Krampus: The Yule Lord
Read Krampus: The Yule Lord Online
Authors: Brom
Tags: #Fiction, #Legends & Mythology, #Contemporary, #Fairy Tales, #Folk Tales, #Fantasy, #Horror
KRAMPUS
the
YULE LORD
This one is for my wife and favorite Yuletide pixie, Laurielee
Contents
Chapter Fourteen - Dark Spirits
Chapter Fifteen - Christmas Demon
Chapter Seventeen - God’s Wrath
S
anta Claus . . .
How vile your name upon my tongue. Like acid, hard to utter without spitting. Yet I find myself capable of speaking little else. It has become my malediction, my profane mantra.
Santa Claus . . . Santa Claus . . . Santa Claus.
That name, like you, like your Christmas and all its perversions, is a lie. But then you have always lived in a house of lies, and now that house has become a castle, a fortress. So many lies that you have forgotten the truth, forgotten who you are . . . forgotten your true name.
I have not forgotten.
I will always be here to remind you that it is not Santa Claus, nor is it Kris Kringle, or Father Christmas, or Sinterklaas, and it certainly is not Saint Nicholas. Santa Claus is but one more of your masquerades, one more brick in your fortress.
I will not speak your true name. No, not here. Not so long as I sit rotting in this black pit. To hear your name echo off the dead walls of this prison, why that . . . that would be a sound to drive one into true madness. That name must wait until I again see the wolves chase Sol and Mani across the heavens. A day that draws near; a fortnight perhaps, and your sorcery will at long last be broken, your chains will fall away and the winds of freedom will lead me to you.
I did not eat my own flesh as you had so merrily suggested. Madness did not take me, not even after sitting in this tomb for half a millennium. I did not perish, did not become food for the worms as you foretold. You should have known me better than that. You should have known I would never let that happen, not so long as I could remember your name, not so long as I had vengeance for company.
Santa Claus, my dear old friend, you are a thief, a traitor, a slanderer, a murderer, a liar, but worst of all you are a mockery of everything for which I stood.
You have sung your last ho, ho, ho, for I am coming for your head. For Odin, Loki, and all the fallen gods, for your treachery, for chaining me in this pit for five hundred years. But most of all I am coming to take back what is mine, to take back Yuletide. And with my foot upon your throat, I shall speak your name, your true name, and with death staring back at you, you will no longer be able to hide from your dark deeds, from the faces of all those you betrayed.
I, Krampus, Lord of Yule, son of Hel, bloodline of the great Loki, swear to cut your lying tongue from your mouth, your thieving hands from your wrists, and your jolly head from your neck.
B
OONE
C
OUNTY
,
W
EST
V
IRGINIA
CHRISTMAS MORNING, 2 A.M.
J
esse Burwell Walker prayed that his goddamn truck would make it through at least one more winter before rusting completely in two. The truck, a ’78 primer gray Ford F150, had been left to him by his father after the old man lost his long battle with the black lung. A guitar now hung in the gun rack and the new bumper sticker pasted across the rear window of the camper shell read
WHAT WOULD HANK DO
.
Snow-covered gravel crunched beneath Jesse’s tires as he pulled off Route 3 into the King’s Kastle mobile-home court. Jesse had turned twenty-six about a month ago, a little tall and a little lean, with dark hair and sideburns badly in need of a trim. He drummed his long fingers—good guitar-picking fingers—on the bottle of Wild Turkey cinched between his legs as he rolled by the mobile homes. He drove past a few faded blow-mold Santas and snowmen, then past Ned Burnett’s Styrofoam deer, the one Ned used for target practice. It hung upside down from his kid’s swing set, as though about to be gutted and dressed. Ned had attached a glowing red bulb to its nose. Jesse found that funny the first few times he’d seen it, but since Rudolf had been hanging there since Thanksgiving, the joke was wearing a mite thin. Jesse caught sight of a few sad tinsel trees illuminating a few sad living rooms, but mostly the trailers around King’s Kastle were dark—folks either off to cheerier locations, or simply not bothering. Jesse knew as well as anyone that times were tough all around Boone County, that not everyone had something to celebrate.
Old Millie Boggs’s double-wide, with its white picket fence and plastic potted plants, came into view as he crested the hill. Millie owned the King’s Kastle and once again she’d set up her plastic nativity scene between her drive and the garbage bin. Joseph had fallen over and Mary’s bulb was out, but the little baby Jesus glowed from within with what Jesse guessed to be a two-hundred-watt bulb, making the infant seem radioactive. Jesse drove by the little manger, down the hill, and pulled up next to a small trailer situated within a clump of pines.
Upon leasing the trailer to Jesse, Millie had described it as “the temporary rental,” because, she’d stressed, no one should be living in a cramped-up thing like that for too long. He’d assured her it would only be for a couple of weeks while he sorted things out with his wife, Linda.
That was nearly two years ago.
He switched off the engine and stared at the trailer. “Merry Christmas.” He unscrewed the whiskey’s cap and took a long swig. He wiped his mouth on the back of his jacket sleeve and raised the bottle toward the trailer. “On my way to not giving a shit.”
A single strand of Christmas lights ran along the roof line. Since he’d never bothered to take them down from the previous year, he’d only had to plug them in to join the season’s festivities. Only all the bulbs were burned out, with the exception of a lone red one just above the door. It blinked on, then off, on, and then off—beckoning him in. Jesse didn’t want to go in. Didn’t want to sit on his lumpy, blue-tick mattress and stare at the cheap wood paneling. He had a way of finding faces in the knots and grain of the veneer—sad faces, tortured ones. Inside, he couldn’t pretend, couldn’t hide from the fact that he was spending another Christmas by himself, and a man who spends Christmas by himself was indeed a man alone in the world.
Your wife sure as shit ain’t alone though. Is she?
“Stop it.”
Where’s she at, Jess? Where’s Linda?
“Stop it.”
She’s at
his
house. A nice house. With a nice tall Christmas tree. Bet there’s plenty of gifts under that tree with her name on them. Gifts with little Abigail’s name on them, too.
“Stop it,” he whispered. “Please, just leave it be.”
The light kept right on blinking, mocking him along with his thoughts.
I don’t have to go in there,
he thought
. Can just sleep in the truck bed.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
He kept a bedroll in the camper for just that purpose, mostly for his out-of-town gigs, because honky-tonks didn’t pay a two-bit picker enough to cover both a motel and the gas home. He looked at the snow on the ground. “Too damn cold.” He glanced at his watch; it was early, at least for him. When he played the Rooster, he usually didn’t get home till after four in the morning. He just wasn’t tired or stoned enough to fall asleep yet and knew if he went in now he’d stare and stare at all those faces in the wood.
Sid had closed the Rooster early—not because it was Christmas; Christmas Eve was usually a decent money-maker for Sid. Plenty of lost souls out there who, just like Jesse, didn’t want to face empty living rooms or empty bedrooms—not on Christmas.
Like to shoot the son of a whore that came up with this goddamn holiday,
Jesse thought.
Might be a joyous occasion for folks fortunate enough to have kin to share it with, but for the rest of us sorry souls it’s just one more reminder of how much shit life can make you eat.
Only five or six sad sacks had found their way into the Rooster this night, and most of them only for the free Christmas round that Sid always doled out. Jesse set aside his amp and went acoustic, playing all the usual Christmas classics, but no one cared, or even seemed to be listening, not tonight. Seemed the Ghost of Christmas Past was in the room and they were all staring at their drinks with faraway looks on their faces, like they were wishing they were somewhere and sometime else. And since no one was buying, Sid had called it quits a bit after one in the morning.