“Woah!” was all Lydia had to say, her eyes growing large as saucers with each new detail added. “You can’t go home; you need to file a police report now. Who would do something like this?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket getting ready to dial, when Emiala gently stopped her.

Emiala hadn’t thought about filing a police report nothing had been taken and what was she going to say someone broke in with 80s/90s decorations to make her drab little apartment festive. But Lydia brought up a good point someone had broken in without waking her, decorated her entire living room with a living Christmas tree, and she hadn’t heard a thing. They also seemed to have gotten out the door and locked it, deadbolt and all. On the other hand, it all seemed ridiculously far-fetched, who would do it and why?

“Maybe I imagined it, you know this time of year is hard for me and I saw the shadow box and it properly just got me thinking. I’ll go home and let you know if it’s still there.”

Lydia tried to protest and offered to come home with her, but Emiala stood firm in her plan. In the end, Lydia hugged her friend tightly, Emiala stiffened in her arms, hugging wasn’t her thing, but she knew Lydia always felt better if she could hug her as if that would make things right, or make up for the rough years in her life.

They watched as Ralph left with Anne signally that they could all leave without censure. “I’ll call you later, just to make sure Santa hasn’t come back,” Emiala said as she grabbed her sweater and walked out with Lydia before turning right to walk to her apartment. The sun was setting but it hadn’t quite gone to night yet. The winter wind was fierce but not so biting that the sweater she had grabbed this morning couldn’t manage to do its job of keeping her warm. As she turned onto her street nothing seemed amiss and she continued to tell herself that she had imagined all of this morning’s events. But as she turned her key in the lock, she felt in her gut that everything would still be there.

And it was, only so much more. Last night the shadow box has shown a miniature but detailed scene from the last Christmas before things had gone so very, very wrong. Now someone had decorated her whole apartment like a scene from a romantic holiday comedy in which the big city lawyer goes to a small town to find love with a flannel-wearing widow. There were boughs of holly and twinkly lights everywhere. Bows and ribbons of green, red, and white around the furniture, and a Santa plate laid out with what smelled like freshly baked gingerbread cookies. It was like her memory had come to life in her small apartment. The icing on the cookies even looked like Adam’s messy attempt at decorating.

This was too much. She reached in her purse for her phone, she was calling the police and then Lydia. She was rifling through the bag when she heard a footstep, it sounded like it was coming from behind her. She started to turn around only to feel a sharp puncture in her neck and she fell to the ground in a heap.

The next thing Emiala knew was she was opening her eyes in a very bright room, on a very soft bed in a very strange place. She reached an arm to her head. It felt like it had been smashed between boulders, the light was too bright, she placed a hand over her eyes which was when she noticed she was wearing a soft cotton polyester nightgown. White and rose just like what she used to wear as a child, in fact, it was the exact nightgown she had worn that Christmas everything went wrong only in an adult size.

Shock pushed the pain out of her mind and she sat bolt upright and looked around the room. It looked exactly as her room did when she was 13, there were scuff marks on the wall from her throwing her skateboard in the corner and posters of Mark Paul Gossler, L.L Cool J, and Keanu Reeves hanging from the mint green walls along with glow in the dark stars. There was the same fake tinsel and garland hanging from her headboard and the chipped-painted cow her best friend Julia had made her in art class the year before. The window was closed but the drapes were pulled back to let in a flood of light. She crept out of the bed and walked slowly over to the windowsill. Whatever she had expected to find outside of it, her old backyard or the shiny chrome of the mother ship driven by an advanced race of aliens obsessed with Christmas nothing could have prepared her for what was out there. A giant floodlight blocked almost any view of what was behind it. But she could see a little past it and the walls behind it looked like a mix of cinder block and old wood. She tried to look harder, but she could only deduce that she was at least 2 stories up in what might be a warehouse or sound stage. She crossed the room and stepped on a stuffed rabbit she had as a child. She picked it up, it was almost identical to Floppsy, its face was squashed in from where she used to sleep on it, and there were the uneven stitches her mother had sewn from a misadventure climbing a tree.

She held the rabbit and tried the door, as she thought it was locked. She tried the window, also locked. She looked around the room, everything familiar but mockingly unhelpful. Nothing in the room seemed like something she could use to open the door or the window. The skateboard that had taken centerstage in her childhood was missing and everything else, while being essential to a young teenager, was useless in an escape attempt. She searched the room for her phone or anything that might give her a clue as to who was holding her here and why they were fixated on what was quickly becoming the second-worst Christmas of her life.

