Advent Ghosts 2021: "Who Comes This Night, This Wintry Night?"

There may be no snow on the ground in Chicago, but the Christmas lights are up, the wreaths are hanging on front doors and the sidewalks are bustling with frantic shoppers. It's the holiday season and that means it's Advent Ghosts time. Loren Eaton who blogs at I Saw Lightning Fall invites bloggers and creative writers to contribute vignettes for his Advent Ghosts celebration. It's a Flash Fiction Challenge of sorts but with a word limit set at exactly 100. No more, no less.  The only other rule is that we write in homage to the Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time.  Be it old-fashioned, chain rattling specters or more terrifying visions of bloody horror each writer makes up his or her own mind how to interpret that rule. 

Here's my contribution inspired by vengeful, angry gods of the forest at wintertime. 

Who Comes This Night, This Wintry Night?

No one was going to spoil his Christmas hunt. He was keen on bagging a ten pointer, heard there was a stag worthy of a mounted trophy. Hoof marks in the snow! Easy tracking now.

Through the fog he saw antlers. No stag’s head beneath those horns. A sardonic grin on an eerily handsome human face. Powerful arms swung out and struck down the rifle.

“Peace on Earth, Hunter.”

A flock of starlings took flight. Their shrill calls drowned out a human scream in the forest.

Cernunnos made his way back through the wood satisfied with another Winter Solstice sacrifice.