The wide-eyed group in the bathroom stares in awe as Valerie huffs.

  “I told you. Blunt force trauma, bitches.” She steps toward them. “Now, let’s get the fuck out of here before—”

  Candy leaps to her feet and rams her shoulder into Valerie’s chest.

  Valerie stumbles back across the room, still clutching the pan, which throws her off balance like an amateur shot-putter. Her pan hand crashes through the window, glass shattering and cutting her arm as the skillet drops out of the window. She winces, clutching her bloody forearm, but that doesn’t stop her from taunting the monster.

  “Come and get me, Candy Cunt.”

  Candy grunts, broad shoulders swaying as she stalks toward her prey like a cheetah.

  Valerie’s had enough knock-down drag-out fights in the school cafeteria to know that she can handle a girl this size with her bare hands.

  Probably.

  Right now, she’s just praying Mateo hits his mark as he darts out of the bathroom, swinging the butcher’s knife. The blade nicks Candy’s shoulder, slicing a sliver of flesh to the floor with a splat.

  Candy throws an elbow into Mateo’s face, sending him stumbling backward into Austin’s arms.

  Valerie’s grateful for the attempt, but knows Mateo is exactly where he should be right now.

  “Cute couple,” she says once more, just in case it’s the last thing she’ll ever get to tell them.

  Candy slams the door on the group and jams the chair back under the handle.

  The bell’s been rung, and fight night begins.

  Valerie’s cornered against the broken window as she lifts her fists in front of her face. The gash on her arm isn’t dripping so much as it is flowing like a soda fountain down her elbow.

  She’s losing a lot of blood, fast, as she grits her teeth at the oncoming killer.

  The bathroom door is splintering wood as the butcher’s knife hacks into it from the other side. Mateo’s still trying, but it’s too little too late.

  Valerie goes woozy as her arms drop to her sides, too heavy to hold up. If she can’t hit with her fists, she’ll at least use her words. She peers through the black hair that hangs over Candy Cain’s face. This girl might not be a zombie, but she sure could use a new skincare routine.

  “God, you really are ugly. No wonder your parents hated you.”

  No reaction.

  Valerie wobbles on her feet, blood pooling around her Uggs. Her eyelids flutter as she glances at the bed and thinks about how nice it would be to take a little nap right now.

  Candy continues her deranged caroling as she steps an inch from Valerie’s face.

  “Give her a dolly that laughs and cries.”

  A finger extends to wipe the tears from under Valerie’s eyes, the ragged nail scratching the skin of her cheeks. Bitch needs a manicure too.

  “One that can open and shut its eyes.”

  Two fingers drag down Valerie’s eyelids, closing them like a Sleepy Sally doll.

  Yes. Just let her sleep.

  Candy’s palm clutches Valerie’s face. It’s a gentle shove, but it’s enough.

  Valerie’s feet fly out from under her, body snapping backwards and catching on the windowsill.

  Her eyes shoot wide open as she looks down at the jagged glass piercing up through her stomach. Too weak to hold herself up, Valerie lets her body go slack, hanging from broken glass by shredded guts.

  She’s seeing outside now, the truck and the basement doors below. As her limbs twitch, she can feel her severed insides slowly separating, and all she wants in this moment is for the pain to end.

  To fall into soft snow and sleep.

  Mateo stops hacking at the door to peer through the ragged hole he made in the wood.

  He sees Valerie bent backwards over the broken window, shards of glass protruding from her stomach.

  Mateo screams her name, utterly helpless.

  Candy Cain turns to look through the hole, into Mateo’s eyes. She bends down and picks up Valerie’s legs, tucking them under her armpits while facing the bathroom door.

  Still singing.

  “Down through the chimney with lots of toys. . .”

  Candy leaps forward, giving a full-bodied yank that tears Valerie’s legs from her torso, which topples out of the window. Mateo gags at the sight of Candy swinging Valerie’s detached legs around in circles, blood splattering the walls.

  “All for the little ones, Christmas joys!”

