This Christmas

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Clara followed Kit down the stairs.

The crowbar hung at her side, half-hidden against her leg, her fingers wrapped so tightly around the cold metal that she feared a finger might break. Kit walked ahead of her, his posture relaxed, his footsteps easy on the creaking wood—like this was any other Christmas morning, like he hadn't just confessed to murder, like the world hadn't cracked open and swallowed everything she thought she knew.

She was mapping the house as they descended. Front door: ten steps from the bottom of the stairs. Back door: through the kitchen, past Carol and Jim. Windows: thick layers of paint, probably next to impossible to throw open, especially in the bitter cold.

The kitchen was too bright. Someone had turned on the overhead light—a harsh fluorescent glare—and it cast everything in a clinical, unforgiving glow. Carol and Jim sat at the table with cups of coffee in front of them, untouched, steam still rising.

They didn't look up when Clara entered.

Carol's hands were trembling. Jim's jaw was clenched so tight that Clara could see the muscle twitching beneath his skin. They sat perfectly still, perfectly silent, like children who'd been told to stay in their seats or else.

"Sit down," Kit said gently, pulling out a chair for Clara. "Please. I know you're scared. I know none of this makes sense. But I'm going to explain everything, okay? I'm going to tell you the truth."

Clara didn't sit. She stood by the counter, the crowbar still pressed against her thigh, her eyes scanning the kitchen. It looked familiar. It felt familiar. But she couldn't actually recall any true memories of this space.

"Start with them," she said, nodding toward Carol and Jim. "Who are they? Really?"

Kit glanced at the couple, and something complicated passed across his face. "They're... helpers. People who understand how important this is. How important you are."

Carol made a slight sound. A whimper. Her eyes darted to Clara, wide and wet, her lips trembling around words she desperately wanted to say.

"Carol." Kit's voice was calm. Pleasant, even. "Quiet, please."

Carol pressed her lips together. But her eyes—her eyes were screaming. They locked onto Clara with desperate intensity, flicking between her and Kit, silently begging her to see, to understand.

"That's not an answer," Clara said to Kit.

"It's the only answer that matters right now." Kit moved toward the basement door. "Please, Clara. Come with me. I need you to see—"

"Please." The word escaped Carol like a sob. "Please, you have to—"

"Carol." Harder now. A warning.

Jim's hand found Carol's thigh under the table. Squeezed. Don't. Stop. He'll hurt you.

But Carol couldn't stop.

"He's lying," Carol gasped, the words tumbling out in a rush. "He took us from our home, he has a gun, he made us pretend, please, please—"

Kit moved.

One second, he was standing by the basement door. Next, his hand slammed down on the table, pinning Carol's wrist to the wood. She screamed—a high, animal sound—and Jim lurched up from his chair, but Kit's other hand was already moving, already pulling something from his waistband, something that punched through the back of Carol's hand with a sound like a hammer hitting wet meat.

The knife tip bit into the wooden table beneath, pinning her in place, and Carol's scream pitched into something beyond sound—a keening, breathless wail that didn't seem human.

Clara stumbled backward, her spine hitting the counter. The crowbar clattered from her grip.

"I asked you," Kit said quietly, "to be quiet."

Blood was pooling around the knife, spreading across the table in a dark, lazy river. Carol was hyperventilating, her free hand clawing at the air, at the knife, at nothing. Jim had gone white as paper, frozen halfway out of his chair, his eyes locked on the blade embedded in his wife's hand.

Kit straightened up. Adjusted his shirt. When he turned to Clara, his expression was calm. Almost apologetic.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," he said. "She just wouldn't listen. Some people don't understand how important this is."

Clara couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Couldn't do anything but stare at the knife, at the blood, at Carol's face twisted in agony.

"Come on." Kit extended his hand toward her, palm up, gentle. "Let's go downstairs. I'll explain everything. I promise."

