Ghosts of Christmas

The Ghosts Of Christmas, The Labyrinth Of Lives, The Windings Of Love,

And The Coil Of Fears

by

Andreas K N (an@altavista.net), 1999

INTRODUCTION

I'm baaaack! I have made the decision to post this story in reasonably frequent short chapters instead of long ones with really long waits in between. As a reader of this kind of stories I have found that I prefer that type of publishing.

This leads me to something I forgot in the INTRO to the first chapter.. givin' ya'll some tips about what you should definitely be reading and doing these days.. Not that most of you care, or even read the INTRO, but I'll do it anyway. I'm having a crappy Christmas and this gives me something to do at least.

Nifty Stories To Read

• Justin's Dark Angel *****

Great story. One of the most mysterious ones

in the celeb section (I love mystery).

Beautifully written in a very different style

that enhances the very special mood of the

story. Read it, now!

• NSYNC - Lance n JC *****

Oooooh!! Sooo romantic! Love, love, LOVE that

story. giggles uncontrollably :D

• When U Say Nothing At All *****+

Very, very good story. It is also one of the

few stories in this section that has a definite

ending. Otherwise, the stories published here

tend to go on and on like soap-operas. It's a

must-read!

• Ryan and Lance ****

Mmmm.. Good story and also the story that

inspired me to post Ghosts Of Christmas in

short chapters.

• Salvaged Grace ****

Oooh! Scary! One of those lovely supernatural

stories. Very well thought through. Immensely

interesting.

• N SYNC And The Vamps *****

Another supernatural story. One of my favorites.

• Busta *****

The most original boy-band fanfic I've ever come

across. Soooo much fun! Absolutely fabulous!

there are more, of course, but they seem to have vanished

from my memory right now... next time perhaps.

Things To Do

• SING!

Even if you're no good at it, sing simply because

it's FUN!

• Enjoy the sunshine - even when you cannot see it.

Songs To Listen To

• Cher: If I Could Turn Back Time / The Shoop Shoop Song

• Celine Dion: Power Of The Dream / Le Memoire D'Abraham

• N SYNC: God Must Have Spent.. / Love's In Our Hearts On Christmas Day

• Dolly Parton: Hard Candy Christmas / Straight Talk

----------- Chapter II:

Flames Of Transition

They all ignored him. He was at the traditional Christmas party with his family and they all ignored him. He staggered around in some kind of haze. Was he drunk? Staggering around with blurred vision and no recollection of what has happened in the last ... oh gosh, he didn't even know how much he didn't remember. That could be a strong indication that he was indeed quite, quite stoned. He, James Lance Bass, was officially drunk out of his mind.

And no one was paying any attention to him.

He just wished they would at least acknowledge him.

If an unknown drunkard had crashed the party they would surely have thrown him out. Lance, however, they just ignored. He was gay and they didn't want to recognize him as a family member. Not even when he was completely plastered did they even care to look at him. Not even glare at him or yell obscenities.

Nothing. As far as they were concerned, he was no one.

He tried to find the exit. He spotted it somewhere far away and moved towards it. Actually, it was more like he floated towards it. He had no idea how he did that but it didn't bother him too much. He was stoned. Quite stoned.

As if on cue, all the people at the party turned to stare at him. He stopped floating and felt more uncomfortable than ever. Yes, he wanted some attention but not this much.

Why were they all staring at him? Why were they staring primarily below his face? Oh no. No, no.

He looked down to find himself completely naked. How did this happen? He didn't know. He did however know that it was extremely embarrassing and he quickly snapped a silver plate off one of the tables and hid as much as he could behind it.

Unfortunately, the silver plate quickly turned into a roasted turkey which dropped to the floor and scurried away.

Lance felt someone tap on his shoulder. "Care for some tea?"

Tea? Who could be offering him tea when he is standing buff naked in front of ..... a lineup of .. Santa Clauses? This was getting too weird. "Tea, sir?" Huh? Tea? Who IS that?!

Someone shook him lightly and suddenly he found himself in his hotel room, sweating in bed. The room was dark. He felt someone's hand on his shoulder. 'Must be one of the other guys,' he thought.

