Chapter 63 — The Absolute Shitstorm of Scariness Unleashed Upon All by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

There was no mistaking this horrible ghost. Santa and her merry elves had summoned none other than the Grim Reaper. A death rattle escaped the shadowy hood of the robed skeleton, like a language of death, full of coughing and growls. Grey and rotting skeleton fingers lifted up to its hood, and peeled back the dusty fabrics.

“Merry Christmas!” the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shouted.

The elves shrieked in horror. Those that could stand fled from the room with their eyes covered—to varying degrees of success in finding the door or running into walls. The ones too exhausted from the ritual hid their faces and disassociated mentally from the room. Santa slapped her mouth shut to avoid screaming in the ghost’s face. Peter, however, beamed a big smile.

Forget the realistic Grey’s Anatomy skull, with all thirty-two teeth and everything from the zygomaticotemporal foramen to the incisive fossa crosshatched in grim, clinical detail. The Ghost of Christmas Future’s skull was more like a white pumpkin, plump and adorable.While human skulls were quite crusty and rigid, his skeleton grin flexed like lips, and his hollow eye sockets dilated and bent and even blinked with bony eyelids. His voice had a musical ring to it, full of merriment and gayness— that’s old fashioned gayness, as in lindy hopping with your favorite flapper girl, not contemporary gayness, as in glory holes in the men’s lavatory.

“Merry Christmas.” Peter took off his mask and shooed the dissipating smoke away from his face. “Are you the Ghost of Christmas Future?”

“I am, I am!” he sang.

“Listen, Santa and I need some help. The Christmas Apocalypse is tonight, and we were hoping you could assist us with the battle.”

“The apocalypse?! Oh that sounds wonderful! It’s been so long since we’ve had one of those! Who are we killing?”

“I love this guy!” Peter said. “We gotta kill the Holy Spirit.”

“Oh that guy, huh? What an asshole.”

Peter unfastened Santa’s gas mask but once she realized what he was doing she swatted his hand away and refused to unmask. As Santa hyperventilated and Peter struggled to calm her, our spectral skeleton friend rattled his bones in a terrible shiver from the arctic air. He abandoned the pair and pillaged a trunk of clothes— dipping his bony tootsies into snow boots, yanking a fleece hoody over his tissue paper death shroud, and turnt up [sic] with a Gucci scarf. Now resembling a festive street artist punk, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come sniffed at the air like a bloodhound and smiled, “Oh! Are those gingerbread cookies? Excuse me!”

The Ghost of Christmas Future pushed past Santa and Peter, ducked under the doorway and went off in search of freshly baked cookies. Wherever he went, shrill and murderous shrieks followed. Peter chased after, following the sound of horrorfication and slammed doors, every now and then coming across an unharmed elf huddled in a corner of the room in the fetal position, staring blankly ahead, eyes full of existential dread. Santa dropped to her knees once the spirit left, unable to pursue.

[NovelPhoenix NovelPhoenix Whypstopher Pippinsticks NovelPhoenix NovelPhoenix]

The kitchen evacuated from the Ghost of Christmas Future’s presence, except for a few terrified chefs who hid under tables and in cupboards, too scared to flee. The skeleton man sat down with a plate of assorted cookies and a glass of milk, and began munching away, moaning happily at each savory delight. An anatomically incorrect skeleton tongue made of bone licked frosting from his dusty white teeth. Peter sat down across from him and laid his rifle on the table.

“I was hoping we could talk strategy,” Peter said. “You see, we’ve only got weapons like these. And I don’t think they’ll work against the Holy Spirit.”

“May I see?”

Peter handed the rifle to the Ghost of Christmas Future, and he expertly examined the weapon. He pulled the box magazine out and squinted at the .50 caliber rounds. He checked the loading mechanism. He pointed the barrel at his eye socket and squeezed the trigger. His skull blew apart into tiny white bits, cobwebs, and dust. A tremendous explosion of full metal jacket blasted though the jolly skeleton’s face at a velocity of 3,000 feet per second, and gouged out a chunk of ceiling. What was left of his neck and jaw fell limp onto the table with a clatter of glass and plates.