Behind him, Carol was sobbing, her forehead pressed to the table, her pinned hand twitching. Jim had sunk back into his chair, his hands raised in surrender, tears streaming silently down his cheeks.

And Clara—Clara looked from this cruel man, back to Carol, back to Kit, and then back to Jim again. Hopelessness welled inside her, and she decided to give in, if only for Carol's sake.

"Fine," she heard herself say. "Show me what you want to show me. Then let these people go."

She followed him toward the basement stairs on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. As she passed the table, Carol lifted her head. Blood and tears streaked her face. Her lips moved, forming words Clara couldn't hear.

But she could read them.

Run.

But Clara didn't run. Instead, she walked down the basement stairs behind the man claiming to be her brother, leaving Carol pinned to the table like a butterfly in a collection.

​

The basement stairs were dark.

Kit descended first, his footsteps steady on the creaking wood, swallowed by the black below. Clara followed, one hand on the rough wooden railing, the other still trembling at her side. The only light came from the kitchen behind her—a thin rectangle of fluorescent glow that shrank with each step down until it was just a sliver, then nothing.

Total darkness. The smell of mold and concrete and something older, something that lived in the walls. Clara stopped, blind, her heart hammering.

"Wait," Kit said softly from somewhere ahead of her. She heard him moving, shuffling across concrete, and then—

A click. A hum. And then light.

Dim. Barely there. A handful of tiny white stars flickering to life along the ceiling—a single strand of Christmas lights, dusty and forgotten, half the bulbs missing or broken. They cast a pale, ghostly glow over the basement, turning everything into shadows and suggestions.

It wasn't much. It was barely anything at all.

But it was enough to see.

The basement was worse in the light.

The stained mattress with its stuffing spilling out. The buckets against the wall. The water bottles and snack wrappers scattered across the floor. But now she could see everything—and something about the space felt less foreign than it should have.

The walls.

Clara's breath disappeared into the basement in a fog.

Tally marks. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, gouged into the concrete with something sharp. They clustered near the mattress, spreading outward, tracking something.

Kit reached up and touched the strand of lights, running his fingers along the dead bulbs, the working ones casting their faint glow across his face.

"This was our only light," he said. "They gave us this. One strand. That was it. Nothing else. Just the little window up there"—he pointed to the narrow rectangle near the ceiling, barely big enough to fit a child's head, now dark with the night outside—"and these lights."

Clara stared at the strand. The white glow. The way it barely pushed back the darkness.

"During the day, a little sun would come through that window," Kit continued. "Enough to see. But at night... this was all we had. These lights. You used to tell me they were magic."

He turned to look at her, and in the dim glow of those dying bulbs, his eyes looked ancient.

"You made them magic," he said. "I was maybe three or four, and I was scared of the dark—so scared I couldn't sleep—and you told me these weren't just lights. You said they were Christmas lights. You said as long as they were on, we were safe. You said Christmas was the safest, happiest time in the whole world. So we wanted it to be Christmas every day down here."

Clara stared at the lights. Something was stirring in her chest—not a memory, exactly, but the shape of one. The feeling of cold concrete beneath her bare feet. The weight of a baby in her arms. The desperate need to make something beautiful in a place that held nothing but ugliness.

"We lived here," she whispered. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"In this basement."

"Yes."

"For how long?"

Kit was quiet for a moment. "I don't know exactly. My whole life. You were maybe five or six when they moved you down here. When I was born, you were already waiting."

Clara's legs felt weak. She lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress—then recoiled, standing again, her skin crawling.

"That's where we slept," Kit said, watching her. "Both of us. You on one side, me on the other. You used to curl around me to keep me warm. And you'd point up at the lights and tell me stories about the beautiful house we lived in. The tree in the corner with the colored lights. The mother who baked cookies. The father who told us stories by the fire. You made it so real, Clara. You made me believe it."

He turned to look at her, and in the dim glow of those dying bulbs, his eyes looked ancient.

"That's all I knew. Those stories. Those lights. You. That was my entire world."

