Christmas with the Family

“Yeah mom, I know I don’t have a Great Uncle Carl, yet here he is, standing in my living room, with enough of our families DNA tests to convince me,” I said into my phone, glancing back into the living room to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating the man claiming to be my Dad’s uncle. “If you want to look further into it, then be my guest.” 

“Just be careful Alex. I’m going to ask your Grandma to check if she’s ever heard of a brother that was separated from her at birth,” she responded, with a not-so-secret worried tone in her voice. “Send me a picture of him so I can show the family to see if anyone recognizes him.” 

“Don’t worry about me, mom, I’ll be fine,” I told her, hiding my own concerns. “I’ll see you tomorrow at Grandpa’s house, okay?” I hung up the phone and walked back into the living room to continue learning about Carl’s wild history and how he managed to find his way back to my family.

“Ah, you’re back! I was beginning to think that maybe you had left me alone here and ran away,” Carl explained. That joke wouldn’t have mattered to me normally, but it was the fifth time he had made a comment in the vein of running away, which was slightly disconcerting, but I had no other reason to be worried about anything. “So, what did your mother have to say about me?” he asked.

I sat down on the couch next to him and explained, “Well, actually, she wants a picture of the two of us together to show Grandma. You know, to jog her memory and make sure she remembers you,” I pulled out my phone and took a selfie of the two of us sitting next to each other to send to my mom. “So, out of all of our family, how did you end up at my house?”

He had already mentioned parts of the story before, but I wanted more details. It was weird to be dealing with a strange man claiming to be related to me, and I would be a lot less suspicious if he gave me in-depth answers to all of my questions. So far, he had passed all of my tests, giving me solid reasoning and explanations for all of his claims, but I had a nagging doubt in my mind telling me that something wasn’t right with the whole situation. 

“Well, I do live just down the street from this apartment building, so naturally, when the time came to actually reach out to the family and try to get welcomed back in, I decided to visit you,” he explained. “I’ve also found that younger people tend to be more trusting and willing to listen to people’s stories.” 

It actually did make sense to me, which did a lot to ease my nerves. He had mentioned earlier that he lived down the street from me, joking that it really is a small world. It also made sense that he would come to me over any of my older relatives, as they were all very quick to distrust someone. I, myself, was very trusting and would, like he said, hear anyone and everyone out before making any sort of judgement call on them. “Now, why Christmas Eve of all days? Why not wait until after the holidays?”

He smiled and said, “Well people tend to be more forgiving over the holidays, don’t they? Sixty years apart from the rest of the family without any attempt at contact doesn’t seem to me like a good start to a relationship. I figured that maybe if I came to you on Christmas, maybe you guys would accept me into the family and welcome me back with open arms.” 

Something about his answer seemed off. It couldn’t have only been sixty years that he had been lost from the family. Earlier, he had claimed that he was my Grandma’s younger brother, who was put up for adoption immediately after his birth. He said that she was only a year or two old at that point, so there was no way she would remember. The glaring flaw in that story: my Grandma is 77. 

Maybe he had just messed up on the number and rounded down, but it was too big an error to be disregarded. Immediately, I went back to not believing his story. Yet, for some reason, I allowed him to keep explaining himself to me.

“Would you excuse me for a moment? I need to use your restroom,” he told me and stood up to walk away.

“Yeah, go ahead, bathroom is down the hall on your left,” I told him, watching him walk away. 

The second he was out of the room, I pulled out my phone and texted my mom asking if she could hurry up on getting the results back. I decided that I needed to calm down and stop freaking out over nothing, so I started scrolling through the news. For some reason, I had always found reading all of the headlines very relaxing and soothing. As I went through, nothing stood out to me, just the normal “Trade war between U.S. and China intensifies”, “Killer still on the loose”, and “10 ways to have the perfect Christmas”. After reading through about twenty headlines, I began to come down from the worried state I was in before. 

As I put my phone away, I saw the folder containing all of the DNA information Carl had brought with him lying on the table. I grabbed it and began to flip through it, just to see how much was actually shown in these types of things. As I suspected, I understood none of it. It was a bunch of complex graphs and tables that didn’t make any sense to me. 

After I flipped past all of the DNA information, I found sheets containing information on our family that he had gathered on his own. There was a sheet with about twenty five addresses on it, most of which I recognized as the addresses of relatives. Behind that paper was a bunch of pictures. There were a few pictures that he had found on my mom’s FaceBook of the whole family from past family events, which he was clearly using to identify different members of the family. 

What I found next was somewhat disturbing to me. Behind the four pictures of the family as a group were numerous pictures of just me. There were pictures of me as a child, as well as pictures of me from High School Prom. A couple of the pictures looked like they were from only a few months ago. Aside from those pictures, there were no others. Why would he have that many pictures of me by myself? 

I closed the folder and put it back on the table, internally freaking out. I pulled out my phone and texted my mom telling her that she might be right about Carl. I stood up and moved around the room, in an effort to calm my nerves and ensure that Carl couldn’t sneak up on me. 