Lance slowly sat up and looked towards the person who had awoken him. There in front of him stood a tall man with a teacup in one hand, his head in his other hand, and a boiling teapot on his shoulders. 'Oooookaaay.. I'm still dreaming,' was the first coherent thought to enter the blond singer's mind after the initial, and quite considerable, shock.

"Strange dream," he muttered while turning to look around the room.

"The way you are perspirating it would seem so, sir," the decapitated one spoke up calmly, "Care for some tea?"

Lance turned slowly to look at the other man again. 'This is a dream.. isn't it? Must be.. But.. it sure seems awfully clear for a dream..'

The head spoke up again. "I assure you, sir. This is not a dream.." He reached over and pinched Lance's cheek forcefully. Lance let out a startled shriek before turning completely speechless. He just sat there, staring at the headless man. He needed something to drink. "Tea sir?" the head said.

Not very strong, but something to drink none the less. He took the cup and downed the tea immediately. He looked up in hopes that the man would have disappeared or at least turned anatomically correct but his uninvited guest was still as decapitated as ever.

No, not nearly strong enough.

Lance felt ready to pass out just as he heard a deafening roar from the other end of his room. At that moment he got his wish and the other man simply vanished before his eyes. Mere seconds afterwards, the opposite wall exploded and a wall of fire came rushing towards him.

"Damn" was the last words this young southerner managed to get out before the fire reached him.

He felt his skin being ripped from his flesh. The blood in his veins boiling and his internal organs ceasing to function, one by one.

Then there was darkness. A cold and terribly lonely darkness.

He was falling.

Meanwhile, in the mechanical bowels of the Crester Palace, or the ventilation system if you like it straightforward, our two friends from the alley were crawling about. The young man was ahead of the woman, shining a flashlight into the darkness before him.

"I just love this part of the job!" he exclaimed, "Crawling around like rats in a sewer.."

"I must say though, it's a very dry sewer.." the woman said.

"Yeah, as dry as your sense of humor!" the man laughed.

His partner was just about to retort as the flashlight died.

"What the--?" the man said as he made futile attempts to reactivate the light.

The woman tried her flashlight. "Mine isn't working either. . . well, just keep on movin', we're on a tight schedule!"

"Sure," the man said and continued to crawl forward. Not four seconds later he screamed in surprise as he fell forward over an edge which, to the best of his knowledge, had not been there five seconds ago.

Two milliseconds after he had begun falling he swiftly swirled around, stretched out his arms in the opposite direction of the g-forces below him in the hope that he would find the edge. Several milliseconds later still, he felt slight shift in particle densities and air dynamics that indicated an edge. He moved his hands towards the source of this disturbance and felt the edge against his palm. He grabbed a hold of it and just over one second after he had gone fallen into this strange hole from nowhere, he was hanging there with the short scream of surprise just leaving his lips.

The edge was not the same as the one that had caused his fall. He could feel a wall with his fingertips. Because of this, he drew the natural conclusion that he had grabbed onto an edge somewhere just below the first one. Perhaps half a metre or one metre below.

The woman was at the upper edge a second later, peering down into the darkness.

"Felix!" she hollered.

"You don't have to shout! I'm right underneath you!" a voice came from below.

She tried to activate the flashlight again and to her surprise it worked just fine. After attaching the small light to her headband she directed the beam of light towards Felix. She stretched out for him and he quickly grabbed her hand.

Just as she was about to pull him up, something made a swishing sound as it fell past her into the darkness below. 'This must be some kind of huge shaft or something,' she thought to herself.

"Something grabbed my foot!!"

She felt Felix being pulled down by something. Was it the falling object? She couldn't be sure, but whatever it was it was heavy. She felt herself being slowly pulled over the edge.

Felix felt something grab his foot and drag him down. He looked up to see Alexandra, his partner, having great difficulty holding on to him. 'She's going to fall too!' he thought.

"Let go, Alex!!"

"No! I'll just get a better grip!"

She never let go of anything. He knew that. He would never have to get a Pitbull - he had Alex. That was quite enough.

