The Sleigh on the Cathedral Roof

Listen

The story

A reporter covering Christmas Eve at a snowbound cathedral in a 1940s American town sees a sleigh parked on the roof with reindeer that have no eyes. The radio voice describes the bells going silent as the sleigh turns toward the crowd.

How it begins

It was the coldest Christmas Eve in the history of Harlan Falls, a small town tucked into the mountains of Pennsylvania, where the snow had been falling since the Thursday before and showed no sign of quitting. The roads were buried. The telephone lines sagged like wet laundry. And in the middle of town, the old stone cathedral of Saint Brigid stood with its tall spire lit from below, a single black silhouette against a sky the color of a bruise. You could hear the carolers from three blocks away. You could smell the cinnamon from the church basement, where the ladies of the parish were boiling cider for the…