  She releases the legs, which soar out the window to join Valerie’s torso below.

  Mateo starts hacking at the door again, but Austin pulls him back.

  “Mateo. We have to go.”

  “I should’ve saved her,” Mateo says, guilt washing over him.

  “There’s nothing you could’ve—”

  A candy-cane-striped arm shoots through the splintered wood and grabs Mateo’s hair. Austin swipes his knife against the hand, drawing blood before it retreats back into the hole with a hiss.

  “Let’s go!” Mrs. Werner pulls them out the other bathroom door, slamming it closed. They hurry from the kids’ room out to the landing, closing that door too.

  “Fiona,” Austin says. “On my back.”

  Mrs. Werner carries the crutches, but Fiona’s still clutching those steak knives as she wraps her arms around her brother’s neck.

  “Please be careful with those,” Austin says.

  “You guys go first.” Mateo grips the butcher’s knife tight, facing the kids’ bedroom door as the rest of the group slips down the stairs.

  He let Valerie die, but he won’t mess up again. As soon as Candy opens this door, he’ll be waiting to—

  Slam.

  The master bedroom door flies open down the hall. Mateo spins toward it as Candy Cain steps out.

  “Go, go, go!” Mateo shouts over his shoulder, raising the wide blade high.

  He’s ready for Candy to charge straight down the open hallway at him. But she doesn’t. She takes a few steps back and sprints diagonally toward the banister, leaping over it.

  Her arms and legs go wide like a psycho starfish, flying toward Austin and his family, halfway down the staircase.

  Mateo doesn’t even think before he leaps, intercepting Candy with a clumsy mid-air tackle.

  Their tangled bodies plummet, and the next thing Mateo feels are the prickles of pine needles on his skin as he slams into the Christmas tree below, which collapses on him and Candy.

  Austin screams, “Mateo!” from somewhere outside the mess of green branches.

  Footsteps rush down the steps.

  Mateo’s empty hands scramble, trying to find the knife that was knocked loose in the fall.

  Candy pops up from the wreckage like a jack-in-the-box, clutching something in her grip.

  A shiny candy cane ornament with the long end broken into a porcelain point.

  She rears it back, and Mateo steals one last glance out of the tree at Austin.

  Not just the boy he has a crush on. The boy he loves.

  It’s the best last thing he could hope to see before the jagged ornament slams down into his eye socket, and everything cuts to black.

  Dana holds her son back. Austin is screaming Mateo’s name, trying to rush toward the tree to help the boy he loves, but Dana knows it’s too late. The moment that ornament plunged into Mateo’s head, his body went quiet and still.

  She’s had to process a lot of death tonight, and fast, but if she slows down now, it’s all over.

  “Austin, listen to me.” She pulls Austin toward the basement door, opens it and guides him inside. “Your plan, it was a good one.” She helps Fiona down the first step, passing her the crutches. “Find the truck keys and get out of here. I’ll buy you some time.”

  “What?” Austin responds. “Mom, no we’re not going anywhere without you.”

  “Fiona.” Dana looks to her daughter, the strongest girl she’s ever known. “Help your brother.”

  The look on both of their faces is too heartbreaking. If she waits another fraction of a second, she’ll lose her will, so she slams the door on the only family she has left.

  Austin’s fist thumps against it. “Mom, don’t! Come with us!”

  Dana leans her head against the wood, listening to her daughter’s steady voice on the other side: “Austin. I know you’re sad. I’m sad too. But we have to move. Now.”

  Good girl, Fiona.

  Dana puts her back against the basement door and slides down to the floor, creating a human barricade with her children on the other side.

  If it’s the last thing she does, she will protect them. But after what she’s seen tonight, she knows a straight up fight with Candy Cain isn’t going to end well. She has to find another way.

  Dana tucks the kitchen knife out of sight under her leg just as Candy rises from the fallen Christmas tree, dripping with pine needles. The grown girl grips a new toy in her hand.

  The silver star that once rested atop the tree.

  Three sharp points protrude between Candy’s fingers as she stalks across the room.