Clara was shaking now. "Why? Why would anyone—why would our parents—"

"Because she hated you."

The words landed like stones.

"But why? I was only a—"

"You had a twin," Kit continued. "A sister. She died during labor—cord wrapped around her neck. You came out healthy, and she came out dead, and our mother never forgave you for it."

"She would call you a murderer," Kit said. "From the time I was old enough to understand. She said you strangled their baby in the womb. She said you wanted to be the only one. And she punished you for it. Every single day."

Clara was shaking now. "I don't remember—"

"You do. Somewhere. Your mind just won't let you. To be honest, I've always been jealous of that. Obviously not why you forget, but that you forget at all. Your brain is protecting you."

Kit moved closer, his words coming faster.

"We weren't allowed upstairs. This basement was our whole world. We heard them up there—footsteps, voices, the TV—but we couldn't go up. Maybe once a month, they'd bring us up for a bath. Cold water, five minutes, back down. That was it. Sometimes they needed help with something—I helped Dad with a burst pipe once, you carried laundry up to the second floor a few times—but mostly we just... existed. Down here. In the dark. With those lights."

The words were unlocking something. Flashes. Fragments. The sound of footsteps overhead. The smell of food drifting down from the crack beneath the door. The endless hours with nothing but concrete walls and a string of white lights and each other.

Clara couldn't breathe.

"She pushed you down the stairs once," Kit said, kneeling beside her. "When you tried to stop her from hitting me. You fell all the way down, hit your head on the concrete. I thought you were dead. I sat with you for three days, just the two of us down here in the dark, not knowing if you'd ever wake up."

"Stop," Clara whispered. "Please stop."

"That's why you forget. Your mind protects you from things you can't handle. It always has."

He reached out and took her hand. His grip was warm and steady.

"The moment you opened your eyes, that was the moment I knew I needed to start protecting you. I started paying attention, really paying attention to their routines, the sounds they made and where the sun or moon were in the sky when those things happened. And I started training: jumping jacks, push-ups, pull-ups on the ceiling joists," he said. "Every day I was getting stronger, getting smarter. Getting ready. Because I had to get you out of here. I had to give you the life you always pretended we had." He gestured at the white lights above them. "You created this whole world for us, Clara. You taught me to believe in it so hard that sometimes I forgot it wasn't real. And I thought... if I could just make it real... if I could give you a real tree with real colored lights and a real family who loved you..."

His voice cracked.

"And so three nights ago, I waited for our real parents to go to bed, I broke down that door, and I killed them in their sleep."

A long silence. The Christmas lights flickered overhead, dim and dying but still glowing.

"Carol and Jim," Clara finally said. "If those people upstairs in the bed are our real parents... who are Carol and Jim?"

Kit's expression flickered. "I told you, people who are helping."

"You stabbed her through the hand."

"She wasn't listening."

The words hung in the air between them—casual, matter-of-fact, like he was explaining why he'd sent back a meal at a restaurant.

"Kit..." Clara's voice trembled. "What did you do? How did you find them?"

"Does it matter?" He stood, pulling her gently to her feet. "They're here now. They're helping. That's what matters. We can finally have the Christmas you always told me about."

But Clara's eyes had drifted toward the basement stairs. The darkness at the top. The sliver of kitchen light beyond.

Carol, bleeding at the table.

Jim, frozen in terror.

A road that led somewhere—anywhere—else.

"Clara." Kit's voice was gentle but firm. "Don't."

She bolted.

Up the stairs, two at a time, lungs burning, hands finding the railing in the dark. Through the kitchen—Carol's head snapping up as she passed, hope and agony blazing in her eyes, the knife still pinned through her hand—past Jim, who reached toward her with trembling fingers but didn't dare stand—to the back door, her hands fumbling with the lock, the deadbolt—

The door flew open, and the cold hit her like a wall of ice.

Clara ran.