“ARGG!” she shouted as she rummaged through the closet finding nothing but clothes, shoes, nail polish, and some more old stuffies. “WHO ARE YOU!” she shouted at no one. “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

There was no answer. She spent the next several hours trying to figure out a way to escape or maybe make a weapon. After several hours she noticed that the flood lamp was changing its light to match the time of day, possibly to real time, or perhaps without any reason at all.

She paced the room, looking for anything that would give her a clue as to who had kidnapped her. They had definitely done their homework; the room was an exact replica, only missing the elements she could use as a weapon like her skateboard and field hockey stick. There were her Lisa Frank notebooks, a trapper keeper with her old homework, it even looked like her handwriting. But nothing she could see gave her a clue to her capture.

In exasperation, she yelled again. “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU! WHAT DO YOU WANT YOU SICK BASTARD!”

There was no answer. The sicko had recreated her room down to her 8th-grade homework, but why? And why that year, that was the year she learned to hate Christmas. That was the year her father had lost his mind and shot her mother. That was the year she and her brother had to testify in court about their father attacking their mother. Emiala had to describe to the court holding a gravy-soaked towel to her mother’s chest and trying to call 9-1-1 with blood-soaked hands while her younger brother struggled with their father.

She had tried to block it all out. The court case, the months their mother was in the hospital, the trauma and depression from that night that had stolen her brother from her just three years ago. She wasn’t the Grinch who hated Christmas, she had valid reasons, but it just seemed like Christmas kept creeping in more and more and earlier and earlier. This year the day after Halloween there was Santa strutting down the street with a credit card. She did her best, but it was unavoidable. And now she was trapped in a room that she hadn’t seen since their grandparents had taken her to live with them permanently three months after the attack, without any clue of who was behind it, or a way to defend herself from their depraved actions when they did finally reveal themselves.

There was no answer but she hadn’t expected there to be one. She tried the window, but it was still locked, she tried the door, locked. She slammed her body against the door harder and harder until she finally gave up exhausted and hurting all over. She struggled to pull apart the bedframe or dresser, she smashed the lamp against the window and tried to use the broken glass to scratch and crack the window. But nothing worked. She sat crumbled on the floor her back against her bed holding Floopsy and wondering what was going to happen next.

Seconds felt like hours, and she watched her old bedroom grow darker, until she could only just barely make out the shapes of stuffed animals and notebooks she had tossed around in the dim. She heard heavy footsteps start to ascend the creaky steps, the loudest creak on the 3rd step just as it had been in her childhood. She counted until all 13 steps had received their heavy load and given their little squeak. Fear started to bubble up, who was on the other side of the door, and what did they want?

She heard a door open, the door that was her parents, and next to her own. The footsteps went in, and then the carpet muffled any more sounds of walking. She strained hard to listen, using every muscle possible to try to hear a voice. But nothing. She thought of going into the closet to listen into the room. In the home she had grown up in, the wall between the closet and her mother’s room was thin, and she would often listen to her parents when they thought she was asleep. Everything else was accurate, it stood to reason that the wall would be thin there. But then she would be in the closet when her kidnapper came in. There were only so many places she could hide, and she didn’t want to limit her opportunities. She knew she was strong, worked out every day, taught kickboxing three times a week, and ran marathons, but that wouldn’t matter if she put herself in a tiny space giving her capture even more of an advantage.

Her ears perked up. Someone was laying something on the bed, something heavy, maybe themselves. She could hear the springs of the bed let out a rusty groan as the weight pressed hard on the old mattress. Emiala thought, if someone had the time and money to put into this, why get such a crappy mattress. Her mother had hated the old bed, and the year of the attack they were supposed to get a new one. The mattress gave Emiala an idea. If the person who had kidnapped her was recreating everything in its tiniest detail, then her mattress should be the same spring-loaded K-mart special. She picked up a piece of the broken glass, threw back the blankets, and pulled the curtain back to give more light. She pressed lightly on the mattress and felt the familiar springs give under her hand. She emptied a pillowcase and wrapped it around her hand before starting to cut into the mattress. She had never been so grateful for the cheapness of her father in her life. The fibers of the mattress started to shred under her makeshift tool. She cut and slashed and sawed and was just starting to see progress when a phone rang. A hoarse voice answered, but she couldn’t hear the conversation. She stopped and listened for the footsteps to come back. The springs on her parents’ bed released their load with a grinding protest and the footsteps crossed the floor. Emiala stashed her glass between the mattress and box springs before throwing the blankets back into place. She picked up another smaller piece of glass from the floor, to use as a weapon if necessary and stood up.

