Fantastic Christmas: Holiday Anthology Series, #5

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Angela Penrose, Annie Reed and 8 more

Venture forth into the delightful adventures of ghosts and elves and imps and more found in the magical worlds of Fantastic Christmas.

Enjoy sweets for the sweet romantics, charming ghosts and imps to capture the imagination, and stories both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.

From Nordic sprites who long for the porridge and butter and sugar from the hands of their human neighbors to a man desperate to be with his dying wife on their own special holiday, the stories in this volume add a bit of warmth to your holiday season.

Includes:

"The Last Hour of Hogswatch" by Michael Warren Lucas

"The Best Christmas" by Dory Crowe

"Spirit of the Season" by Anthea Lawson

"The Magic of Sharing" by R.W. Wallace

"The Way the Cookie Crumbles" by Angela Penrose

"An Embarrassment of Id'imps" by Ezekiel James Boston

"The Case of the Disappearing Decorations" by Annie Reed

"The Inn, the Black Cat, and Two Halves of the Same Heart" by Kari Kilgore

"Motorcoach Miracles" by Juliet Nordeen

"Magic For a New Year" by Lisa Silverthorne

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201559793

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Fantastic Christmas

FANTASTIC CHRISTMAS

A HOLIDAY ANTHOLOGY

Edited by

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

WMG Publishing, Inc.

CONTENTS

Ghosts and RVs and Cookies, Oh, My!

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Last Hour of Hogswatch

Michael Warren Lucas

The Best Christmas

Dory Crowe

Spirit of the Season

Anthea Lawson

The Magic of Sharing

R.W. Wallace

The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Angela Penrose

An Embarrassment of Id’imps

Ezekiel James Boston

The Case of the Disappearing Decorations

Annie Reed

The Inn, the Black Cat, and Two Halves of the Same Heart

Kari Kilgore

Motorcoach Miracles

Juliet Nordeen

Magic for a New Year

Lisa Silverthorne

Also in this Series

About the Editor

GHOSTS AND RVS AND COOKIES, OH, MY!

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

I gave my writers their head in this anthology. I let them write the holiday fantasy story they wanted to write.

Here are the guidelines I issued as I started soliciting stories for the fantasy volume in 2020’s Holiday Spectacular:

I am looking for light contemporary or historical fantasy here. By that, I mean a touch of fantasy—like ghosts or maybe some kind of magical creature. I’m going to favor sweeter stories to darker ones, and happy endings to unhappy endings, but you can do a dark vicious story if you would like. I would suggest, though, that if your story is dark and vicious, it also needs a crime.

So what did we end up with? Well, we don’t have anything vicious. All the vicious stories lacked a fantasy element and ended up in Mysterious Christmas. We do have a bloody story, but it’s also a lot of fun, and the wounds are superficial, as you’ll see.

We do have a few dark stories, but not in the way I meant above. Mostly the dark stories are heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

Primarily, though, we have the light stories I asked for in the guidelines. Three stories are romances, and could have easily fit into the (already overstuffed) Sweet Holidays volume. But these three stories had a touch of magic, so I put them into this anthology.

In fact, I ended with one, which I think is just about the perfect holiday story. A ghost, a romance, a cat, an old house…what more could you want?

Speaking of ghosts, we have a lot of them. It’s probably my fault for mentioning them in the guidelines. The ghost stories are lovely, though, and each is wonderful in its own way. One of them, in fact, is one of the best stories I’ve read in years.

We also have quite a few elves and imps and tiny magical humanoid equivalents, including one of the most inventive stories I’ve ever read. In fact, we mix that inventive story with a couple of stories that follow the tropes right down the line—and are all the more enjoyable for it.

We have an absolutely lovely story about…motorcoaches. Which I’ve never associated with the holiday before, but I will now.

Not every story is about Christmas either. We have a New Year’s story, a story about an invented holiday, and a story that’s more about retail employees in the holiday season rather than the season itself.

So if you think you know what you’re getting from an anthology called Fantastic Christmas, you’d be wrong.

I know I was—in a very good way.

The stories in this volume are very strong and each one will add a bit of warmth to your holiday season. So venture forth into the ghosts and elves, do a bit of shopping, and maybe avoid eating anything, at least until the magic gets resolved.

Oh, and enjoy yourself. This volume is a lot of fun.

