Heather Graham - The Keepers - Christmas in Salem

We hope you enjoy, that your trials and tribulations will be small, and that you’ll have the best holiday season ever!

Best,

Heather Graham

For families everywhere, in every sense of the word family . Sometimes we’re bonded by blood, and sometimes by friendship and caring.

Winters came with a vengeance to Salem, Massachusetts. When settlers had first come to the shores of the then colony, many had not survived. Those who had settled Salem and her environs had been devout Puritans, and they had seen the Devil in the darkness, in the forests that surrounded the land they worked so hard to cultivate. They were, in fact, so convinced that the Devil was in the forest that they believed he also somehow entered their homes—and from this belief came the terror of the witch trials. But people learned the bitter lesson of the cruelty they had perpetuated. Salem’s name became famous in history, the city itself a place dedicated to the awareness of man’s inhumanity to man, where people could learn from the past so that they never again allowed such cruelty and injustice to occur.

By the twenty-first century, the city welcomed any and all, embracing those of different ethnicities and becoming a place where every religion was welcome, from Wicca to Buddhism to the more traditional forms of worship.

Even now, it was easy to understand how people without electric lights, without communication, could play on old grievances, look around the woods where natives they didn’t understand were lurking, where God only knew what might emerge from the never-ending forests and the land beyond, and fear what they didn’t comprehend. When winter came, the wind howled and ice formed on houses. They sat huddled before their fires and feared what lay beyond.

When winter was at its height, darkness came by late afternoon, and they shivered in their homes and prayed for dawn. Then.

But this was now.

And the darkness had never been anything like this.

At first the darkness had seemed to come normally. October arrived, and with it Halloween, Salem’s favorite holiday. November followed, and daylight savings time was gone. Then winter came, and with it, shorter days.

And that was when the darkness began to extend its reign.

People would get to work, stare at the sky and say, “Wow. It’s not light yet.”

Children would get out of school in the afternoon and say, “Wow. It’s dark already.”

The mayor called the governor; the governor called the president.

The president called the experts at NASA.

But they were all completely stymied. Because the darkness had settled only over Salem, Massachusetts.

For the most part, the citizens of that fair and historic city lived with it. But each day they grew a little more concerned, a little edgier. They became prone to rudeness, to attacking one another. They behaved the way people had a way of behaving whenever they were …

Afraid.

With winter came the holiday season. For the city’s Wiccan community, the winter solstice was the day of highest importance, and while they tried to make it a time of celebration, many were short-tempered, their moods as dark as the sky. Hanukkah was not much better. Now as the community moved to welcome Christmas, their shared but unspoken fear was that Christmas Day would dawn with complete darkness, and rather than being the celebration of rebirth it was meant to be, Christmas would bring something evil leaking from the stygian darkness that enveloped the city.

And even in this enlightened day, they began to wonder.

Was the Devil more than a myth, and was he running loose in the world?

Was he back wreaking havoc in the Salem woods—this time for real?

The bulb Samantha Mycroft was trying to replace was just above her reach. She swore softly—and then felt guilty.

It was Christmas Eve. One was not supposed to swear on Christmas Eve. In the front yard, next to the tall and beautiful pine she was trying to decorate, the motion-activated Santa was singing in Bing Crosby’s voice, cheerfully telling the story of the Little Drummer Boy.

She should not be cursing on Christmas Eve, she thought again.

But, she thought, pausing to look at the sky, this was a most unusual Christmas Eve.

It was dark. Darkness was to be expected at night, of course.

But the darkness had started coming earlier and earlier. At first it had been natural, as fall had come to Salem. But four in the afternoon had become two. And where at first the sun had come out at six in the morning, six had become seven. Then eight. Then nine.

Finally there had been just an hour of light at midafternoon, and today, Christmas Eve, she wondered if even that hour would come, because it had gone from being one hour to fifty minutes, then forty, then thirty… .

They kept the Christmas lights on 24/7, which, Samantha was convinced, was why her Never Burn Out! Christmas lights were burning out.

She managed to reach the offending bulb and change it, and then, from her perch atop the ladder, looked up at the sky again.

The news, of course, was filled with the phenomenon. It was centered on Salem, but it had begun spreading—though to a lesser degree—south toward Boston and north toward the Gloucester area. None of the rest of the country was any darker than it normally was at this time of year. Naturally, scientists and meteorologists were having a field day with the situation. They all had theories that explained what was going on, from the extremely esoteric to a strange type of sun flare. How a flare could cause such darkness, Sam didn’t know.

It didn’t matter.

Their theories were all wrong; she knew that much. Whatever was going on in Salem was being caused by a miscreant in the Otherworld.

“Hey! Pretty lights!”

She heard the deep voice and for a moment, she froze. She knew that voice, though she hadn’t heard it in years. It was rich and fluid; it had made her laugh.

And its absence from her life had, once upon a time, made her cry.

She turned quickly, then remembered that she was on a ladder and grasped hold of it, absolutely determined that she wouldn’t humiliate herself by falling off and landing at his feet.

With all the control she could muster, she turned regally to look down.

Maybe she was imagining that it was him… . He had disappeared on a Christmas Eve, exactly two years ago now.

She’d imagined nothing.

There he was. Daniel Riverton in the flesh.

As if on cue, the stupid Santa began singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Daniel was tall and appeared lean, but she knew from experience that his shoulders were broad, his chest and arms muscled and honed, and he could move with incredible grace, speed and agility. He was the epitome of “tall, dark and handsome.”

Naturally.

Because Daniel was a vampire. And an exceptional one.

He was striking as only a vampire could be; his hair was coal dark and his eyes were that burning, intense hazel often seen among his kind. When he was passionate or angry, the hazel burned with a golden light that seemed more intense than the sun. He looked up at her now, those eyes of his enigmatic, a slight smile curving his lips.

Leave it to Daniel to come back smiling. She wanted to smack him—smack that smile from his face.

And she also wanted to touch him, feel his arms around her again, look up at him and smile and laugh because they were a duo, soul mates.

Yeah, so much for that.

“How are you, Sam?” he asked softly.

“Fine. What are you doing back in Salem?” she demanded curtly.

It would have been nice if he’d said something like I tried to survive without you but I couldn’t. I had to come back to Salem. I don’t care about rules or regulations or if we’re damned for all time. I can’t live without you.