She heard a key turn and felt herself stiffen. The light in the room was faint, but she stared hard at the door. The door opened slowly, letting in light from the hallway, and obscuring the face of the man in front of her. She wanted to lunge, slash, and scream at the large man-shaped figure looming in the doorway.

“Emmy.” A scratchy voice called out from the entrance. “EMMY!” the voice was deep, but had a hoarseness to it, like a 2 pack a day smoker had strained themselves singing an opera that morning.

“EMMY!” the tone changed first questioning, then hesitant, and finally joyful! “I’m so glad they found you! My darling girl come here and give your poppa a hug!”

It was a request, not an order, but still a strange and disturbing one. She didn’t know this man in front of her. She took a step cautiously towards the figure, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, and sliding the glass up her sleeve, she wanted to make sure she could maintain any advantage she might have.

Her eyes adjusting to the dark, took note of the face in front of her. The man was older, but not old perhaps early to mid 60’s. His beard was full, but neatly trimmed, and his face was a roadmap of wrinkles that spoke of a hard life and he had a deep red scar under his left eye and ending at his nose, but his dark eyes were lit up with pure delight. He was a large man, but muscular large, not fat. His frame took up most of the doorway, blocking an easy exit. “Who are you?” Emiala asked cautiously. “What do you want?”

“Emmy? Don’t you remember me? I’m your poppa!” he said in that same gruff almost hoarse voice. “Come here let me take a look at you! You’ve grown into such a beautiful woman.” He took a step closer and into the room.

Emiala took a step back, and he stopped. “Honey, I know it’s been a long time, but you have to remember me.” He sounded genuinely hurt, and Emiala stopped for a moment. He acted as if he was seeing her for the first time in years.

He looked similar to her father, or at least how her father might look if she had seen him since his first parole hearing 10 years ago. She had gone with her mother for mental support but had to leave as the vitriol that spewed from her father’s mouth at her mother turned her stomach. Her brother had tried to cross the room to hit him but was held back by the bailiff, after that, they were able to communicate via Zoom and letters to convince the courts that the man in their custody was not fit for human society.

He sounded like her father, and his two-pack-a-day habit, though in videos his voice wasn’t so gruff and course. He even smelled like him; a mix of old spice, tobacco, and vodka. “Darren?” she questioned, using his given name. In her mind her father was dead, and the figure before her didn’t deserve such niceties.

“Poppa. Dad, Daddy, Father even, but you don’t call me Darren little lady.” Now the voice sounded like her father’s; commanding, condescending, and with a tint of anger. He raised a hand and took a step closer, but stopped himself and lowered it again.

“Okay. Dad.” She said adding as much venom to the word as she could. “What is all the levels of hell do you want? This seems a bit overkill don’t you think, Dad?”

She gestured to the room and let the glass slip into her hand. She wished she had thought about the bed springs earlier she could have had a harder weapon or at least something harder than a stuffed rabbit to throw at this man. She braced herself, readying for a fight, she glanced over his shoulder, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there.

The man claiming to be her father stood frozen before her, taken aback by her words. He seemed stunned by her attitude. Emiala thought it bizarre, what had he expected?

“Emmy.” He started a slight pleading in his voice now. “I… I…. I just thought that maybe we could…”

He stopped.

“We could what Dad?” She started sarcastically. “We could just start over at the point we left off. The last 20 years never happened? What Dad?” She spit her words at him all anger and fury. “What did you expect? That we could just pick up where we left off, you never shooting mom. You never hurting Adam. You never destroying my family. You never being you. Is that what you want? Because I want out, I want to go home and never, never, never see your sick disgusting face again!”

He appeared stunned if only for an instance and she took her chance. She edged a little closer before making a run for it slashing at his arms and chest while striking quickly at the outside of his left knee, right at the joint line.

He howled in pain and reached for her, but as he bent down, she slashed again this time at his face before trying to drive the broken glass into his eye. She missed and the glass broke off in his forehead. But she was able to kick him hard in the stomach before he grabbed her arm and twisted her down. She pulled away and just managed to catch herself as she stumbled back a step or two. She caught her breath and he reached towards her again still bent over with blood dripping down his face, she narrowly avoided being caught before she braced her leg and drove it up as she slammed his head into her knee. He whimpered and she felt his teeth try and bite her, but she pulled away and grabbing the dresser to prevent a fall she watched his large frame crumble to the floor. She watched for an instant as he went down coughing and sputtering, blood dripping from his forehead, and mouth.