She was just about to tip over the edge as he made his decision. He lifted his hand and hers out from the wall, turned it around so that her hand faced the hard surface, and slammed her hand into it. She yelped in pain and in that moment of confusion she loosened her grip just enough for Felix to let his hand slip out.

And so, he fell.

Alex hauled herself up to rest safely on the other side of the edge again. She leaned forward and peered into the darkness once again. "Bastard!" she muttered.

Without further a do she got a device out of her backpack, pulled a thin wire from one end of it and attached the little cubic contraption to her belt. She pulled out shaded glasses with extra equipment attached to the bows. With a chord she then connected the glasses to the box in her belt and put them on, pushing them up on her nose with her index finger.

She placed a high-tech suction device on the wall and attached the silvery wire to it. With a final tug at the wire, she jumped into the mysterious dark shaft to begin her quick descent.

Somewhere down there was Felix and the number one priority was always to keep the team intact. The loss of one of them was, as their boss always said, completely unacceptable.

'So HIM to find such a remarkably rude way to be noble,' she thought.

Lance fell, fell, and fell through the darkness. It was a strange fall though. He didn't accelerate one bit. His mind told him that was not possible but it was happening nonetheless. But, he had just gone from being burned to death to defying the laws of physics so he felt no real desire to try to logically analyze his current situation.

The one thing that went through his mind over and over and over again was 'Am I dead? Did I die? . . . Am I falling towards hell?'.

He swirled around from time to time. It felt as if he had been falling forever when he saw a faint light far below him, rapidly growing closer and brighter. 'Hell?'

He heard faint voices. There were people there. He started flailing his arms around and just as he fell past the light with incredible speed his one hand grabbed a hold of something and - he stopped falling.

He was holding onto someone's ankle. Maybe he would be all right after all.

No such luck this time. He soon felt considerable gravitational forces tugging at his body. The person above him would fall as well. Might as well let go.

Just as Lance was about to loose his grip of the ankle, he found himself falling again, still holding on to the unknown individual above him. Startled, he let go and was alone again, but not for long.

Felix fell and, like Lance had before him, he noticed the lack of acceleration. Before he had time to contemplate this though, he stopped falling.

Inserted into the wall of the approximately four metres in diameter cylindrical black shaft were a ring of elliptical bright lights. Felix quickly drew the conclusion that these strange lights somehow counteracted gravity and made this particular section of the mysterious 'black hole' a place where 'fallers' such as himself could float around peacefully in zero-G. However, what the purpose of this floating could be was as shrouded in mystery as the purpose of the falling, or for that matter the whole contraption.

Before he had had any more time to consider these questions, he turned to his left and was surprised to see another young man floating in midair beside him.

It took a few milliseconds for Felix to figure out who this surprising new acquaintance was. The spiky hair, the nearly white skin, the green eyes, body frequently engaging in straining physical activities. His mouth is open. Ah, yes. Very well developed vocal chords.

"Mr. Bass, I presume?" Felix said, stretching out his right hand, "Fancy meeting you here.."

The other man just stared at him with his mouth hanging open. 'Hmm.. That face gives new meaning to the word 'bewildered'..' Felix thought.

"You ARE Mr. Bass, right?" he said, still no response, "James Lance Bass of NSYNC fame? IMPOOFU as you Internet screen-name? Bass singer? Called Scoop? Stealth?"

No reply. Still that stupid face. Felix waved his hand in front of the unresponsive one's eyes. "Hey! HEY! Hellooooooo!?"

Finally, Lance snapped to. "Oh! Yeah.. Hi!" He took Felix's hand and shook it. "I'm Lance!"

"Yeah, I think even the walls know that by now.. I'm Felix! Nice to meet ya!"

With a very suspicious look and tone of voice, Lance said "What.. are you doing here?"

"Ooh, just hangin' around!" Felix replied chipperly as he stretched out and put his hands behind his head.

"Ehm.. What am I doing here?" Lance said, still as confused as ever.

Felix turned his head slightly too look at Lance with a look that seemed to say simply 'Duh?!'.

