shutting the door behind her. Will stopped and turned towards her. “I think we’re sa…” He stopped talking. There were drips of blood coming out of his mouth. Carly looked down and saw what appeared to be a sword or a claw sticking out of his stomach. It got pulled out and Will started falling backwards. Carly grabbed the flashlight and started running.
For an instant she felt bad about leaving Will behind, but she knew there was nothing she could do for him. She had seen it in his eyes. As she ran, the story she had heard as a child came back to her. She remembered being told that the people of old made sacrifices during the winter to keep the darkness at bay. They put lights all over in order to have safeguards in case the sacrifice wasn’t enough. And they celebrated when the days were getting longer, because they had survived and the darkness was leaving. How did we manage to twist it all around to what Christmas has become, she thought. We really have forgotten.
She reached the bottom floor. She had heard noises around her all the time while she was running, but
nothing had attacked her. It must have been the flashlight. She pulled open the door and ran towards the exit. It was locked and the lock had been jammed. She heard a noise behind her and turned around. The darkness was thickening. It avoided the light from the flashlight, but she could see it getting closer.
She wielded the flashlight like a sword, swinging it back and forth, to keep the darkness from closing in on her. But a flashlight is a very direct source of light and the darkness moved quickly. The rest of the house was now silent. Am I the only one left, Carly thought, while swinging her flashlight. Now she was panicking. She tried kicking out the glass of the door she stood by, but that just made her foot hurt all the while the darkness was getting closer.
She could feel a sharp pain in her arm and another one in her foot. She fell to her knees and… she dropped the flashlight. She could see it rolling away from her, and with it her last hope of making it out of this alive. She tried to push herself up on her feet to run, but the pain was too great. She saw the darkness advance upon her, she even thought she could make out shapes in
it. She knew this was it. Then the electricity came back. It started with a small buzz, the lights in the ceiling flickered for a second before they lit up the hall. The darkness disappeared. Carly just laid there on the floor, exhausted. Now she allowed herself to cry. As she lay there, she heard the whispering voice once more, very faintly this time.
“You remembered. That saved your life. Never forget again. Never forget.”
---
A year later, another midwinter solstice was upon them. Carly was going back to her own family for Christmas this year. She didn’t have a new boyfriend, but she didn’t really feel ready for one either. She wasn’t the only survivor from that day, but no one talked about what had happened. Officially it was a viral outbreak and Carly wasn’t going to argue. She knew what people’d think. But she had made sure that her parents stocked a lot of candles this year. And the day of the midwinter solstice, Carly spent some time in the woods, while there was still daylight, burning several kilos of meat.
She didn’t know if the darkness would come back, but she sure as hell was going to do what she could to keep the satisfied this year.
And she remembered...