She crept around him and out the door and didn’t turn around as she ran down the steps towards the front door, she pulled and found that it wasn’t locked. He never doubted for a second that their reunion would have been anything but joyous. She felt relief when the door opened easily and she couldn’t see anyone outside. She heard the heavy footsteps starting to build up speed behind her and she slammed the door and sprinted into the warehouse.

It was large, empty, and dimly lit. There was a smell of old dirt, rust, and stale air, and she could hear dripping water. But other than the roar of her father, she couldn’t hear anything else. She ran to the left, hoping to find a door or a window or any way to get out. The floor was cold on her bare feet and she felt a sliver of glass driving itself into the soft arch of her right foot. There were puddles of sludge that she tried not to think about as she tried to escape and she felt something soft and squishy squash under her foot as she ran.

“EMMY YOU LITTLE WITCH! GET BACK HERE NOW!” she heard him roar, as he limped after her. He had also chosen left and she heard him struggling to catch up. She felt around, for a wall or a door, she kept running but scanned the floor for anything she could use as a weapon. She was strong and tough but she was 5’1” on a good day and 110 pounds after a big dinner, her father was at least 100 pounds heavier and had spent the past two decades in prison, with nothing to do but work out and plan this horrific reunion.

Emiala stayed silent and tried to run as quietly as possible. She slowed to a walk and struggled to control her breathing as she slipped behind a wall of pallets. Several large bugs climbed over her feet and bare legs and she resisted the urge to swat them away. She heard his footsteps getting closer, a strong solid step followed by a drag and a sharp intake of breath. “So, I did hurt him.” She thought, before realizing she was now trapped with a very angry very deranged man who was also in pain.

“EMMY. I hear you. You can’t run! GET BACK IN THAT HOUSE NOW.” He bellowed.

She held her breath as he came closer and closer to her hiding spot. “I promise I won’t be mad. It’s understandable for you to be a little upset. I understand that now. Just come home and we can talk this out. It’s not what it seems. I just want to get to know you.”

He was pleading now. But she noticed he was only talking to her. There were his footsteps and no others. They were alone, at least for now. He came closer to her wall of pallets, and she assessed her situation. She was alone in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse with her crazy father, who at least at the moment was injured, and she was trapped behind a wall of pallets with no way out. Her mind raced, going over every self-defense class, she had attended or taught. Never go to the secondary location, too late for that. Make yourself as unattractive as you can to them, that wasn’t going to happen. Yell fire not help, not likely that would do anything other than give away her location. Why couldn’t she think? She looked around, pallets, pallets, and more pallets. She leaned a little and felt the tower sway, she waited until her father was closer then launched herself at the tower of pallets. They came crashing down on the old man pinning him to the floor. Emiala scrambled over them ignoring the sharp pain in her foot and started running again.

She ran finding a wall and keeping close to it before finally finding a door, she pushed on it hard. Locked! She kept running. She found three more locked doors before finding one that opened. She pushed and found herself outside in an industrial park under the light of a waning moon. Brush grass grew in clumps, and stunted trees pushed through the concrete. The warehouse had broken windows and rust eating at its sides. There were several other buildings all desolate and abandoned. An eight-foot-tall chained link fence surrounded the property with barbed wire twisted on top. She quickly glanced left and then right. If she was a crazed lunatic, where would she park a car?

She went to the left hoping that this was the first of the buildings and not the last. As she turned the corner, she saw three cars. Two looked as if the owners had walked away at least 5 years ago, the weeds gathered around the deflated tires were several feet tall. The third was a new Ford truck covered in dust but with a fresh handprint on the door. Emiala looked around again, no one was in sight, and she couldn’t hear anything from inside, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to fear. She opened the door to the truck. Her father had a habit of leaving the keys in the visors whenever he parked the car in the garage. It had always been an old vehicle and he would joke that he would get more from the insurance claim than the thieves would but chopping it up for parts. She hoped he hadn’t broken that habit.

She flipped the visor and a set of keys dropped in her lap. It even had the elephant keychain she had made him in 5th grade. She started the car and thanked her mother for teaching her to drive stick. She slammed the car into reverse and heard the gravel crunch and spray behind her. Emiala drove towards the fence and found the gates, they were locked with chains, the road just on the other side, so close. She backed up a little, then took a deep breath before she gunned it, foot to pedal to floor, straight at the gate. The sides flew open the chain whipping towards her, smashing the windshield and creating a spiderweb of cracked glass. She didn’t care and she didn’t stop.

