A story for Christmas

[caddyman]

A couple of days ago, I issued the seasonal challenge for a Christmas ghost story. I am rather gratified at the number of you who have risen to the challenge. This is my contribution, though on reflection I'm not sure that strictly speaking it is a ghost story.

Now I have written this, I can go and read all the others that I have so far avoided so as not to be influenced by them.

I hope you enjoy it and I hope you write something, too.



It is not unusual for children to have imaginary friends. My sister had two, with the unlikely names of "Zuba" and "Meanie".

My sister is six years younger than me, so when I was twelve, I had a great deal of difficulty keeping a straight face when she played with her imaginary friends so I teased and we fought. Of course, regardless of whoever started it, I was always the one to get into trouble: "You’re six years older than she is, you ought to know better". That refrain was one to follow me around for a number of years until she too was adjudged old enough to know better.

One winter, unlike this one, cold and frosty on the run up to Christmas, with a thin sprinkling of early snow on the ground, we had one of our fights. Who knows now what it was all about, I certainly don’t and I doubt that my sister does, even if she remembers it at all. She would have been about seven, making me the thirteen year old bully who should have known better.

We fought; she ran off.

After a few minutes I followed; annoyed at first, then angry and finally scared. Out, then, into the cold afternoon about three-thirty in the afternoon and only a half hour before sunset at that time of year, no more than forty-five minutes until nightfall.

I knew her regular haunts and sure enough after a few minutes I found a trail of footprints leading off through the snow away from the house and down the lane. I remember that it was very cold, though to begin with I barely felt it in my annoyance. By dusk though, I was frozen and despite only being a few minutes behind my sister and larger and faster, I was beginning to worry at my seeming inability to catch up with her. A shadow here, a reflection there, a childish laugh around the corner: always one step ahead.

And then, just as I was beginning to give up and the darkness was taking hold, there she was, calmly sitting on a neighbour’s gate swinging her legs back and forth, letting the snow fall from her boots and smiling at me with the sort of complete malice that only a child can summon.

We walked home in silence, though she had the jaunty strut of someone who has just won a battle. The cold gnawed my bones but she seemed completely oblivious to it. When we reached home she ran ahead and into the house slamming the door behind her. Another transgression, but one I was now too cold to worry about.

Inside again, I removed my shoes and too thin jacket and went into the lounge. There by the fire, dressed for bed and playing with a tea set arranged for three was my sister. Snug and warm.

"Thank you for finding Meanie" she said, "she was late for tea and we were worried about her."

As usual, cross posted between my journal and just_writing.

Comments

[binidj.livejournal.com]

I likes

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Oooh that's good, I like!

[ingenue-the.livejournal.com]

What a fabulous story.
Thanks for the challenge & sharing your writing.