Short horror novella, written by M. Rickert and published by Tordotcom in 2022.
Ro -- short for Roanoke -- is a young, aspiring writer who has suffered more than her share of tragedy. When she was a teenager, her whole family was killed during a home invasion while she was out hoping to meet a secret admirer. Now she's in her senior year in college and struggling with the poverty many people suffer early in life. While visiting a local soon-to-close diner, she meets four random strangers -- wealthy and privileged Grayson, beautiful but paranoid Adrienne, and friendly, soon-to-be lovebirds Keith and Lena. The meeting at the diner leads to a decision to hold a makeshift Christmas party at Ro's run-down apartment, with the stipulation that the gift exchange feature only presents that have been stolen.
With the party falling apart early, Ro suggests everyone tell a Christmas ghost story. Grayson tells the best one, a creeptastic and supposedly true tale of his childhood in the old ancestral manor, in which, after accidentally getting the cook in trouble and angering his stern father, he pursues a figure who he thinks is Santa Claus through the snow. Tracking St. Nick to the small church on the family's property, he instead finds a candlelit dungeon with the servant shrieking in a cage and a horned monster chasing him back to his house.
The next year's party is a bit more prosperous for Ro, but the party is less successful, since Grayson is unable to attend. His father is dying, and he is preparing to take over the family business. After that, there's a break in the festivities for several years.
When the tradition finally resumes, everyone ends up invited to spend Christmas at Grayson's palatial estate. But circumstances have changed for almost everyone. Ro is now a best-selling horror novelist. But Lena died recently, leaving Keith a widower, though one who seems to be able to switch his mourning on and off. Grayson is distant, obese, embittered, his long-ago charisma drained away, content to preside within his all-but empty home. Adrienne has changed the least, still paranoid, still seeing threats and foes everywhere -- but is she wrong? In this house, with these people, where are the real dangers coming from? And what's being hidden inside the little church down the road from the mansion?
More plot points follow after that -- but the book is barely over 100 pages long, and I ain't interested in spoiling that large a percentage of the story.
There are several interesting things at work in this story. First is the way it works as a Christmas story. In every case, the Christmas parties are unsatisfying for the participants. It doesn't matter if it takes place in Ro's shabby apartment with the nailed-upright Christmas tree or if it's at Grayson's richly appointed mansion. The theme that runs through the group's Christmas celebrations is that they're awkward and ice-cold, mostly because these people really don't know each other at all -- and most of them really don't care about anyone but themselves. They only get together for these parties because they're lonely. Most of them have no one else in their lives, and it's easy to see why. They're suspicious, resentful, manipulative, or even outright hostile, no matter how pleasant they may act to each other.
This is a problem out in the real world, too. We have very unrealistic expectations for Christmas parties -- and for every other Christmas celebration. We all want a warm and festive gathering where our hearts are filled with friendship, love, goodwill to all, peace and joy, a Christmas goose, and a cup of minty hot chocolate. Best case scenario: We get some presents, we eat some good food, we tell our loved ones we love them, and we go home safely, without getting in fights with relatives, and we make it through another bleak midwinter. But the worst case scenario? It might be getting stuck with people you can't trust. It might be people dying. It might be getting a visit from the Krampus.
We also get to consider the title of the story -- Lucky Girl, which we are told describes Ro. She was lucky enough to be out of the house during a home invasion. She was lucky enough to get a career as a writer. She was lucky enough to save someone in danger later in the story, and to get her happy ending. But there's bad luck as well as good, and from her perspective, losing her family was epic bad luck. And her lucky happy ending ends up flipping to truly bad luck well before the final page. Even her writing career -- she'd tell you it wasn't luck because she worked very hard on her writing. But even then, she didn't work too hard, as Grayson points out that she stole his childhood Krampus tale for her own novels.
And what of the Krampus? Its name is in the title of the novella, and its menace hangs over every page. But we never actually see it. It shows up in Grayson's story -- but we don't know if he's making it up, dreaming it, or hallucinating it. In folklore, the Krampus abducts naughty children, but Grayson does nothing wrong in his Christmas tale, nothing worthy of punishment or pursuit by a monster. It's also implied that the jingle bell he found as a child has the power to summon the Krampus if rung -- and Ro seems to believe it's so, as she goes to significant lengths to silence it when she receives it as a gift. But like Chekhov's gun, you can't introduce a Krampus bell in a story without ringing it by the end of the tale.
And when the bell is finally rung, on a feverish, stormy Christmas morning, the Krampus, in whatever form it takes, will bring the final -- the very final -- holiday gifts.
If you enjoy creepy, nightmarish Christmas tales, this is one you may well enjoy reading.