The Chimney Man
By Mari Harrison
My daughter won’t stop talking about the chimney man. She’s six. Started three weeks ago.
“He comes down every night,” Becca says, picking at her waffles.
“Santa only comes on Christmas,” I say. “That’s the rule.”
She shakes her head, serious. “Santa brings presents. The chimney man just watches.”
My wife laughs it off. Kids and their imaginations. But that night I hear it. Scraping from the living room. Then nothing.
I find soot on the carpet. A trail leading from the fireplace to the hallway to Becca’s room.
“Did you go downstairs?” I ask her in the morning.
“No. The chimney man did.” She’s coloring, unbothered. “He stood by my bed for a long time. He smells like smoke and Uncle Max.”
We board up the fireplace that weekend. My wife thinks I’m being ridiculous, but doesn’t argue.
Two nights later, our daughter stands at our bedroom door, backlit by the hall light.
“He’s sad,” she says. “You blocked his way. So he’s coming through yours instead.”
“There’s no chimney in our room,” my wife says.
Our daughter points at the HVAC ceiling vent. The one that’s been making that scraping sound for the past hour.
“That,” she says. “Everything connects. He showed me.”
The scraping stops. I’m holding my breath. My wife grips my arm.
“What does he want?” I whisper.
Our daughter tilts her head, listening to something we can’t hear.
“He wants to know if you’ve been good.” She smiles. It’s not her smile. “He’s been checking his list. He checks it every night now. There are so many names.”
The vent cover falls. Something black and thin unfolds from the darkness above our bed.
“Daddy,” my daughter says. “You’re on the list.”
Mari Harrison spent years writing (what she’d consider speculative fiction) for the government, but finally quit to write things that let her sleep at night. Her writing has appeared in Apex Magazine, Claudine, manywor(l)ds, and elsewhere.
Creepy
This is incredible!! Loved it!