HOME | DD

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Billy and Zoë were always said to be good kids, not getting in fights, making the sports team, honor roll, debate team, cheer squad, chorus and band. Both moderately popular jacks-of-all-trades, they managed to make prom king and queen even though they were just friends, and got scholarships to the same college. Billy played sports year round, but managed to talk about other things, mainly debating, singing or playing clarinet. Well, not when he was doing those things, as they involved his mouth. He had a tall, muscular build, his features seemingly mismatched. He had soccer legs and basketball feet, baseball arms on a football torso, which his head was thankfully not too small for, his white blond hair contrasting with his frequently red face. Zoë’s body, however, seemed more perfectly constructed. She had toasted mocha skin and shiny black hair, large brown eyes, long willowy arms and legs rippling with muscles and small, athletic breasts that did not get in the way when she cheered, played the flute, lacrosse, tennis or cricket. Both frequently smiled, especially when the life-long friends found out they were going to college together.

            It was mid-December and winter break hadn’t started yet. The air was crisp, the sky that pale blue that seemed to constant promise snow without ever actually delivering it. Steam poured like a fountain from Zoë’s gingerbread latte, filling the car with its scent but remaining too hot to drink and too full for her to set down in the cup holder. She ordered roughly ten gingerbread lattes over the course of December every year, and drank what amounted to seven of them. One of them got poured down the drain for going cold while waiting for it to be cool enough to drink. The other two were drunk, a third of a cup at a time, by Billy, who insisted he didn’t like girly flavoured coffee and was only stealing sips off of Zoë’s coffee because he forgot to order his own.

            “Pass me your coffee, Zoë.”

            “It’s still too hot to drink.” she responded, nonetheless passing the cup over.

            “We should have waited to get coffee until after we made to it the airport.”

            “I’m not drinking airport coffee!” Zoë scoffed. Billy took a sip of the latte and winced. Zoë was absolutely right; it was too hot to drink. He wasn’t going to admit that, but Zoë had known him long enough to know exactly what the wince meant.

            “Well, we could have picked up the coffee after we picked up my cousin.” Billy suggested with a shrug. “I hear they drink a lot of coffee in Norway, she might have liked it.”

            “I don’t think they have Dunkin Donuts in Norway.”

    “They might, it’s a chain restaurant.”

    “Is it really a restaurant? They mostly serve coffee.”

    “But they do have food in there.”

    “But surely if they serve mostly drinks, it’s a coffee house.” Billy took another sip of the too-hot coffee and passed it back to Zoë before turning into the parking garage.

    “They have bathrooms.” said Billy decisively. “Restaurants legally have to have bathrooms, so it’s a restaurant.”

    “That’s a logical fallacy.” countered Zoë. “The dorm has a bathroom, but it isn’t a restaurant. I thought you were on the debate team.”

    “Affirming the consequent.” Billy nodded proudly. “People always get caught up on that and then I can attack the resulting argument. I am a big blonde Columbo.”

            “I don’t even—” Zoë began hopelessly, then gratefully spotted a parking space. “Park here.” she suggested, hoping Billy would forget about this whole ridiculous conversation.

            Billy parked, the two got out of the SUV, locked it and left the too-hot latte to freeze while they left to pick up Billy’s cousin.

            “Birgitta Hillestade.” Billy intoned, carefully pronouncing each syllable.

            “Burgrita Hillystand.” Zoë chorused.

            “Birgitta Hillestade.” Billy repeated, louder.

            “That’s what I said, Burgrita Hillystand.” Zoë nodded.

            “Look, I’ve been pen pals with Birgitta since I was eight.” Billy moaned. “Please don’t play the ugly American and murder her name.”

    “That’s what I’m confused about.” she Zoë. “I didn’t even know you had a cousin.”

            “Well, we’re third cousins but you know how it is, in second grade you decide you want a foreign penpal, you look yourself up on a genealogy site and look for the branch of your family that moved furthest away and look for someone about your age, find their address, and start writing to them.”

            “So you did all that?”

            “No, Birgitta did.” Billy shrugged.

    By now, they had reached the arrivals area and were swiftly reaching the conclusion that picking up the gingerbread latte that even now was not being drunk had pushed them from being right on time for Birgitta’s flight to looking through the thinning crowd of travellers for someone who looked like they could be Billy’s cousin. There were enough blonds, Zoë supposed, but she was pretty sure that was not a good way to find Billy’s cousin. Most of the crowd coming off the plane from Norway looked old, white, and tired enough to be members of congress. But no one Zoë could see looked like they could be related to Billy. Being his best friend since second grade, she’d become familiar enough with him to recognise his family, address his mother as first “Mrs. Hitchner”, then “momma Hitcher”, and finally just “mom”. She knew where the family hid the spare key and had spent much of their junior year letting herself into their house and playing with their dog while she waited for Billy to get home from football practice. She was confident that she could recognise someone from Billy’s family, even if she’d never met them before. Even if all of those pink faces with messy shocks of blonde hair were starting to all look alike as the crowd worked its way into the recesses of the airport.

            “We should have made a sign.” Zoë murmured, bouncing up on her toes to see if she could see anyone else in the terminal.

            “Yeah, I should have…” Billy admitted sheepishly. “Do we have anything we can write on?”

            “No, I left my notebooks in the car, I wasn’t expecting to get any work done today, it’s almost winter break.”

            “I could try and write something on my tablet, but I don’t think I could get the font size big enough to be read from a distance…” Billy mused, petting his jean pocket. Zoë was mildly disgusted that Billy could fit a tablet computer in his trousers, when she needed to split a gum packet into two parts to get them in her pockets.

            “Well, how big does the font get?” Zoë asked, leaning over the device Billy was currently powering up.

            “Pretty big, but the autocorrect keeps Hillestade to Hillside.” Billy frowned, poking at the screen.

            “It is Hillestad, actually.” corrected a warm, accented voice.

            The pair looked up, and found themselves face to face with another woman roughly their age. She was delicately built, wearing a cardinal-red hooded peacoat over a white dress and knit leggings. Once they were looking at her, there was no doubt of who she was. There were traces of Billy’s face around her eyes, the red flush to her cheeks, the pale blonde hair, but where Billy was awkward and hulking, this woman was one of the most beautiful and elegant people either of the friends had ever seen.

            She was a bit shorter than Billy but taller than Zoë, with her pale hair braided into a crown, little wisps of that hair filling the air and catching the light in such a way that Zoë felt would have made her look like she hadn’t slept in days, but with her sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, the other girl looked like a fairy queen. There was a rim of pink around her eyes that suggested either lack of sleep or poor health, but that was probably jetlag, and for some reason it made the woman look ever prettier, in a wilting flower sort of way. There was strength in her stance, however, a sort of firmness that made her look more like she was going to be protecting someone rather than she herself needed protection.

            “You are Billy Hitchner?” she asked in that soft, warm accent which had corrected Billy’s pronunciation. Billy nodded, awkwardly returning the tablet to his pocket.

            “Yeah. Hi. You must be Birgitta.” Billy said awkwardly, finding it difficult to fit his tablet back into his pocket. He managed, eventually, and reached out to shake her hand.

            “You must be Birgitta. Bir- is there a shorter version of that? You always just signed the letters ‘Birgitta’.” The girl shrugged.

            “Birgit? Most people just say Birgitta. It is too long?”

            “It’s fine, Billy just has problems with words with one than two syllables.” said Zoë, offering her hand.

            “I know, he stopped writing so often once he was a teenager.” Birgitta smiled, accepting it. Birgitta’s hand was soft and warm, and she looked directly into Zoë’s eyes and smiled.

    Zoë suddenly and unexpectedly felt her sexuality take a sharp veer towards bi-curious. As shocked as she was by how much she found herself attracted to Birgitta, it wasn’t the fact that she was another girl that surprised Zoë. It was the fact that a girl could look that much like Billy and be that cute. Zoë forcefully redirected her thoughts from whether it would be a strain on her friendship with Billy if she started making out with his cousin to actually introducing herself to Birgitta.

            “And you, his friend Zo? He tells me much about you.” she said, giving Zoë’s hand a final squeeze before resting her hand on her rolling suitcase.

            “It’s pronounced ‘Zoë’.” Billy corrected.

            “Or Zo, Zo’s fine.” Zoë added quickly. Billy looked at her sceptically.

            “I’ll keep that in mind, ‘Zozo’.” he smirked quietly. Zoë elbowed him in the gut. Birgitta smiled.

            “It’s very nice to finally meet you.” she said. “Both of you.”

            “Sorry we’re so late, Birgitta.” said Billy. “Zoë wanted to make a stop before we came here.

            “Is alright, I haven’t been waiting long. And it is good to stand up for a while after my flight, walk around and stretch my legs between the aeroplane and the car ride.”

