DOES DEATH WEEP AT CHRISTMAS?

Here is my entry for Ellie's CHRISTMAS TALE BLOGFEST :
http://elliegarratt.blogspot.com/2010/11/christmas-tales-blogfest.html

{This is my spectral Christmas tale,

spotlighting Samuel McCord, the man with the blood of Death in his veins.

DayStar, his Moriarity if you would,

is the being from outside Time itself who has the peculiar delusion that he is Lucifer.

Samuel is the narrator.}
It was Christmas Eve. A lonely church bell was tolling midnight in the silvery distance. Meilori's was dark.

I had sent everyone away. No one but me to die when my Christmas guest arrived.

DayStar has announced his coming earlier that evening :

A dead baby in a manger with the word "Midnight" written in blood on its tiny forehead.

The ceiling speakers murmured the recording of Meilori playing the "Moonlight Sonata." She had left me with only haunting memories and this one lone recording the night she walked out of my life.

The lights died. The music stopped. I straightened in my chair. My last showdown. It came to every Ranger. Time to face it with courage.

"Hello, DayStar," I smiled.

A tarnished gold voice sneered in the darkness, "Hello, Samuel. Ready to die?"

"I died seven years ago."

"Ah, yes, when your beloved Meilori stormed out of your life. Wasn't she the one who professed, though she were dead, still she would be at your side at the end?"

I watched him shrouded in shadows, just barely making him out. He looked this way and that.

"The end has come and look : no Meilori."

"You're wrong."

I tapped my chest and head. "She's right here and here."

I sensed more than saw him approach my table, the sound of his steps steady, firm and unrelenting.

Heard the chair opposite me being pulled out. Felt as well as heard him sit down in the plush leather chair and neatly arrange his clothes.

"Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey."

"Only the very best for the very worst."

He laughed as if I mattered. I smiled back as if I gave a damn. We both weren't fooled.

DayStar’s words were little more than whispers,

"Once the world lived by night.

The dark drew people together. Under its cover, they could feel the need for each other.

But I gave the night to the predators, kept for myself the day so that the living could look into eyes filled with fear and hatred.”

I fought the urge to challenge his delusion. I reminded myself of Jung's warning that challenging the delusion of a madman only made matters worse.

And when said madman had the power to wither a man with just a whisper, making things worse seemed like a poor game plan.

I shrugged. "You see what you look for.

His smile flashed like a knife from out of the shadows. "You still die alone."

A boy's happy laugh sounded from just outside Meilori's.

Strolling easy through the saloon doors like the wild gypsy he was, Victor Standish laughed as if at the funniest joke in the world. "Wrong! Boy, would you be lousy on JEOPARDY."

"Victor," I snapped. "You promised you'd leave."

He flashed me that scamp's smile of his. "And I left. I never said anything about not coming back."

Alice Wentworth solidified beside him, and he stiffened, "You promised to let me come alone."

Her neon-blue eyes sparkled with the burning love that only the young can have.

"And so I let you come alone. But there is nowhere you will go, Victor, that I will not follow. Not even to meet the devil himself."

DayStar laughed as if all his dreams had come true. "Oh, Samuel, you get to see the young lovers die first."

Victor shook his head, picking up the now living, giggling baby from the manger.

"Sorry to disappoint you, your Hind-Ass. But Mother promised me she'd pass over this place tonight."

His face went as hard as his past life. "You know like she did way back when in Ancient Egypt."

His gypsy's face lit with a grin.

"When your Mother is the Angel of Death, well, let's just say her Christmas presents can literally take your breath away ... or not."

Alice hugged him. I wanted to. Instead I just winked in approval.

And that is how DayStar had his second-worst Christmas Eve.
***