"Not enjoying the fact that at least you've stopped falling?" he said plainly.

Lance sighed. "You have no idea where we are, do ya?"

Felix leaned back again with a carefree smile. "Absolutely no idea what so ever!" he said happily.

"And you don't care?!" Lance asked, mildly shocked.

"No. Alex is already on her way down to rescue us so I'm just going to enjoy this little break as much as I can!" He looked at Lance's confused face and thought it best to explain. "Alex is my partner. She and I were .. hmm.. breaking into the Crester Palace when suddenly I fell into this hole and you came along and pulled me further down. She's not too far above us and she's got excellent climbing equipment.."

Lance let out a sigh of relief. "And I thought I was falling towards Hell!" He laughed weakly.

This got Felix's immediate attention. He looked at Lance and said "Now why on Earth would you think that??"

Lance squirmed a bit and mumbled something unintelligible.

Felix quickly searched through all facts he could access about James Lance Bass in the hope of finding a hint as to what the answer might be. Three seconds later he blurted out "Ah, I see, you're a Southern Baptist and you thought you were going to hell", he studied Lance briefly and the young singer could almost feel Felix's eyes seeing right into his very being, "because . . you're gay..," Felix finished, knowing he had found the answer.

Lance looked utterly shocked and stared at Felix. "Wha-- How d-- I mean.. I'm not--" he stammered.

"Gay? Of course you're gay! Do I look like an idiot??"

Lance just continued to stare.

"On second thought, ya don't have to answer that.." Felix added. After a moment of silence, Felix spoke up again. He was now completely serious. The joking and carefree Felix had been replaced by much more mature and caring version in just a few seconds. "Do you wish you weren't gay?" he asked.

Lance inhaled deeply. "God, yes."

"You don't have to bring Him into this talk, a simple 'yes' would have been quite sufficient!" Felix muttered before continuing, "Now let's set th--"

Felix was rudely interrupted by Lance.

"Do you believe in God?" he asked.

"Huhn? . . Depends on which one your referring to.." Felix said, clearly annoyed.

"The Christian one, of course.."

"Still depends . . but to answer your question - yes, but not as you might expect and the nature of that answer still depends on which one and which aspect you're referring to.. I believe in a higher power but I don't belong to any religion but my own.."

Lance was only slightly satisfied with this answer and was about to continue the discussion as Felix steered back to the original one.

"But back to you, Mr. Bass.." He gracefully moved his weightless body so that he was floating about one foot above the fair-haired singer. "Gay is not What you are," he clasped Lance's head with his strong yet slender hands and stared into those green eyes, "it is WHO you are! Get it?"

Lance merely grunted. Felix wasn't sure if he should take that as a yes or a no but before he had time to investigate further, Lance spoke up again.

"You can't tell anyone!" he sounded scared, "I mean, you're not going to, are you??"

Felix let out a loud laugh which only managed to confuse Lance further.

"Lance, trust me, in my line of business we tend to stay as far away from the press as humanly, or superhumanly, possible!" he assured the green eyed one.

"Superhumanly?"

"Let's sing a song!" Felix said, now back to his former carefree self and completely ignoring Lance's question.

"A song??"

"Yeah, one of Cher's hits!"

"One of Cher's hits??"

"The Shoop Shoop Song!"

"The Shoop Shoop Song??"

"Is there an echo in here?"

". . Is there an echo in here??" Lance replied with a smirk and the both burst out laughing. If sentient, the walls would probably have found the two boys most obnoxious but luckily these walls were as dead as most walls in our dimension. The walls in the 64th dimension though, that's a whole other story. Those walls have even formed a Union to help protect them against obnoxious beings and creaking doors.

When their laughter finally died down, Felix started singing in a deep and very powerful voice.

"DOES he love me I wanna know, HOW can I TELL if he loves me SO?" he began.

"Is it in his eyes?" Lance sang with a smile that seemed ready to crack his face in two. They continued the song, both having a hard time trying not to laugh .. too much.

"It's in his kiss, that's where it is, oohoohh, it's in his kiss" they sang as they neared the end of the song. Suddenly, a third voice was added to this spontaneous arrangement. From the darkness above them, a beautiful female voice answered "that's where it is Yehah!"

