Ghost Stories Tales For The Holidays – Ethan Blackwood

Emily walked into the box. The darkness wrapped around her like a heavy blanket. The lid clicked shut. On the floor of the empty hotel room, a single item remained. A receipt. It lay on the carpet, the purple ink glowing. The text had changed. Item: One (1) Soul.

Status: Delivered. Date: December 25, 2025. A maid cart rattled down the hallway outside. The maid knocked on the door. “Housekeeping?” There was no answer. She used her keycard. The room was empty, pristine, the bed made. There was no luggage. No sign of a guest. Just a faint smell of lilies and a small scrap of paper on the floor that the vacuum cleaner swallowed up without a sound.

OceanofPDF.com The silence of a shopping mall after closing time is not a peaceful silence; it is a heavy, pressurized vacuum that seems to actively resent the absence of noise. For Kevin, a security guard approaching his tenth year at the Rolling Acres Pavilion, this silence was the only companion he had on Christmas Eve. The last of the stragglers had been ushered out the sliding glass doors at six o’clock sharp, clutching their desperation-buys in glossy bags, leaving Kevin alone with the waxed floors, the shuttered storefronts, and the echoing hum of the industrial HVAC system.

He walked his beat with a slow, deliberate cadence, the rubber soles of his boots squeaking rhythmically against the terrazzo tiles. The air smelled of stale cinnamon pretzels, floor cleaner, and the lingering, metallic scent of thousands of stressed bodies that had occupied the space only hours before. Kevin adjusted his belt, feeling the familiar dig of the radio into his hip. He didn’t mind the holiday shift. He had no family waiting for him, no children expecting a bicycle under a tree, and the double-time pay was enough to cover his rent for January.

The house smelled of cardboard and Lemon Pledge, a sterile combination that did little to mask the underlying scent of stagnation. Lucas had bought the place cheap, a foreclosure on the edge of a development that had stalled out halfway through construction. The realtor had called it “private,” but standing in the living room surrounded by towers of unpacked boxes, Lucas felt the weight of a different word: desolate. Beyond the front window, the cul-de-sac was a loop of cracked asphalt lined with empty lots and a few scattered houses that looked as though they were holding their breath.

It was November 29th, and the sky was a bruised purple, threatening snow that never seemed to fall. He spent the first day breaking down boxes and arranging furniture in a way that mimicked his old apartment, trying to impose familiarity on the alien angles of the new rooms.

By midnight, exhaustion had settled into his bones like lead. He double-checked the locks—a habit from living in the city— and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. The silence here was heavy, pressing against his eardrums. In the city, silence was a pause between sirens and traffic; here, silence was a physical presence, a vacuum waiting to be filled. He fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of hallways that stretched on forever and doors that wouldn’t open.

He woke with a start, his heart hammering against his ribs. The room was freezing. He had left the thermostat at sixty-eight, but the air biting at his exposed face felt closer to forty. He rolled over, fumbling for his phone on the nightstand. The screen lit up the darkness with a harsh blue glow: 3:17 AM. Then he heard it. It was faint at first, drifting through the double-paned glass of the bedroom window.

A voice. A single, high tenor, pure and unwavering. It was singing “Silent Night,” but the tempo was agonizingly slow, dragging each syllable out until the melody threatened to tear apart. Si-lent night… Ho-ly night… Lucas sat up, pulling the duvet to his chin. It had to be a neighbor. Maybe a drunk stumbling home from a holiday party, confusing this driveway for their own. But there were no parties out here, no festive lights strung up on the half-finished houses down the block.

He swung his legs out of bed, the floorboards icy beneath his bare feet, and crept toward the window. He didn’t turn on the lamp; instinct told him to stay hidden. He peered through the slats of the blinds. The street below was bathed in the sickly orange glow of the only working streetlamp, located directly across from his driveway. The light buzzed and flickered, casting long, jumping shadows across the frost-covered lawn. There was someone there. Standing directly under the dying light was a figure.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 2cdc47d61861dc50
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 962,273 bytes (0.918 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 153
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 237.91 minutes
• Total Words: 47,583
• Total Characters: 270,852
• Average Words per Page: 311.0
• Average Characters per Page: 1770.27

Most Frequent Words

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