  Dana looks over at Greg’s body. Her North Star. She has to try to be what her husband wanted her to be. Even if she has to use her rusty acting skills to fake it. She’s going to be warm and loving.

  She’s going to be Mother.

  “Merry Christmas, Candace,” Dana says. “You must have been so lonely all these years. So cold.” She really needs to sell it, so she digs deep, searching for empathy. “I’m sure you didn’t want to have to kill all those people tonight. But they came into your home, didn’t they?”

  Candy stops in her tracks. Cocks her head like she’s actually thinking, feeling something other than a murderous rage.

  It’s working.

  “You were just scared, right? Defending your home. Your mommy and daddy didn’t treat you well. I saw it. In the video.” Dana motions toward the couch, where Brock tossed the camcorder.

  Candy’s head swivels toward it. Is that a twinge of sadness, a frown behind the mask of black hair?

  “Come here,” Dana says, extending her arms. “Let me hold you.”

  Candy steps toward Dana, just a foot away now. She raises that silver star high.

  Dana closes her eyes. At least she tried.

  Smash.

  She opens her eyes to find Candy empty-handed, the ornament shattered to silver fragments on the floor.

  Dana’s heart lodges in her throat as Candy slowly lowers into her lap. She cradles the lanky teenaged girl, rocking her back and forth. Candy smells awful up close, but Dana can’t show disgust, can’t show fear, even though she’s utterly terrified.

  She can only show love.

  Dana raises her right hand to the girl’s cheek, pushing the black hair away. The face beneath brings spicy vomit up her throat, but she chokes it down. Replaces it with kind words.

  “You poor thing.”

  Candy clearly likes her Christmas carols, so Dana tries to remember one. The small town she grew up in didn’t have a theater, so she got her acting start in Christmas pageants. Her memories from those early days are a blur, some of them more consciously scrubbed than others, but music has a way of sticking in the brain.

  Dana keeps rocking the child in her arms and begins to sing.

  “What child is this who laid to rest. . .”

  Her left hand quietly lowers toward the floor.

  “. . . on Mary’s lap is sleeping?”

  She wraps her fingers around the knife handle. The metal blade makes a slight tick against the wooden floor as she lifts it. Candy doesn’t seem to hear the sound, doesn’t seem to notice Dana’s hand moving up behind her head.

  Candy hums along as Dana sings.

  “Whom angels greet with anthems sweet. . .”

  Dana hesitates, only for a moment. All that digging for warmth really has unearthed some empathy in her heart.

  Can she really kill this child?

  “. . .while the good shepherds watch are keeping?”

  She has no choice if she wants to protect her own children. She has to act, now.

  But that one moment of hesitation is all it takes for Candy’s body to tense in Dana’s arms.

  Just as Dana tries to thrust the knife down, Candy’s fingers clamp around her hand. Sharp nails dig into flesh as Dana lets out a cry. She tries to release the knife, but Candy won’t let her.

  Candy looks up at the blade, frowning as she guides it toward the side of Dana’s head and picks up the song.

  “Oh raise, oh raise this song on high. . .”

  The girl is strong, and Dana’s arm feels weak, those ragged fingernails shredding the tendons in her hand as blood seeps.

  “His mother sings her lullaby. . .”

  The tip of the blade grazes Dana’s ear lobe, landing softly in her inner ear. She tries to stop it, but Candy grabs the other side of Dana’s head and pushes it further against the blade.

  “Oh joy, oh joy, for Christ is born. . .”

  The knife slices in, and Dana hears the flesh splitting just before her eardrum pops.

  There’s only ringing in that ear now, like a faint church bell, as the other ear catches Candy’s final verse:

  “. . . the babe, the child of Mary.”

  The blade digs deeper and downward now, grazing Dana’s jawbone as the cold metal glides through her jugular vein. Blood oozes over her ear, running down her neck.

  Death comes quick, and Dana welcomes the warmth, pooling in her lap where the child still rests.