            “Oh.” said Billy. “Do you want to get lunch or something on our way back, then?”

He awkwardly ruffled his short hair.

            “To, uh, keep our legs moving and all.”

            “No, is alright, I’m stretched and ready to go see your house, get ready for Christmas.” she answered, shaking her head.

            “Well, if you’re sure…” said Billy.

            “Well…” Birgitta mused, with the very distinct expression of someone who does want something but doesn’t want to admit it. “There is one thing I wanted to do in America… and if we could get it out of the way…”

            Birgitta bit her lip and looked away.

            “What is it?”

            “It’s just… back to Billy’s home on the drive do we pass by an ocean?”

The end of the question came out in a jumble, quick and like she was embarrassed to say them. Billy and Zoë glanced at each other, trying to work out what she said as much as why she had said it.

            “Not really close, but…” mused Billy, “We could take a detour, I don’t think it would add more than half an hour, depending on how long we stayed there. Not like there would be a crowd this time of year, either.”

            “You want to go to the beach in December?” Zoë asked, her eyes wide.

            “It is just sometime I would like to get done, so to relax this holiday.” said Birgitta. She bit her lip, and Zoë felt a fresh wave of confusion wash over her, paired with the desire to find out what Birgitta wanted.

            “We could do it.” Zoë informed Billy swiftly, as if he had been the one to make the objection. Billy felt slightly befuddled, as if the two women had had several minutes of conversation and he did not notice it; and scratched the back of his neck.

            “Yeah. Like I said, not much of a detour. Give us a chance to stretch our legs.”

            “Then we could get coffee.” Zoë suggested, wondering why she was saying each word as she spoke it.

            The ocean stretched out to meet the sky in an unhappy gray mass. It churned slightly, like someone who was feeling just barely not ill enough to mention it to the people around them but far too ill to think about anything else themselves. The sky looked just as gray and unhappy, the clouds above the sea rolling like they were trying to decide whether to let out snow or rain, and being unable to do either until they had made a decision either way.

            The three college students clamoured over the rocks with various levels of grace. Zoë strode along the tops of the crevasses, surefooted as a mountain goat, while Birgitta hopped from stone to stone like a little red songbird and Billy did his best to only fall to his knees when he did inevitably trip. But something felt off. Normally, when young people sprang along the shore, there was an air of light-hearted frivolity that went with it. Ever since they came in sight of the water, Birgitta had tensed up, digging her hands into her pockets and taking them out again. She fiddled with her luggage, unzipping and zipping up the top again and again, then shoving her hands back into her pockets and staring out the window of the car. Once they parked, she led the way to the waterfront, not even checking to see if Billy and Zoë were following her.

            “Birgitta?” Billy called, pulling himself to his feet. “You haven’t forgot about us, have you?”

            His cousin froze and half-turned towards him. Her profile stood against the sky, and although Billy had been joking when he said that, something in her eyes made him think she had.

            “You don’t have to come with me.” she called back, but there wasn’t a trace of bitterness in her voice. If anything, she sounded protective. She wasn’t quite sure if she liked admitting it to herself, but Zoë was fascinated by Birgitta. There was something that the blonde woman was not telling them, and it wasn’t so much that Zoë wanted to know what it was as she wanted to find out what Birgitta wasn’t telling them.

    Zoë crossed the last few rocks so that she could stand near enough to see Birgitta’s eyes. They had gone from blue to the same turbulent grey of the sea and the sky, almost like holes had been bored into her head. Birgitta shifted her gaze as sharply as a falcon, and looked at Zoë as if she was only properly seeing her for the first time.

            “You’re right, we don’t.” said Zoë. “But here we are.”

Zoë reached out and offered her hand to Birgitta. The other woman hesitated, never breaking Zoë’s gaze, but ultimately accepted the gesture. Zoë grasped her hand firmly, and then jumped down onto the sand, helping Birgitta down after her.

            Billy followed and privately wondered what exactly he had just witnessed.

    They reached the shore, and for a moment, the three of them looked out over the water.

    “So, Birgitta, which way’s home?” asked Zoë. The Norwegian paused thoughtfully, and then pointed at a very precise point over the water.

    “That way.” came the heavily accented but very sure answer. Billy gazed up into the sky, wishing that the sun could be seen more clearly. It was around two forty in the afternoon, and as grey as the day was, a diffuse sunlight filtered down to the water, like it was being shone through filtered glass.

            Birgitta took a long breath and closed her eyes.

            “This is going to look very odd.” she said suddenly, reminding Billy that she’d asked to be here. “But I have to do this.”

            “Do we get to ask why?” offered Billy.

            “I wouldn’t stop you from asking.” Birgitta threw over her shoulder, walking away from the group. “But I don’t think you would much care for the answers I have.”

            She took a few steps closer to the shore and knelt in the sand. She then started pulling objects out of her pockets: her wallet, a pocket knife which had almost certainly been in her checked luggage, a box of matches, a handkerchief and finally a crumpled piece of evergreen. Billy and Zoë shared a glance, each half hoping that the other one would have some idea what was going on.

            Birgitta smoothed out the evergreen, and it proved to be a dried out wreath. Red ribbons were stuck in places with knobs of wax that quite possibly were matching candles at some point, but now didn’t look like much of anything. Excitement, and maybe a touch of fear glowed in Birgitta’s eyes.

            “Is this some weird Norwegian tradition I’ve never heard of?” Zoë asked cautiously. Birgitta looked up suddenly.

    “No. No, no. Just a weird Norwegian.”

            “Birgitta, will you please just tell us what you’re doing?” Billy asked with exasperation. His cousin looked pained, biting her lip and ultimately shaking her head. Not in denial, but in discomfort.

            “I will, but only because nothing I say will make me look more crazy than I do already. Forgive me my English, this is confusing enough as it is in my own language. I will do my best.” Birgitta took a deep breath, looked up at the pair of them, and began her story.

    “You may not believe in ghosts. I do not have time to argue why I do not have privilege of not believing in ghosts. I will only tell you why, but I must begin many years ago. In the late sixties, am not sure of exact year, but was early December. Billy, you said in letters as a child that it was not that way here, but in Norway, Christmas season is spread out across many saint’s days: santa Nicholas, santa Stephen, santa Lucia. Each has different celebration, different traditions, and on santa Lucia’s day, girls in white dresses process with candles and… these. These crowns, crowns of candles, because santa Lucia is the saint of light, saint of sailors. She was said to have pulled out her eyes and given them to a suitor, because he kept telling her how pretty her eyes were. The girls, they bring breakfast to their parents, and they sing praise. Many towns hold a Lucia pageant, and pick a pretty girl to be the Lucia that year in the pageant. It is… it is like a May queen? Have you May queens here?”

            “When is Saint Lucia’s day?” Billy asked.

            “Thirteenth of December. Tomorrow.”

            “What does this have to do with ghosts?” Zoë asked.

            “That is what happened in late sixties.” Birgitta explained, holding the box of matches tightly. “The Lucia pageant was held as usual, and my aunt, Birgitta Frazen… who is also your relation, Billy, this is in our blood, was crowned the Lucia. This is good, she is lovely, everyone is happy… except another girl. Very pretty, not very nice. Always making a huge fuss over little problems, breaking up with boys before they even go out together. Nagging her parents, getting in fights with other girls. She was… she was not well. Oh, today she would have been taken better care of, but the homes they had for mad people were so poor her parents thought it was best to keep her home, and she only ever broke somethings sometimes. Her name was Elise Madsen. Blonde hair, long. Blonde like a glazed bun. She… she was not well, but she joined the pageant. Did not place, got very angry, she… Elise was not well, she…”

            Birgitta’s voice caught, she wrenched her eyes shut at the thought and shook her head.

            “Elise decided if the town did not accept her as the Lucia, she would prove that she was the Lucy by herself. She ripped out her own eyes and walked into the sea, bleeding out, still wearing her santa Lucia dress. She was found like that, washed up on shore, no eyes… I do not know how she ripped out her own eyes. It was the next day that Birgitta died, burned horribly. Nothing else in her room had burn marks, but she was baked up like a bread.”

            The students were unable to speak at this point. Billy wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he believed his cousin, but he believed that she believed in what she was saying, and that was enough to terrify him.

            “There is more.” said Birgitta gravely. She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, forcing herself to tell the full tale. Billy lay a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. She took a breath, and started her story again.

            “My father loved his aunt Birgitta, and when I was born he gave me her name. Lots of girls have names of dead aunts. Lots of aunts are dead back home. Lots of sisters. Lots of daughters. No mothers, all aunts, all sisters, cousins, daughters. Because the next year, the winner of the pageant burned up in her bed, leaving stuffed bear at her feet untouched. Year after that, electric fire started on St. Lucia’s day and three more girls died. Every year this happened, every St. Lucia burned before the year was out. In eighty-two, the entire float caught fire and all the girls died, and then the town stopped holding pageants at all. Families won’t even have small celebrations with themselves, or else their daughters might burn up.”