Peter sat, shellshocked, his ears still ringing with tinnitus from the accidental discharge. Was that it? Did their best hope at winning the war just shoot himself in the face and fudging die? He poked at the corpse’s shoulder to see if he would stir. When quite magically, the exposed spine of the Ghost of Christmas Future bubbled like liquid clay, and his curious skull reshaped itself from nothing. He cracked his neck with a twist, blinked his hollow eye sockets into focus, and smiled at Peter.

“So these weapons are useless,” Peter said.

“Not necessarily.” The Ghost of Christmas Future sipped some milk, and it spilled out through his many bony cavities. “You just need to put a curse on the bullets.”

The shells clattered on the table like a Russian roulette version of knucklebones, and Death stretched his twiggy fingers over the leaden slugs. The room darkened with shadows. A pentagram of Christmas trees glowed under the ammunition, and the Ghost of Christmas Future spoke these words in a deep and guttural voice:

“Yuletide spirits, gather near.

“Within this shell, let magic sear

“with lead and fire. Blend them well!

“Christmas curse! Let death here dwell!”

The bullets trembled with black magic, as if they couldn’t wait to launch themselves into the heart of whatever angel crossed their path. Peter even thought he might have heard the bullets giggling evilly with tiny voices. He picked up a smoking shell and examined it. There was no doubt that the military industrial nature of these things had changed to something heinous and unnatural. Their full metal jackets glowed with demonic sigils.

“Oh, perfect!” Peter said. “I need you to do this to all our ammo.”

“No problem, Peter! But I will have to stay up all night to curse everything. It’ll be like a slumber party!” He laughed gaily.

“Did I… tell you my name?”

Something about the Ghost of Christmas Future’s demeanor suddenly changed. His joyous giggling halted, and he slowly focused his vacant black sockets onto Peter. His voice became grave, “Oh... I know your name. I know... everyone’s name.”

Peter shifted in his chair, and swallowed a lump in his throat, a little uncomfortable.

“You know… those angel things have a lot of eyeballs. Do you think we can blind them with mustard gas or something?”

“Whoa… wait a second. You want to break the Geneva Protocol and use chemical warfare against the forces of heaven?”

Peter’s whole body tensed up. He thought he was just spit-balling ideas, but now Death was silently judging him with an immortal stare. He had gone too far— crossed some invisible Rubicon of good taste and entered Peter-land, that sacred realm where his mind often wandered, but when voiced, all recoiled at his thoughts?

“That is amazing!” The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come said. “Mustard gas! Oh! I haven’t used that in ages! You really know your stuff! Would you like to meet my daughter?”

“Does she… look like you?”

The Ghost of Christmas Future laughed and clattered his hand against the table, but the fit of joyous humor was then silenced with a loud gasp. He shot up so fast his chair clattered to the floor. “Is that my favorite Youtuber in the whole wide world?” he shouted.

Iumika, click-baity-est of the elves, passed by the kitchen, chugging peppermint schnapps from her flask, when the Ghost of Christmas Future slithered like a living shadow of locust from nowhere to right before her very eyes.

“Iumika!”

Her eyes burst with terror as she fought to stop herself from spitting out the booze all over his skeleton face. So she choked and ran, but doing both isn’t easy. The Reaper chased the frilly elf down the hallway laughing as she coughed, screamed, burped, screamed again, and dry heaved away from him. The terrifying and cuddly vision of death scooped her up in his bony arms and squeezed her in a rigid skeleton hug— like having an extra-large xylophone lay down on top of you.

“Iumika!” he sang. “Will you please sign my cat ear headphones? I have the exact same pair you do! We’re like sisters! You know what my favorite video is? Bear Mace Monopoly with the expert mode NPCs! How did you not die making that video? Do you want to play a co-op game together?”

Iumika screamed and struggled from his skeleton grip, and Peter nibbled at an abandoned cookie. He watched his ace in the hole skeleton friend twirl joyously with poor Iumika as she begged for help. Oh yes. It was all coming together now.