Titan Books will publish my novella A Christmas Ghost Story in paperback this October.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… a death threat in a pear tree!
December 1st. Angie and her teenage son Rust prepare for Christmas, stringing fairy lights around their isolated home on the Somerset levels and decorating a tree with traditional ornaments. The first door of the advent calendar is opened, but the chocolate inside tastes off. Rust receives his first Christmas card, it’s unsigned and the message is ‘pinch, punch … first of the month’. The robin chirruping on a bough in a snowy woodland picture looks like a nasty piece of work.
The cards keep coming, one each day and each more sinister than the last, and a frightened Angie recalls The Cards – a seasonal TV show from her childhood that featured similar happenings, and while she remembers it vividly, there is no evidence that it was ever broadcast…
Christmas cheer is gradually poisoned, with cruels instead of carols, the turkey rotting in the fridge, unwelcome visits from the Merciless Gentlemen and the Jingle Basterds, and Rust becoming increasingly unwell. Angie begins to wonder if her childhood Christmases were in fact as joy filled as she remembers…
Available from Titan … and Amazon.co.uk … and Amazon.com …
Paperback ordering details here …
Bookshop.org
The audiobook, read by Charlotte Worthing, is on Audible.
Here’s an exclusive extract …
December the First. Half past two in the afternoon. The Somerset Levels. Greyer than green.
Rust cycled along the A road from the County Town. Hours before dusk, he had his lights on.
Low, heavy cloud. Standing pools in flat fields. Brimming ditches.
Three years ago, the levels flooded over the holidays. The Six Elms Cut-Off became impassable. Rust and his mother survived till January on Christmas tree chocs and back-of-the-larder tins. Mum kept saying ‘mustn’t grumble, there’s a war on’. He didn’t get the joke. The council said it couldn’t happen again. Rust didn’t trust The Knell of Doom podcast had more credibility. Their advice for his postcode was ‘buy a boat’.
His bicycle wheels cut a line through mud-film on the road. His face pushed into spits. The aerodynamic helmet protected his ears. This wasn’t proper rain. Just water in the air.
He was cycling through the Next Village Over when the Christmas Wars kicked off.
A thousand and one lights came on.
It had started with the first house past the village sign. They initiated hostilities years before the flood. Officially, their look was Traditional Christmas. More lighting effects than stadium rock. Fairy lights around every window and strangling every bush. Basically, Bling Christmas.
From a bed of artificial snow, a plaster golem with million-watt LED eyes surveyed the battlefront. Its white football head swivelled like a security camera. Fixed to the roof with hurricane-resistant wire, the Amazing Colossal Father Christmas sat atop a sleigh pulled by reindeer kaiju. A ‘ho ho ho’ loop would play until Twelfth Night…
At first, the rest of the village got up a petition to shut down the display.
When that only made the aggressor add more lights, they returned fire. The fad went viral. Neighbours would literally not be outshone.
The house across the road declared Vegas Christmas. Bigger, brighter, more blaring. Neon tubes and audio loops of snippets from Sinatra Sings Swinging Carols or whatever the Rat Pack Christmas album was called. Mum had it on vinyl. Mob boss Santa with eyes like angry ball bearings glared across the road at the snow sentinel. Vegas deer wore shades and packed heat.
It didn’t stop there.
All through the village, systems came to life. Rust cycled down the road, veering as if dodging shellfire. Some displays would require age verification if they were websites. Rust had learned how to seem over eighteen online before he was twelve. He wasn’t shocked by Porn Christmas (mooning Santa, sexy girl elves, obscene gnomes) or Horror Christmas (axe-wielding Saint Nick, zombie reindeer, ghost snowman).
It was a good thing afternoon traffic was light or there’d be nasty accidents. Every year, bedazzled passers-through drove into the ditch by the Coaching Inn. In the snug, Garage Gary waited for accidents like the wreckers who lured ships on the rocks. Mum would hire a horse and haul her car ten miles to Yeovil for servicing to avoid being plundered by Garage Gary.
The wars had gone on too long and cost too much time, money and mental strain… but the village collectively went even more nuts and stuck at it no matter what the council, the fire safety officer or a few clergymen said. Now Rust had seen it, he’d avoid cycling this way until February.
At the Y-fork past the Coaching Inn, he turned off the A road onto the B road – the only way into Sutton Mallet. The B road wasn’t gritted. Low-hanging branches weren’t trimmed.
He slowed a little, running low on puff.
Sutton Mallet didn’t hold with the Christmas Wars. A bare minimum of decorations was their policy. Holly and mistletoe. Plain lights. Season’s Greetings. Nothing to attract attention.
The Next Village Over got on local news every year. Mr Bling would be interviewed, neighbours fuming in the background. A vicar would express qualified approval. ITV West would blur images behind Mr Porn and Miss Horror. Uncensored footage would be on the net by midnight.
Three minutes on local news was what it was all about. Highlight of the year.
Not for Sutton Mallet. They didn’t want to be on local news. Or national. Or live-streamed. Or bothered at all.
They’d had too much of that, thank you very much.
Sutton Mallet wasn’t overly keen on Rust’s Paraphenomenon Pod either. Expressions like ‘most haunted village in England’ provoked overly cheerful suggestions he should get outdoors in the fresh air – hah! – and not let his eyes go googly staring at screens all the time.
He be daft to put credit in old spook tales. If ghosties there be, best they be left to thesselves, my lover, eh?
Here’s a key image …
Yay!
Posted by Nigel | March 8, 2024, 5:55 pm