{"id":4035,"date":"2010-12-24T09:33:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-24T14:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=4035"},"modified":"2010-12-24T09:33:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-24T14:33:00","slug":"the-night-after-christmas-an-advent-ghost-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=4035","title":{"rendered":"The Night After Christmas: An Advent Ghost Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wayne\u2019s car died downtown while a frizzy-headed kid watched. Three sickly children stopped playing under a large electric snowflake when he walked by, and a pale, stained baby, rolling on the sidewalk, began wailing. Now he runs past the shuttered tourist-shop windows, seeing shadows in doorways, twisted faces in car windows, and figures from the corners of his eyes.  The rumor can\u2019t be true&#8211;that children, murdered by Herod, haunt the streets tonight seeking abusers. Broken sidewalk catches his foot and cracks his knee like a walnut. <\/p>\n<p>Then they come. <\/p>\n<p>Pallid boys emerge from the cracks: grabbing, pulling, twisting, choking.<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks for Loren Eaton for organizing this <a href=\"http:\/\/isawlightningfall.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/advent-ghosts-2010-stories.html\">shared storytelling event.<\/a> See his post for a list of other stories.)<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wayne\u2019s car died downtown while a frizzy-headed kid watched. Three sickly children stopped playing under a large electric snowflake when he walked by, and a pale, stained baby, rolling on the sidewalk, began wailing. Now he runs past the shuttered tourist-shop windows, seeing shadows in doorways, twisted faces in car windows, and figures from the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=4035\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Night After Christmas: An Advent Ghost Story<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[105,981,1064],"class_list":["post-4035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-social-media","category-creative-writing","tag-advent-ghost-stories","tag-flash-fiction","tag-ghosts"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}