Every year I participate in ‘Advent Ghosts’ which is an event where people tell spooky stories around Christmas time to honour the Victorian tradition of doing so. I enjoy the challenge of writing something dark or haunting with the season in mind, as well as reading what everyone else has put together. My story is below but to read all the other contributions the best way to is to go to Loren Eaton’s blog (the creator and host of Advent Ghosts) right here –> https://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/
He links all the stories there and hosts some in the comments as well 🙂
The rules say each of these stories is meant to be a drabble but I don’t follow that rule LOL This year’s story is about 1,500 words long.
Without further ado, here is my contribution:
Eleven months of the year Mallory house was the scariest house in town. It was built of wood that had long ago lost any colour that had a name and merely looked old. It was way too large for its lot and seemed, always, to be crowding the sidewalk, looming over it. Its dormer windows looked like eyes and the wrap-around porch with its broken pillars like a leering mouth. Mr. Mallory lived there and he hardly ever left. In fact, last year the police had been called to check up on him after no one had seen him for months. When he did occasionally come out to get groceries or what not he looked as old and broken as his house. He walked bent over with a shuffle more than a step, and used a sturdy-looking wooden cane to keep himself upright.
But every December his house transformed, and him along with it.
On December first, as soon as the sun went down, his house lit up. Strings of lights that were unnoticed other times of the year — lost within shadows or eavestroughs, perhaps — sprang to life, painting the weather-beaten boards in festive red and green. The eye-like windows came to life, the porch looked like a hockey smile rather than a leer, and old Mr. Mallory got a spring in his step.
Some folks even said they’d seen him down at the shops in December without his cane once or twice despite the snow and ice on the ground.
“Ya know,” Percy said, scratching at the back of his neck, “they say it’s the lights.”
“What?” Edie asked, impatiently.
The two were standing on the sidewalk in front of Mallory house. They had been on their way home but Mr. Mallory’s house was between the toboggan hill and their homes and had presented a completely irresistible distraction all decked out for the holidays as it was.
“Ya know, people say it’s the lights.”
“They say what is the lights?” Edie asked. She was used to having to ask him things more than once but it wasn’t her favourite thing about him, if she was honest. People thought that just because she always knew the answers in class and he didn’t it meant he was stupid. But he wasn’t stupid. He just thought of things in different ways than how the teacher liked, that’s all. But one of the annoying parts of that, she’d found, was that he often had a whole conversation in his head but only said the end part out loud.
Percy turned to look at her and Mr. Mallory’s lights lit up his pale skin red and green. The lights made the freckles on across his nose stand out in a weird way — like they weren’t real even though they were.
“They say that the lights are what gives old Mr. Mallory life.”
“That’s stupid. No one says that.”
“They do!”
“Who says that?”
“My nan for one.”
“Your nan–” Edie began but Percy cut her off.
“My nan says that Mr. Mallory kills people and stores their souls in the lights. She says that’s what powers the lights and powers him too. She says back when she was our age she knew someone who–”
“Your nan leaves cream out for the fairies and won’t walk under ladders or even leave her house on Friday the thirteenth. And once I saw her do this,” Edie made the sign to ward off the evil eye.
“Because she knows things!” Percy said, stomping his boot on the impeccably shoveled sidewalk.
“Because she’s dotters!” Edie snapped.
The look Percy turned on Edie was half betrayed pain, half anger. There was a wrinkle above his nose where his eyebrows came together and his lips were pursed, but tears shone red and green in his eyes. Unshed.
“My nan is not dotters.”
“She is.” Edie said, but with a lot less vitriol than had been in her voice only a moment before.
“Prove it then.” Percy crossed his arms over his chest and the scratching sound of the sleeves of his coat rubbing together sounded extra loud in the space between them.
“How am I supposed to prove your nan is dotters. She just is. No one believes in–”
“Go touch a light. If there’s nothin’ to be afraid of, just go touch a light.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I dare you,” Percy said, lifting his chin up defiantly.
Edie had felt bad after she called Percy’s nan crazy, she hadn’t meant to, it had just slipped out. And she’d been planning to walk it back, maybe even apologise, but then he’d just kept pushing and pushing. And now–now he was daring her to touch a light?
Anger flared warm in her chest, spreading through the rest of her body so that she could feel it flush her face. She pulled her toque off, holding it by the pom-pom on top and staring at Percy, chest heaving with big, deep, fuming breaths.
“You dare me?” she said. “You dare me? Okay, Percival Jacobs, I accept your dare. But I also dare you. I dare you to touch a light bulb too.”
That sure ‘took the wind out of his sails’ as her own grandmother would have said. She watched all the other emotions drain off his face, leaving him pale and scared-looking. She felt a kernel of regret, of pity, burst into existence in her belly but then it was burned away to cinders by her anger.
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine,” she said.
They approached the hip-high gate side by side, shoulder to shoulder, but when Percy reached out to unlatch it and swing it open, Edie had to step to the side to get out of its way.
Percy hesitated at the property line, but only for a moment before he stomped into the yard. Edie followed him.
The air was still, heavy. A few snowflakes, fat and lazy, drifted down to dust their shoulders. They were illuminated by the cold light of the streetlights and the red green red of Mallory house’s decorations.
Percy straightened his shoulders and marched up the walk to the left, Edie walked just behind him to the right.
The house grinned at them.
From inside, the soft sounds of “Silent Night” could be heard, soft and mellow. Golden light, like from candles, poured like honey from the windows and pooled on the snow outside.
Beside her, she could hear Percy’s breath coming in sharp puffs and little clouds of vapour drifted by on the periphery of her vision. She reached out for a light bulb, a red one bright as Rudolf’s nose.
Then she stopped.
Something was wrong.
Up this close she could see not just the lights but the string which held them. Could see that it was attached to the house with big fat staples that held the string taut and straight. But she could also see the end of that string where the plug was. It was not taut but hung straight down. From the street it was invisible, hidden behind a small bit of shrubbery, but right up here, a breath away from the lights she could see it. Could see the plug. The plug that was supposed to go into an outlet or another string. Was supposed to but didn’t. Instead it hung there, suspended over darkness behind the shrub, not plugged into anything.
Not plugged into anything.
And the lights flashed red green red.
And she felt terror claw at her belly, at her throat. Because if it wasn’t plugged in what was powering it, what was–
“Percy!” she shouted and turned. Too late and too slow she turned. Just in time to see Percy reach out with a triumphant look on his face to touch one of the bulbs.
And vanish.
Edie screamed his name into the night as, somewhere at the back of the house, another light bulb turned on.
**
To read some of the other, much shorter, stories being shared as part of this year’s Advent Ghosts, I invite you to click here -> https://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/2025/12/advent-ghosts-2025-stories.html and it will take you where you need to go.
