Christmas Wishes

Christmas Wishes is a scary story for the holiday season written by Pete LeBrun. It’s about a young boy who hates his mother and sister and wishes they would disappear.

My mom and and my sister were never very nice to me. My mom preferred my sister over me and spoiled her rotten. My mom usually spent all my dad’s money getting her everything she wanted for Christmas, and got me nothing. Well I did get stuff from my other relatives, it didn’t make ignore how they treated me.

Being a spoiled rotten 5-year old, my sister delighted in making fun of me, calling me every name in the book and telling me how my mother loved her and hated me.

This Christmas, I didn’t ask Santa for any presents. I asked him to grant my Christmas wish. I wanted a new mom and a new sister.

We lived in Ohio and our relatives all lived in Pennsylvania, so we left in early morning on Christmas Eve, because of snow and holiday traveling and usually got there in the early night hours. However this time we left around noon, and my mom was yelling at my dad the whole time. She’d been threatening to leave him lately, and take my sister with her.

It was getting dark and too late to be driving so we got off the nearest exit, and parked our car at a designated parking lot, and walked through this Victorian style town. Appropriately named Dickenstown, Pennsylvania. It was as if we’d fallen into the pages of A Christmas Carol. Horse drawn carriages, and sleighs lined the streets. The houses were all built together, like townhouses in London, and the people were all dressed in 1800′s clothing. All the buildings had wreaths on them, and candles lighting the windows. Some carolers were standing in the town square singing “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”. It had and Victorian style clock tower and gazebo. An older looking church, the kind with just one room, much like the older schoolhouses, was just finishing it’s service and “Silent Night” could be heard from inside. After my mom and sister kept complaining about my dad and I admiring the scenery we pulled to fancy 19th century looking looking inn, appropriately named “The Old Victorian Inn” it had a stone gravel lot, in keeping with the old style look of the town. A trio of street performers, were using trombones to play “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman”.

We entered the lobby through a wooden door, also with a wreath on it, and approached the owner and manager, Pam. She and Dad had quite a nice conversation, she even left us get a room at half-price it being Christmas and all. She introduced to her children Jeremy, a 7 year old like me and Angela the sweetest little girl ever. Dad let me play with them while my mom and sister went to our room. Dad and Pam continued their conversation and Pam told him her husband had passed earlier this year and she hadn’t been able to get them much for Christmas, as running the inn was hard enough without him. They stopped and Dad and I got a chance to admire the lobby, with a Christmas Tree in the corner, it in old style decorations and ornaments, a village that was a replica of Dickenstown in the window, candles in the other window, and a chimney in the corner adjacent to the Christmas tree with garland stockings hanging from it, and blaring fire, with rocking chairs in front. Pam then motioned to the man playing the piano in the corner, and asked if we had any requests for him. We asked him to play “O Little Town Of Bethlehem”. Pam then offered to bring us hot chocolate, and we both said yes.

Dad complimented Pam on everything, and she explained that she owned the wagons and sleighs seen in town, and the wagons were for citizens, well the sleighs were for tourists, and the band outside worked for her, and she would have a carriage take them home in an hour, and that the wagons and sleighs took people to the special parking lot outside of this special part of town, where we were parked where they drove home, she offered to get us a sleigh ride, the last of the night, and we accepted. I asked if her kids could come with us, she said sure. We got back, thanked Pam for everything said good night to her and her children, then joined my mom and sister in our room. They were complaining about everything, no tv, pool, hot tub, etc. they had been harassing employees while Dad and I were talking with Pam and her kids, then on the sleigh ride. We all went to bed as we had to get up early to leave and went to sleep, Mom and my sister in one bed, Dad and I in the other.

I awoke in the early morning hours to the sound of sleigh bells. At first I thought this was one of Pam’s sleighs but remembered that she had went home, and wouldn’t run her sleighs this late anyway, as we had rode the last one. Besides, these came from above us. I thought I was imagining them, then heard a thud on the roof, followed by what sounded like hoof prints, and and another thud of what sounded like boots. I heard the boots walking on the roof then fade, then heard them coming up the wooden steps, and stop at our door. The door swung open, and a big man in a Santa suit walked in, complete with a beard. I closed my eyes, keeping one slightly open to see what the man was doing. He grabbed my om and stuffed her in a sack, then walked over to my sister who had been startled awake by the sound of his boots. In a deep Darth Vader type voice, he said “YOU’VE BEEN NAUGHTY”, and picked her up, stuffing her into his sack with my mom, then turned and walked out of the room, my eyes now completely shut listening to his boots till they faded.

In the morning, my dad just assumed my mom and sister had left him, having called a cab to take them back home, and get her stuff, not believing my story about the man in the Santa suit. He told Pam who consoled him, then she gave him her number if he ever needed anything. Around New Year’s he called Pam and asked if they could meet, and told her he loved her, and after going through the divorce proceeding, started dating her, then asked her to marry him on Christmas Eve the next year, which of course, was a year after they met. To celebrate we had the wedding the next day. I didn’t even ask Santa for anything else that year, he had already given me everything I wanted…