Before I knew it, he was back in the living room saying, “This is a really nice apartment, Alex. I’m surprised that someone as young as you can afford a place like this.” I hadn’t heard the toilet flush before he came back, so I assumed that he had lied about what he was doing.

“Oh yeah, well my mom paid for it when I first moved in, until I had enough to start covering it myself,” I tried my best to hide the anxiety and panic I was starting to feel. At this point I was less concerned with who he was and more with why he was here.

I really hoped that he wasn’t there to kill me. I don’t know what else he would want, but I really didn’t want to die. Maybe he just wanted to kidnap me and my mom would pay whatever ransom that he wanted and I’d live happily ever after. 

“So, why no roommates? They say it’s dangerous to live alone, don’t they?” he asked, still with a smile on his face. 

“Yeah, I just don’t know anyone that would want to live with me. I guess I never thought that I would be in a situation where I would need one,” I was telling the truth, I picked this apartment because it was in a safe neighborhood where everyone felt safe and no one ever felt in any way threatened by the potential for a break-in. Though I don’t really think you could call this a break-in, I had invited Carl right into my home. 

“Well I doubt that you’ll end up in any trouble. And even if you do, you seem like a tough kid,” He said with a small laugh. The way he said kid sent shivers down my spine. I was an adult who owned their own apartment and lived by themselves. He had no right to call me a kid, especially with that terrifying tone. 

My phone rumbled in my pocket and I wasted no time pulling it out and answering the call. It was my mom. “Sorry Carl, it’s my mom, I’ll be back in a minute.” I hurried towards the bathroom as my mom began explaining what was going on. 

“After I showed the picture to your aunts, uncles, and grandparents, I realized that no one was going to miraculously remember him. So, I started looking into him online, and I found out that the name he gave you is completely made up. Carl Bungel doesn’t exist.” At this point my heart was pounding out of my chest. “Then, your Uncle Joseph said that he thought he recognized the man from somewhere and started doing his own research. All of a sudden, Aunt Claire started freaking out and screaming and showed us a news article with a picture of that man attached to it. The article was about a serial killer going around nearby cities killing people, and he’s currently their number one suspect. His real name is Daniel Kingston.” 

“So am I just supposed to die then, mom?” I was on the verge of tears. I felt absolutely powerless, like there was no hope. I was going to die in my own home. On Christmas Eve.

“No! Honey, the police on their way to you now. Do your best to keep him distracted. I love you Alex.” All of a sudden, there was a knocking at the bathroom door.

“Hello? Alex are you coming out? I was wondering if you could make us some tea?” Carl, or Daniel, whatever his name is, called to me.

“I gotta go mom, I love you,” I hung up the phone and took a long, deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I felt like I was about to collapse and die right there. All I had to do was go out there and keep him talking until the police got there, then I would be safe. “Yeah, I’ll be out there in a second,” I called back to Daniel.

I walked out of the bathroom and over to the kitchen. He was in there rifling through my cabinets, looking for something. He turned towards me and explained, “Sorry, I just have such a hankering for tea and I wanted to see if you had any.” 

“Yeah, tea should be in the top cabinet above the microwave. I’ll start the water boiling,” I kept my eyes on him as he reached for the top shelf. Only once I was sure that he was completely distracted did I begin to move towards the sink. I filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove-top. 

“Ah, I love herbal tea,” He told me. He put the box of teabags next to me on the counter. “What’s your favorite type of tea, Alex?” It was terrifying to think that he was going to kill me, but he was going through a normal conversation like we were lifelong buddies. I sat there for a moment before responding, pushing away those thoughts and focusing on saving my own life. 

“Well I do like green teas, but my favorite is probably-” I was cut off by a sudden, startling knock at the door. Even though I knew it was likely the police, my heart was still pounding. I was so close to being saved now.

I started to move towards the door but I was stopped by Daniel. He stepped right in front of me, showing very little hostility towards me. Then he smiled at me and said, “Now Alex, I wonder who that could be. Don’t worry, I’ll go tell them to leave us alone. We don’t want someone disrupting this very valuable family time, do we?”

He slowly began walking towards the door as I stood there paralyzed in fear. Every second that it took for him to get to the door felt like an eternity. The police were here and everything was going to be okay.

He looked through the peephole and swiveled to face me, giving me a horrible glare. “Oh Alex, that’s not a very nice gift,” He said, as he began to open the door. Even before he had opened the door he had started to say, “Look officers, everything is fine here, me and my-”  

Before he could finish I heard the shouts. “SIR, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD AND DO AS WE TELL YOU.” I was saved. The police handcuffed him and started escorting him away. As they pulled Daniel, he attempted to turn around and said, “Merry Christmas, Alex. Hope it’s a great one.” But I wasn’t scared anymore. He was powerless. I breathed a sigh of relief. I won.