Once Upon a Christmas Carol Read online

  Once Upon a Christmas Carol

  Pamela Fryer

  Summary:

  Trey Janssen only wants to settle his late mother's affairs and get back to San Francisco, but he finds himself trapped in the town Christmas literally threw up on when he's arrested for drunk driving-right after a Dickens in the Park actor proclaims he'll be visited by three spirits.

  The ghost from his past turns out to be Celia Brown, the innocent Girl Next Door he deflowered before leaving town on a football scholarship. Now he's hoping for a repeat or two of that night, because pretty Celia Brown has something all the nameless, faceless, one-night-stands of his wild pro-athlete lifestyle didn't-but it will take ghost number two and ghost number three to show him exactly what that something is.

  Chapter One

  Welcome, California, December 18th

  Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingling too...

  Trey Janssen ignored the cheery lyrics as he stepped out of the funeral home’s grand foyer into the chilly air. He crossed the street and headed toward the coffee shop a block down. The flask in his breast pocket thudded against his chest, a promising and reassuring weight. If there’d been a bar anywhere near, he’d go there instead. Since there wasn’t, a sweetened coffee spiked with Jack Daniels would have to do.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  Farther down the street, revelers surrounded the festively decorated gazebo in Main Street Park to watch performers dressed in historical costumes. Trey ground his teeth. His mother had loved Christmas and all its brightly wrapped flair, but he wished the holiday would pack itself up and cancel this year. He was in no mood.

  “God bless you, merry Gentlemen!”

  A sizeable crowd had gathered, and one of the actors did something to make the spectators chuckle. As he neared the park, he noted the three ghosts who identified the performance as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

  Trey slipped into the coffee shop and ordered a vanilla espresso. It was extra sweet and too hot, and he scalded his tongue on the mouthful needed to make room in the cup. He faced the street and subtly reached into his lapel for the flask, watching as several more actors in period costume filed past the window. They were Carolers, eerily picking up “Sleigh Ride” where he’d left it at the funeral home.

  He dumped a generous portion of Jack Daniels into the brew. It mixed prettily with the coffee, cooling the temperature so he could drink it right away.

  He wasn’t much of a drinker, but since learning of his mother’s death there had been a nagging pain in the top of his head that stretched all the way to the arches of his feet, leaving a queasy stomach in between. The whiskey dulled that, and made it possible for him to concentrate on the grim task ahead.

  Having just turned thirty, to say he was inexperienced with death was an understatement. He’d never even been to a funeral before, let alone planned one for a relative. In a way, he guessed he was lucky for that.

  None of the coffee shop employees seemed to have noticed him spike his coffee. He waited until a young girl finished wiping a nearby table and moved away and then poured another dollop of whiskey into his cup. He took a sip and grimaced. He’d ruined it, and it was now lukewarm, but he drank it anyway. At least the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach was going away, and some of the achy tension was sliding out of his shoulders.

  He slugged down the remainder of the cup in two bitter, flammable mouthfuls and tossed the cup in the recycle bin near the door. Outside, the frigid winter wind bit into his face and made his eyes water. Flakes of snow swirled around him, and the graying sky darkened his mood.

  The crowd in the park had grown, and it seemed the cast of actors had as well. Not in a hurry to get back to his mother’s house, he chose to avoid the merrymakers by taking the long way back to his car. He wasn’t in the mood for Christmas foo fah right now.

  He’d left Welcome, California twelve years ago, but even so, he didn’t remember it being this festive when he was a kid. His mother had always gone all-out with the Christmas decorations, but he’d thought she’d done it for his benefit. He’d been slightly surprised to arrive this morning and find her house dripping with Christmas cheer, and it had only succeeded in making his heart crumble. He’d realized then that his mother had truly loved Christmas, and though she’d never complained, his not coming home for a single one in twelve years had probably broken her heart. It was only a four-hour drive from San Francisco—three and a half in a sports car. His guilt grew heavier.

  He hadn’t had the courage to stop and go inside earlier; instead, he’d bypassed the house and headed straight to the funeral parlor.

  Trey crossed the street and turned left, intending to skirt the park on the far side of the gazebo. Immediately he wished he hadn’t. The Carolers, part of the troupe no doubt, identified by their bonnets and hand muffs and waistcoats and top hats, were headed his way. He stopped short, nearly having trampled a small boy who materialized from behind a lamppost.

  “Please, mister. A penny for a crumpet?”

  If the boy wasn’t British, he was a hell of an actor for a ten-year-old. He had the Cockney accent down pat. Someone had done his costume with intricate care as well. His woolen coat had frayed cuffs, and his jaunty little cap bore moth-eaten holes. Trey suspected he was supposed to be a chimney sweep, if the smudges of soot on his face and his filthy hands were an indicator.

  “Um, sure.” Trey dug in his pocket and fished out a dollar. “Here you go.”

  “Wot’sis?” The boy stared at it in his dirty, fingerless glove. “Please sir, I’m ever so hungry.”

  Trey groaned inwardly. He dug out another bill. “Here’s five.”