She continued to drive down the road, faster and faster than she had ever dared before. The side street she was on quickly met up with a larger state road. She turned left, it had worked so far, she thought, and kept going. The brush grass had changed to woods, and finally small farms. The tank of the truck was full, she kept driving. After thirty-five minutes she found an open gas station. She pulled in and hopped out of the truck before locking it behind her. She raced inside, a middle-aged woman with dark roots showing in her blonde hair looked up from a magazine she was reading. Emiala didn’t know if the look of shock was because of her presence or her appearance.

“CALL 9-1-1!” Emiala demanded. “I need help!”

The woman blinked twice before picking up the phone and calling. She told the operator that a small dark-haired woman in a nightie was standing barefoot and bleeding in the middle of the store. She hung up quickly.

“They’re on their way hon.” She said soothingly. “What in the world happened to you.”

Emiala sighed and looked out the window. Though the conversation had only lasted a few minutes, she was terrified her father would appear. “Can I get behind the counter, there’s a man after me.”

The woman didn’t hesitate or ask anything else, but opened the counter door and gestured her in. “You hide here honey, let me get the mop. Is that his car out there?”

Emiala nodded. “Give me the keys and I’ll move it. I’ve had friends in your situation, I know that hunted look.” The woman with a name tag that read Pauline held out her hand.

Emiala hesitated, that was her only way out, but she was exhausted, cold, hungry, and bleeding. She handed the keys with the elephant keychain to the woman and slumped against the counter wall, hidden from sight and surrounded by cigarette boxes, lotto tickets, and dust bunnies.

The woman flipped the sign on the door to closed and dimmed the lights, before walking out the door to move Emiala’s truck. She came back a few moments later and locked the front doors behind her, before handing Emiala the keys. “Let me lock up the back and then we can wait for the police together. Do you need some water, honey?”

Emiala nodded, grateful for this woman’s kindness. She didn’t know what type of friends Pauline had that she was this calm dealing with a scared injured woman in a night gown, but she was grateful.

Pauline came back with a cold bottled water and some crackers. “Here you go, sweetie. Now do you want to tell me what happened?”

Emiala shook her head. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, she didn’t want to think, she opened the bottled water and started to nibble the crackers. The two women sat in silence nibbling crackers and listening to Christmas carols muffled through the old dusty speakers.

Bing Crosby was halfway through White Christmas when flashing lights appeared outside the tiny gas station. Two officers emerged and walked purposely to the door. The one who had driven tapped lightly on the glass. Pauline stood up and walked over. “Hank, is that you?” she asked the county sheriff.

“Pauline what’s going on now?” the man named Hank answered.

Pauline unlocked the doors, and ushered the two officers in, before locking it behind her.

“It's okay now sweetheart, the police are here, well actually Sherriff Hank Bullard and his deputy Stephanie Hardgrove. But they’re good people and can help.”

Emiala peaked over the counter, making sure it was just the two of them, before creeping out.

“Dear God, what happened?” asked Hank. Stephanie stood dumbfounded for a few minutes before collecting herself.

She reached to her shoulder and radioed for backup as well as to see when the ambulance would get there.

Emiala opened her mouth to speak but found words wouldn’t come out. She started to cry, first a trickle of tears, then sobs. She couldn’t stop she stood leaning on the counter looking at the three of them staring at her and cried.

Stephanie looked around and grabbed a roll of paper towels, she tore open the container and handed several to Emiala. “It’s ok, it’s going to be okay. You're safe now.” She cooed softly. “Can you tell me who you are?”

Emiala tried to speak again and got her name out before the sobs returned. Stephanie reached to put an arm around her and Emiala let her lead her to a chair. They sat looking at each other while Hank took Pauline’s statement. The ambulance arrived a few minutes later, with sirens blaring Pauline unlocked the door and let them in.

The people, lights, noise, and confusion started to swallow Emiala up. She found it hard to focus, everyone seemed to be asking her a million questions. Was that her blood? Whose blood, was it? Why was she in a nightgown in a gas station at 2 in the morning? Emiala couldn’t find her words. She nodded or shook her head and ten minutes later she was wrapped in several white blankets on a gurney being rolled out. Thirty minutes after that she was in an emergency room with more new people and more questions.

She was hooked up to machines and IVs with doctors whispering to each other outside, but not quietly enough for her not to hear their concerns. She turned and watched clear liquids drip drop by drop into the line attached to her elbow. The room was warm, and the medication strong, she fought hard but soon found herself drifting off to a dreamless sleep.

