Prologue
The Monster
“Chris, Chris, wake up, wake up! The Monster…it’s coming.”
The little girl’s strained whispers crashed through his head like a clap of thunder that scattered the dreamscape and left only blackness.
The Monster? Here? Wait, where exactly am I?
His eyes flew open, and as the wind began to rise, Chris saw his sister’s dark and ghoulish figure standing in her nightgown next to his bed, and backlit by an eerie light. Her breaths were rapid and shallow. It was Janey—poor, sad Janey, longing for their mother, fearing a storm, and seeking comfort and protection. Right? He blinked hard, sparking a flash. The thunder crashed again. A storm or the Storm? This was getting crazy.
Feeling gutted but fully aware of what happened earlier in the day, Chris sat up and wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth. Then he glanced about. Stark walls, barren floor…his familiar prison firmly in place. Yet something strange was happening. His clothes were drenched in sweat, and his skin tingled from the strong charge in the air.
Along the periphery, shadow figures—never seen before, their origins unknown—stood shoulder-to-shoulder and shifted nervously, as if they wanted to flee. The red light on his clock radio glared at him and seemed to record his fear. And the voices inside it mumbled their steady alarm…and his name. “Janey?” he said, grasping for some sanity.
His lips felt hard to move. When she didn’t answer, Chris squinted, fine-tuned his hearing, and detected other troubling telltale sights and sounds.
Please don’t leave us, not with him, his voice cried from beyond.
I’m sorry, his mother said. I don’t know why this is happening.
At the window, the glittering but deadly white butterfly, tapping the glass as it fluttered, trying to get in. Behind it, radiant snowflakes as big as feathers drifted down in the warm raging air. Far beyond, the pulsing spires of the Bethlehem Star, shining just above a pointy treetop, looking for that safe place to send the Child, and finding them instead. Its gaze lit the room with the ghostly light.
The stage was set, props in place. And then the Story took hold…
Cristofori’s Dream Description:
In a magical quest for a Christmas miracle, he did not understand the power with which he played . . .
In this timely and haunting tale about revenge and forgiveness, writing and painting, a bullied young teen–overwhelmed by tragedy–abandons his faith for science, then escapes to a world of his own making in search of a Christmas miracle for his dying younger sister. There, he must confront all of his creations–the sacred and the unholy–if he wants to recapture the true love he once knew, and save his sister from the deadly legacy that relentlessly stalks her.
Because it really does matter what he believes, especially this holiday season . . .