  He turned before the boy could complain about that, intending to go the other way, and stopped short. One of the actors was immediately behind him. His surprised reaction brought a titter of laughter from the crowd.

  “Good day, sir. Ah, ’tis lovely to see the gesture of charity during the Christmas season.” The actor bowed, removing a top hat to show a muss of wild hair.

  “Whot now? Charity? The bloke gave me fake money!”

  Trey tossed him a scowl. “I gave you six bucks, you little guttersnipe.” That was a Victorian slang, wasn’t it? His English Lit classes had been so long ago, and he’d slept through half of them.

  “Oy now, why tease the boy? He’s just a poor mite want’n some roasted chestnuts to warm his tiny gullet.”

  “Yeah? Watch he doesn’t pick your pockets.”

  The crowd chuckled at his cynicism. Trey tried to sidestep around the man, but the tall actor anticipated his move and blocked his path again.

  “It’s Christmas! What right have you to be dismal?” the actor said, quoting A Christmas Carol. That much Trey remembered. “What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

  “Bah, humbug,” Trey returned with an edge of nastiness. The growing crowd erupted with laughter.

  “Christmas a humbug!” said the actor. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

  “Good man,” Trey said, reaching far into the depths of his brain to remember even this much. “Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

  The actors were now circling him, and the audience laughed again as Trey found himself trapped.

  “Hark, I think I know you, sir!” The tall actor heckling him jumped onto the base of the light post like Don Lockwood in Singin’ In The Rain, and leaned into Trey’s path. “You’re that fellow Scrooge. From Scrooge and Marley’s.”

  Oh, great. “No, you’re mistaken. I’m...Walter Hawthorn. Sir Walter Hawthorn.” He hoped playing along would appease the man. He tried to step around, but the actor jumped off the light post and landed in front of him
again. Trey was an inch from punching the guy in the nose. He narrowed a flinty glare, hoping the actor would take the hint and leave him alone.

  The Carolers were closer now, filling the park with their pretty song. They switched from “Silent Night” to “Joy to the World” without a pause, and Trey hoped the audience was paying more attention to them than this embarrassing exchange.

  “No, I’m sure of it. You’re Ebenezer Scrooge. Behold, it is your late partner, Jacob.”

  Trey was already turning as the actor spoke, and this time found himself face to face with a portly man in zombie makeup with a length of chain wound around his waist.

  Trey groaned. This had gone too far. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”

  Odd how more and more of the classic story was coming back to him. The spectators ooh’d and aah’d as though impressed, and Trey felt a sliver of satisfaction that these actors seemed surprised by his comebacks.

  “A warning.” The Marley ghost lifted a hand and pointed at him. His expertly applied makeup carried the deathly pallor to his fingertips, blackened fingernails and all. “You must wear the chain you forged in life, Ebenezer Scrooge.”

  Trey rolled his eyes. “All right, yeah, yeah. I know, when the bell tolls midnight—”

  “Hear me! My time is nearly gone!”

  Trey winced at the man’s shout. He fell silent, letting the actor have his thespian rant. The whiskey was sliding pleasantly through his veins, making it harder and harder to recall the story. But it also draped warm comfort over his grief, and Trey eagerly let it take him. Marley would foretell three ghosts, and then move along to his next victim. Hopefully.

  “You will be haunted,” resumed the ghost, “by three spirits.”

  “I think I’d rather not,” Trey responded on cue. His English Lit teacher would be proud.

  “Without their visits,” said the ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path you tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.”

  “Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” Trey said in an exaggerated English accent.

  The remaining onlookers laughed again. Trey noted many of the crowd had moved back to the gazebo, where the Carolers fell into a beautiful rendition of “Comfort and Joy.” The sad Christmas song touched his heart in an unexpected and unwelcome way, and Trey’s throat grew tight.

  “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”

  “Right.” Trey touched two fingers to his forehead and gave both actors, now standing before him, a mock salute. “Will do. Thanks much.”

  “He doth not believe us.”

  “He will, heretofore.”

  “Why do they always doubt so?”

  The taller actor clapped Marley on the back as they started away. “’Tis only a matter of time. Fear not, good ghost. All men in their own time.”

  “Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I!”

  “I know, Marley. I know.”

  The Marley ghost rattled his plastic chains as they walked to the gazebo. “I toil so, traveling the nether regions without pause, and yet they do not appreciate my efforts or sympathize with my suffering.”

  When they were a good enough distance away, Trey let out a long breath. “Nether regions. Jesus.”

  A sudden burst of cold wind struck him, invading his clothes and chilling him to the bone. Snowflakes danced on the air and settled on his coat. The Carolers broke into a sweet rendition of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” leaving Trey feeling strangely alone on the now-empty sidewalk. On the far side of the gazebo, the actors did something to bring another burst of laughter from the crowd. Another hapless victim, no doubt. Trey was glad they’d lost interest in him.

  His shoes crunched through a thin layer of icy crust as he made his way to the parking lot behind the drugstore. If it kept coming down like this, his Jaguar Coupe wouldn’t make it back to his mother’s house, let alone out of the mountains after the funeral.