Lance was so startled he stopped singing but Felix continues, backed up by Alex who descended into the dim circle of light. The song ended and she decided to introduce herself. Meanwhile, Felix moved over to Lance's side again.

"Hi there! I'm Alex! Nice to meet you Mr. Bass!" she smiled, "And I'm here to rescue you two goofballs!"

Lance was once again utterly confused. "How come you both know my name just like that?" he asked them.

"Well, you see.." Felix began to explain "we're worse than twins really, we--"

At that very moment, half of the lights in the circle, the ones nearby Lance, were turned off and not a second later Lance plummeted once again into the darkness below. He fell in silence, too startled to make even the slightest sound.

Felix, however, remained floating and turned to look down into the mysterious darkness. "Damn" he muttered.

Alex pulled her partner towards the wall and attached a wire to his belt.

"We need to climb up" she said, grimly determined, "we have a job to do!"

"You can climb up if you want to," Felix said as he detached himself from the wire again, "I'm going," he pushed out from the wall and received enough kinetic energy to move through the zero-G field, "DOOOOOWWN!!" he shouted as he fell into the darkness below and disappeared.

"Aaargh!" Alex growled "I am SO going to kill him!"

The reply came almost instantaneously. "You'll do nothing of the sort young lady!" the voice said - a voice only she could hear. "I'm not paying you to kill valuable company assets, BUT I'm not paying either of you to go chasing cute boy-band members either so you get down there and find Mr. Hyper-A NOW!"

"Did you think I would do anything BUT what you just suggested?"

"No. You're the responsible one. I just felt like ranting! NOW MOOOVE!!"

Alex quickly resumed her descent.

"His nobility is REALLY getting on my nerves today!" she muttered as she vanished into the darkness.

Somewhere between major dimensions we find a huge underground room which looks like a cross between a sewer and an old dungeon. The floor looks some kind of indoors swamp and at least half of the ceiling is missing in favor of a big pitch black cavity, seemingly the end of some huge shaft.

A blond youth suddenly appears from out of the darkness. He falls face down into the 'swamp' and grunts in pain.

Moments later, a tall man dressed in a cloak as black as the darkness above him walks up to the young man lying on what could possibly pass for a floor. He hunches down to look at the blond. The young man slowly raises his mud-covered face and tries to focus on the cloaked one.

"Ah, you're conscious.. good.." Yerad said, "then I guess I should be a good host and welcome you.." He stood up slowly, stretching out his hand in an offer to help his guest up.

"Welcome to your appointment with Destiny, Mr. Carter!"

ToBeContinued

That's it for this time. Well, not quite. I have decided to try to write a new song for each chapter I publish. Sometimes I'll incorporate it into the story and sometimes, like now, I'll publish it at the end.

Later on, I plan to make digital arrangements and recordings of the melodies and publish them as MIDI files on my site but for now you'll have to settle for just the lyrics. :)

------- 'Falling Destiny' by Andreas K N, January 2000

I am Falling

I don't know where I am Don't know where I'm going

Or even Where I'm coming from

Don't know Who I am What I want Why am I falling? Is it something I did wrong?

Or is it me Just me? Am I not allowed to be

Me

I am Fa- Fa- Falling Don't know where I'm going

Tell me who I am Am I not allowed to be?

Is that My falling destiny?

I am Falling

I don't know where I am Don't know where I'm going

Please show me Where I'm coming from

Is it something I did wrong?

Am I not allowed to be?

Is that My falling destiny?

Is that My falling destiny?

I am Falling

Falling -------

If you read this, PLEASE email me and tell me what you think of the story or the song, or both. It doesn't have to be much. Just a couple of sentences would be nice. :D

I LOVE FEEDBACK! ..... Now you know that, in case you hadn't figured it out already. Email: an@altavista.net

Have an Absolutely Fabulous day!!

/ AKN

-------------------------------------- Copyright 2000 Andreas K N Characters from XYXX(TM) are copyright 2000 po'tolo Productions --------------------------------------