THE LAST HOUR OF HOGSWATCH

MICHAEL WARREN LUCAS

If I were to follow the rules of anthology building—and yes, there are rules to anthology building—I wouldn’t start with this story. Because there’s nothing else like it in the entire volume.

Usually the first story sets the expectations for the volume, and the main expectation this story sets is that the story quality in Fantastic Christmas will be very, very high.

The anthology meets that single expectation.

The reason I decided to lead with The Last Hour of Hogswatch, though, is that it is one of the best stories I’ve read all year, if not one of the best I’ve read in the past several years.

I didn’t want you to miss it. If I put the story at the end (where it should probably go), many of you wouldn’t get there. And if I put it in the middle, you’d think I buried it.

I’m calling attention to The Last Hour of Hogswatch because it is so very good.

Michael Warren Lucas usually writes strong stories. He has another strong story in one of the companion anthologies to this one, Mysterious Christmas. His work also appears in a variety of publications, including Fiction River: Superstitious and Snot-Nosed Aliens. He has published a number of novels, including the mystery novels Butterfly Stomp Waltz, Terrapin Sky Tango, and git commit murder, which combines Michael’s two writing careers. Because in addition to fiction, Michael is very well known as a tech writer. (You can find out more at mwl.io.)

Michael takes one of those personal holidays that exist only in the secret language of couples, and ratchets up the stakes so high that the story careens forward.

Don’t settle in. You won’t have time. Just stay on the edge of your seat, and read.

Snow streamed past the windshield like stars on the Enterprise’s screen, illuminated only by the pickup’s headlights. The distant taillights ahead might as well be as far away as the Klingon Empire for all the company they offered. Merle kept the digital dashboard turned down way low, to protect his vision. Endless cornfields on either side faded in and out as ragged clouds veiled and unveiled the gibbous moon. Straight out of a Hammer film. The dimness would usually make him sleepy enough that he’d have to crack a window so the cold on his face would keep him alert. Tonight he had the windows shut and the heat so up high he could taste the baking dust in the ducts. His heart still felt like a puck of hamburger straight from the freezer.

Tires hummed on asphalt, the intermittent double thump of patches the only music.

Merle kept his breathing slow and deep. Panic wouldn’t help.

And he couldn’t just floor it and aim at a phone pole. Devorah still needed him. Needed him more than ever.

Even if she hadn’t shown up today.

For eighteen years, Devorah and Merle had spent every single Saturday before Christmas together. They’d called it Hogswatch, after Terry Pratchett’s fictionalized Christmas. Other people complicated Christmas, but Hogswatch was theirs. They’d watch a movie—Christmas Vacation, or Rare Exports. Something like that. They’d eat tiny bits of fancy food that they didn’t usually bother with the rest of the year, random delicacies that they found while exploring weird little specialty shops. Cheese with mango in it. Squid pasta, or the goose pâte he’d smuggled back from France. One year Merle had been stuck over in Manchester, in England, negotiating a buyout. He’d taken three torturous flights back starting Thursday night, spent Hogswatch with Devorah, and flown back on Sunday. They called it Jet Lag Hogswatch.

Hogswatch was important.

And Devorah hadn’t come.

They’d promised each other that nothing this side of death would keep them apart that day. The last couple of years had hinted that not even death would keep Devorah away. Not that she was dead. Not quite dead.

Fierce wind skittered snow like hail across the asphalt.

Caught side-on, the truck wobbled.

Merle eased his foot off the accelerator, letting the truck coast. Hit the brakes and you’d go right into the ditch.

Way ahead, distant taillights wobbled.

Vanished.

Twin dots of headlights swept into view and spun sickeningly away.

Merle’s hands clenched the steering wheel hard enough to hurt.

The taillights didn’t come back.

Merle grimaced. The dashboard clock said 9:27.

Devorah might be waiting back at home.

Two and a half hours left of Hogswatch.

At ten below zero with wind like the breath of Frost Giants, his problems had to wait.

The first Hogswatch Eve after the accident, Merle had stopped on the way back from the hospital for a fifth of Maker’s Mark. He knew if he started drinking he’d never stop, but the next day was Hogswatch and he couldn’t think of any other way to survive the night. He woke the next morning with an empty bottle, an open sewer for a mouth, and a witch’s brew in his stomach.

Through all that, he could still smell the sheets. He hadn’t changed them in weeks. There wasn’t a reason to. The bed made a warm greasy nest that suited the wreck of his life.