Several hours later according to the machine peeping next to her, she looked around startled to find herself in a dimly lit hospital room with a police officer, several people in white coats and Lydia crammed in with her.

“Emiala, you’re awake, thank God. I was so worried,” Lydia said, reaching to hug her friend. The doctor stopped her, gently pushing her back.

“Miss Abraham, can you tell us what happened?” the officer asked firmly, but not too harshly.

A doctor glared at him, clearly thinking this was not the time for questioning. “Miss Abraham, how are you feeling? Can you tell us anything, your friend Lydia has tried to give us all the information she had. We also need your consent to treat and we need some x-rays.”

Emiala nodded, and the police officer interjected. “Your friend here filed a missing person’s report yesterday. She said someone illegally decorated your apartment, and that made her worry.” He said a little incredulously, not finding a problem with a little holiday décor.

Emiala nodded again, her head pounding and her body aching. She started to tell the officer, Lydia, and the doctors what had happened to her, all of it, and ended with her dropping a large tower of pallets on her father before escaping. Lydia and the staff just stood, mouths agape, speechless, while the strange officer took notes and asked follow-up questions. In the end, he said he would file the report and see about sending people out to the warehouses to look for her father. He left and a few minutes later an orderly came to take her for imaging. A stern nurse came in and tried to shoo Lydia out saying that no visitors were allowed but both Emiala and Lydia protested so vehemently that she relented at least for a few more hours.

Emiala stayed in the hospital for almost a week, she had broken her collar bone, probably smashing the door, had several stress fractures and a cracked patella, as well as an infection in her foot. Lydia stayed with her, not asking questions, just being there to support her and make fun of the holiday rom-coms they were binge-watching.

The day before she was released Hank, Stephanie, and Pauline arrived with a newspaper. They had found her father and he had been arrested but died of a heart attack two days later at a different hospital. Emiala couldn’t feel anything at the news, not anger, or sadness, or even a sense of relief. She knew that would come later; she did feel a little safer knowing he couldn’t hurt her. Lydia patted her hand reassuringly.

“What about his accomplices?” She asked. Hank, Stephanie, Pauline, and Lydia looked at her and then at each other. Confusion on their faces, the paper said her father was dead, so the ordeal was over.

“What accomplices?” Lydia asked.

Emiala looked at all of them. Did they really think her father had done this all by himself? “He said when he saw me, oh good they brought you. They. THEY! Who are they? He was surprised I was in that room. I heard a phone ring. Who are they that helped that sick demented old bastard do this?”

But no one had any answers for her. With her father dead there was no one to question. Even the parole officer hadn’t known what her father had been up to, he simply said he made all his check-ins on time. The warehouses had been abandoned for years; they hadn’t known someone was accessing them let alone building a house in them. There was no physical evidence suggesting anyone else had been involved.

“Emmy.” Lydia started

“Never call me that again.” Emiala snapped, Lydia looked hurt but didn’t argue.

“Emiala, there was only him. And he’s dead now. You’re safe. Look when you get out come to my place and we’ll figure things out. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Emiala nodded because it was easier than arguing with them. She knew the truth, and it would become clear soon enough. The next day she left and went to Lydia’s apartment. There was no way she would ever live in her home again. She had bought some clothes online while in the hospital and they were waiting for her at Lydia’s.

She had been at Lydia’s place a month before the letter from her landlord came. The lease was up for renewal, could she come down to the office and discuss things? No, she couldn’t, she thought to herself, but Lydia promised to come with her and coerced her into going stating she needed to get out of the house. She needed closure, was the argument that had won out, besides her mother’s jewelry was there and she couldn’t let that be thrown out.

They took a Lyft to her old building; it looked the same. It didn’t have a right to look the same, not anymore not after what had happened. But there it stood the bricks still standing the windows now hung with Valentine's Day decorations. Emiala and Lydia went up to her old apartment. The door was locked, but Lydia had her key. They turned the handle holding each other’s hand tightly. The room had been returned to the way it had been. No Christmas decorations, no lights, no tree, no gifts. Her coffee mug from that morning sat on the table a brown stain where the coffee had been. There was a pile of dirty clothes in the bedroom, and the unopened Christmas cards on the counter.

It looked like nothing had happened. But then Emiala looked down and there on the chair where she had dropped it was the shadow box, with a little note on the back that merely read, Merry Christmas see you next year.

 

The End