Michael takes a deep breath. He eyes the mummers and then says, “They must be from one of the neighboring cabins. I’ll handle this.”
He steps to the window. “Hey, guys. Thanks for coming by but?—”
They slap their gloved hands against the glass. Michael jumps, but his shoulders square, as if steeling himself not to inch back.
“I’m having a quiet, romantic Christmas with my fiancée,” he says, “which I’m sure you guys can understand. If you want a more appreciative audience, there’s another cabin?—”
They push their faces against the glass. “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“Yeah, thanks, but no.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a twenty. “I’m going to slip this through, and you guys have a great Christmas?—”
In unison, four gloved hands thump the glass. “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
Michael adds another twenty and holds the bills up. “You can buy your own.” He walks to the window and unlocks it.
Ava struggles against the urge to stop him. But he’s being careful, and she’s overreacting. It’s just a couple of guys from a nearby cabin, who got loaded and decided to go a-mummering, grabbing old clothes and a couple of pillowcases.
Michael eases the window up a half inch and pushes out the bills. One man reaches out…and grabs the window instead. He wrenches up, and Ava leaps to help Michael get it shut.
The window slams down, catching the man’s fingers. The mummer only withdraws his fingers slowly. Then he stares at them.
Both men stare with their painted eyes, and this close, Ava should be able to see the holes. But there are none. Below thenoses, the red mouths have openings, but she sees only darkness behind them.
One man bends, his mask sliding down the glass as he disappears. When he rises, he holds the two bills in his hand. Painted gaze still fixed on the window, he rolls the bills. Then he gives one to his companion. They lift them to their mouth holes and push them through, jaws working behind the masks as…
“Did they just eat twenty-dollar bills?” Michael says. “Okay, that isn’t a few beers. These guys are on something.” He raises his voice. “Well, apparently, we’ve fed you. Now, if you walk back a few steps, you can grab a handful of snow to wash that down. Then it’s time to go and have yourselves a very merry?—”
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“You know what this window needs?” Michael mutters. “Curtains.”
When Ava doesn’t respond, he turns and says, “Ava?”
She’s returning from the kitchen. In her hands, she holds a bag. She opens it to show a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.
“I’m giving them what they want,” she says.
“Okay, but we’re not opening that door.”
“Of course we aren’t.” She heads for the bedroom. “Just keep them busy.”
She shuts the bedroom door, and outside it, she can hear Michael talking to the mummers. Meaningless patter—asking them where they’re from, what they want for Christmas, whether they have family plans… Acting as if there is nothing odd going on at all. Nothing unnerving. Certainly nothing frightening.
Michael is staying calm, cracking jokes, trying to handle an irrational situation rationally. And so will she. She’ll forget the terror of that childhood Christmas Eve, and instead she’ll remember the day after it, when two of the mummers came to her house. Without the costumes, she knew them from town—the couple who ran the bakery. They apologized for frightening her. They’d had too much to drink and hadn’t realized she’d been genuinely terrified.
Not boogeymen—just regular people who’d gotten carried away with the spirit—and the spirits—of the season.
That explanation hadn’t worked for three-year-old Ava. She’d never been able to set foot in their bakery again, and she’d spent the next two Christmas Eve nights sleeping under her bed. Even these days, when she goes home for the holiday, if mummers come to call, she finds a reason to be out for the evening.
But Ava is not three years old anymore, and there is indeed a rational explanation here. If she can’t see eyeholes or faces, that’s the absinthe messing with her mind. The men didn’t really eat those twenties—they just shoved them into their pillowcases.
A couple of idiots who’ve had too much booze or too much dope and decided to prank the neighbors.
All she has to do now…
She opens the bedroom window, drops out the bag and walks back into the front room, where the two figures stand silent at the window. She strides up to it and raises her voice. “You want wine and food, right?”
No answer. Those unnerving masks stare at her, and as hard as she tries to spot eyeholes, she can’t.
