Colton Merris

Holiday Lights

Candice served peppermint schnapps on the boat with extra schnapps. On paper, she wasn’t supposed to, not for the Holiday Lights Cruise. It was approaching midnight on the Merry Way, a triple decker yacht, and no other boats cruised along the river. With the weather turning freezing, the last thing she wanted was any guests on the cruise complaining about how cold they were. The cruise would run up and down the river in town, and people could look up at all the Christmas lights on the mansions that loomed over the cliffs. She served peppermint patty after peppermint patty, loaded them up with extra marshmallows and whipped cream and sugar to keep everyone feeling all warm and Christmasy on the inside. Keep them all drunk and warm and leaning on the rails to marvel at the pretty lights, how the greens and reds and blues dance between the snowflakes to the tunes of a few good men playing violin.

Honestly, who cared if anyone ended up overboard? Would anyone miss another drowned papermill owner, or banker, or newspaper editor? Last Christmas, when Candice was working the bar, she’d seen a woman drop a necklace overboard, and she fell into hysterics. She jumped overboard to recover the necklace, this woman. They pulled her up, already dead. She’d been dragged under the hull. At below freezing temperatures, sudden drops in the water like that can cause a heart attack. 

A coworker had joked, “For real, this ship is haunted. Every hecking year, someone dies, I swear to god.” Candice didn’t buy it, even though later that night, a couple of gentlemen got in a drunken fight, and one pulled a gun and shot the other. The shooter got locked up in one of the cabins with his victim, and people just drank and partied while the cruise completed its route. Candice poured heavier drinks that night, and people tipped same as usual. Nothing, not nothing at all, will keep these rich people from partying.

Later that night, her coworker said, “It’s because years ago, years and years, back when this liner first started, there was another ship, the Finer Spirit. One night, around the holidays, it was doing one of those night cruises. Back then, it was like, prohibition era or something, and this was like a speakeasy cruiser. So everyone drank extra hard, even the captain.

“Well, that night, there must have been something wrong with the boat. Like a leak or something. All night that boat cruised around in the dark. Except the thing is, the boat was slowly sinking, and hardly anyone knew. With it all dark outside, hardly anyone could tell they were getting closer to the water. Then the thing capsized. Ever since then, people who live along the river say that around the holidays, they hear jazz music. That sometimes at night, they look out on the river and see lights in the water.”

Meanwhile Candice split out the tips between them and said, “You know we get tipped the same even if someone dies?” 

Tobacco smoke clouded the dining area. The doors in the boat kept opening and closing with people drifting in and out of the dining area like spirits. Gusts of snow and the violin sounds followed people inside. Candice didn’t have a coat. Not even a suit jacket. Ship policy said she wears a white dress shirt, a bowtie, and suspenders. 

She kept her own mug of peppermint patty hidden behind the bar, and sipped that to keep warm.

A man approached the bar, his skin practically blue, with snow and frost clinging to his coat and beard. He looked like an old captain, like a Captain Ahab type. His teeth chattered and he leaned against the bar. He said, “Please, liquor. Something, anything.”

Even his breath was cold. 

Candice poured cocoa from a fresh carafe, and then added two shots of schnapps. A great cloud of steam rose from the cup, and the tips of her fingers burned when she put the cup down in front of the man.

“Be careful,” she said, “That’s fresh cocoa. It’s super hot.”

The man put the cup to his lips and gulped it all down in a single swig. Cocoa dripped from the hair on his lips, still scalding, still steaming. The man said, “Another.” He reached into his pocket and put coins on the counter. Quarters and dimes.

Candice picked them up, and they were wet, ice cold. The coins were all dated from fourty, fifty years ago at least. “What’s the name on your tab, sir?” These rich bastards always skimped on tips, even during the holidays. 

“Engstrom, captain,” the man said.

There was no Engstrom on the guest list, not that Candice cared. Just another man stupid drunk on the holidays. The door to the dining area opened again, and Candice, to fight the cold wind that blew through, took another drink of her peppermint patty. She still felt cold, colder than she’d been all night. 

She took the man’s cup and poured more cocoa. A little splashed on her hand, and it burned. “Shit!” she said, taking a rag and wiping the liquid off. A bright pink continent shined on her skin where the cocoa fell. It stung and she picked an ice cube out of the nearby ice maker to take the heat off.