Snow up to her calves, trees pressing in on all sides, her breath turning to steam in the frozen air. She didn't know where she was going—no road in sight, no lights, no sign of anything—but it didn't matter. She just had to get away.

"Clara."

Kit's voice. Calm. Unhurried. From the porch behind her.

"You won't make it far, Clara. You really hate the cold."

She kept running.

Kit shouted after her, "if you don't remember, your body will!"

She stopped.

Her feet refused to move. Her legs locked in place, muscles seizing, body frozen by something more painful than temperature.

And then she saw it.

Through the trees. A shape she knew in her bones.

Rusted metal fencing. A collapsed wooden shelter. Snow piled against the sides.

The pig pen.

Clara's knees gave out. She collapsed into the snow, and the memories came crashing in.

The cold. The metal beneath her fingers. The hours alone. Her mother dragging her by the arm, throwing her inside, clicking the padlock shut. The screaming that no one heard because there was no one—there had never been anyone—they were completely and utterly alone in the middle of nowhere, and no one was coming, no one had ever been coming—

And Kit's face. Small, tear-streaked, pressed against the basement window. Watching. Helpless.

Footsteps behind her. Slow. Patient.

"The pig pen," Kit said, and Clara's whole body went rigid. "That was her favorite punishment for you. She'd drag you up the stairs and out the back door and lock you in this rusted cage for hours. Sometimes overnight. Summer heat, winter cold, didn't matter."

She couldn't move. Could only kneel in the snow and stare at the cage where her childhood had been murdered piece by piece.

"I'd watch from that window," Kit continued, his voice breaking. He pointed to the narrow rectangle near the ceiling. "I'd drag the mattress over and stand on it and press my face against the glass and watch you out there, screaming, and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't help. I was too small. The window was locked. I just had to watch."

"Look, I know you're scared," Kit said softly. "I know you want to run. But there's nowhere to go, Clara. There's never been anywhere to go. It's just us. It's always been just us."

"Come back inside," Kit said, and his voice was so gentle, so full of love. "Let me take care of you. Let me give you the Christmas you always deserved."

He knelt beside her in the snow. Wrapped his arms around her. Pulled her against his chest.

And for a moment—just a moment—Clara let herself be held. Let herself believe that maybe, despite everything, despite the horror and the blood and the bodies upstairs and the woman pinned to the kitchen table, this adult man was actually her little brother. And her little brother had done this out of love, that he was still the boy she'd protected. That they could find a way through this together.

"I made it stop, Sissy," Kit whispered into her hair. "They can never hurt you again."

She was crying. Sobbing. Clinging to him like she was drowning.

And then—

The back door slammed open.

Footsteps. Frantic. Stumbling through the snow.

A man's voice, desperate and breaking, shouting loudly:

"Help—someone please, you have to help us—please—"

Jim. Racing away from the house in the early twilight of Christmas morning. His robe flying behind him, his bare feet leaving bloody prints in the snow.

Kit released Clara.

He stood slowly, turning to face the escaping man. With no real direction in mind, the older man stumbled through the thick snow aimlessly, screaming at the sky for help.

Kit quietly mumbled something to himself while shaking his head.

"Please, oh God!" Jim was catatonic now, stumbling toward a hill that descended into nothing but more snow. "Please, he's going to kill us, someone help, anyone—"

With horror, Clara watched Kit reach into his waistband and produce something dark and heavy.

But before she could utter a sound, a loud report echoed through the trees as the back of Jim's head exploded. Hair, bone, brain, and all manner of human gore now stained the once-perfect, pristine white snow an awful, deep red while Clara stared at the man before her in utter disbelief.

Was the man standing before her a villain or a savior? Or is it possible that he just might be both?

— END OF CHAPTER FIVE —

🎄 VOTE NOW 🎄

What happens next?

1) Clara attacks Kit — tries to wrestle the gun from his hands

2) Clara freezes — watches in horror, unable to move, taking any and all future direction from Kit without issue

3) Clara runs — the car is out front still; did she leave the keys in the ignition?