I call out for them to leave her alone, to leave us both alone, but I know in my heart there’s no point to my words. So instead I begin trying to shimmy and turn my chair enough that I can see what they’re doing to her, as though bearing horrified and helpless witness will make it better that they’re killing Melanie.

There are two figures holding her down—one is an average-looking man in his late fifties. Well, average-looking except for the frenzied sweat pouring down his face and his insane expression full of wide eyes and skinned back teeth. It was hard to say if he was angry or excited, but as he grasped Melanie’s ankles tight enough to make his hands go white, I realized it made little difference. He was gripped by the same fervor that was driving the two monsters in the room.

The first of the others might have been a woman once. It was hard to say because of how twisted her flesh was and how distorted her features had become. I had the thought that she was a candle, made of wax and human fat and carved to look like a person. A candle that was held to some terrible flame long ago until the eyes drooped and ran and the nose pooled away into a flattened bulge with two uneven holes for air.

And the mouth…the mouth was filled with rotten little pegs of yellowed ivory as it hung open at the bottom of her head like an open, festering wound. She held Melanie’s shoulders and alternated between looking at her and at me with her deep-set, black pig eyes, all the time working a greyish green-striped candy cane at the corner of lips that looked like strips of red, wet meat. The woman-thing let out a titter as Melanie tried to struggle again. My sister was strong, but she was clearly already tired, and the creature easily pressed her shoulders flat again as the next jug was made ready.

Presiding over it all, dressed in tattered rags that likely had once been a very expensive Santa suit, was the third thing. It looked more like an old sinister tree than a candle or a man, the odd angles of its body and joints making the soiled red coat shift and poke like a sack holding a large, struggling spider. It held the jugs of what smelled like eggnog over Melanie’s face and poured them slowly in the general direction of her mouth and nose, each new gallon causing my sister to sputter and choke again.