You remember what I said before, right? My Drama group coming to my house to rehearse would be the worst possible thing to happen, ever. Remember that? Yeah, it turns out, one shouldn't count their reindeer's before they fly. I might not have liked the idea of the group coming to my house to work on our Drama piece, but Granny had other ideas. She thought it was great to have them all round, push the chairs in the living room back, make a lot of noise, stuff ourselves with junk food and try to be productive. Granny was openly allowing us to be loud and irritating and stuff ourselves would food that would probably make us vomit if we ate too much.

Honestly, hearing the phrase 'sure, you can rehearse here' was one of the worst things to have ever come out of anyone's mouth, including the whole Maths test debacle. Why on the softest snow did she think it was going to work? She knew, better than anyone, that Grandpa lacked the self-control necessary to keep people from finding out about our little secret. The moment I brought that up with her, however, she announced her and Grandpa would be leaving as soon as the group arrived, meaning it was up to me to ensure nothing would give us away. Yeah, didn't exactly fill me with much confidence either.

Nevertheless, I decided there was no harm in giving it ago, though I truly debated faking some kind of illness in order to get out of it. Not that it would be believable, funny thing about living in the cold (and being a Claus) is that you never get ill, like ever. It's both a blessing and a curse. None of that repetitive, annoying sneezing you get with a cold, or a cough that could bring a ceiling down or the days where you just can't physically get out of bed, so you don't have to do anything productive. Instead, I had to actually do chores and be productive, there was no physical way for me, or Nick for that matter, to get out of any of our set tasks. Yeah, I would have taken the cold any day of the week.

So, after discussing it with the entirety of the group, we decided to meet at mine one Saturday morning to rehearse, or procrastinate, depending on which way you want to look at it. Granny had offered me the house for the entire day, so they could go out and do whatever it is they were going to do, I didn't ask them. The morning of our rehearse all day, I had gotten up extra early so I could add some more to my art project, a piece that had been spread out across the kitchen table since the assignment had been given. If I was going to have to spend all day doing Drama and having to play a dolls creepy spirit, I was going to have a little bit of fun beforehand.

"I wish you wouldn't spread out like that, Ken, we've got nowhere to eat breakfast," Granny sighed, leaning against the counter as she ate her cornflakes.

"Sorry, it's just such a big project and the desk in my room isn't big enough," I shrugged, trying not to get chalk on my clothes. Wearing a black jumper and drawing with white chalk wasn't the best thing to do if you actually have to be presentable.

"Just don't leave it lying around, you know your Grandfather is likely to spill something on it," Granny said, raising an eyebrow at Grandpa who had just thrown half a glass of orange juice down his shirt.

"If I do, it's an easy fix," Grandpa said, lightly swiping his hand over his shirt, the damp patch drying instantly. Somehow, I doubted the magic that dried his clothes would be able to dry a giant sheet of paper, it's not as though they are made of the same material. Honestly, how he thought that was going to work was beyond me. Then again, I didn't have the same magical ability Grandpa had so he might've been able to do it, but I certainly couldn't. Fledging magic at its finest.

"If you spill anything on this, and I mean, anything, I'll come after you," I joked, almost dropping a piece of toast covered with jam onto the picture. Not my finest moment.

"Watch out, Kenz."

"Yeah, yeah." I wiped my chalked hands onto a kitchen cloth and quickly stuffed my toast into my mouth, not risking dropping it onto the paper.

With my toast eaten, I began to add more to the picture, lightly sketching the design in pencil before brushing over the top with the chalk, using my fingers to smudge it, like snow. I may have been told to make a Halloween themed image, but the bird cage with the icicles gave me an idea. Halloween and Christmas rolled into one, a bit like our Drama piece. Papa always said one of the scariest things he had ever seen in his time was Jack Frost and the battle they faced when I was just a baby and Nick was only a possibility. Although he belongs in the Christmas story, there is no reason at all for him not to be included in Halloween, at least the real Jack Frost, not the cutesy guy they show in films.

The question was, will the idea work as well on paper as it did in my head? Often I found myself with great ideas in my head, but they were almost impossible to put them onto paper, like a mental block. I hoped this was not going to be one of those occasions. I didn't have time to start the entire project from scratch, and if I did, I wouldn't know where to start or what I was going to do. It was an issue, one I wish I didn't have to face.

As I sketched a few more lines onto my paper, the doorbell rang, scaring the stuffing out of me and causing me to draw several unintentional lines across the piece of paper. Just fabulous. Probably with drawing on black paper in white pencil is that it is so obvious if you make a mistake. Fingers crossed I can fix it. "No, you just sit there and carry on, Ken, I'll answer the door," Granny said sarcastically, placing her empty bowl in the sink, pointless seeing how it was clean seconds after she walked away.

