Elsie Calderige – Naughty List

Christmas morning came a fog that breathed with snow.

The Calderidge house sat quiet in its little cul-de-sac, buried beneath a night of silent weather and blinking string lights. Inside, the tree blinked a glowing golden in the early hour haze, its reflection warped in the living room window like a joyful blur.

Elsie Calderidge was the first to rise.

She always was.

Elsie slammed her bedroom door behind her—just enough to stir the silence.
She padded fast down the hallway, the cold floor biting at her heels, eyes locked on the glow spilling from the living room like a secret waiting to be caught.
Behind her, Abby’s door creaked open.

“Is it morning?”

“It is now,” Elsie whispered, already rounding the corner.

Their parents shifted behind their door—groggy, confused.

The girls didn’t wait.

Abby ran ahead barefoot, hair tangled, nightgown twisted from sleep. Elsie chased close behind, their shadows stretching long and thin across the hallway walls, twin silhouettes racing toward the blinking lights and whatever magic still clung to the air.

The tree was still there.

The gifts were still there.

Elsie stopped just short, breath fogging. Her eyes scanned the piles like a hawk.
She counted them.

Abby had two.
Mom had one.
Dad had three.
She had… three.

Her eyes cut toward Abby’s stack first.
One box was big and badly wrapped—too much tape, a corner already torn. The other was her stocking, stuffed with candy canes and a crooked bow stuck to the front.

Abby dropped to the floor, cross-legged by the fireplace, face lit with sleepy wonder.

Look!” she squealed, already shredding the paper. “It’s a scooter!”

She held it up, triumphant. “I knew it,” she breathed, hugging the box. “I knew he wouldn’t forget.”

Elsie didn’t respond. She just moved to her own stack.

Her hands found the first two boxes—one wrapped in purple snowflake paper with Love, Mom & Dad scrawled across a glittery tag, the other in glossy silver from one of those department store sets her mom always grabbed last-minute.

She opened them without ceremony.

The first was a makeup starter kit—cheap brand, too pink, full of glitter and pastel colors that didn’t suit her skin.

The second was a body spray set, the kind that came with a little loofah and lotion that smelled like synthetic fruit.

She stared at the boxes for a long beat.

No expression.

No thanks.

They must think I’m ugly and stink, she thought.

Then her eyes shifted to the third box.

It sat dead center beneath the tree.

No tag. No bow.

Wrapped in dark red paper that shimmered faintly in the glow of the lights.

It looked—off. Not in a big way. Just enough to feel like it didn’t belong.

Elsie crawled forward on her knees, dragging the box into her lap.

The paper felt dry. Heavy.

Abby was still digging through her stocking behind her. “I got candy coal!” she giggled, holding up the little plastic sack.

Elsie peeled the paper back.

Inside her box was a single piece of coal.

Not candy.

Not black and crumbling.

Smooth. Polished. Warm.

It sat perfectly still, nestled in a bed of fine ash.

The room quieted.

“What, love?” her mum asked gently.

Elsie blinked, then tilted the box toward herself.

She closed the lid slowly and slipped her fingers beneath the coal, finding a piece of folded paper tucked underneath—so neatly placed it might have been part of the box itself.

“It’s just… something else,” she said. “I think Santa wrote something.”

Her mother smiled, already half-distracted. “Well? What does it say?”

Elsie unfolded the paper.

The handwriting didn’t curl or decorate itself. It didn’t try to be magical. It simply was paper.

She read aloud, soft and even, like she was reading a receipt.

You told yourself it didn’t matter.
But you knew it would hurt her.
And you smiled anyway.
You have not yet been punished.
This is not kindness.
This is time.
There will not be more of it.

— Santa Claus

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then her father said, uncertain, “Sweetheart?”

Elsie flinched.

She folded the note quickly and shut the box, too fast now, her fingers twitching as she slid it out of sight.

When she looked back up, her smile was already in place.

“Sweetheart?” her father said again, gentler now.

Elsie looked up, smile still in place but her heart sank.

