Your neighborhood always went overboard for Christmas — garlands on every fence, wreaths on every door, and your house so bright it could guide planes home. Your wife loved it. You tolerated it. Your son… well, your son hated everything that wasn’t glowing on a screen.

Tonight, he’d been worse than usual — ignoring dinner, glued to his tablet while you tried to talk to him. When you raised your voice, he muttered something cruel and stormed upstairs. The air felt heavy afterward, the kind of silence that soaks into your bones.

Hours later, when the house was still, you heard it — a thump on the roof. You smiled to yourself. “Santa,” you whispered. Maybe your son would get a surprise after all.

But then came another sound. A buzz. A metallic roar.

You sat up, frowning. That wasn’t sleigh bells. It was something mechanical — violent — like a chainsaw struggling to start. Then the sound moved inside.

You opened your door. The hallway was bathed in flickering red light from the Christmas tree downstairs, the glow pulsing like a heartbeat. You crept toward your son’s room. His door was slightly open. Inside, you saw movement — a shape standing over the bed.

The figure was wrong. The beard was matted, the red suit darker than it should’ve been. And in his hand, the “Santa” held something buzzing — a long, blood-red tool humming with vibration. His eyes burned like coals through the dark.

When he turned toward you, the air stank of smoke and iron.

You froze. Your wife screamed from behind you. In the chaos you grabbed her hand, bolted for the stairs, crashing through ornaments and garland. The tree toppled as you sprinted out the front door into the snow.

Behind you, the house erupted in the shrill wail of carols from the radio — but warped, slowed, and reversed. Over it came that same voice, deep and merry in all the wrong ways:

“HO… HO… HOOOOOO.”

You didn’t stop running until the lights of your home vanished into the black woods. And even then, the jingle bells followed — faint at first, then closer.

Somewhere behind the trees, something laughed.