Marc Damian Lawler - Christmas Under the Covers

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Marc Damian Lawler [ed.] - Christmas Under the Covers (Dec. 2021)

Mark Damien Lawler - Holly
Allison Weir - Festive Fatum
Brad C. Hudson - A Sound of Wings
Jim Moon - All Through the House
D. T. Langdale - Black Spots
Mark Damien Lawler - Christmas Certificate X
Hume Nisbet - The Old Portrait
Matt Cowan - The Carollers
David Little - Ice Cream at the Zoo
Trevor Kennedy - A Salute to Lewis Fee
Mark Damien Lawler - Jimmy‘s TV Talk-In
Russell Holbrook - Christmas Layaway Bloodbath Blues
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Christmas Eve
A. P. Sessler - The Berryville Blessing

Blurb:
Christmas is the spookiest time of the year. Dickens knew it; M. R. James knew it; and these authors know it, too.

Slimline 128 page festive offering from the Before You Blow Out The Candle brigade.

Mark Damien Lawler - Holly: Grasmere, Westerland, Christmas Eve 1949. Teenager Michael Cornish rescues a girl badly injured in a fall high on the hillside - fine way to celebrate her twentieth birthday. Michael lowers Holly to safety, rests her on a bench beside a phone box while he calls an ambulance. She vanishes.

Ten years to the day, their paths again cross in identical circumstances.

Allison Weir - Festive Fatum: Sonja, the anti-Christmas fairy, invades Drayton House to perpetuate seasonal massacre. A nosey reporter gets wind of a headline shrieker in progress.

Brad C. Hudson - A Sound of Wings: West Virginia, 23rd December 1967. It was Cole discovered the corpse of a schoolfriend early in the month and since then he's been stalked by a creepy young chemist and experienced three close-ish encounters with Mothman. Do the creature's visits warn of tragedy to come. or does it merely thrive on misery and bereavement?

Jim Moon - All Through the House: The gentlest benevolent ghost story. Brian relates his strange experience of three Christmases ago, inspecting 15b Cotters Lane, a house annexed to the drop-in disability advice centre. It had become so unpopular with staff next door that they only used for storage. Brian completes his survey without incident. It is only when he turns to retrieve his coat from a bannister he realises there's someone else here.

D. T. Langdale - Black Spots: Virulent, diseased splotches pursue a family of three from a Lochside caravan site to .... wherever they go from here on in.

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Mark Damien Lawler - Christmas Certificate X: Vampire visits cinema for horror all-nighter and refreshments on tap. Dr. Phibes Twelve Days of Christmas sounds a riot.

Hume Nisbet - The Old Portrait: (Stories Weird & Wonderful, 1900). Narrator buys a worthless painting for it's ornate frame. Scrubbing the grime from the canvas reveals an unflattering depiction of a publican beneath, but this in turn has been painted over a work of genius — the portrait of a young woman, bewitching in her beauty but " .... in its placid pallidity it looked as if the blood had been drained from the body, and that I was gazing upon an open-eyed corpse." It's not long before her face regains its colours.

Matt Cowan - The Carollers: Jonathan Cartwright acquires a house at auction for a bargain price. The remote cottage in the Talbot Forest has been home to several generations of the Vale family until Old Leonard fell into financial difficulties and sold up against his wishes. He has no intention of permanently relinquishing the property, however, and come Christmas, summons forth the four demon carol singers and their jingle bells of doom.

David Little - Ice Cream at the Zoo: Ghostly vignette. As one of the crowd mercifully cover her mother's corpse with a blanket, her daughter tries to carry on as normal with her two little girls. Let's drive to the zoo, eat loads of ice cream and have fun! Gran likes the sound of that.

Have to say, The Old Portrait is head and shoulders (sorry) above the contemporary material.

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Trevor Kennedy - A Salute to Lewis Fee: Twelve-year-old Lewis, bullied at school and scared sick of his drunken dad's violence toward ma, runs away from home late on Christmas Eve. With no where to go, he shelters in the Shankhill Road cemetery. The ghost of Sergeant John Brown, killed in the Crimea, inspires the boy to fight back.

Mark Damien Lawler - Jimmy‘s TV Talk-In: Some folk have never forgiven Jimmy Osmond, his brothers and sister for their early 'seventies chart success.

Russell Holbrook - Christmas Layaway Bloodbath Blues: The Super Big Gigantamart chainsaw massacre is averted by young love/ lust.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Christmas Eve: (The Night Ghouls, 1975). Bewitched by a girl in the Royal George Hotel, a self-loathing, middle aged bachelor assists in a weird yuletide birthing.

A. P. Sessler - The Berryville Blessing: (2015, as The Night I Stopped Believing in Santa Claus ). "As is our tradition since the founding of our town, we bestow the Berryville Christmas Wreath upon one special family. The family will carry both the joy and the burden of the Berryville Blessing, which will see to the continued prosperity and safety of our little paradise here in the greatest town on earth."

A Christmas variation on Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, wisely held back to last as it's far the best of the contemporary material, or seems so to me. This years lucky winners are Rudolph or Nicole Wilson, but which will Santa's not-so-little helper take up the chimney?