  Jesus, the funeral. Eight days before Christmas, and they couldn’t accommodate the services until December twenty-seventh. He knew he needed the time to get her affairs in order, but a small part of him wished he could hire someone else to do it and head back to the city tonight. His father was still alive, curse his bitter heart, but Trey hadn’t spoken to him in more than twenty years. That was a relationship he didn’t want to rekindle, so for all intents and purposes, Trey was completely alone in the world. It was a strange feeling.

  Did that actor pick on me because I look like a Scrooge? It couldn’t be because there was something wrong with the path he’d chosen. He had a perfect life. He was successful, wealthy, and he dated beautiful women. They were the kind of women who didn’t want marriage, but he didn’t want marriage either. The aloneness he was feeling right now was mourning, the sudden shock of finding himself completely alone after his mother’s death. It was a temporary emptiness. When he got back to work, corporate excitement would fill his life as it always had.

  He slid into the leather seat and started the car. He’d left the heater on, but the engine had cooled completely, and the blast of cold air hit him straight in the face. The warm air slowly came back, and Trey rubbed his hands together to get the circulation going before touching the freezing steering wheel. The sporty convertible hadn’t been made for cold weather, that was certain. Its thin cloth roof let the heat out of the car faster than the heater could replenish it.

  He eased out of the parking spot and drove slowly to the driveway, but still the wheels locked and the car slid a few feet when he stepped on the brakes. A gigantic four-wheel drive truck rolled by on thickly treaded tires, hitting a pothole that splashed dirty slush over his hood. Trey double-checked the narrow street was clear, and pulled out carefully. The last thing he needed was to wreck his car in a town where the local mechanic thought a Jaguar was an exotic cat from South America.

  He made a right and then a left, turning onto the end section of Main Street a few blocks before it led out of town and into the quaint neighborhood where Victorian and Craftsman homes stood in proud testament to Welcome’s rich history.

  Everywhere, lights and ornaments dripped from buildings and trees. Red ribbons wound around the upper halves of the light poles, and giant gold balls dangled beneath the lamp of each one. It was only four in the afternoon, but the churning sky had triggered the streetlights early. Their warm yellow beams created sparkles on the glittery bows topping each gold ball, and now that the heater was churning out lovely warm air, the swirling snow almost looked pretty. Maybe in another time, another place, he could appreciate such enthusiasm for Christmas.

  The beggar boy from the park suddenly slipped out between two cars on a BMX bicycle. He stared into Trey’s headlights with wide, haunted eyes. Trey swerved and cut off a small sedan coming the other way. His wet shoe slipped off the brake and punched the gas. The Jaguar jumped the curb on the far side and plowed up a rising lawn frosted with snow.

  A large wooden sign loomed in front of him. Bright pink letters for the Briarwood Bed & Breakfast was all he saw the instant before he crashed through. A piece of the sign flew off and hit an extended ladder propped against a giant pine in the center of the lawn. It wobbled, and tipped. The man who’d been standing on it fell off and sent it careening backward.

  The ladder hit a tall pencil juniper at the corner of the gingerbread house, and then rocked the other way and bounced off a bushy shrub before it rolled backward again and crashed through the gigantic glass window of the stately Victorian’s parlor.

  Chapter Two

  This...is...not...happening.

  Celia Brown gripped the mug in her hand. Hot tea splashed on her, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the horrific scene. On the street below, a silver sport
s car went into an out-of-control slide on the narrow street. The driver regained control, and then accelerated out of the path of an oncoming car, which fishtailed and narrowly avoided sideswiping the parked cars. The other driver blared his horn before continuing away, unscathed.

  The sports car jumped the curb and climbed the lawn, headed straight for their hand-carved wooden sign, which had just been repainted last spring.

  No, please don’t —ah, crap. It crashed through, a direct hit as if the driver had been aiming for it. A chunk of wood flew wild, hitting the ladder where Enrique perched dangerously, repairing a string of malfunctioning Christmas lights. He dropped to the ground and rolled, clutching at his ankle. The car finally stopped, a jet of white steam shooting skyward like a geyser from its ruptured radiator.

  She stood riveted, watching the spectacle play out in front of her as if in slow motion.

  The ladder tipped toward the house. A thump echoed through the parlor, making the guests sitting by the fire stop their conversation. The ladder then drifted over sideways before pitching toward the house again. The front window shattered, bringing a scream from one of the guests.

  And through it all, Celia could only stare.

  That did not just happen.

  Frigid air rushed in. Hot tea dripped from her hand.

  The guests stared in silence, mouths open in surprise. Then, four heads swiveled toward her.

  “Is everyone okay?” she asked in a small voice.

  The four guests jumped to their feet and peered through the gaping maw in her front parlor.

  “There’s a car on the lawn.”

  “Is the driver hurt?”

  “Did the maintenance man get run over?”

  From the back of the house, Celia’s father called out, “What happened?”

  “Broken window, Dad,” Celia answered in a surprisingly calm voice. She set down her mug on the reception counter and hurried for the front door.