            Birgitta opened her eyes.

            “We don’t have St. Lucia festival anymore, but still, everyone tells me I am beautiful. Everyone tells me how much I look like poor aunt Birgitta, everyone tells me that if we had a pageant again, I would be the Lucia.” She turned and looked at Billy.

            “I wish I could say I was brave, that I am doing this to protect all the girls at home, and let my family have a St. Lucia day again, and I do want that; but first I do not want to die.”

            “So you came here?” Billy asked.

            “I came here, with this.” said Birgitta, holding up the piece of topiary. “This is Elise’s crown, found on her body when she was dragged out of the sea. No one wanted it in town, but no one dared destroy it. My father kept this after his aunt died, tried to give offerings to Elise, to soothe her soul and make peace. It was no good, no help. Peace cannot be made with this evil spirit. I am here to lay her soul, to finally seek redemption or rot in hell. I am not sure if this will work, but if I went wrong, I did not want to bring more evil upon our town. It had suffered so much, Billy, I needed to do something, even if it meant giving up my last advent on Earth, not at home with my family but in a strange place laying Elise’s evil.”

            With her story finished, Birgitta fell silent, her expression daring Billy to doubt her story.

            “You think that your town is being haunted by someone who lost a seasonal beauty contest?” he asked carefully.

            “ ‘Think’ does not come into it. This is a fact I lived with since I was a girl.” she answered matter-of-factly. “I saw my father make his offerings, and I watched my friends die. You asked what I was doing, and I told you. I want the deaths to stop. I want to not be one of them. I want Elise to finally, in some form, get her… what is it? Comeuppence? For all she has done. I should forgive her, perhaps, but all I want is to see hell accept the wretched woman.”

            Birgitta picked the matchbox out of the sand, and struck the match. It hissed to life, flared for a moment, and accented the highlights on her face. Then the wind picked up, whirring over the water, and the flame extinguished in a twisting veil of smoke. Her eyes grew into a startled expression, and the wind blew even harder. The sky began to grow dark.

            It was subtle, at first, like a cloud passing over the sun, but then a blackness grew in the clouds, like ink dropped into water. The sun bowed in the sky and retreated before their eyes, as if it were running from the howling wind. Waves picked up and stopped lapping at the shore so much as crashing against it. The three of them were splattered with salty foam, filling their nostrils with the putrid, half-pickled stench of everything that had died in the water. Over the horizon, the water churned like it was boiling, reflecting the black clouds like a single dark mass, quickly and violently approaching the shore with a bellow of icy wind.

            “What the hell is going on?” shouted Zoë, springing to her feet. Billy pulled his tablet out of his pocket and checked the time, even though he knew he hadn’t even had lunch yet.

            “It’s 2:47!”

    Birgitta didn’t say anything, but continued frantically striking the match. It snapped off in her hand, and the head flew off into the sand. Zoë dropped to her knees beside the woman, pulling open her down parka. She spread the fabric out as best as she could, trying to shield the matches from the wind.



    “You believe me, Zoë?” asked Birgitta, looking up. Zoë’s mind raced. She had no idea what she believed, particularly when Birgitta was the one asking.

    “I believe you have to do this.” said Zoë.

    “Plus the sun just went down!” added Billy, who sounded panicked. “Am I the only one who noticed that the sun just went down?”



    Birgitta looked from one of the people she had just taken into her confidence to the other and gave Zoë another one of those weak smiles, the tentatively hopeful expression that meant so much after so much doubt. She braced her body closer to Zoë’s, guarding the flame between them, and struck a new match. It flared to life with a hiss, the tiny plume of flame dancing between life and jumping off of the match entirely. It steadied, and as brine splashed against Zoë’s back, Birgitta lowered the flame, raising the wreath in her other hand and carefully merging the two. The match touched the tinder-dry needles and both girls leapt away, springing to their feet as flames consumed the wreath. It flew from Birgitta’s hand, as her body refused to hold onto a cursed, flaming object any longer.



    The wreath made an arc through the air, dripping flames like water shaken from a dog and filling the air with little sparks. And then the arc paused.

    Floating in the air, spinning slightly so as to show the beautiful flames dancing along the length of the wreath without actually singeing so much as a needle. The wreath paused in the air, roughly five and a half feet above the churning water like someone was standing in the surf and wearing the crown.

    With a brilliant flare, a new light burst into being in the front of the wreath, a smaller golden flame that made all the others seem white and weak by comparison. Soon, the little knob of red wax under it grew, like film of a candle being burned played backwards. But by then, new lights were flaring along the wreath: one, two, six in all: all red as blood and misshapen by the dribbling wax pouring from their tops.



    The students watched in horror as slowly, a long white finger of wax poured from the base of the wreath, bubbling and building along itself. More wax came, forming bulbous lumps of white and red, long strands of wax building themselves into a single mass. As more wax poured, the figure took shape. It was a woman, a pale woman in a white dress.

    Slowly, half of her face formed, then more wax trickled down and built the other half, inch by inch to match the other half. She was beautiful; a heart shaped face, hair as golden as saffron buns and milk white skin, but her eyes removed any chance of her beauty being appreciated.

    They might have been blue or green, but at the moment it didn’t matter, as they were not there at all. Eyelids hung loosely over empty sockets, half exposing the blackness beyond. Red, hot blood dribbled down her snowy cheeks, bright as the ribbons woven through her hair. She hovered over the water, seemingly unaware of the waves crashing around her. Then, with a crackle of thunder, the ghost of Elise Madsen looked up at the woman who would have lain her. Her beautiful face distorted into a mask of fury.



    Zoë thought that she really ought to be screaming, after all, Billy was and she really doubted she was any less terrified than he was. But despite the fact that her mouth was open no sound was coming out. But on Birgitta’s face, her terror was cut with fierce determination.

            “Elise Madsen!” she shouted. The ghost raised her head and cocked an ear towards Birgitta.

            “My name is Birgitta Hillestad!” Birgitta shouted into the wind. With a howl, wind whipped around Birgitta, sending her coat flaring behind her. The ghost’s face contorted into a snarl, the flames in her wreath flaring nearly as tall as the candles themselves.

            “You shame the saint with your petty killing!” Birgitta screamed, trying to think of something that could be said to an angry ghost. “You don’t belong on this Earth, Elise! You only stay because you know that heaven would never accept you!”

    The wind whipped Zoë’s black hair across her face, cutting into her cheeks. Part of her wanted to run, to get as much space between that waxy apparition and herself as possible, but that part was eaten up by the part of her that knew she couldn’t move. Her legs felt like lead pins sinking deep into the sand, sprayed with the white foam of the sea crashing against the rocks. The sounds of the storm were deafening, but somehow, Birgitta’s voice cut threw it.

            “Ta deg en plass i helvete, gjenferd! [1]” she screamed, her voice overpowering the wind.

            The ghost of Elise snarled like a cat, turning her face to the shouting woman. She leaned forward and sped across the water, the tips of her toes now quite touching the turbulent surface but raising a growing wake on either side of her. The wave was small at first, but by the time she was two yards from the store and speeding closer, the ghost was buttressed by walls of water three feet high.

    “Get back to the car!” Billy shouted. Zoë grabbed his arm.

    “Do you actually think we could outrun that?” she demanded. The pair of them looked back at the water and ghost just in time to see them crash against the shore. Birgitta was still railing in Norwegian, and even if the students could speak her language there was no making out the words against the roar of the storm.

            The water broke against the young woman, knocking her back onto the sand and then pulling her out to the sea.

            “Birgitta!” Zoë screamed, throwing herself towards the other girl and grabbing at her hands. Billy too reached out, catching Zoë around the waist and praying his heavy, muscled body would be enough to keep the three of them from being swept into the water. Birgitta’s grip faltered for a moment, sliding over Zoë’s soaking hands. Throwing her other hand back, she caught hold of Zoë’s coat and pulled herself closer to the shore.

            The ghost opened her mouth to scream, but the only sound was that of the wind rising up. Snow white and delicate hands dove down and gripped the front of Birgitta’s coat, pulling her up to Elise’s eye level. Birgitta was sure she couldn’t have breathed, even if the ghost’s grasp, cold as iron and just as firm, wasn’t crushing her larynx.

    Zoë, seeing her friend—well, she certainly wanted to be Birgitta’s friend—in danger, did the first thing that came to mind, and scooped a handful of water up at the ghost. The flames sizzled and spat, a few of them on the side of the crown closest to the water sputtered out. The spectre dropped Elise on top of the other two, screeching and clutching her face as if in pain.



