Secret Santa

by Andrew Shaffer

“Do not bring detestable things into your home, for then you will be destroyed, just like them.”

She’d come across a fair number of occult texts in her day. They were a staple of horror fiction. Real-life occult books always disappointed, though. They were less repositories of forbidden knowledge and more repositories of bad writing.

Blackwood-Patterson was a literal cult. Because of course it was. The signs were all there: Slavish devotion to their leader. Elitist thinking. Irrational fear of the outside world. Treating the excommunicated like they were dead. Lussi hadn’t realized it earlier because none of them had that faraway look in the eyes. The look those Jonestown converts had. The one that signaled nobody was home upstairs.

As Michel de Montaigne said, there was no more expensive thing than a free gift.