Mary Christmas
By the time the first body turned up, Deacon Falls was already halfway into its annual performance of cheer.
The town always went hard for Christmas. Harder than necessary. Harder than was healthy. Lights wrapped every oak tree on Main Street until they looked strangled. Plastic reindeer bred across front lawns like invasive species. The high school marching band played carols in front of the courthouse every Saturday night, their breath fogging the air while parents pretended not to notice how tired the kids looked.
People liked to say Deacon Falls was the kind of place where nothing bad ever happened.
That was lie number one.
The body belonged to Ray Whitcomb. Fifty-two. Realtor. Former varsity quarterback. Permanent smile that looked stapled on. He was found sprawled in the snow behind his split level on Holly Lane, throat opened from ear to ear like someone had been checking for spare change.
The lights on his house were still blinking in festive red and green. Jingle Bells chimed softly from a plastic snowman on the porch.
Ray’s blood steamed.
Sheriff Tom Calder stood over the body, hands on his hips, feeling that old itch behind his eyes. The one that meant paperwork, phone calls, and the slow ugly unraveling of a town that liked its illusions intact.
“Knife,” Deputy Lisa Moreno said, crouched beside the corpse. “Big one. Clean cut. Not a robbery. Wallet’s still in his pocket.”
Calder nodded. He already knew. Ray Whitcomb was the kind of guy who never met a situation he couldn’t talk his way out of. Whatever happened back here, words hadn’t helped him.
The snow told the rest of the story. One set of footprints. Small. Deliberate. No struggle.
“Who’d want Ray dead?” Moreno asked.
Calder looked up at the glowing neighborhood. At the wreaths and the inflatable Santas and the carefully curated happiness.
“Start with who wouldn’t.”
The second body showed up three nights later.
Linda Foster. PTA queen. Former prom committee chair. Real estate partner to Ray back in the day. She was found in her kitchen, face smashed in so badly it took dental records to confirm who she was. Her Christmas cookies were still cooling on the counter, little green trees dusted with powdered sugar.
This time, there was a message.
Carved into the butcher block with a paring knife, neat as cursive.
Merry Christmas.
Calder didn’t say anything when he saw it. He just stared, feeling the shape of the thing forming. The pattern. The sense of it.
Moreno said it for him.
“They went to school together.”
Calder exhaled through his nose. “Class of?”
“’91. Same as Ray.”
That itch behind his eyes turned into a headache.
Mary Christmas had gone to school with them too.
Most people remembered her only vaguely. The name stuck because it was weird, and because kids are cruel in a way that feels creative when you are the one doing the hurting.
Mary Christmas. Jokes wrote themselves.
She’d been the scholarship kid. The poor one. Wore the same sweater too many days in a row. Smelled like cigarettes and damp laundry. Hair always pulled back too tight, like she was afraid it might try to escape.
Ray Whitcomb had started calling her “Merry Kiss My Ass” in ninth grade. Linda Foster made sure it stuck.
It escalated the way these things always do. Notes in lockers. Gum in hair. A pig’s head dropped into her gym bag junior year, eyes missing, tongue lolling.
Teachers looked away. Kids laughed. Survival meant becoming invisible.
Mary tried.
She ate lunch in the bathroom. She walked home alone. She kept her head down and her mouth shut.
It did not save her.
The night of senior prom, someone slipped something into her punch. They dragged her behind the bleachers while the music thumped and the stars watched and nobody noticed or nobody cared.
She told the principal the next day.
He suggested she might have misunderstood what happened.
She told her parents.
Her father drank harder. Her mother cried quieter.
Mary Christmas graduated with the rest of them and vanished.
The third body made the connection impossible to ignore.
Darren Mills. Former class clown. Current used car salesman. Found hanging from the big oak in the town square, Christmas lights wrapped around his neck like a glowing noose. His eyes bulged. His tongue was purple.
Pinned to his chest with an ornament hook was a laminated photo from the high school yearbook.
Class of 1991.
Calder called the state police. Called the mayor. Called anyone who would pick up.
The town council wanted discretion. Wanted calm. Wanted it handled quietly.
Calder wanted answers.
He got a list.
Thirty-two names. The graduating class. Some had moved away. Some were dead already. Most still lived within twenty miles, clinging to Deacon Falls like it owed them something.
Mary Christmas’s name was at the bottom.
Moreno found the file.
“She moved back,” she said. “Last year. Rents a place out by the old paper mill.”
Calder closed his eyes for a moment.
“Get a warrant.”
Mary Christmas’s house was small. One bedroom. One string of white lights in the window. No inflatable nonsense. No wreath.
Inside was clean. Sparse. Almost monk like.
There were photographs on the wall.
Not family. Not holidays.
Yearbook photos.
Faces crossed out. Some scratched until the paper tore.
Ray. Linda. Darren.
And more.
Mary wasn’t home.
They found blood in the bathtub. Not fresh. Scrubbed, but never completely gone. There were knives laid out on the kitchen table, sharpened to a dangerous shine. A notebook sat open beside them.
Names.
Dates.
Notes.
Ray laughed.
Linda watched.
Darren held my arms.
Moreno swallowed hard.
“She planned this.”
Calder stared at the list. Half the class was already marked.
Outside, the church bells rang for evening service.
The fourth killing happened before they could move.
Paul Henricksen. Former vice principal. The man who suggested Mary had misunderstood.
They found him in his office at the high school. Throat crushed. Eyes gouged out. A Santa hat shoved down his mouth.
On the chalkboard behind him, written in shaky block letters.
Do you understand now?
They cornered her Christmas Eve.
Snow fell thick and heavy, muffling sound, turning the world into something quiet and holy. The old paper mill loomed like a corpse against the river.
Mary stood inside, holding a knife that looked too big for her hands. Blood speckled her sweater. Her hair had come loose, wild around her face.
She looked calm.
“Mary,” Calder said, gun raised. “It’s over.”
She smiled at him. A small thing. Sad. Almost gentle.
“No,” she said. “It’s almost done.”
Moreno stepped forward. “You don’t have to do this.”
Mary laughed then. A sharp sound that cracked the air.
“I already did.”
She moved fast. Faster than Calder expected. The lights went out. The mill filled with shadows and echoes and the sound of metal on metal.
Moreno screamed.
When the lights flickered back on, Mary was gone.
There was blood on the floor. A lot of it.
But no body.
They searched the river for days. Found nothing.
The killings stopped.
Deacon Falls breathed again.
They put the lights back up. Held a candlelight vigil. Talked about healing and moving forward.
Calder retired the next spring.
Every year after, someone in Deacon Falls received a card.
No return address. Just a neat red envelope.
Inside, a single line.
Merry Christmas.
Some people said it was a sick joke.
Others said it was a warning.
On cold nights, when the snow falls just right, people swear they see a woman standing at the edge of town, watching the lights, smiling to herself.
Waiting.
After all, Christmas comes every year.