    Zoë attempted to put an arm around Birgitta and help her to her feet, but was cut short by Billy tucking each of them under one arm and pulling himself up. He was running before Birgitta had worked out that she wasn’t being throttled anymore. The girls flailed with their legs, trying to see if they could get their feet beneath them and start running themselves. Zoë managed first, and then the three of them fell together in another huddle, some twenty feet from the ghost. Billy looked back to see how far they’d gone, and saw the ghost turning her head around with a lost expression.

            “She looks crazy!” Billy exclaimed.

    “Well, she wasn’t sane before she died.” Birgitta pointed out breathlessly. “Dying cannot have helped with anything.” The ghost turned her head directly towards the group and grimaced.

    “…stygga gris… [2]” the ghost snarled. Elise rose in the air a few inches and sped towards the group.

    “Run!” Billy reiterated, hoping his suggestion would be taken more seriously this time. The three of them scrabbled along the beach, diving behind a large rock to hide. They panted, glancing left to right to make sure all three of them made it to safety.

    “Okay, we raised an angry beauty queen who might think she’s a saint from the grave.” Zoë puffed. “Now what?”

    “We?” Billy demanded. “What do you mean ‘we’? I had no idea what she was doing.”

    “We have to lay her spirit, send her back to hell so that she won’t kill anyone else.”

    “Great.” Billy gasped, still slightly winded. “Anybody know how to do that? Birgitta?”

Birgitta looked at her cousin helplessly and gulped great breaths of air, shaking her head.

    “You raised a dead person who you didn’t know how to kill again‽”

    “Is that an unusual mistake over here‽” Birgitta demanded breathlessly.

    Birgitta rubbed her neck, still gasping. She quickly turned from Billy to Zoë.

    “I didn’t want to get you two wrapped up in all of this, I didn’t want anyone else to be put in danger, but you’re here now, and I’m sorry.”

    Neither Billy or Zoë could argue with that, so she continued.

    “She burns the Lucia girl every year.” said Birgitta. “She’s here, which means she isn’t back home, killing someone else.”

    “Do we know that?” asked Billy. “She is a ghost.”

    “But she only kills once a year, and she only kills the girl who would have been the Lucia. The most beautiful. With all my friends dying, I think it’s likely that I’m the best they’ve got to offer.”

    “Don’t say that like you’re not gorgeous.” Zoë commented. Birgitta smiled, casting down her eyes as if she were about to start blushing.

    “I thought perhaps when I saw you that Elise might go after you, you are quite pretty yourself. I am so glad that she did not, Zoë. That is why I didn’t want you to follow me here. You are far too pretty to be hurt.” Birgitta smiled at Zoë, who returned it with an almost sappy expression. Billy looked at them with a mixture of surprise and exasperation.

    “Really? Now?” he demanded.



    “I just had a thought.” said Zoë. The other two looked at her.

    “She’s lost her eyes, right?” Zoë whispered, “And when we were sitting in front of her, she didn’t attack… not until-”

    Birgitta reached out to cover Zoë’s mouth, but it was too late. Long, delicate fingers reached over the rock and grabbed a fistful of Zoë’s hair. Zoë screamed, clawing at the spectre as Elise lifted her up over the rock. Birgitta called out the other girl’s name, trying to keep her hands on Zoë’s. The ghost lifted the screaming girl off of her feet, kicking helplessly as Birgitta threw her arms about her. There was a terrible moment of tug-of-war as the ghost as the living girl both tried to free the shrieking Zoë from the other’s grasp; but as Zoë was fighting Elise and Birgitta had gravity on her side, Zoë tumbled from the ghost’s grip. The girls fell into the sand in a tangle of limbs, noses all but touching.

    “Are you alright?” asked Birgitta, touching Zoë’s temple.

    “I think so, are you alright?”

    “We don’t have time to be lesbians!” Billy exclaimed in frustration.



    With assistance from Billy, the two young women got to their feet and retreated several feet. The ghost paused, turning her head. Wax and blood, each as red as the other, flew from her face as she tried to hear where her quarry had fled to.



    “I’ll try and distract her.” offered Billy in a whisper. “She won’t kill me, I’m a guy. Then you two can get her.”

            “ ‘Get her’?” Birgitta demanded. “That is your plan? Get her‽”

    “You really want to be John McClain, don’t you?” Zoë hissed in exasperation.

    “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.” Billy shrugged. Slowly, carefully, Billy began to walk away from the girls. Zoë started as if she remembered something, then pointed away from the shore. She then indicated herself and Birgitta, and pointed at the sea. Birgitta nodded, Billy gave a thumbs up, and they slowly crept in opposite directions.



     Floating above the stone, the ghost craned her head about, clearly straining to hear. On the shore, Zoë and Birgitta started to run as quietly as they were able, which fortunately was much easier on sand. Billy licked his lips, slowly stepping to one side, wondering where the best place to lure a ghost from was. He screwed his eyes shut for a moment and pretended that he was on the football field, that this ghost was just another player, and he had to hold the ball just long enough to throw it over the rival’s head to Zoë. Zoë would catch it, there’d be a touchdown, then they’d all go home to celebrate. It would be fine. It would be alright. No one was going to kill his cousin. No one was going to kill his best friend. Billy opened his eyes and took two more steps to the left.



    “Hey! No-eyes!” he shouted. “You think you’re so hot?”

    Elise’s head snapped towards Billy and the lights on her crown flared like butane torches.

    “I’ve got to say, being dead hasn’t done much for your looks! And that haircut, it’s so outdated!” he shouted, running along the beach. The ghost opened her mouth in a snarl, and the wind howled as if it were screaming. Somewhere, behind the wind, an echo of half-muttered Norwegian snarled something, but Zoë understood as much of it as Birgitta, for all the sense it made.

    “Jan Brady called, she wants her look back!” Billy shouted, running towards the water. The ghost howled, flying in the air towards Billy. Her long white robe and red sash filled the air behind her, as she shed red blood and wax like hailstones.



    Billy ran towards Zoë and Birgitta, ducking beneath their arms and coming to a skidding halt between them. Sand filled his mouth and jacket, but given that a flaming ghost was passing above him as that happened, it was the least of his concern. Each of the young woman grabbed hold of a sleeve, discovering quickly that while the ghost did not adhere to the laws of gravity, the laws of momentum were quite another matter entirely. All three of the ladies were drawn two yards into the turbulent water; and while the ghost was not affected by gravity herself, she was affected by the weight of the two women pulling her down.



    With a hiss like a shrieking kettle or a badly-tuned violin, Elise fell, writhing into the water, her face contorted in as if in pain. The fabric of her dress slithered beneath Birgitta’s fingers, but she held fast. If she was fated to die this St. Lucia’s day, she would die banishing this evil ghost, not as her victim. Birgitta tossed her head up above the crashing water and took a final gulp of air before throwing her arms fast around the ghost’s waist. Flailing about in an attempt to get a firmer grip somewhere on the drowning ghost, Zoë reached up out of the water and grabbed a handful of her loose, golden hair. It felt like plunging her hand into a boiling vat of fabric, being dyed or washed of something that required the water to be hot as a flame. She screeched in pain, but held fast and slipped beneath the waves, pulling the ghost with her.

    Elise threw back her flaming head, blood flowing like a tears of pain from her wounded eyes and her mouth contorted into a silent scream. And with a final hiss like a teakettle boiling over, the ghost was extinguished as a flame is extinguished, pulled beneath the tearing waves by the weight of the two women beneath her.



    Billy pulled himself to his feet, searching the water for his friends.

    “Zoë?” he shouted. “Birgitta?!” The young man felt the icy water on his legs before he realised he was running into it. He couldn’t lay the ghost, he couldn’t have touched her white-hot skin, but he wouldn’t let his friends die. He took a breath, bracing his lungs for the freezing water, and dove in, salt water stinging his eyes. But beneath the water, he could see the red of Birgitta’s coat filling the sea around her; and there in her arms was a smaller, darker figure, sinking to the bottom with her. Billy pushed himself forward, towards the women. He couldn’t fight the monster, but he could save his friends.

    The three of them staggered, dripping, to Billy’s SUV, still shaking with the shock that they were still alive. And of course, shivering given they had just climbed out of the ocean in December.

    “Let’s get some hot drinks into us.” suggested Billy, opening his door. Zoë opened hers, discovered the forgotten latte in her cupholder, and picked it up.

    “…except now the coffee’s gone cold.” Zoë grumbled, sniffing the cup with a disgusted expression.

    “We can get a new cup, yes?” suggested Birgitta, taking Zoë’s other hand. Zoë grinned at her. Billy rolled his eyes with disgust. It wasn’t so much that Zoë was flirting with a girl that he minded, it was that his best friend was hitting on his cousin within two hours of meeting her. It was just embarrassing to be around them.