"I was going to move, I was just startled by the doorbell," I replied, trying to use an eraser to remove the white pencil. It wasn't working. Acting quickly, I swiped my hand across the paper, concentrating as my hand hovered just above the lines on the page.A tingling sensation travelled down my arm until it reached my hand, staying for only a few moments before it passed. Removing my hand, I glanced down at the page, noticing the absence of the white pencil. My plan had worked.

"Come on through here, Kenzie is just clearing away her art project," Granny said as she entered the room, sending me a harsh glare.

"I'll clean it up... When it's finished. Like I said, the desk in my room is too small. If we had a sheet of wood or something then maybe I'd move it until then, it's staying," I replied, tidying my art supplies away.

"There's a sheet of wood in the attic, Kenz, use that," Grandpa said, tapping his nose and winking at me.

There wasn't a sheet of wood in the attic, he was lying. No, wait, he wasn't lying, he had just magicked one up there, trying to look like he hadn't. To any normal person, he just looked like a weird old man who enjoyed tapping his nose and winking at his Granddaughter. Bit creepy, to be honest. Like I said, he wasn't good with subtle. No matter how much he thought he was.

"Right, I knew that," I muttered, fighting a smirk that was trying to shove its way onto my face.

"Since your group is here, your Grandfather and I are going out. We'll be back later on this evening. There is money on the mantelpiece for you to order pizza or anything else you want and you know where we keep the snacks. Don't break anything or upset the neighbours," Granny said.

"I can't promise anything, but we'll try," I smiled, showing my teeth in a mocking sort of way.

"Sometimes, I wonder why we leave you on your own."

"Because I'm fabulous, now I thought you had places to be?"

"Alright, see you later Kenz, have fun!" Granny waved as she and Grandfather slipped through the back doorway to the car.

As soon as they had left, the awkwardness descended. No one quite knew how to react to the circumstances. They were standing in the kitchen of a girl they had only known for a week having just witnessed an insane conversation between her and her guardians. If it were me, I'd feel awkward as well. You could say, the situation had turned remarkably... Frosty.... (I do love a good snow pun.)

"So, this isn't awkward at all. I say we get some rehearse al down now and then do nothing for the rest of the day," Niska proposed, "Kenzie, you said you had a doll. Can we use it to rehearse for today?"

"Yeah, I'll have to get it from the attic. Whilst I'm doing that, you can push the sofas back against the walls so we have more space. Just try not to break anything in the process," I said. I didn't exactly trust them with moving the furniture and not breaking anything, but hey, I needed to get out of the awkward as soon as possible and escaping to the attic as the only outcome I could think of.

"I'll come with, knowing me I'll be the one who breaks something," Joel said.

"Okay then, follow me. Niska, you sort this lot out, but don't you dare knock over the plant pot again."

Niska smirked at me and gave a mock salute, rounding up the rest of the group and herded them into the living room, like Papa when he was trying to get the reindeer together. I looked to Joel, pushing my chair back and gesturing my head to the side, telling him to follow me into the unknown, commonly known as the attic. When Niska and Joel had been round to help with my Maths skills, they had gone no further than the living room, the kitchen and bathroom, well, I hope they hadn't anyway. Going beyond that was new territory for the both of them, though it wasn't like it was anything exciting.

Whilst the others carefully sorted out the living room so we had space to rehearse, Joel and I made the fun climb to the attic. He hung back and remained remarkably silent, not that that was anything new, as we reached the first of the two landings. We passed my bedroom, the door left slightly open from when I left in a hurry as we passed the door, I was struck with an idea, a strange, but possibly decent idea. "Wait here, I need to grab something," I said to Joel, motioning for him to come to a halt just outside my bedroom.

"Okie Dokie," Joel replied, raising an eyebrow. With a slight tilt of my head, I pushed open my bedroom door and slid inside, my eyes instantly searching the room for the article I was looking for.

Luckily, being a Claus meant I had a strange, yet handy, ability to find objects in an extremely messy room. You could say, I was capable of finding a needle in a haystack if I wanted to of course. Unfortunately, my room always looked like a mole had gone through it, so it took a little while longer to locate than normal. After several seconds of scanning the piles of junk that littered the floor (I might have only been there for a week, but I liked to spread) I found what I was looking for. Hidden away at the bottom of my wardrobe, was a small red ribbon.

Just what I was looking for.

