“One hour ‘till midnight!” John shouted as he ran through the living room.

I glanced towards the small closet in the hallway. The door had been removed and propped up against the opposite wall, as usual, and the mistletoe had been hung up in the center of the doorway. The closet was empty, and there was no light coming from inside.

I held on to my glass of water, nervous. I never drank at the annual holiday party; the things we were about to see were bad enough sober, and I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if I were drunk.

I looked over at Mel, who was smoking a joint, as she did every year. I’m not sure how she managed to get through the events of the night, but maybe being high helped her to process what she saw.

John ran back through the living room, stopping to make sure all of the windows were locked and all of the curtains were shut. He walked over to the front door, rattling the doorknob and pulling on the door to make sure that it too was locked, before making his way into the kitchen.

The rest of us; Ben, Alma, Mel and I sat around the living room in silence. Even though we had done this every year for the last three years, it wasn’t something you could easily get used to. The horrors that we would witness tonight wouldn’t be anything like the horrors from last year or the year before.

We took over this ritual from our parents, who had passed it onto us when we turned eighteen. Ever since then, we have made sure that every year, on Christmas Eve, we gather at John’s house to make sure that we keep all of the holiday horrors away from the rest of you.

The drugs and the food are only here to distract us, although it hardly ever works.

We all gather on the day before Christmas Eve, a few minutes before midnight, and we stay inside John’s house until midnight on Christmas night.

It doesn’t always start at the same time, but never before 1 PM on Christmas Eve, so we always make sure that we are inside the house and that all the exits are locked tight before the fun starts. I use the word ‘fun’ very loosely here.

I set my glass of water down as Mel passed by me, letting us know she was going to pee before it all started.

She came back fairly quickly and plopped back down on the couch, sighing.

Mel was always annoyed that we had to do this. She didn’t seem as affected by it as the rest of us, and would usually spend most of the month of December complaining about the holiday party.

“John!” Ben shouted suddenly, “It’s starting!”

I looked back at the closet. Ben was right, it was starting, and standing in the threshold under the mistletoe was a creature whose top half was a reindeer, with the bottom half of a nude human male.

It stood there, looking towards us. It’s head had a big hole where its left eye should have been, as if it had been shot there, and there was dried blood all over its face. It’s left antler was broken in half, and I could see some bugs crawling around the wound in its face.

“What the fuck is that?” Alma whispered.

No one replied. We just stood there, watching it as it watched us. It retreated back into the closet before it got down on all fours and charged towards us. I still flinched even though I knew it couldn’t make it more than a few feet away from the closet.

I remember asking my parents once why we had to make sure all the exits were locked, even though most of the monsters couldn’t get more than a few feet away from the mistletoe. They didn’t give me a direct answer, only that making sure that everything was locked guaranteed that nothing would get out.

“Jesus fucking christ!” Mel shouted.

I continued to charge towards us, ramming into the invisible barries each time. Then, just as it had randomly appeared, the creature randomly disappeared, and there was a few minutes of empty silence.

No one said a word, but we all watched as the next creature appeared. This one was human, but there was something wrong with him, as usual. The man had been flattened out to resemble the shape of a gingerbread man. He had large, rotting gumdrops that were meant to be gingerbread buttons, sewed down his front. His mouth had been pulled back at the corners with some sort of metal hoops that pierced through his skin in order to give him a permanent smile.

He waddled from side to side as he attempted to balance on his flattened feet. As he tried to walk out of the closet, his arms got stuck in the doorway and he ran into it over and over, slamming himself into it harder and harder each time until there was a sickening crunching noise and his arms flopped backwards. He finally waddled through the doorway and this time, he made it out further than the first creature had, and began waddling towards us.

“Fuck this,” Ben said, leaping behind the couch to take cover.

I took a few steps back as the man continued to waddle towards the living room. Suddenly, a branch pierced through his chest from the back, and he was violently pulled back into the closet where he disappeared.

That was immediately followed by dozens of branches that snaked their way around the floor of the house, climbing up the walls as they made their way around the house. The branches were covered in the sharpest pine needles I had ever seen, with a few random, broken ornaments hanging off of them.

I jumped up onto a couch as the branches made their way into the living room and everyone else followed my lead as we watched the branches weave in and out of the floorboards.

Suddenly, Alma screamed and I turned towards her. Some of the branches had wrapped around the legs of the chair she was on, and she was being pulled towards the closet. John attempted to reach out for her as she was dragged past him, but the branches began to snake up and intertwine until they created a sort of protective dome around the chair, trapping Alma inside.

She continued to yell as I tried to figure out a way to get to her without the branches getting to me, but it seemed impossible. It was like the branches had a mind of their own and were making sure that none of us could help Alma.

We watched as she was dragged into the closet along with the chairs, before the branches finally retreated.

