Xmas Spirit Read Online Free Page A

curious.
    “What’s that supposed to mean? I just saw her last night. So did you.”
    “Yeah, but she didn’t show up for work today.”
    Eric lifted his head to meet Pam’s worried That’s not like her gaze.
    “Are you trying to say she’s missing?”
    “I don’t know what else to think. She’s not at work and she’s not home.”
    “Well, it’s not like anything awful could have happened to her. I mean, she’s already dead.”
    “This isn’t funny.”
    “Relax, Pam,” Eric said sweetly. “Where could she go? She’s just pissed at me. She’ll get over it.”
    “Not just you.”
    “You guys were fighting too?”
    “I was defending you, if you want to know the truth.”
    Eric stood up and put his hands in his jean pockets, down to the studded leather bracelets on his wrists.
    “Listen, I appreciate that, but our problems shouldn’t come between the two of you.”
    “She’s my best friend, Eric. I was just being honest, telling her to maybe see things from your side, and she didn’t want to hear it. I should have just shut my mouth.”
    “I’m sorry but I just can’t listen to all that Petula and Scarlet and Damen stuff. Especially the Damen stuff.”
    “Jealous much?”
    “It’s like, what am I, not good enough for her? I’m a damn rock god! I had girls clawing for me,” Eric said, getting lost in his own myth. “I’m freakin’ Santa Claws.”
    “Let’s not get crazy, Eric. You got electrocuted playing at an outdoor band shell in a lightning storm. That hardly qualifies you as some hard-rocking heartthrob. A tragic figure maybe, but hardly some legendary lothario.”
    “What’s the last thing she said to you?” Eric asked.
    Pam thought about it for a second.
    “She said, ‘I wish I’d never died.’”
    Pam looked stunned as the words fell out of her mouth.
    “What?”
    “Oh. No.”
    “Don’t even go there, Pam.”
    “Christmas crossover.”
    Eric turned away and walked back toward the window, and Pam rushed toward him, spinning him around by his shoulders.
    “Admit it,” Pam said forcefully. “You are totally thinking what I’m thinking. She’s not here. She’s there!”
    “This is crazy. You are crazy!”
    “Am I? Didn’t Mr. Brain always say that Christmas was theone time of the year when the door between our world and the living world opened?”
    They both looked out the window, and the lights grew even fainter. Eric took the plug that had been hanging on his windowsill and placed it in his mouth. Instead of a burst of electrical energy shooting through the wires, there was a slight hum, a few sparks, a quick brightening, and then a slow fade. Pam shot him an I told you look.
    “That was just a coincidence,” he said, playing it off.
    “Don’t you get it, Eric? If she’s there, alive and well in Hawthorne, we can’t be here.”

4
Winter Wanderland

    Story of Christmas
    If our lives are like the chapters in a book, then Christmas is the page we keep rereading. Searching for a sentence, a phrase, or even just a word we might have overlooked the first time that will help us to move on and clarify our understanding of what comes afterward. We may adjust the lighting, check our eyes, and ultimately question our powers of concentration in a futile effort to make sense of it all. Sometimes, though, it’s worth remembering that the problem may not be with you. It might just be a misprint.

    Charlotte strolled down the still-familiar lanes of Hawthorne, lost in thought and brimming with anticipation, running her hands along whitewashed fence posts, flicking snow off the occasional evergreen branch, breathing in the sweet and smoky smell of burning birchwood from fireplaces up and down the street. She meandered cautiously through the maze created by the mounds of snow piled up on the sides of the road discoloring gradually—from pure virgin white to dove gray to dark black soot—like the strata of an archeological dig.
    A full spectrum of color. Of reality. Of