A Christmas Horror Story by Sebastian Gregory Read Free Book Online Page B

sticking into her skin. It was painful, but she was numbed by the cold and her layers of clothes. She fell and landed on the embankment of snow on the other side of the fence, her jacket and thermal trousers ripping as she did. The tear went deep, and blood trickled from the scratches. As she moved across the field, droplets of blood followed, leaving tiny red stains against the white snow. The trees, although mourning the loss of dead leaves, were tall and thick enough to block out the moonlight, leaving only shadows.
    It was then Katie realised that any fear she had previously felt was only a rehearsal compared to how she felt now. Now, she was truly held in terror’s grasp. She dropped her rucksack to the ground where it landed with a dull, soft thud. As she knelt by the bag, Katie couldn’t help but cry uncontrollably at the prospect of facing the creature that lay in wait for her inside the forest. So far none of this had seemed real but had been like a nightmare. But now, with the snow seeping through her clothes and blood trickling down her legs, her whole body screaming in protest, it suddenly felt real.
    ‘I have to go on,’ she said. ‘For their sakes, I have to go on.’
    Wiping her stinging cold tears from her eyes, Katie took the large black heavy-duty torch and a hatchet from the bag. She stood and turned the torch on and instantly the beam cut into the trees. It was so cold here that white fog rose from the ground, covering the forest in a freezing mist, every bit as ghostlike as the breath leaving her mouth. Katie gripped the handle of the hatchet tightly for fear of it slipping away, and she stepped between the trees.
    The snow was thinner here and easier to walk on. Her boots held to the familiar crunching ground with each step. The woods, however, were as quiet as a deadly secret and the only other sound was her own gasping breath. Katie’s nerves tickled unpleasantly with an eerie feeling that she was not alone. As she walked through the dark, slumbering trees, the feeling grew. However, she held onto that uneasy tingle, following the strength of it, using it like a sixth sense. She allowed it to take her into the maze of trees, until finally the beam of misty light from her torch fell upon her destination.
    There was no mistaking this to be the grotto of the Child Eater. She gulped at the sight of it, not wishing to go further but knowing there was no turning away now. The torchlight formed a circle around the gaping, yawning maw of the tunnel. The dirt and snow, piled and overturned, made a mixture of twigs and soil, root and worm, scraped together with deep frozen claw marks in the frosted mud. She stepped closer and saw how the tunnel’s darkness consumed the light and gave no clue as to what waited in that miserable dark. Her eyes, however, were drawn as, in the entrance of the awful chasm, the torch illuminated discarded festive decorations. Moving into the cave, Katie stepped over sad and jagged baubles, crushed into the dirt, while dead fairy lights and filthy tinsel lay on the ground.
    The entrance was huge and Katie was swallowed into it. Soil fell from the gouged ceiling that was riddled with tree roots and cobwebs. Mist swirled and danced around Katie’s boots like ghosts trying to trip her. She breathed in the dank air as thud, thud, thud went her heart, and the beam of light rattled in her glove, not from the cold but from the icy grip of fear. She thought back to when she was a child, when the dark held terrors created by her imagination. She was there now, dark and scared and alone. But her childhood memories also held her mother and she remembered being held and kissed. It soothed her, listening to the memories of her mother’s kisses and her father’s voice calling her name.
    She sang to herself now. Her voice was timid, but the distraction helped.
    ‘
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.
’
    The tunnel, although wide, was low and Katie hunched as she walked deeper