The Ghoul of Christmas Past

to throw the remaining items on the backseat of the car and get going. The girls were expecting him to collect them soon anyway. He wanted to be on the slopes by early afternoon, and on one of the girls by early evening.
Unable to shift the creepy feeling, he threw his armful through the backdoor as fast as he could and slammed it shut. He didn’t care that it was a mess that would most likely tumble out as soon as he opened the door again. He would sort it out after he collected Sophie or, rather, when he collected her as he would need to load her items then.
Without a care that the sudden noise of the rear door slamming would most likely wake his mother, he jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed that door too. The engine was already running, chugging away to make the car’s interior warm and power his heated seat.  Now that he felt much more secure, he stomped on the gas and peeled off down the drive with a slew of gravel.
Fifty feet away, back at the trees, a figure leaned out to watch. No longer concerned he would be spotted and give the game away, the figure, far more normal sized than the first one, started walking after the car. He didn’t hurry his pace though: the car wasn’t going to get very far.
A snort of laughter escaped Jason’s nose as he settled in and wondered what on Earth had got into him. Jumping at shadows at his age? Ridiculous.
The house’s long driveway bent around in a big arc to reach the front gate which would automatically open once he got close enough to it. Relaxing, he turned his attention to the stereo. He needed to portray the hip, edgy personality that would lure the girls into his bed. No good listening to Radio Two which was universally considered to be for old people even though he always listened to it when he was alone. As his finger poised over the button to select Crushing Crew Beats volume two, the sensation of being watched returned but in a far more serious way.
Checking his rear-view mirror to see if he were being followed, he found it to be filled with the ghoulish head and face of a giant man. The apparition’s pallid skin had the anaemic appearance of a corpse and when he opened his mouth, the sound that came from it was a bone-chilling rasping noise that defied translation.
Jason Pendergrass screamed in fright, an automatic reaction he could not have fought and failed to even try.
Giant hands surged forward, grasping his head on either side as the ghoul came between the front seats to get him.
Across the garden and watching with excitement as he strolled nonchalantly after the Range Rover, the second smaller shadow saw the car swerve and look ready to lose control. For a moment, he worried it might leave the driveway and crash into one of the ornamental displays, of which there were many dotted along the route in and out of the grand house. That wouldn’t do at all, so he was thankful to see the car come to a stop to the side of the driveway but still on it.
The victim was in for a real treat, even if he didn’t know it yet.

Breakfast. Saturday, December 24th 0900hrs
‘There is something screwy here.’
Mary Michaels raised an eyebrow and looked up from her newspaper. She did not agree with conversation over breakfast, she felt it interrupted the flow of her day. Raising her newspaper so it formed a shield in front of her face, she focussed on the article she was reading.
Two fingers looped over the top edge of the newspaper to pull it down. On the other side, her husband, Michael Michaels grinned a cheeky grin at her.
‘Good morning, Mary,’ he said as if they had not already spoken several times in getting up and starting their day. ‘I wonder if perhaps you were too absorbed in what you are reading to have heard me speak?’
‘I heard you,’ she replied, casting her eyes back to the page.
Michael waited to see if she had anything else to say, and when it became clear she did not, he persisted. ‘I believe I have stumbled across something.’
Mary felt that she had to deal with enough nonsense from her son, Tempest’s, shenanigans already. With a sigh, she made eye contact. ‘Have you finished your breakfast, dear?’
Michael cocked an eyebrow and looked down at the wreckage of his two boiled eggs with toasted soldiers. ‘Yes, dear.’
‘Then perhaps you ought to stumble across the kitchen where you will be able to put away the condiments and wash up the dirty plates.’ With a flick of her hands, the newspaper once again formed a barrier between them.
Frowning at the Prime Minister’s face as it leered out from the front cover of his wife’s broadsheet, Michael Michaels tossed a mental coin. Should he push the issue and risk an hour or more of sullen silence as his punishment or withdraw his hypothetical troops from her border? ‘There was a theft from the Dickens Museum a few days ago,’ he chose to go with full invasion.
With a huff, because she liked to make her feelings abundantly clear, Mary Michaels folded her newspaper, placed it neatly on the table, and fixed her husband with a glare. ‘What of it? You told me about it when it happened.’
‘Yes, dear, how silly of me to trouble you with conversation.’ Her glare intensified. ‘You may remember my old Navy buddy, Rob Whittaker. Well, he was talking about the theft the other night in the veteran’s bar.’
Mary frowned. ‘I do not recall him talking about that.’
‘You didn’t hear him because you were chatting with the ladies. He said he was the one who reported the theft and