“What was that? They’ve never taken any of us before.” Ben said.

No one replied as we continued to watch the closet. Suddenly, Alma leaped out and ran out, but was stopped a few feet away from the doorway.

“What?” She shouted, panicked. “Let me out!”

John leapt off the coffee table and ran over, grabbing hold of Alma’s hand and attempting to pull her away from the doorway, but he couldn’t.

“Don’t leave me here! Please, help me!” Alma sobbed.

Ben ran over and tried to help John, but something was holding Alma back and stopping them from pulling her away.

“OW!” Alma shouted suddenly.

I ran over as Mel followed.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Did we pull too hard?” John asked Alma.

“OW!” Alma shouted again, louder this time.

“Alma what’s wrong?” I asked.

“It hurts!” She shouted as she fell to her knees.

We watched as she continued to shout in pain. And then we realized what was happening. Her skin was being peeled off in one large chunk. Her biceps had been exposed as the skin continued to peel from the back to the front, until everything, including her face, came off. Alma continued to scream the whole time, even after her skin was off.

Her skin began crawling towards us as she screamed and cried in the background, and it started to make sense why John’s parents had told him to find a remote area to host the parties at.

We began to back away as her skin continued to crawl towards us. I soon realized that it was heading towards John specifically, and he backed into a wall as it continued to snake towards him, climbing up his body.

It was at this point that I realized that Alma had stopped screaming, and I turned just in time to see her limp body being dragged back into the closet. It looked like she was dead.

I started to get anxious then. None of the things we witnessed had ever affected us this much. Usually some of us would walk away with some scratches, but nothing this permanent. I took a deep breath as I tried to ignore the voice in the brain that was screaming at me to get out of the house as soon as possible.

But I knew that I couldn’t; I couldn’t let all of these things out into the world.

I turned back to look at John, as Alma’s skin began wrapping itself around his torso until it tightened and formed a weird, skin sweater around him.

John started to gag and I looked away as I felt the urge to vomit. John began freaking out and I looked back to see him attempting to peel the skin sweater off his body. Every time he pulled part of it off, it began to bleed, until his hands and legs were covered in blood.

He started to cry, scratching at Alma’s skin as he tried desperately to peel it off. It did come off eventually, and John kicked it aside as he ran into the kitchen. I heard the faucet open as he continued crying.

“Oh God.”

I turned at the sound of Ben’s voice to see small elves walking out of the closet. They were dressed in typical green outfits, but they were severely deformed, with different sized heads, arms, and legs. We watched as they all headed towards the pile of Alma’s skin. They began to pick it up as she tore off pieces of it with their teeth and ate it until it was all gone. Then, they got on the floor and licked up all the blood before returning back into the closet.

“There’s only five minutes left until midnight,” Ben said, breaking the silence.

“Do you think it’s over then?” I asked.

“No,” Mel replied.

I looked over to see that she was pointing at the closet. I could hear footsteps coming from inside.

“Do you feel that?” John asked.

I turned, not noticing that he had come back from the kitchen.

We stood still as I began to notice that the house was getting cold. It continued to drop in temperature, until my teeth were chattering. The footsteps continued even though nothing appeared. I rubbed my arms as I tried to warm up, and began to notice a thin layer of ice appearing on every item in the house.

For the next few minutes, the house continued to grow colder and colder, until I was sure that we were going to die. I could feel my heartbeat slow down as my fingers turned blue. My eyes had started to burn from the cold, and I could no longer move.

Then, just when I thought it was all over, it was gone, and the house warmed up in the blink of an eye.

“Is it over?” I asked,

“Yeah, it’s midnight,” Ben replied.

“Where’s Alma?” John asked.

I carefully walked over to the closer, peering inside. It was empty. There was no sign of Alma anywhere.

“What the fuck happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” John replied.

“This has never happened before,” Ben said.

“She’s dead. There’s nothing we can do about it,” Mel replied curtly.

She began to gather her stuff and we watched as she threw open the front door and left, slamming the door shut behind her.

“What do we tell her parents?” John asked.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.

“I should get going too,” Ben said suddenly.

I could tell that he was about to cry, and I stepped out of his way as he left the house.

I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and I excused myself as I ran upstairs and shut the bathroom door behind me. I splashed cold water on my face as I tried to make sense of what had happened. I wondered why this time had been different.

As I racked my brain for reasons, I felt a sudden chill as I noticed it was abnormally cold in the bathroom.

I turned around as I heard a car start, and stood there, staring at the open bathroom window.

My heart began to hammer against my chest as my thoughts ran a million miles a minute. I walked over to the window and glanced down just in time to see Alma’s car backing out of the driveway. Confused, I stuck my head out the window and squinted as I tried to make out the driver.

As the car turned out into the street, I got a direct view into the driver’s seat, where I saw a skinned, blistering red Alma drive off down the road.