“I think it’s just a joke,” she said brightly. “Like… Santa coal poetry. He probably leaves one in everyone’s box. Abby got a scooter, I got a scary poem. Fair trade, right?”

Her mom gave a thin laugh. “Well, if he’s writing threats now, someone ought to tell the mall.”

Abby looked uneasy. “I don’t think it was funny.”

“It wasn’t about you, Abs,” Elsie said, already folding the blanket back over her lap. “Just… a weird adult thing. I’m fine.”

She stood and picked up the box, careful, deliberate.

“Anyway, I think I’ll go journal about this,” she added with a wink. “Santa’s watching, right?”

She left the room quietly.

Her parents exchanged a glance, unsure whether to laugh or follow.

Abby just stared at the scooter.

She didn’t ride it that day.

She didn’t ride it the next, either.

But eventually, spring came, and with it, sunshine and sidewalks and schoolyard bets about who could jump the curb.

Abby pulled the scooter out from the garage one Saturday morning, the air still cold enough to turn her breath white. She wore her pink helmet. A sparkly jacket. A smile.

Elsie watched her from the window.

That night, she waited until everyone was asleep, crept into the garage with a wrench stolen from the kitchen junk drawer, and loosened the bolts on the front wheel. Not too much. Just enough to make it look like use had done it. A normal accident. Something no one would question.

She left the scooter leaning neatly against the wall.

The garage door clicked behind Elsie, and from the hallway’s dark edge, Abby blinked once and thought nothing.

Four days later, Abby rode it down the hill near the end of their street.

Elsie was watching again.

The wheel came off as she was turning—one minute solid, the next flying sideways into the gutter. Abby pitched forward, arms flailing, body lurching off-balance as the scooter twisted underneath her. She didn’t fall—not all the way.

She stumbled into the street.

A car was coming. Too fast.

It didn’t stop.

The sound of the impact was loud. Soft and wet and hollow. Abby’s body bounced against the hood, rolled, struck the pavement with a dull smack, and she didn’t move.

The driver never even saw her until it was too late.

There was screaming. Neighbors. And then the sound of multiple Sirens.

Elsie just stood at the edge of the driveway, arms crossed, watching it happen like she was watching a movie.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t scream.

She just tilted her head slightly, blinked once, and whispered to herself, “That wheel really wasn’t on tight, huh?”

Abby survived.

Barely.

She spent the next six weeks in the hospital—fractured pelvis, broken arm, a punctured lung. They said it was a miracle she wasn’t killed instantly.

They called it an accident. Just a freak combination of bad timing and a faulty toy.

No one suspected Elsie.

She brought Abby flowers again. A balloon. A sympathy card that said “You’ll bounce back! :)” in glittery blue.

She sat beside her sister’s bed, swinging her feet, humming songs Abby used to like and smiling when she flinched.

Abby didn’t remember the day of the crash.

Abby couldn’t explain it—not even to herself—but the sight of Elsie made her stomach twist, as if some small voice inside her had decided it wasn’t safe to love her sister anymore.

After that, the house went quiet—not the kind that heals, but the kind that listens.

Her parents barely spoke, their movements soft and spectral, as if trying not to stir the thing that now lived under their roof in their daughter’s shape—until finally, after the neighbor’s dog went missing and a knife was found in her backpack, juvenile detention became a mercy no one said out loud.

Elsie’s defiance had the rhythm of a habit, not a phase—something compulsive, like scratching an itch that never healed. Her parents blamed hormones. Then trauma. Eventually, they stopped blaming anything at all.

She rolled her eyes more.

Laughed harder at things no one else found funny.

Started locking her bedroom door at night.

She began to prank the neighbors in ways that didn’t feel like pranks:

She crept down the street just before dawn, sliding raw meat into mailboxes like she was hand-delivering threats in shrink-wrap.

The bird hadn’t moved when she poked it. Its eyes were still open. Later, she placed it like punctuation beneath the words YOU’RE NEXT, scrawled in red spray-paint across the neighbor’s garage—a warning she pretended wasn’t hers, even when she smiled at it.

