ISSUE #13 | Excerpt, "Pleasant Guests with Better Games"
AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #13
WRITTEN BY HAILEY PIPER
Illustrations by Maura McGonagle
Get The Piper Pack—a five book collection containing the works of Stoker Award winning novelist, Hailey Piper
“Anna’s my plus-one,” Diedre said. “Just a dorm friend.”
Those last few words kept the smiles on Mom’s and Dad’s faces.
Anna mimicked them with scrunched cheeks. “Happy holidays!” she shouted, waving an enthusiastic hand.
Stairway steps cried, and a gruff throat cleared. Catherine didn’t look from the living room foyer to the stairs; she felt Uncle Rex descend, a man tall and bald as a mountain. She fell under his shadow as he approached the new houseguest.
A grimace crossed his freshly shaved face. “Merry Christmas,” he said, knuckles rubbing the hips of his jeans. “You mean.”
The air chilled, Anna’s smile frozen stiff. “Same thing, right?”
“No, young lady. It isn’t.” Dad opened his mouth to say something, but Rex’s chest puffed out, and Dad shrank back. In some ways, younger siblings remained small forever. “Back in the day,” Rex said, with a pause for reverence. “Back then, we had a little something called Christmas spirit. Wasn’t some frivolous holiday to throw with the others. Not that you’d remember.”
Catherine held still, skin frozen as if Diedre and Anna had let in all of winter before they shut the front door.
Anna’s toothy grin shattered the ice. “Well, Merry Christmas then.”
Rex plodded close, slippers crushing snow, and then a laugh quaked up his chest. “I like this girl,” he said, and his tree trunk arms wrapped her in a hug. “I’m just ribbing you.”
Everyone chuckled, even Catherine, but her gut said that he wouldn’t have been ribbing if Anna hadn’t said that magic word. Christmas held that kind of power.
While Mom gave Anna the downstairs tour, Dad returned to the living room, and Uncle Rex followed. Catherine rarely heard the word “Christmas” from the TV speakers. Sometimes the angry channel gave “immigrant” this and “trans” that. Though she didn’t know their meanings, her dad and uncle soaked rage into their spongy heads, processed it into trembling fear, and then radiated anger back, a cycle between their skin and the screen. Catherine preferred books over Christmas specials, freeing the TV for Dad’s and Rex’s frequent absorption.
“Nothing against the LG-whatevers,” Rex said, his recliner creaking on the far side of the couch from Dad’s.
“Nope,” Dad said.
“Just no need for your kid to shove it down our throats during family time. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake.”
There, the magic word, but Rex couldn’t cheer himself up. He needed someone else to say it. Catherine started toward the sofa to wish him a merry one when Diedre stormed past, shoulders hunched. She ducked into Anna’s dark hair and whispered, “Don’t wait,” and then she slipped into the downstairs bathroom and shut the door.
Catherine hadn’t realized she needed to go until then. That had to be a sister thing, as if Diedre’s return helped Catherine know herself better. She scurried upstairs and into the bathroom there.
Voices didn’t follow until she finished washing her hands.
“This is the guest bedroom?” That was Anna, her tone honey-sweet.
Heavy footsteps walked with her. “Mine,” Uncle Rex said, a laugh in his voice. “I mean, you’re welcome to share, but think you’ll take Diedre’s old room. She’ll bunk with Cat.”
“Welcome to share.” Anna almost sang the words.
Catherine flicked off the bathroom light, turned the doorknob, and opened the door a crack. The upstairs hall loomed dark from here, the faint light from downstairs broken by Anna’s slender silhouette and Rex’s mountainous shadow.
Anna’s darkness turned to Rex, chin jutting up at him. “You seem quite giving. You remember old days and honor them.” Her fist reached for his neck.
Rex stiffened. “I mean, ‘tis the season, but I was just ribbing about sharing. You’re what, how old?”
“Very old,” Anna said. Her silhouette shifted, and her fist uncurled into a long-nailed hand. She wrenched it back from Rex with a wet slash.
Catherine started to shout, but nervous icicles pierced her tongue. No sound rushed out, only breath.
Hailey Piper is the 2x Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Worm and His Kings, Queen of Teeth, and other horror books. She’s a member of the HWA with over seventy published short stories, including multiple appearances and one editing stint in Planet Scumm. Hailing from the haunted woods of New York, she now lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal research is classified. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays.