The Ghoul of Christmas Past

it, but I won’t be doing that again in a hurry.’
‘What then?’ Frank wanted to know. ‘You said it took someone earlier. Did the police believe you? Are they going to deal with it?’ Michael puffed out his cheeks – they both knew the police were not committing officers to investigate the possibility of a ghoul. ‘Then we have to do it,’ Frank concluded.
Michael did not like that plan. ‘If I get killed on Christmas Eve, Mary will kill me.’
Frank tried to work that scenario out in his head but had to give up after a few seconds. He shook his head to clear it. Trying a different tactic, he said, ‘Brother Grey Fox, ask yourself, what would Tempest and Big Ben do?’
Dammit. That was an unfair tactic.
Beginning to feel like there was no longer a way out of this, he argued, ‘Big Ben would shag all the girls and knock the ghoul out with one punch while Tempest said something cool and got arrested. I can’t do those things at my age.’ Thinking about Big Ben’s habits, he added, ‘I’m not sure I ever could.’
‘But you’ve already been arrested, Grey Fox,’ Frank soothed, ‘and so far as we know, there are no girls involved. Besides, all we have to do is go to the theme park and see if you are right. Once we get there, we can call the police and report what we have found.’
Michael knew Frank was right, but that wasn’t going to make the phone call to Mary any easier. With a reluctant sigh, he placed the phone to his ear.
‘Michael Michaels I cannot believe you got yourself arrested!’
Perplexed by the mixed signals hitting his brains, Michael took the phone away from his ear to look at it. It hadn’t connected yet. In fact, he could hear it ringing, but that meant … He looked up and saw the panic in Frank’s eyes.
‘She’s behind me, isn’t she,’ Michael asked with a fearful gulp.
Frank backed away, nodding his head as he went but never taking his eyes from the approaching menace.
A few choice words, some rather colourful, bounced around in his head, then with a sharp sniff of the cold winter air, he spun around to greet his wife. ‘Sweetie, how are you? You’re looking so lovely this evening. How was the show? I’m so sorry I missed it, but I did get your chestnuts.’ he pulled the packet from his pocket only to discover the paper they were in had lost its integrity and ripped.
Chestnuts spilled onto the pavement forcing him to hurriedly shove the bag back into his coat.
‘Don’t you sweet talk me, Michael Michaels,’ Mary ground to a halt just inside trouser kicking range and wagged a finger at him.
Oh, no! She’s using the wagging finger.
Mary couldn’t hear her husband’s thoughts, but she wasn’t going to let him say another word. ‘I had to sit through that whole performance alone and I was parched. I couldn’t go to get my own drink because I would have lost my seat to someone else so I had to sit there thirsty for almost three hours.’
‘That’s what you are upset about?’ Michael questioned.
Mary lifted her hands like she was going to throttle him. ‘Arrgh! No, Michael. I am upset because I was worried about you. I had no idea where you had gotten to, though I assumed it was to do with your daft need to be adventurous like your son. I kept trying to call you and I was getting more and more worried and then I called the police and they said you had been arrested.’
Michael could see how upset and scared his wife was. He’d been ready for something of an argument, but he pulled her into him now, wrapping her up in a warm hug. Placing a kiss on the top of her head, he said, ‘I saw a man being attacked. I had to go to try to help. Anyone would have done the same.’
‘No, they wouldn’t,’ she argued.
He conceded that she was most likely right. ‘But it is what I did. One thing led to another, Frank came to my aid, we gave chase and the police arrested us because the person we were chasing escaped.’ He thought it best to say it was a person and leave the word ‘ghoul’ out. Using it hadn’t done him much good so far.
Noises from behind him made Mary move her head to see what it was, and feeling his wife stiffen, Michael let her go so he could swing himself around to protect her if necessary.
He almost said, ‘Holy Cow!’ but managed to change it before the words left his lips, coming out instead as, ‘Holy ... Good evening. This is Poison, yes?’ he asked Frank and dipped his head at the small Chinese woman.
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m Athena. This is Poison.’ Coming out of the dark was another Chinese woman and she was flanked by two men, both also Chinese.
‘Are you human?’ asked Mary, unsure what she was looking at. She didn’t believe in the supernatural, but the Bible didn’t talk about aliens from outer space so maybe that’s what they were.
The four young people looked at each other, mystified by the question. They each wore makeup, the guys included, and it gave them angular lines to their faces, accenting their cheekbones to make them look like they jutted out. The guys’ hair was styled into spikes and one had frosted tips that glowed in the dark. Everyone wore black but each outfit was styled with a different colour that peeked through the tears in the fabric of the outer garments and above all, their clothing was tightly fitted to their bodies. Mary’s assumption that they were from another planet was not without merit.
It was Athena who answered, ‘Nah, we’re in