She slipped a stray cat into the neighbor’s kitchen through a cracked window and walked away before the crashing started.

She told her teacher a lie that got another girl suspended for cheating. Then smiled when the girl cried. She flushed Abby’s pills once. Just to see if anyone noticed. She told Abby one morning, offhand, that their parents probably wished she’d died instead. Then handed her a waffle like it hadn’t been said.

Sometimes she whispered Abby’s name while she slept, just to see if she twitched.

She did.

December returned slowly.

The lights came up again—hesitant, dim. The decorations were fewer. The tree smaller, thinner, like it had been chosen without feeling. No one mentioned the year before. Abby didn’t bring up the scooter. Or the coal. She just hung her stocking again, neat and hopeful, like doing everything right might make the things better since the past few months seeing her sister in and out of juvenile detention.

Elsie hung hers too.

But hers went up with a grin.

She didn’t write a list. Didn’t bake the cookies. Just tacked the stocking onto the mantel like a dare—half‑empty, wide open, waiting to see what would crawl out of it this time.

She didn’t ask for anything.

She waited.

And the house, this time, waited with her.

Midnight came without a proper ceremony.

The fire sank into embers. The lights dimmed until the room felt farther away than it should have. Elsie woke at the edge of the couch, eyes fixed on the tree, breath slow and measured.

Then the air changed.

Not a sound—not at first. A pressure. Like the room had been gently pushed inward from all sides.

Elsie looked up.

Santa stood by the tree.

He didn’t enter with joy. No chimney, no laughter, no booming voice. Just Santa, already in the room, tall and red against the dark, snow clinging to him like soot. His beard was too long, his face too old—etched with lines no smiling portrait ever showed. When his eyes met hers, they didn’t brighten. They dimmed.

They were sad.

“You weren’t supposed to be awake,” he said.

Elsie didn’t speak. She smiled instead.

“So you are real,” she said quietly.

Santa glanced toward the hallway—toward the bedrooms, toward Abby asleep with her stocking folded neatly at the foot of her bed.

“Most children don’t see me,” he said. “They aren’t meant to.”

“What happens if they do?” Elsie asked.

Santa’s hand twitched at his side, and without a word, the air in front of Elsie shimmered—boxes blinking into existence one by one, perfectly wrapped and pulsing faintly like they were holding their breath.

He looked at her like he’d seen this before—too many times—and the weariness in his face wasn’t sadness, but the kind of regret that came from knowing what would come next, and being powerless to stop it.

Then he nodded once.

That was all.

Behind him, the fireplace went black.

The air tore open.

Chains dragged across the floor.

Santa stepped aside without looking back.

“This,” he said softly, “is why.”

Krampus did not enter politely.

The room froze as he unfolded himself from shadow—horns scraping the ceiling, chains rattling with a sound that sank into Elsie’s bones. His eyes burned low and steady, fixed on her.

Elsie’s smile faltered.

The sack unfurled like a curse spoken backward—air bending inward, sound vanishing, as if the world itself recoiled.

As Krampus reached for her, claws scraping the wood floor like ice on glass, Elsie twisted her head, desperate to see Santa one last time.

He had already turned away.

She opened her mouth to scream—

But the sound never came.

The world vanished before she could make a noise.

Just gone.

Swallowed.

And when the quiet returned, it wasn’t in the house.

It was in the snow.

She landed hard, the air punched from her lungs, her scream still frozen somewhere behind her. Around her, the trees rose impossibly tall, black and bone-thin, their limbs tangled with chains and hung with bells that rang without wind.

Soft.

Patient.

Waiting.

This was the Forest of Bells.

But it had grown darker.

Older.

Hungrier.

Elsie staggered to her feet, coughing ash from her mouth. Her hands were scraped raw. Her pajamas were already damp with cold. The snow here didn’t melt—it clung like guilt, whispering her regrets up her legs.

The bells above her began to chime.

Not in chorus. In accusation.

Each note struck like a gavel.

Elsie Calderidge.

Her name, carried on voices that weren’t voices—rasping, echoed things, as if the trees themselves remembered her sins. She turned in a circle and found no paths. Just trunks. Faces carved in the bark. Eyes closed. Mouths sewn shut.

Then—

A groan.

Low. Deep. The sound of something massive waking.

The ground split behind her with the sound of tearing meat.

She turned just in time to see the sack—Krampus’s sack, gnarled and breathing—rise out of the snow like a blister being pulled inside out. It opened, wide and wet and soundless, a hole in the world’s skin, and from it spilled shapes—

Not things.

Memories.

The rot of her worst moments uncoiled like worms from the dark corners of her mind—
not as memories, but as intrusions.
Living things.
Festering things.

A frozen stuffed rabbit emerged first—its ears crudely severed, the thread ends stiff and dark with freezer burn. Its button eyes stared, clouded and wet, as if it had cried before it froze.

Then came the hallway—overbright and echoing. Abby knelt on the floor, her small hands welded shut with glue, fingers sealed in a stiff, painful clutch. Her flashcards were fused into one pulpy mess, edges curling like burnt skin. She didn’t sob. Just trembled, tears streaking silently down her cheeks while Elsie stood nearby, still holding the empty bottle of super glue.

The driveway shimmered into view, cold and sharp. The garage door bore the words YOU’RE NEXT, written in something thicker than paint—dark, viscous, and dripping slow. Below, the bird’s broken wings twitched in the frost. Its eye opened once, as if to say: It has begun.

And then—
The sound.
Not from the forest.
From her.

A scream, but not a clean one—warped, raw, still stuck in her throat.

It echoed around her, grotesquely delayed, as though time itself had held it back just long enough to make it hurt.

And in that moment, the bells began to ring.

Not gently.

Not patiently.

But with a frightening purpose.

And with her name.

Too far.

She turned to run—

But the snow reached up like hands and dragged her down, yanking her beneath the surface with a hiss like steam, a sound that whispered:

“You’re ready now.”

The words coiled around her like roots.

And then—
she dropped.

Not into snow.
Into something hollow. Ribbed. Familiar.

She was falling through herself—layer by layer, lie by lie—peeling open like rotted fruit.

Into the gnawing dark behind her ribs. Into the part of herself that had been rotting all along. Where the snow turned to ash, and the ash whispered her name.

The Forest didn’t trap her in a single loop.

That would’ve been too kind.

It hollowed her out.

Each punishment arrived like a room built just for her—hallways lined with lockers where children she’d tormented turned to stare, mouths sewn shut with twine and buttons. Classrooms full of crying kids she didn’t recognize, each wearing versions of her face.

She opened a closet and found her mother sobbing inside, holding Elsie’s stocking, whispering, “I don’t know what we did wrong.”

Elsie closed it again.

The scene shifted.

Now Abby was at the top of the stairs.

Elsie watched herself—again—but not like before. This time she couldn’t look away. She wasn’t just seeing it.

She felt it.

The thought. The smile. The moment before the push.

And then—Impact.

Wood and bone and blood. Again. Again. Again.

But this time, she landed too.

Each thud broke something inside her.

Every time she hit the stairs, the forest rang louder, bells clashing like laughter.

This wasn’t a memory.

It wasn’t justice.

It wasn’t even cruelty.

It was design.

The forest didn’t punish you. It became you. It turned your every sin into a path, and made you walk it barefoot, bleeding.

Elsie called out.
To Santa.
To Abby.
To anyone.

But this place did not recognize sorry.
Only repetition.

No aging.
No sleeping.
Just the long, endless echo of herself—
a ghost still wearing skin.

And deep in the dark, the bells prepared another note.

Not a warning.
A memory.

Not a cry.
A name.

Elsie Calderidge.

Claimed.

Kept.

Forgotten by the world—but never by the forest.

The Forest of Bells never forgets a name.

And the snow, like guilt, never melts—only settles deeper.