Another voice behind her said, “Excuse me darling, can I trouble you for a drink? It’s dreadfully freezing out there.” 

“Just one second,” Candice said. She rubbed the ice cube along her burn, and could tell already it was going to blister. This must have been one of the ways the cruise line came up with to slow down people’s drinking. By making the cocoa so hot people had to take it outside and wait for it to cool before they could drink.

Candice turned back to the bar, and standing next to the old man was a woman in a dripping white dress. Icicles hung from her hair. Behind this woman, a path of wet foot prints led to the door. Guests stepped around them, and they briefly stopped to look at the girl, before resuming their smoking and their looking outside. 

Candice looked over the bar, and the woman was barefoot.

“Excuse me, miss, but our policy says you have to wear shoes at the bar,” Candice said. She didn’t even know if that was true, but at not one, not a single bar she ever worked at, did she serve a shoeless person.

“Oh dear, I must have lost them out on the deck,” the woman said. Her hands reached for her own neck and touched a gold necklace, glittering with diamonds so big and gaudy they must have been costume. 

Someone else came in, soaking wet, covered in ice and ordered a peppermint patty. This one dressed like a flapper girl, her short hair frozen stiff.

Was there some sort of costume party themed ice plunge that Candice didn’t know about? More people came in, one bearing a dripping violin. Candice poured, drink after drink, the cocoa from the carafe still steaming. She went through a bottle of schnapps, and called the back for more cocoa. With each serving, she said, “Be really careful, this stuff will burn you.”

Each customer gulped the cocoa down like it was a shot. When asked what name was on their tab, they gave names like Westchester and McAdams, all names that were streets, or were on the sides of buildings.

None of these names were on Candice’s tab list. There were no cards on file for these people. But whatever. There were other bars on the ship, two per deck. Candice could make it through a night only seeing a patron once, and still have to cut them off for drunk conduct. People would end up overboard, and Candice and her coworkers would have to clarify from which deck someone jumped, because someone else had a jumper that night as well. 

A man approached the bar with his hand held over his stomach. He limped between people, his skin pale and sickly. He said, “Can I just get a beer maybe?” He removed his hand from his stomach, revealing a gaping red bullet wound.

“Holy shit, sir. You’re hurt! Stay where you are, I’ll find somebody,” Candice said.

She bolted from behind the bar, yelling, “Somebody? Hello! We’ve got an emergency! Someone’s hurt.” 

But all the patrons on the ship stood frozen still, looking out the windows, as though Candice weren’t even there. She ran up to them, yelling, “Is anyone here a doctor?”

They all stared ahead, out the windows.

Candice went outside on the deck, yelling, “Come on! We got a guy who is losing a lot of blood.” The cold cut through her clothes instantly. It was quiet outside. The sound of people talking, and music playing had gone completely. Everyone stared at the same direction.

Candice grabbed someone by the arm. “What the fuck is the matter with you people?”

The man didn’t respond. His mouth hung slack, and a pale green light shifted on the surface of his skin.

Candice looked out where the man looked. A green light drifted in the river. There was nothing above the surface in the water that caused that light. It seemed to glow from beneath. Faintly, drums and horns played from its direction.

A cold hand clasped Candice’s shoulder. A voice said, “I need another cocoa drink.”

Candice turned around, and there stood the old man with the peacoat, talking close enough his breath froze against her face. His eyes were blackened, his skin blue. He opened his mouth, exposing blackened gums. “I’m so cold,” he said.

Behind him stood the man with the bleeding stomach. “I never got my beer.”

And then the woman with bare feet. She stood outside in that small white dress. “Have you seen my shoes out here, dear? I just took them off to get my necklace.”

Hands came over the ledge of the deck, and people dressed in fine fur coats, tuxedos with long tailcoats pulled themselves onto the ship.

The old man said, “This is your captain speaking. We are reaching max capacity on the Finer Spirit. We may have to make some room.” To Candice, Captain Engstrom said, “Now please, could you go and pour me something warm?”

Candice shivered. She nodded, and walked back into the bar area.

The cold and drowned started shoving the patrons off the ship. The people did not resist, did not notice the frozen hands grasping them. They stood hypnotized by the holiday lights they had come to see. Candice poured peppermint patties into each mug, and refilled the carafes as fast as she could. She lined the bar with steaming mugs with whip cream and extra marshmallows. She watched as people dropped into the icy waters silent as the night, until that faraway jazz finally stopped.