[1] Take you place in hell, spectre!—Norwegian

[2] Ugly pig

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Billy and Zoë were always said to be good kids, not getting in fights, making the sports team, honor roll, debate team, cheer squad, chorus and band. Both moderately popular jacks-of-all-trades, they managed to make prom king and queen even though they were just friends, and got scholarships to the same college. Billy played sports year round, but managed to talk about other things, mainly debating, singing or playing clarinet. Well, not when he was doing those things, as they involved his mouth. He had a tall, muscular build, his features seemingly mismatched. He had soccer legs and basketball feet, baseball arms on a football torso, which his head was thankfully not too small for, his white blond hair contrasting with his frequently red face. Zoë’s body, however, seemed more perfectly constructed. She had toasted mocha skin and shiny black hair, large brown eyes, long willowy arms and legs rippling with muscles and small, athletic breasts that did not get in the way when she cheered, played the flute, lacrosse, tennis or cricket. Both frequently smiled, especially when the life-long friends found out they were going to college together.

            It was mid-December and winter break hadn’t started yet. The air was crisp, the sky that pale blue that seemed to constant promise snow without ever actually delivering it. Steam poured like a fountain from Zoë’s gingerbread latte, filling the car with its scent but remaining too hot to drink and too full for her to set down in the cup holder. She ordered roughly ten gingerbread lattes over the course of December every year, and drank what amounted to seven of them. One of them got poured down the drain for going cold while waiting for it to be cool enough to drink. The other two were drunk, a third of a cup at a time, by Billy, who insisted he didn’t like girly flavoured coffee and was only stealing sips off of Zoë’s coffee because he forgot to order his own.

            “Pass me your coffee, Zoë.”

            “It’s still too hot to drink.” she responded, nonetheless passing the cup over.

            “We should have waited to get coffee until after we made to it the airport.”

            “I’m not drinking airport coffee!” Zoë scoffed. Billy took a sip of the latte and winced. Zoë was absolutely right; it was too hot to drink. He wasn’t going to admit that, but Zoë had known him long enough to know exactly what the wince meant.

            “Well, we could have picked up the coffee after we picked up my cousin.” Billy suggested with a shrug. “I hear they drink a lot of coffee in Norway, she might have liked it.”

            “I don’t think they have Dunkin Donuts in Norway.”

    “They might, it’s a chain restaurant.”

    “Is it really a restaurant? They mostly serve coffee.”

    “But they do have food in there.”

    “But surely if they serve mostly drinks, it’s a coffee house.” Billy took another sip of the too-hot coffee and passed it back to Zoë before turning into the parking garage.

    “They have bathrooms.” said Billy decisively. “Restaurants legally have to have bathrooms, so it’s a restaurant.”

    “That’s a logical fallacy.” countered Zoë. “The dorm has a bathroom, but it isn’t a restaurant. I thought you were on the debate team.”

    “Affirming the consequent.” Billy nodded proudly. “People always get caught up on that and then I can attack the resulting argument. I am a big blonde Columbo.”

            “I don’t even—” Zoë began hopelessly, then gratefully spotted a parking space. “Park here.” she suggested, hoping Billy would forget about this whole ridiculous conversation.

            Billy parked, the two got out of the SUV, locked it and left the too-hot latte to freeze while they left to pick up Billy’s cousin.

            “Birgitta Hillestade.” Billy intoned, carefully pronouncing each syllable.

            “Burgrita Hillystand.” Zoë chorused.

            “Birgitta Hillestade.” Billy repeated, louder.

            “That’s what I said, Burgrita Hillystand.” Zoë nodded.

            “Look, I’ve been pen pals with Birgitta since I was eight.” Billy moaned. “Please don’t play the ugly American and murder her name.”

    “That’s what I’m confused about.” she Zoë. “I didn’t even know you had a cousin.”

            “Well, we’re third cousins but you know how it is, in second grade you decide you want a foreign penpal, you look yourself up on a genealogy site and look for the branch of your family that moved furthest away and look for someone about your age, find their address, and start writing to them.”

            “So you did all that?”

            “No, Birgitta did.” Billy shrugged.

    By now, they had reached the arrivals area and were swiftly reaching the conclusion that picking up the gingerbread latte that even now was not being drunk had pushed them from being right on time for Birgitta’s flight to looking through the thinning crowd of travellers for someone who looked like they could be Billy’s cousin. There were enough blonds, Zoë supposed, but she was pretty sure that was not a good way to find Billy’s cousin. Most of the crowd coming off the plane from Norway looked old, white, and tired enough to be members of congress. But no one Zoë could see looked like they could be related to Billy. Being his best friend since second grade, she’d become familiar enough with him to recognise his family, address his mother as first “Mrs. Hitchner”, then “momma Hitcher”, and finally just “mom”. She knew where the family hid the spare key and had spent much of their junior year letting herself into their house and playing with their dog while she waited for Billy to get home from football practice. She was confident that she could recognise someone from Billy’s family, even if she’d never met them before. Even if all of those pink faces with messy shocks of blonde hair were starting to all look alike as the crowd worked its way into the recesses of the airport.

            “We should have made a sign.” Zoë murmured, bouncing up on her toes to see if she could see anyone else in the terminal.

            “Yeah, I should have…” Billy admitted sheepishly. “Do we have anything we can write on?”

            “No, I left my notebooks in the car, I wasn’t expecting to get any work done today, it’s almost winter break.”

            “I could try and write something on my tablet, but I don’t think I could get the font size big enough to be read from a distance…” Billy mused, petting his jean pocket. Zoë was mildly disgusted that Billy could fit a tablet computer in his trousers, when she needed to split a gum packet into two parts to get them in her pockets.

            “Well, how big does the font get?” Zoë asked, leaning over the device Billy was currently powering up.

            “Pretty big, but the autocorrect keeps Hillestade to Hillside.” Billy frowned, poking at the screen.

            “It is Hillestad, actually.” corrected a warm, accented voice.

            The pair looked up, and found themselves face to face with another woman roughly their age. She was delicately built, wearing a cardinal-red hooded peacoat over a white dress and knit leggings. Once they were looking at her, there was no doubt of who she was. There were traces of Billy’s face around her eyes, the red flush to her cheeks, the pale blonde hair, but where Billy was awkward and hulking, this woman was one of the most beautiful and elegant people either of the friends had ever seen.

            She was a bit shorter than Billy but taller than Zoë, with her pale hair braided into a crown, little wisps of that hair filling the air and catching the light in such a way that Zoë felt would have made her look like she hadn’t slept in days, but with her sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, the other girl looked like a fairy queen. There was a rim of pink around her eyes that suggested either lack of sleep or poor health, but that was probably jetlag, and for some reason it made the woman look ever prettier, in a wilting flower sort of way. There was strength in her stance, however, a sort of firmness that made her look more like she was going to be protecting someone rather than she herself needed protection.

            “You are Billy Hitchner?” she asked in that soft, warm accent which had corrected Billy’s pronunciation. Billy nodded, awkwardly returning the tablet to his pocket.

            “Yeah. Hi. You must be Birgitta.” Billy said awkwardly, finding it difficult to fit his tablet back into his pocket. He managed, eventually, and reached out to shake her hand.

            “You must be Birgitta. Bir- is there a shorter version of that? You always just signed the letters ‘Birgitta’.” The girl shrugged.

            “Birgit? Most people just say Birgitta. It is too long?”

            “It’s fine, Billy just has problems with words with one than two syllables.” said Zoë, offering her hand.

            “I know, he stopped writing so often once he was a teenager.” Birgitta smiled, accepting it. Birgitta’s hand was soft and warm, and she looked directly into Zoë’s eyes and smiled.

    Zoë suddenly and unexpectedly felt her sexuality take a sharp veer towards bi-curious. As shocked as she was by how much she found herself attracted to Birgitta, it wasn’t the fact that she was another girl that surprised Zoë. It was the fact that a girl could look that much like Billy and be that cute. Zoë forcefully redirected her thoughts from whether it would be a strain on her friendship with Billy if she started making out with his cousin to actually introducing herself to Birgitta.

            “And you, his friend Zo? He tells me much about you.” she said, giving Zoë’s hand a final squeeze before resting her hand on her rolling suitcase.

            “It’s pronounced ‘Zoë’.” Billy corrected.

            “Or Zo, Zo’s fine.” Zoë added quickly. Billy looked at her sceptically.

            “I’ll keep that in mind, ‘Zozo’.” he smirked quietly. Zoë elbowed him in the gut. Birgitta smiled.

            “It’s very nice to finally meet you.” she said. “Both of you.”

            “Sorry we’re so late, Birgitta.” said Billy. “Zoë wanted to make a stop before we came here.

            “Is alright, I haven’t been waiting long. And it is good to stand up for a while after my flight, walk around and stretch my legs between the aeroplane and the car ride.”