  Candy watches the whites of Mother’s eyes go red and gives her one last hug. It turns the white stripes on Candy’s pajamas red now too.

  She drags Mother across the floor, laying her next to Father.

  The path to the basement door is clear now.

  The door to her home, where the children wait.

  Austin can barely hear Fiona’s voice over the sound of his own sobbing, but he knows she’s right.

  They need to move. Now.

  He puts everything that’s happened tonight out of his mind, steels himself and turns toward his sister with a nod. The only thing that matters now is what they do next, so they take their first steps into the shadowy cellar.

  “Rick’s body has to be here somewhere.” Austin searches the cavernous corners, but finds nothing. Just shelves and boxes.

  “Austin.” Fiona points a crutch at the little square door in the floor. The one Ethan almost opened earlier.

  The one in the video where Mother was killed.

  Austin wraps his fingers around the metal ring and gives it a big pull. The wood groans until the square door pops out of its frame, like opening the worst present ever.

  The smell slams Austin in the face and he gags instantly. Two corpses are folded up inside, a tangle of limbs improbably bent into the tight space.

  “What is it?” Fiona asks far enough away that she can’t see the crooked contents.

  “Stay there.” Austin doesn’t want his sister to see any more bloodshed than she already has.

  The body on top is definitely Lynette. He recognizes the beige pantsuit, even under the ropy red intestines that have been wrapped around her body like Christmas tree lights.

  Austin gets onto his knees and starts tugging at her limbs. Rigor mortis has set in, so it takes a bit more effort than just pulling wrapping tissue from a gift box. He manages to move her body to the side, revealing the second one underneath. A man, facedown, the back half of his skull caved in. This must be Rick.

  Austin starts digging, trying reach the front pockets of the man’s overalls; but his searching fingers land on something he wasn’t looking for beneath the body.

  He pulls out an old children’s Bible, stained with blood. The one Mother was clutching in the video. Austin tosses the book to the floor and keeps digging, elbow deep in dead bodies. His fingers finally slip into a denim pocket, touching cold metal.

  “Holy shit.” Austin pulls his hand out to show Fiona the dangling keys. “I actually found them.”

  “Great,” Fiona says. “Because I’d like to get where we’re going sometime before Christmas.”

  Austin’s never appreciated his sister’s sense of humor more. They share a sad little laugh before he rushes up to the metal storm doors. Pressing upward, he’s met with some unexpected resistance.

  “Damn, they’re heavy. Must be the snow.”

  He resets his hands for a sturdier push. The gap between cracks opens a little further, releasing a red Slurpee mixture that drips down against Austin’s grit teeth. He stumbles backwards, wiping his bloodied face.

  “What is it?” Fiona asks.

  Austin’s just piecing it together himself, realizing why those doors won’t open.

  “It’s Valerie. I think her body fell onto the doors. It’s weighing them down with all the snow.”

  He gives it another try, shouldering one door and using his legs to lift, ignoring the slippery organs that slip through the crack to slap his face. But it’s too much weight, and he collapses to the steps.

  “I can’t open them. We’re stuck.”

  “We can’t be stuck,” Fiona says. “There has to be another way out.” She looks around the space, nodding toward the raised rectangular window. “There.”

  Austin runs over. “That must be the window she crawled out of to get Ethan.”

  “If she can do it, so can we.”

  Austin uses the old wooden shelf like a stepping stool. Once he gets up to the window, he sees another six inches of fresh snow have already packed against the glass. He tries to open it, but it won’t budge. “I think it’s frozen shut.”

  “So, smash the fucking thing!” Fiona says.

  Austin grabs a can of deviled ham off the shelf, gripping it as he wraps a dirty rag around his whole hand.

  One punch doesn’t do it.

  Neither does two.

  But on the third, his protected fist breaks through. Austin keeps smashing around the edge to remove the broken shards from the wooden frame. The image of Valerie’s death is still emblazoned in his mind, and there will be no repeats of that. Once he’s cleared every last sharp edge and pushed the snow away to make room on the other side, he climbs back down the rickety shelf.

 

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