Christmas Ghosts and the Holly Queen (1)

Read the first part of my serialised Yuletide folk horror novel - completely free!

Chapter 1: November

I lived with ghosts for a long time, even before my mother died, but that doesn't mean I believe in them. I'm like that other Alice, my fictional namesake, who said: “One can't believe impossible things.” I'm a journalist, so trained to question. When I was younger, and even now when I'm lost in a book, I'm more like Lewis Caroll’s Queen who could accept six impossibilities before breakfast. This is about my trip down a rabbit hole and a Christmas with ghosts that made me question everything.

I entered this story about 20 years ago, back in the early noughties. The world was still feeling confident at surviving the turn of the millennium, but starting to doubt the future would be so bright. However, the roots of the tale go deeper into the past than a mere 20 years. My best friend Abigail yearned to recapture the joys of bygone Christmases in a country cottage. She’d found the perfect place, it was haunted, she warned me, would I come and stay there with her? I appreciated her invitation, but there were things more pressing on my time than ghosts, or at least, unknown ones in some distant place.

My mother had recently died, after a long illness. She’d never got over my father’s death five years before. I’d been meaning to spend as much time as possible with her, to give her a perfect last Christmas. She died when autumn leaves were still golden on the trees. I was sad we weren’t to share a last exchange of gifts, eating and drinking and reminiscing, but it wasn’t to be. In all honesty my grief was mixed with relief she was no longer suffering.

After her funeral, I found myself on my own in what had been the family home. I didn’t want to be there at Christmas in a house that seemed too big and haunted by memories, so I was going to bury myself in work. Someone had to staff the newspaper office in case an urgent story broke - some unexpected calamity that had to be reported. I’d said I’d go in on those days. I’d keep myself busy and let others have a holiday. So, when I heard Abi’s invitation in early November, I turned it down.

We were both members of a library book club and bonded through our shared love of fiction. We were very different in other ways. Abi was late 20s, while I was in my 40s. She was happily married, while I’d long been single. She was a cheery fundraiser for a children’s charity, while I’d spent years reporting on the nastier side of human interactions. Abi had a passion for nostalgia as well as books. I think that was because her own mother died when she was young. She was raised by grandparents.

Abi told me, over our mugs of tea and coffee at the café before the book club, that her perfect escape was into a world behind a dog-eared cover on pages dried with age. It was a pathway into the past both material and imaginary. A Dickensian Yuletide was exactly what she yearned for. I recognised how she felt, but told her I wasn’t escaping anywhere for Christmas that year. Nevertheless, she kept urging me to come with her.

She’d asked other members of our club: Tate, the librarian who ran the reading group, his wife Debbie, Jon, a recently divorced dentist who I think came to the club more to make a new social life than because he liked reading, and Abi’s husband Paul. He’d attended a couple of times, but I suspect that was to see what his wife was up to. I doubt he’d read the books, just the precis on Wikipedia.

The holiday idea was that we’d sit by a real wood fire and read or tell Christmas stories by candlelight. There was no electricity. That didn’t particularly appeal to me either. I’d rather be somewhere with central heating and light at the flick of a switch.

Surely that’s the big divide between us in the 21st century and people in the 19th and early 20th centuries? Abi’s plan was to leave modern tech behind. No phones, no laptops, no television. She even wanted everyone to dress up vintage and live like our forebears – that was part of the fun, she felt. Apart from the storytelling, we’d go for country walks, attend Christmas church service in the nearby village, and cook our goose from scratch. I could see her eyes gleaming with the thought of those things. And, of course, there was the ghost.

“The house is supposed to be haunted. We could have a séance,” said Abi, as though that would persuade me.

“That’s not a game I play these days,” I replied. “I did when I was younger. Some friends and I used a Ouija board and terrified ourselves. Since then I’ve realised it’s always someone moving the glass. Most old houses have ghost stories, but they’re people’s imaginations. They see patterns in shadows and hear old pipes groaning, and tales growing with the telling. I don’t believe in ghosts these days. I’m a sceptic… But, if ghosts do exist, just in case they do, they should be taken more seriously than by playing games.”

“Oh yes, I know. I agree,” Abi said hurriedly, and ignoring my scepticism. “We’d be respectful. We could say we want to hear their story. Perhaps there are secrets they want told and that’s why they can’t rest or move on. As a journalist, you could write about it.”

“I don’t want to write that kind of thing. I’m just not interested. And I probably won’t do any writing anyway, even though I’ll be at work. I’m hoping I can just drink tea, eat the leftover food from the office party, and bury myself in reading a novel without having to do any writing at all!”

I meant it at the time, too. But, a couple of decades later, here I am putting the story on paper. The reasons I’ve waited are complicated, but it’s not just because I was a sceptic, it’s also because I have a guilty secret.

Spoiler alert - the next 2 paragraphs refer to events in my first novel, Erosion

I have a skeleton in the closet. That’s not a metaphor. It’s not a complete skeleton either, just a skull and a few bones: human. Don’t worry, they’re not anyone I murdered, but I’m not innocent. When I was in my 20s, so old enough to know better, some friends and I found them when an ancient burial site was revealed in an eroding cliff face. Rather than report them as archaeology, which we should have done, we took them home and did that séance. I really thought we were getting messages from beyond the grave.

We called the skull Rosmorta. She’s been with me ever since. There were times I’d talk to her and feel I got answers, but as the years passed, I became cynical. I did research. It can be comforting to think we have guiding spirits, but the science points against it. I became a dedicated non-believer. More likely those messages were from our own subconscious or wishful thinking. Nevertheless, Rosmorta was still there, her skull concealed behind books in a cupboard, haunting my thoughts and pricking my conscience. It was safer not to believe.

End of spoiler!

Note: Christmas Ghosts and the Holly Queen is copyright Lucya Starza 2024

About this novel serialisation

This is the first post in the serialisation of Christmas Ghosts and the Holly Queen. The next section, which will be Chapter 1 continued, will be posted tomorrow.

I finished writing my new Gothic/folk-horror novel set at Christmas and am giving my Substack followers the chance to read it for free in posts between now and the New Year. The book features the same main character as Erosion, my first novel. In the new tale, a group of friends seek the joys of Christmas past in an idyllic remote cottage but discover the spectres of bygone times lurk there too. It’s about friendship, folklore and the telling of ghost stories at Yuletide.

Christmas Ghosts and the Holly Queen is a complete story so you don’t need to have read Erosion before you begin. However, the main character, Alice, sometimes briefly refers to things that happened earlier. As you can see, I’m indicating when a spoiler appears so you can skip those paragraphs if you want to. You might choose to read Erosion first so you don’t need to avoid spoilers, or you might want to read this freebie to see whether buying Erosion is something you want to do.

Where to find Erosion, my first Gothic novel

My publisher is Moon Books, an imprint of Collective Ink. You can find Erosion on its website via this link: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/erosion-novel

You can order from any of Collective Ink's imprints. Moon Books publishes well respected titles on magickal topics, particularly the Pagan Portals series. Other imprints cover mind, body spirit subjects, culture and politics, history and fiction. My non-fiction books in the Pagan Portals series are Candle Magic, Poppets and Magical Dolls, Scrying, Guided Visualisations, and Rounding the Wheel of the Year.

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