            “Oh.” said Billy. “Do you want to get lunch or something on our way back, then?”

He awkwardly ruffled his short hair.

            “To, uh, keep our legs moving and all.”

            “No, is alright, I’m stretched and ready to go see your house, get ready for Christmas.” she answered, shaking her head.

            “Well, if you’re sure…” said Billy.

            “Well…” Birgitta mused, with the very distinct expression of someone who does want something but doesn’t want to admit it. “There is one thing I wanted to do in America… and if we could get it out of the way…”

            Birgitta bit her lip and looked away.

            “What is it?”

            “It’s just… back to Billy’s home on the drive do we pass by an ocean?”

The end of the question came out in a jumble, quick and like she was embarrassed to say them. Billy and Zoë glanced at each other, trying to work out what she said as much as why she had said it.

            “Not really close, but…” mused Billy, “We could take a detour, I don’t think it would add more than half an hour, depending on how long we stayed there. Not like there would be a crowd this time of year, either.”

            “You want to go to the beach in December?” Zoë asked, her eyes wide.

            “It is just sometime I would like to get done, so to relax this holiday.” said Birgitta. She bit her lip, and Zoë felt a fresh wave of confusion wash over her, paired with the desire to find out what Birgitta wanted.

            “We could do it.” Zoë informed Billy swiftly, as if he had been the one to make the objection. Billy felt slightly befuddled, as if the two women had had several minutes of conversation and he did not notice it; and scratched the back of his neck.

            “Yeah. Like I said, not much of a detour. Give us a chance to stretch our legs.”

            “Then we could get coffee.” Zoë suggested, wondering why she was saying each word as she spoke it.

            The ocean stretched out to meet the sky in an unhappy gray mass. It churned slightly, like someone who was feeling just barely not ill enough to mention it to the people around them but far too ill to think about anything else themselves. The sky looked just as gray and unhappy, the clouds above the sea rolling like they were trying to decide whether to let out snow or rain, and being unable to do either until they had made a decision either way.

            The three college students clamoured over the rocks with various levels of grace. Zoë strode along the tops of the crevasses, surefooted as a mountain goat, while Birgitta hopped from stone to stone like a little red songbird and Billy did his best to only fall to his knees when he did inevitably trip. But something felt off. Normally, when young people sprang along the shore, there was an air of light-hearted frivolity that went with it. Ever since they came in sight of the water, Birgitta had tensed up, digging her hands into her pockets and taking them out again. She fiddled with her luggage, unzipping and zipping up the top again and again, then shoving her hands back into her pockets and staring out the window of the car. Once they parked, she led the way to the waterfront, not even checking to see if Billy and Zoë were following her.

            “Birgitta?” Billy called, pulling himself to his feet. “You haven’t forgot about us, have you?”

            His cousin froze and half-turned towards him. Her profile stood against the sky, and although Billy had been joking when he said that, something in her eyes made him think she had.

            “You don’t have to come with me.” she called back, but there wasn’t a trace of bitterness in her voice. If anything, she sounded protective. She wasn’t quite sure if she liked admitting it to herself, but Zoë was fascinated by Birgitta. There was something that the blonde woman was not telling them, and it wasn’t so much that Zoë wanted to know what it was as she wanted to find out what Birgitta wasn’t telling them.

    Zoë crossed the last few rocks so that she could stand near enough to see Birgitta’s eyes. They had gone from blue to the same turbulent grey of the sea and the sky, almost like holes had been bored into her head. Birgitta shifted her gaze as sharply as a falcon, and looked at Zoë as if she was only properly seeing her for the first time.

            “You’re right, we don’t.” said Zoë. “But here we are.”

Zoë reached out and offered her hand to Birgitta. The other woman hesitated, never breaking Zoë’s gaze, but ultimately accepted the gesture. Zoë grasped her hand firmly, and then jumped down onto the sand, helping Birgitta down after her.

            Billy followed and privately wondered what exactly he had just witnessed.

    They reached the shore, and for a moment, the three of them looked out over the water.

    “So, Birgitta, which way’s home?” asked Zoë. The Norwegian paused thoughtfully, and then pointed at a very precise point over the water.

    “That way.” came the heavily accented but very sure answer. Billy gazed up into the sky, wishing that the sun could be seen more clearly. It was around two forty in the afternoon, and as grey as the day was, a diffuse sunlight filtered down to the water, like it was being shone through filtered glass.

            Birgitta took a long breath and closed her eyes.

            “This is going to look very odd.” she said suddenly, reminding Billy that she’d asked to be here. “But I have to do this.”

            “Do we get to ask why?” offered Billy.

            “I wouldn’t stop you from asking.” Birgitta threw over her shoulder, walking away from the group. “But I don’t think you would much care for the answers I have.”

            She took a few steps closer to the shore and knelt in the sand. She then started pulling objects out of her pockets: her wallet, a pocket knife which had almost certainly been in her checked luggage, a box of matches, a handkerchief and finally a crumpled piece of evergreen. Billy and Zoë shared a glance, each half hoping that the other one would have some idea what was going on.

            Birgitta smoothed out the evergreen, and it proved to be a dried out wreath. Red ribbons were stuck in places with knobs of wax that quite possibly were matching candles at some point, but now didn’t look like much of anything. Excitement, and maybe a touch of fear glowed in Birgitta’s eyes.

            “Is this some weird Norwegian tradition I’ve never heard of?” Zoë asked cautiously. Birgitta looked up suddenly.

    “No. No, no. Just a weird Norwegian.”

            “Birgitta, will you please just tell us what you’re doing?” Billy asked with exasperation. His cousin looked pained, biting her lip and ultimately shaking her head. Not in denial, but in discomfort.

            “I will, but only because nothing I say will make me look more crazy than I do already. Forgive me my English, this is confusing enough as it is in my own language. I will do my best.” Birgitta took a deep breath, looked up at the pair of them, and began her story.

    “You may not believe in ghosts. I do not have time to argue why I do not have privilege of not believing in ghosts. I will only tell you why, but I must begin many years ago. In the late sixties, am not sure of exact year, but was early December. Billy, you said in letters as a child that it was not that way here, but in Norway, Christmas season is spread out across many saint’s days: santa Nicholas, santa Stephen, santa Lucia. Each has different celebration, different traditions, and on santa Lucia’s day, girls in white dresses process with candles and… these. These crowns, crowns of candles, because santa Lucia is the saint of light, saint of sailors. She was said to have pulled out her eyes and given them to a suitor, because he kept telling her how pretty her eyes were. The girls, they bring breakfast to their parents, and they sing praise. Many towns hold a Lucia pageant, and pick a pretty girl to be the Lucia that year in the pageant. It is… it is like a May queen? Have you May queens here?”

            “When is Saint Lucia’s day?” Billy asked.

            “Thirteenth of December. Tomorrow.”

            “What does this have to do with ghosts?” Zoë asked.

            “That is what happened in late sixties.” Birgitta explained, holding the box of matches tightly. “The Lucia pageant was held as usual, and my aunt, Birgitta Frazen… who is also your relation, Billy, this is in our blood, was crowned the Lucia. This is good, she is lovely, everyone is happy… except another girl. Very pretty, not very nice. Always making a huge fuss over little problems, breaking up with boys before they even go out together. Nagging her parents, getting in fights with other girls. She was… she was not well. Oh, today she would have been taken better care of, but the homes they had for mad people were so poor her parents thought it was best to keep her home, and she only ever broke somethings sometimes. Her name was Elise Madsen. Blonde hair, long. Blonde like a glazed bun. She… she was not well, but she joined the pageant. Did not place, got very angry, she… Elise was not well, she…”

            Birgitta’s voice caught, she wrenched her eyes shut at the thought and shook her head.

            “Elise decided if the town did not accept her as the Lucia, she would prove that she was the Lucy by herself. She ripped out her own eyes and walked into the sea, bleeding out, still wearing her santa Lucia dress. She was found like that, washed up on shore, no eyes… I do not know how she ripped out her own eyes. It was the next day that Birgitta died, burned horribly. Nothing else in her room had burn marks, but she was baked up like a bread.”

            The students were unable to speak at this point. Billy wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he believed his cousin, but he believed that she believed in what she was saying, and that was enough to terrify him.

            “There is more.” said Birgitta gravely. She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, forcing herself to tell the full tale. Billy lay a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. She took a breath, and started her story again.

            “My father loved his aunt Birgitta, and when I was born he gave me her name. Lots of girls have names of dead aunts. Lots of aunts are dead back home. Lots of sisters. Lots of daughters. No mothers, all aunts, all sisters, cousins, daughters. Because the next year, the winner of the pageant burned up in her bed, leaving stuffed bear at her feet untouched. Year after that, electric fire started on St. Lucia’s day and three more girls died. Every year this happened, every St. Lucia burned before the year was out. In eighty-two, the entire float caught fire and all the girls died, and then the town stopped holding pageants at all. Families won’t even have small celebrations with themselves, or else their daughters might burn up.”