With the ribbon in my hand, I tucked it hastily into my trouser pockets, to keep it hidden from prying eyes, for the time being at any rate. Standing up from my bedroom floor, I left the room and joined Joel in the hallway, he looked just as lost as he did before. "Right, come on then."

"What did you need to get?" Joel asked, following me up the second flight of stairs and towards the attic.

"You'll find out soon enough," I replied, grabbing the key from on top of the door frame and unlocking the door. Truth was, I didn't quite know what I was going to do with the ribbon, I just knew it was something important. Maybe it was a clause intuition or something, I don't know.

"So where's the doll?" Joel asked, his eyes scanning the mess that was our attic in an attempt to find it.

"Honestly, I have no idea," I replied.

Most of the junk from the house had been forced into the attic, from the old Christmas decorations to odd socks, many of which had been missing a partner for years. You could scarcely move without walking into something, trust me. I had been to the attic about three times since I had moved in with Granny and Grandpa, mainly because Grandpa was known for dumping junk up there and then needing it only having no idea where he put it. Most of the time, it was the attic and I was asked to find it, not that I succeeded very often, even with my Magic, it was practically impossible to find anything in that mess. Finding the doll was going to take a lot, all I wished was for the doll to get up and walk towards us saying "I'm here!" but that would be creepy.

"You take the left, I'll take the right," I said, looking at Joel.

"Right," he said, venturing off to the left side of the room. I did the same, only to the right, determined to track down the doll as soon as possible.

The floorboards creaked underneath me as I crossed the attic, my eyes scanning the boxes of Christmas decorations for the doll. I squeezed my way past the boxes and across the floor, peering into them but seeing nothing but tangled lights and window display pieces. Stacked up across one of the walls were old pictures, pictures of my Great-Grandpa and his family, Grandpa and Papa. In one, I noticed my Aunt Ivy, stood to the side of Papa, glaring into the camera, her white hair pinned up with a clip. Papa rarely spoke of Aunt Ivy, though I knew she was a make-up artist living in London, I had never questioned how she came to work there, well, not until I was told that I had the ability to leave if I really wanted to.

I crouched down next to the pictures, moving the frames out of the way to get a better look at the ones behind it, the ones tucked away from view. The further book a looked, the older the photograph, soon enough they became paintings. Mementoes of what was, but through looking at them I saw that nothing really changed. They were all happy family images, but something was always amiss. The second sibling, or third, always looked angry, or bored, like they didn't want to be there. It appears that the traditional views were often not reflected by the other siblings, such as myself. Leaving home appeared to be a common occurrence.

Sighing, I put the photos and paintings back into place, leaning them against the wall, where I had found them. As I ran my hand along the last photo, my hand caught the edge of the frame, where the wooden beam had been broken, exposing the glass below. The palm of hand snagged on the glass and as I moved my hand along, not noticing the snag, the glass pierced my skin, leaving a cut abut the size of a toothpick across the palm of my hand. "Ow, damn it!"I said, looking at the cut.

"What happened?" Joel asked, his voice carrying across the room.

"I cut my hand on a picture frame, it's nothing."

"Let's have a look. I think the dolls over here anyway," Joel said, the floorboards creaking as he moved. Using my non-injured hand I pushed myself up and negotiated back across the attic floor to Joel, who was standing against the far left wall. "Pretty deep cut there. Nothing a good clean and a plaster shouldn't fix."

"I'm sure it'll be fine. Now, where's that doll?" I asked, brushing off the twinge of pain I felt in my hand.

"Over here," Joel said, gesturing to a small cardboard box that was propped up against the wall, the cardboard colour fading and breaking off. Joel grabbed the top of the box and spun it around, showing the see-through plastic cover that protected the face of the doll but meant it could be seen without being removed from the box.

"There she is," I smiled, looking at the doll through the small window at the front. I hadn't seen the doll since I was a child, but it was safe to say it hadn't changed in the slightest. Although it was a bit dustier, the pale complexion of the doll and the red painted lips looked almost unaffected by age.

"Let's go then. You can tend to that cut before we start rehearsal."

As Joel and I left the room, Joel holding the doll, me examining the cut on my hand, I began to wonder why the pictures had been abandoned in the attic in the first place. They had just been left up there to collect dust and breaks in the glass like they were nothing to the person they belonged to. Truth was, most of those images I had never seen before, the older paintings were new to me, things I had never laid eyes on in the past. Family members I had never been told about or who were long since forgotten to Papa and myself. It felt like it was a part of his world he never wanted to revisit or show to Nick and me like he was hiding something.

Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, I don't know, but something didn't feel right to me and I was determined to find out what it was. For the time being, the cut on my hand worked as a remarkable distraction. Normally, pain didn't bother me, at least a cut like the one I had. Not that the cut would remain for very long, again, the Claus thing comes with weird healing abilities, the ability for a cut or bruise to heal within a matter of hours, or days. The depth of the cut meant nothing to the Magic healing abilities of a Claus!

"Go and clean that," Joel said as we reached the bathroom door.

"Alright dad," I joked, slipping into the bathroom to run the cut under the tap. Wearing black whilst working with chalk wasn't a great idea, but wearing black and having a cut hand was fantastic. Well, sort of.

I turned on the tap and watched the blood mix with the water, tinting it red as it disappeared down the plug. The water stung the cut immensely, but at least the bleeding was beginning to stop, for a short while anyway. After running the cut under the tap for several minutes, I turned it off and with a small flick of my wrist, the cut and my hand dried, Magic drying powers, who'd have thought it. From the bathroom cupboard, I grabbed a plaster and quickly stuck it over the palm of my hand, knowing it wasn't going to stay because of where they cut was located. Having a cut on the palm of your hand was a nightmare, especially if you intended on putting a plaster on it.

Slipping out of the room, I noticed Joel was still in the hallway, waiting for me. It looked as though he didn't feel like walking the house on his own, even though he had done it in the past. "Right, let's go," I said, looking at Joel.

"That was quick," he replied, readjusting his grip on the doll.

"I know," I shrugged, taking him down the stairs and into the living room, where all the sofas had been pushed back to create a big enough space for us to rehearse in. "We have the doll!" I announced, gesturing to the box in Joel's hands.

"Let's see it then," Sophie asked, she was sprawled out on the sofa, arms above her head, hands tucked behind her head.

I took the box from Joel's hands and rested it on the arms of one of the chairs as I opened the top to reveal the doll. The blonde hair of the doll had grown static and messy after so long in the box, but a quick once over with my hand meant that the hair had smoothed itself out into tight curls that lay half-way down her back. The eyes of the doll remained fix and unmoving, the bright blue making her appear to be living. I had always found the doll to be a little creepy, especially since the eyes were so life like, she looked as though she was staring right at you. It was the perfect doll for our creepy Halloween/Christmas piece and it was only going to get stranger.

"That is one creepy doll," Niska said, examining it over my shoulder.

"I know, used to scare me when I was a kid. Kind of glad it was banished to the attic," I told her, dropping the box onto the floor beside the sofa.

"Shall we get to rehearsing then? I want to get this done so we can eat," Niska said, rubbing her hands together in a manic, almost psychotic kind of way.

"Yeah, give me a second," I said, pulling the ribbon from my pocket. Honestly, I still didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I had a fairly good idea. If I was to play the creepy spirit of a doll, I needed to look creepy. And what better way to look creepy then by having a ribbon in your hair?

I know, what kind of logic is that? But hey, it was going to work, whether it was insane or not. Running my hand along the ribbon, I watched as it split into two, two separate ribbons for a creepy doll spirit.

"What are you doing?" Leo asked, watching me play with the ribbon in my hands

"Just wait," I replied. With one of the ribbons, I tied it around the head of the doll, securing it in a little bow on the top of her head. With the longer ribbon, I did the same thing to my own hair, tying it up in a bow on the top of my head, pushing my hair out of my eyes in the process.

"You look creepy," Sophie said, watching as a smoothed my hair out.

"It's weird how similar you are to the doll," Niska said, her eyes flicking between me and the doll in my hand.

"Yeah, yeah, I know I look like the doll, now are we going to get on with this rehearsal, or not?" I asked.

"Yeah, let's do it." 

~~~

A/N - I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to update again until after my exams, but I've been ill, sort of, these past few days so I've spent the time writing. However, this is going to be the last chapter of Last Christmas for the next 3 WEEKS!!! I'm sure you can survive that, I can go a full month without updating. But I will be back, that is a promise.

Anyways, so Kenzie's group are rehearsing at her house and she has already used Magic in front of them TWICE! Will they catch on, or are us humans really that stupid? What about the cut on her hand? That happened for a reason, what could that reason be? Hmm? Hmmm

Oh! I set up a Last Christmas Inspiration Board on Pinterest if you want to check it out, just click on the External Link!

Don't forget to vote and comment if you enjoyed as well as add to your reading list so you never miss an update from me!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to ToxicAustralian who is writing an AMAZING Rant book I think you should all check out! 

First Published - June 4th, 2017