But it was Hogswatch. He had to get to the clinic. Soon as he could. They were reading Night Watch. For when his voice gave out, he’d loaded a couple of movies onto a tablet. White Christmas and Gremlins. He hadn’t done much in the way of shopping, but he’d picked up a fruit and nut bar at the hospital gift shop a couple days ago. It was the first treat he’d ever bought her back in college, and all the feast he could handle.

The alternative was to lie here and cry. Again. Crying always made him feel worse.

He pulled open eyes like half-dried lumps of Elmer’s, and there she was. Plain as an empty bank account.

His heart stuttered.

Devorah was in her favorite pajamas, a onesie made to look like a NASA space suit. It always made him smile, and not just because she always wanted him to take it off her before bed. It was pure goofy fun, pure Devorah. Her hair was sleep-mussed and her eyes half open.

Merle could see the bedroom door, right through her.

He couldn’t have been more paralyzed if his brain had been damaged.

Her smile warmed him like a midwinter week in the Caribbean.

Then she was gone.

Merle lay there, not daring to move. Not even daring to question.

Finally he decided that it had to have been a leftover dream, with whiskey sauce. He wanted Devorah to be there. Wanted that more than he wanted to draw another breath. But it wasn’t going to happen. She could wake up. It was possible. She wasn’t going to, he knew she wasn’t going to, but she could. The doctors said there was always hope. The only hope he was permitted was that if she was still in there, she’d recognize his voice and know she was loved.

Drinking himself unconscious had been a mistake. It had been the only choice, but he needed to not do that again.

He guzzled a glass of water, gulped three aspirin, and stumbled into the shower until the hot water pummeled away the worst of the aches and he thought he could shave without cutting his own throat. Drying off, he felt almost human.

When he walked back into the bedroom to find some clothes, Devorah met him.

She wasn’t translucent. She was real. His eyes simply couldn’t latch onto her. She blocked his view of the shambles of a bed, and yet he could see the bed at the same time. She stood calf-deep in a heap of filthy laundry, somehow passing through it while still solid.

Merle’s mouth dropped open. His feet kept moving while the rest of him stopped, and he almost fell before he could grab the wall.

Devorah’s face was stricken. She held a hand at the bed, at the wallet and crumpled wads of receipts and the empty deodorant tube on the dresser. Her perfume and armoire were meticulous, right where she’d left them, but his side was a rat’s nest of belts and underwear and the socks he’d worn for three days. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

Then she was gone.

Gone.

How had he gotten down on the floor? How long had he stayed there? Long enough for the warmth of the shower to dissipate, for the carpet to scrape his naked butt.

His heart screamed Devorah had been there.

His brain knew she was lying on a gurney disguised as a bed.

His soul felt as divided as the sight of Devorah being there and not-there made his eyes.

He needed help. It was Hogswatch. No doctors worked Hogswatch. Mostly because it was Saturday. He could call the doctor Monday. If she kept showing up.

He wanted her to show up.

And the truth was? If Devorah could see him living like this, with dirty clothes everywhere and sheets that hadn’t been changed, she’d cry. The kitchen would probably send her into a barbarian rage.

He needed to get to the clinic.

But putting in a load of laundry, loading the dishwasher, and maybe picking up the trash wouldn’t take him more than an hour. She’d want him to do that. He’d known all along she’d want him to do that. He’d quit because she’d never know.

The half-hour drive to the clinic had been spent ruminating on stress, on simultaneously caring for an invalid wife and holding a business together. He couldn’t do both. Not forever.

The clinic was the best his money could buy. The air was always a little bit perfumed, and it had enough air-conditioning to suck away the unpleasant smells as soon as they showed. One hundred and twenty-six unresponsive patients made for a lot of unpleasant smells. The staff wore street clothes. Soft Christmas music filled the air, just loud enough to hear but not loud enough to drown out the beeps and the intercom and all the ways the clinic showed itself for what it was. After all these months, he knew the clinic like he knew the sound of Devorah’s laughter.

Merle’s heart still shuddered every day he walked into Devorah’s room and saw her pale face above the sheets. That day, he focused on cradling Devorah’s limp but warm hand in his and reading Pratchett’s tale of Captain Vimes stuck in his own past.