            Birgitta opened her eyes.

            “We don’t have St. Lucia festival anymore, but still, everyone tells me I am beautiful. Everyone tells me how much I look like poor aunt Birgitta, everyone tells me that if we had a pageant again, I would be the Lucia.” She turned and looked at Billy.

            “I wish I could say I was brave, that I am doing this to protect all the girls at home, and let my family have a St. Lucia day again, and I do want that; but first I do not want to die.”

            “So you came here?” Billy asked.

            “I came here, with this.” said Birgitta, holding up the piece of topiary. “This is Elise’s crown, found on her body when she was dragged out of the sea. No one wanted it in town, but no one dared destroy it. My father kept this after his aunt died, tried to give offerings to Elise, to soothe her soul and make peace. It was no good, no help. Peace cannot be made with this evil spirit. I am here to lay her soul, to finally seek redemption or rot in hell. I am not sure if this will work, but if I went wrong, I did not want to bring more evil upon our town. It had suffered so much, Billy, I needed to do something, even if it meant giving up my last advent on Earth, not at home with my family but in a strange place laying Elise’s evil.”

            With her story finished, Birgitta fell silent, her expression daring Billy to doubt her story.

            “You think that your town is being haunted by someone who lost a seasonal beauty contest?” he asked carefully.

            “ ‘Think’ does not come into it. This is a fact I lived with since I was a girl.” she answered matter-of-factly. “I saw my father make his offerings, and I watched my friends die. You asked what I was doing, and I told you. I want the deaths to stop. I want to not be one of them. I want Elise to finally, in some form, get her… what is it? Comeuppence? For all she has done. I should forgive her, perhaps, but all I want is to see hell accept the wretched woman.”

            Birgitta picked the matchbox out of the sand, and struck the match. It hissed to life, flared for a moment, and accented the highlights on her face. Then the wind picked up, whirring over the water, and the flame extinguished in a twisting veil of smoke. Her eyes grew into a startled expression, and the wind blew even harder. The sky began to grow dark.

            It was subtle, at first, like a cloud passing over the sun, but then a blackness grew in the clouds, like ink dropped into water. The sun bowed in the sky and retreated before their eyes, as if it were running from the howling wind. Waves picked up and stopped lapping at the shore so much as crashing against it. The three of them were splattered with salty foam, filling their nostrils with the putrid, half-pickled stench of everything that had died in the water. Over the horizon, the water churned like it was boiling, reflecting the black clouds like a single dark mass, quickly and violently approaching the shore with a bellow of icy wind.

            “What the hell is going on?” shouted Zoë, springing to her feet. Billy pulled his tablet out of his pocket and checked the time, even though he knew he hadn’t even had lunch yet.

            “It’s 2:47!”

    Birgitta didn’t say anything, but continued frantically striking the match. It snapped off in her hand, and the head flew off into the sand. Zoë dropped to her knees beside the woman, pulling open her down parka. She spread the fabric out as best as she could, trying to shield the matches from the wind.



    “You believe me, Zoë?” asked Birgitta, looking up. Zoë’s mind raced. She had no idea what she believed, particularly when Birgitta was the one asking.

    “I believe you have to do this.” said Zoë.

    “Plus the sun just went down!” added Billy, who sounded panicked. “Am I the only one who noticed that the sun just went down?”



    Birgitta looked from one of the people she had just taken into her confidence to the other and gave Zoë another one of those weak smiles, the tentatively hopeful expression that meant so much after so much doubt. She braced her body closer to Zoë’s, guarding the flame between them, and struck a new match. It flared to life with a hiss, the tiny plume of flame dancing between life and jumping off of the match entirely. It steadied, and as brine splashed against Zoë’s back, Birgitta lowered the flame, raising the wreath in her other hand and carefully merging the two. The match touched the tinder-dry needles and both girls leapt away, springing to their feet as flames consumed the wreath. It flew from Birgitta’s hand, as her body refused to hold onto a cursed, flaming object any longer.



    The wreath made an arc through the air, dripping flames like water shaken from a dog and filling the air with little sparks. And then the arc paused.

    Floating in the air, spinning slightly so as to show the beautiful flames dancing along the length of the wreath without actually singeing so much as a needle. The wreath paused in the air, roughly five and a half feet above the churning water like someone was standing in the surf and wearing the crown.

    With a brilliant flare, a new light burst into being in the front of the wreath, a smaller golden flame that made all the others seem white and weak by comparison. Soon, the little knob of red wax under it grew, like film of a candle being burned played backwards. But by then, new lights were flaring along the wreath: one, two, six in all: all red as blood and misshapen by the dribbling wax pouring from their tops.



    The students watched in horror as slowly, a long white finger of wax poured from the base of the wreath, bubbling and building along itself. More wax came, forming bulbous lumps of white and red, long strands of wax building themselves into a single mass. As more wax poured, the figure took shape. It was a woman, a pale woman in a white dress.

    Slowly, half of her face formed, then more wax trickled down and built the other half, inch by inch to match the other half. She was beautiful; a heart shaped face, hair as golden as saffron buns and milk white skin, but her eyes removed any chance of her beauty being appreciated.

    They might have been blue or green, but at the moment it didn’t matter, as they were not there at all. Eyelids hung loosely over empty sockets, half exposing the blackness beyond. Red, hot blood dribbled down her snowy cheeks, bright as the ribbons woven through her hair. She hovered over the water, seemingly unaware of the waves crashing around her. Then, with a crackle of thunder, the ghost of Elise Madsen looked up at the woman who would have lain her. Her beautiful face distorted into a mask of fury.



    Zoë thought that she really ought to be screaming, after all, Billy was and she really doubted she was any less terrified than he was. But despite the fact that her mouth was open no sound was coming out. But on Birgitta’s face, her terror was cut with fierce determination.

            “Elise Madsen!” she shouted. The ghost raised her head and cocked an ear towards Birgitta.

            “My name is Birgitta Hillestad!” Birgitta shouted into the wind. With a howl, wind whipped around Birgitta, sending her coat flaring behind her. The ghost’s face contorted into a snarl, the flames in her wreath flaring nearly as tall as the candles themselves.

            “You shame the saint with your petty killing!” Birgitta screamed, trying to think of something that could be said to an angry ghost. “You don’t belong on this Earth, Elise! You only stay because you know that heaven would never accept you!”

    The wind whipped Zoë’s black hair across her face, cutting into her cheeks. Part of her wanted to run, to get as much space between that waxy apparition and herself as possible, but that part was eaten up by the part of her that knew she couldn’t move. Her legs felt like lead pins sinking deep into the sand, sprayed with the white foam of the sea crashing against the rocks. The sounds of the storm were deafening, but somehow, Birgitta’s voice cut threw it.

            “Ta deg en plass i helvete, gjenferd! [1]” she screamed, her voice overpowering the wind.

            The ghost of Elise snarled like a cat, turning her face to the shouting woman. She leaned forward and sped across the water, the tips of her toes now quite touching the turbulent surface but raising a growing wake on either side of her. The wave was small at first, but by the time she was two yards from the store and speeding closer, the ghost was buttressed by walls of water three feet high.

    “Get back to the car!” Billy shouted. Zoë grabbed his arm.

    “Do you actually think we could outrun that?” she demanded. The pair of them looked back at the water and ghost just in time to see them crash against the shore. Birgitta was still railing in Norwegian, and even if the students could speak her language there was no making out the words against the roar of the storm.

            The water broke against the young woman, knocking her back onto the sand and then pulling her out to the sea.

            “Birgitta!” Zoë screamed, throwing herself towards the other girl and grabbing at her hands. Billy too reached out, catching Zoë around the waist and praying his heavy, muscled body would be enough to keep the three of them from being swept into the water. Birgitta’s grip faltered for a moment, sliding over Zoë’s soaking hands. Throwing her other hand back, she caught hold of Zoë’s coat and pulled herself closer to the shore.

            The ghost opened her mouth to scream, but the only sound was that of the wind rising up. Snow white and delicate hands dove down and gripped the front of Birgitta’s coat, pulling her up to Elise’s eye level. Birgitta was sure she couldn’t have breathed, even if the ghost’s grasp, cold as iron and just as firm, wasn’t crushing her larynx.

    Zoë, seeing her friend—well, she certainly wanted to be Birgitta’s friend—in danger, did the first thing that came to mind, and scooped a handful of water up at the ghost. The flames sizzled and spat, a few of them on the side of the crown closest to the water sputtered out. The spectre dropped Elise on top of the other two, screeching and clutching her face as if in pain.



