Ava creeps to the side window and peers out. She can see their truck, alone in the lane, covered in snow. She tries to get a look at the front door, but the angle is wrong.
She turns to find Michael behind her, looking out and frowning. The knock comes again. Three raps.
“Don’t answer,” she says.
“The fact we don’t see another vehicle might explain why someone’s at our door,” he says. “Roadside trouble, and they followed the lights to the cabin. Or hikers who’ve lost their way. Are we going to leave them out there on Christmas Eve?”
She calls, “Who is it?”
No answer. Michael strides to the door. “Who’s there?”
Silence.
“I asked, who’s there?” His voice booms through the tiny cabin.
Still nothing. Ava sidesteps toward the front window. All she can see is the falling snow. She cups her hand to the glass and?—
A white face appears. Stark white with blackened eyeholes and a red slash of a mouth. Ava staggers back with a shriek as Michael races over. Then he sees what she sees, and he stops.
“What the hell?” he says.
It’s a man in an old suit—a jacket and tie. Over his head, he wears a pillowcase painted with a grotesque face. A second man appears beside him, also masked with a painted pillowcase. Beneath it, he’s dressed in old-fashioned pajamas.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Michael whispers.
Ava doesn’t answer. She wants to tell herself theyaren’tseeing the same thing, that she’s imagining these figures, conjured from her oldest nightmare.
Before Michael can speak again, one of the men presses his pillowcased face to the window and says, “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
His voice is eerie and unnatural, wheezy, as if he’s inhaling as he speaks.
Ava takes a step backward and smacks into Michael. He wraps his arms around her and whispers, “There are two men at our window, wearing old clothing and pillowcases, right?”
She nods and finds her voice. “They’re mummers.”
“Mum—?”
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine,” the two men say in unison.
“Mummers,” Ava whispers.
“You told me about…” He trails off and gives a ragged laugh. “Well, now I understand what you meant, and I don’t blame you one bit.”
Last year, they’d been drinking with Ava’s college friends, comparing Christmas horror stories. It was mostly the usual jokes about terrifying post-Christmas credit-card bills andhaving to suffer through dinner with drunk relatives. Michael, though, Michael had one-upped them with Belsnickel, the old-world boogeyman from his German grandmother’s stories. He did that for Ava, after she confessed to her real holiday fear: mummers. Her friends had laughed and teased her, and Michael had come to her rescue with his story, even if secretly, she suspected, he’d been fighting the urge to join her friends’ laughter.
Michael had never heard of mummers—no more than she’d heard of Belsnickel. Michael was from Ontario, where they seemed, thankfully, mummer-free. Ava grew up in Newfoundland, and most of her friends were familiar with the tradition…and thought it was cool.
It was not cool. It was being three years old, waking up Christmas Eve to the sound of bells, running to the window, expecting to see Santa’s sleigh, and instead spotting a group of passing mummers with their strange costumes and horrifying pillowcase heads. Ava had ducked fast, but not before one saw her. They’d come to her window and crowded in and asked her—in those wheezing voices—if she’d been a good girl. If not, they said, they’d come back. Even after she’d hidden under the bed, they stayed at her window, taunting and tormenting her.
And now there are mummers at her window again. Which cannot be. Absolutely cannot be.
“So I’m going to admit—even at my age—they’re kinda freaking me out,” Michael whispers. “At three, I’d have pissed my pants.” He takes a step forward. “I’ll just tell them we’re not interested, give them a few bucks for their trouble and…”
He stops, finally realizing what she has already.
“What are they doing out here?” he says. “The nearest town is?—”
“Ten miles away.”
