Near Midnight

by Tony Chavira

“What was it you heard?”  Her mother asked near midnight, walking into her room.

“A sound I can’t explain.” The little girl returned.  “A scraping, a crawling.  Through the walls, between the floors.”

“Was is Santa Claus?” Her mother asked, holding back a smile.

“No,” the girl whispered “It cannot be him.  It’s the people who visit us this time each year.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed and she walked through the darkness, entering the room, now obliging her smile.  “Please, my darling, I don’t understand.  Are you hearing our neighbors?  They’re only one wall away.  This building is old and sound seeps through the walls… was it possible you didn’t hear anything at all?”

“I saw them as well.”  The child gently murmured.  “Every year they play Christmas games in the hall.  I hear them at night, sometimes sad, sometimes laughing.  And sometimes I see them walk into our place.”

Her mother took pause, her smile quickly fading, sitting next to her daughter, listening faintly for some kind of sound in the worrying darkness.  And all Christmas night they sat here waiting, slowly dissolving into the cold wintery shadows inside their old, red brick building.

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(I decided to write this bit of flash fiction as part of my friend Mr. Loren Eaton's request for 100-word advent ghost stories for Christmas Eve, although admittedly I doubled the word count... oh well. Other short stories are collected on his website, I Saw Lightning Fall.)

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