    Zoë attempted to put an arm around Birgitta and help her to her feet, but was cut short by Billy tucking each of them under one arm and pulling himself up. He was running before Birgitta had worked out that she wasn’t being throttled anymore. The girls flailed with their legs, trying to see if they could get their feet beneath them and start running themselves. Zoë managed first, and then the three of them fell together in another huddle, some twenty feet from the ghost. Billy looked back to see how far they’d gone, and saw the ghost turning her head around with a lost expression.

            “She looks crazy!” Billy exclaimed.

    “Well, she wasn’t sane before she died.” Birgitta pointed out breathlessly. “Dying cannot have helped with anything.” The ghost turned her head directly towards the group and grimaced.

    “…stygga gris… [2]” the ghost snarled. Elise rose in the air a few inches and sped towards the group.

    “Run!” Billy reiterated, hoping his suggestion would be taken more seriously this time. The three of them scrabbled along the beach, diving behind a large rock to hide. They panted, glancing left to right to make sure all three of them made it to safety.

    “Okay, we raised an angry beauty queen who might think she’s a saint from the grave.” Zoë puffed. “Now what?”

    “We?” Billy demanded. “What do you mean ‘we’? I had no idea what she was doing.”

    “We have to lay her spirit, send her back to hell so that she won’t kill anyone else.”

    “Great.” Billy gasped, still slightly winded. “Anybody know how to do that? Birgitta?”

Birgitta looked at her cousin helplessly and gulped great breaths of air, shaking her head.

    “You raised a dead person who you didn’t know how to kill again‽”

    “Is that an unusual mistake over here‽” Birgitta demanded breathlessly.

    Birgitta rubbed her neck, still gasping. She quickly turned from Billy to Zoë.

    “I didn’t want to get you two wrapped up in all of this, I didn’t want anyone else to be put in danger, but you’re here now, and I’m sorry.”

    Neither Billy or Zoë could argue with that, so she continued.

    “She burns the Lucia girl every year.” said Birgitta. “She’s here, which means she isn’t back home, killing someone else.”

    “Do we know that?” asked Billy. “She is a ghost.”

    “But she only kills once a year, and she only kills the girl who would have been the Lucia. The most beautiful. With all my friends dying, I think it’s likely that I’m the best they’ve got to offer.”

    “Don’t say that like you’re not gorgeous.” Zoë commented. Birgitta smiled, casting down her eyes as if she were about to start blushing.

    “I thought perhaps when I saw you that Elise might go after you, you are quite pretty yourself. I am so glad that she did not, Zoë. That is why I didn’t want you to follow me here. You are far too pretty to be hurt.” Birgitta smiled at Zoë, who returned it with an almost sappy expression. Billy looked at them with a mixture of surprise and exasperation.

    “Really? Now?” he demanded.



    “I just had a thought.” said Zoë. The other two looked at her.

    “She’s lost her eyes, right?” Zoë whispered, “And when we were sitting in front of her, she didn’t attack… not until-”

    Birgitta reached out to cover Zoë’s mouth, but it was too late. Long, delicate fingers reached over the rock and grabbed a fistful of Zoë’s hair. Zoë screamed, clawing at the spectre as Elise lifted her up over the rock. Birgitta called out the other girl’s name, trying to keep her hands on Zoë’s. The ghost lifted the screaming girl off of her feet, kicking helplessly as Birgitta threw her arms about her. There was a terrible moment of tug-of-war as the ghost as the living girl both tried to free the shrieking Zoë from the other’s grasp; but as Zoë was fighting Elise and Birgitta had gravity on her side, Zoë tumbled from the ghost’s grip. The girls fell into the sand in a tangle of limbs, noses all but touching.

    “Are you alright?” asked Birgitta, touching Zoë’s temple.

    “I think so, are you alright?”

    “We don’t have time to be lesbians!” Billy exclaimed in frustration.



    With assistance from Billy, the two young women got to their feet and retreated several feet. The ghost paused, turning her head. Wax and blood, each as red as the other, flew from her face as she tried to hear where her quarry had fled to.



    “I’ll try and distract her.” offered Billy in a whisper. “She won’t kill me, I’m a guy. Then you two can get her.”

            “ ‘Get her’?” Birgitta demanded. “That is your plan? Get her‽”

    “You really want to be John McClain, don’t you?” Zoë hissed in exasperation.

    “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.” Billy shrugged. Slowly, carefully, Billy began to walk away from the girls. Zoë started as if she remembered something, then pointed away from the shore. She then indicated herself and Birgitta, and pointed at the sea. Birgitta nodded, Billy gave a thumbs up, and they slowly crept in opposite directions.



     Floating above the stone, the ghost craned her head about, clearly straining to hear. On the shore, Zoë and Birgitta started to run as quietly as they were able, which fortunately was much easier on sand. Billy licked his lips, slowly stepping to one side, wondering where the best place to lure a ghost from was. He screwed his eyes shut for a moment and pretended that he was on the football field, that this ghost was just another player, and he had to hold the ball just long enough to throw it over the rival’s head to Zoë. Zoë would catch it, there’d be a touchdown, then they’d all go home to celebrate. It would be fine. It would be alright. No one was going to kill his cousin. No one was going to kill his best friend. Billy opened his eyes and took two more steps to the left.



    “Hey! No-eyes!” he shouted. “You think you’re so hot?”

    Elise’s head snapped towards Billy and the lights on her crown flared like butane torches.

    “I’ve got to say, being dead hasn’t done much for your looks! And that haircut, it’s so outdated!” he shouted, running along the beach. The ghost opened her mouth in a snarl, and the wind howled as if it were screaming. Somewhere, behind the wind, an echo of half-muttered Norwegian snarled something, but Zoë understood as much of it as Birgitta, for all the sense it made.

    “Jan Brady called, she wants her look back!” Billy shouted, running towards the water. The ghost howled, flying in the air towards Billy. Her long white robe and red sash filled the air behind her, as she shed red blood and wax like hailstones.



    Billy ran towards Zoë and Birgitta, ducking beneath their arms and coming to a skidding halt between them. Sand filled his mouth and jacket, but given that a flaming ghost was passing above him as that happened, it was the least of his concern. Each of the young woman grabbed hold of a sleeve, discovering quickly that while the ghost did not adhere to the laws of gravity, the laws of momentum were quite another matter entirely. All three of the ladies were drawn two yards into the turbulent water; and while the ghost was not affected by gravity herself, she was affected by the weight of the two women pulling her down.



    With a hiss like a shrieking kettle or a badly-tuned violin, Elise fell, writhing into the water, her face contorted in as if in pain. The fabric of her dress slithered beneath Birgitta’s fingers, but she held fast. If she was fated to die this St. Lucia’s day, she would die banishing this evil ghost, not as her victim. Birgitta tossed her head up above the crashing water and took a final gulp of air before throwing her arms fast around the ghost’s waist. Flailing about in an attempt to get a firmer grip somewhere on the drowning ghost, Zoë reached up out of the water and grabbed a handful of her loose, golden hair. It felt like plunging her hand into a boiling vat of fabric, being dyed or washed of something that required the water to be hot as a flame. She screeched in pain, but held fast and slipped beneath the waves, pulling the ghost with her.

    Elise threw back her flaming head, blood flowing like a tears of pain from her wounded eyes and her mouth contorted into a silent scream. And with a final hiss like a teakettle boiling over, the ghost was extinguished as a flame is extinguished, pulled beneath the tearing waves by the weight of the two women beneath her.



    Billy pulled himself to his feet, searching the water for his friends.

    “Zoë?” he shouted. “Birgitta?!” The young man felt the icy water on his legs before he realised he was running into it. He couldn’t lay the ghost, he couldn’t have touched her white-hot skin, but he wouldn’t let his friends die. He took a breath, bracing his lungs for the freezing water, and dove in, salt water stinging his eyes. But beneath the water, he could see the red of Birgitta’s coat filling the sea around her; and there in her arms was a smaller, darker figure, sinking to the bottom with her. Billy pushed himself forward, towards the women. He couldn’t fight the monster, but he could save his friends.

    The three of them staggered, dripping, to Billy’s SUV, still shaking with the shock that they were still alive. And of course, shivering given they had just climbed out of the ocean in December.

    “Let’s get some hot drinks into us.” suggested Billy, opening his door. Zoë opened hers, discovered the forgotten latte in her cupholder, and picked it up.

    “…except now the coffee’s gone cold.” Zoë grumbled, sniffing the cup with a disgusted expression.

    “We can get a new cup, yes?” suggested Birgitta, taking Zoë’s other hand. Zoë grinned at her. Billy rolled his eyes with disgust. It wasn’t so much that Zoë was flirting with a girl that he minded, it was that his best friend was hitting on his cousin within two hours of meeting her. It was just embarrassing to be around them.

[1] Take you place in hell, spectre!—Norwegian

[2] Ugly pig