He couldn’t help chuckling at the bit where Vimes faced down an angry crowd with a mug of cocoa.

Devorah appeared again.

She was sitting on her bed, her rear planted in her unknowing body’s shoulder and her legs hanging over the edge. Silent laughter split her face. Quick as a flash she put her there-not-there hand over her own. Right where Merle was holding her.

A tiny bit of pressure, like a kitten’s breath, against his fingers.

And gone.

She reappeared to urge him to eat the chocolate bar.

A whisper of laughter at a White Christmas dance number.

A flash of a pointing finger when the aide offered him dinner, commanding him to accept.

Merle left the clinic that night with his heart overflowing.

He’d had to stretch that heartful out for an entire year.

The road wasn’t slippery right here, but someone ahead had spun out. Merle put the high-beams on and let the pickup slow to a near coast. The snow shooting past the windshield slowed from warp five to warp one. Just the thought of going out in that made him feel even more chilled, but he already had the heat all the way up.

He could stop. Make sure everyone was okay. Maybe call for help, or a tow truck or something. It wouldn’t take long. He’d still have time to get home before Hogswatch ended.

Devorah hadn’t shown. He’d spent all day in a knot of trepidation and anticipation, and she hadn’t shown. Not once.

She wouldn’t know to look for him out on this empty road. Even if she did know, could she get here? Merle knew business, he knew law, and while he’d read everything he could get about Devorah’s conditions—both the one everyone knew of and the one nobody knew of—he had no idea what the rules were here. He had to get home, where he knew she could find him.

But he couldn’t abandon someone to freeze either. He wasn’t that kind of person. Devorah wouldn’t love that kind of person.

Eight miles home. Seven more to town. He’d be home before ten. Ten-thirty at the latest. Lots of time.

The truck crept forward. Merle kept his attention on the road.

Snow started filling the tire tracks on the asphalt. After an endless half mile, the road disappeared in a gleaming, shimmery reflection. Maybe a hundred yards past that, headlights shot up out of the ditch into the sky like the saddest film premiere.

Merle hit the four-ways, zipped up the parka, and got out.

The cold wind hit like a mattress dropped from orbit, pushing his whole body aside before he could catch his balance. His khaki pants chilled instantly, and sweat from the car heater froze in his leg hair. His feet stayed warm inside the snug shoe boots, though, and the double-layer gloves did a decent job, but the little bit of exposed face around his eyes and nose instantly tightened. His sinuses burned with his breath. He wasn’t driving onto that sheen before he figured out what it was, though. A dozen short steps on increasingly cold legs brought him to the edge.

It creaked and cracked under his foot. Fresh ice, covered with a sheet of flowing water.

A winter water main break was the worst. You could drive on it, if you had four wheel drive and were real slow, but any extra speed and you’d be in the ditch.

It was hard to hurry with tiny steps, but Merle managed. Climbing back in the truck cab, he hissed as his bending legs pressed against his chilled pants. A terrible night on the worst Hogswatch.

Leaving the flashers on, he inched the truck toward the headlights.

A sedan coalesced from the darkness, its tail in the ditch. The front tires were off the ground, the headlights’ feeble beams illuminating sideways snow. A rag of cloud veiled the moon, dimming the cornfields and making the night look even colder.

Merle grimaced and climbed back out into the storm. You got used to Midwestern winters, where the wind screamed for miles across barren ground like a DA with a discovery order through a company whose staff had turned on the board.

The car wouldn’t be safe to be in, hanging up there like that. But being out in the wind was a whole different sort of danger.

Hello? The wind ripped his shout away.

The water-covered ice made each step treacherous, but he edged closer.

Was the driver sheltering in the ditch, behind the car? No, the ditch was full of water.

He took a deep breath and bellowed, loud as he could. Hello!

The darkness on the asphalt ahead moved. Just a suggestion of an upraised arm.

Merle’s heart thrummed. Was it her?

The moon cleared the clouds.

No, two ordinary mortals. An adult, towing a child. Had they been trying to walk to safety? In this?

Merle raised an arm to wave them in. The adult said something, but the wind stole the words so he just got them in the passenger side of the truck before scurrying around and eagerly climbing in himself.

He didn’t even get the door shut behind him before they said, Thank you! Thank you so much!

No problem. Merle slammed the door behind him, started the pickup, and hit the buttons for the heated seats. They didn’t work quickly, but anyone out there more