Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (20 page)

You wouldn’t expect them to be chums, would you? The man who spoils kids and the one that brings them down to Hell. But they laughed together. Old Nick had a booming voice that crashed over the water and exploded on the roofs around our apartment building, splashing the air around us with his mirth. I thought the whole world must be able to hear him laugh. Krampus, though, his laugh was quieter, darker, a low chuckle that made its way into the cracks and the corners of the world. It was the laugh that made you stop, look around, convince yourself that you were alone and safe.

I read about Krampus, when I was around nine or 10. Just after I’d realized who I was watching tramp around on the canals. The stories say that he carried around a wicker sack. What bullshit. He was always dressed impeccably, like the richest banker in Amsterdam. He wouldn’t have been caught
dead
carrying a wicker basket around. He didn’t need it, anyway.

I hated them both. They scared me when I was a child, and shouldn’t they have? It was obvious that no one else saw them. I often saw beggars and drunks pass them in the street with less notice than they’d give to a piece of rubbish. No one else ever mentioned the two men, not even my friends who sometimes sat with me in the attic when they were visiting and Mama’s boyfriend of the week came by. I figured it out pretty quickly. I didn’t talk about them, I pretended that I didn’t see them. I
wished
I didn’t see them.

I got my wish when I moved out of Mama’s apartment. They disappeared from view, and didn’t reappear for a long, long time. Maybe that’s why I was so curious when I caught sight of the tall one again. I had wondered for years whether I had hallucinated everything, whether I was one step away from singing to the canals and cringing in the straightjacket. I was
relieved
when I saw him. I guess that’s why things happened the way they did.

That night I saw him, the night you’re all so keen to know about, I only saw him because I’d gone out of my way. I’d had a fight—another fight. I was fired, this time. You people do know what that means, don’t you? I mean, can gods even get fired? Anyway, I was. I worked under a sous chef and I was sick of his petty rules and thunderous temper. When it came to his word against mine, I was out on my ass, no big shock there. So I packed up my knives and I took the long route home through the snowfall. I’ve always liked walking in the snow.

I stormed along, shivering more with anger than with cold. Swearing to myself from time to time, going over the whole spectacle again and again in my head. I let my feet do all the thinking for me, and bowed my head, and just kept going. By the time I noticed him, we were nearly touching noses. I started and stared into eyes as blue as the heart of a flame. Then I hopped out of the way and even said, “Excuse me,” in the nicest tone I could manage. He just kept going. No noise, no pause, nothing. I turned after him, maybe with half a mind to shout something. All those thoughts were torn away like snowflakes in the wind as I turned to stare after his retreating back.

The tall thin man with midnight skin, with black horns, with cloven hooves. The walking myth and icon from my childhood.

Like I said before, I was giddy with relief. I’m not just being fancy here, so you can stop rolling your eyes—you, over there in the toga. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like, to think you might need institutionalization. To think you’re so crazy you can’t trust what you see, what you feel, what you hear. Of course you don’t think that. In your perfect little world, you’re always right. But
I
was glad, in a way. Glad that I was sane, that he was real, even though I remembered his laugh and how it could chill me.

I should have been smart enough to stay away from him, I know that. But I was overwhelmed by all of those different emotions: relief and elation, anger and self-righteousness, and even curiosity. I used to watch that man go round and round with his fat friend, trading jokes and drinking booze so strong it could fuel a barge. This time, I noticed that Nick wasn’t beside him, or even close behind, nor did Krampus walk with that relaxed, meandering gait that he used when taking a stroll with his friend. He walked with purpose now. With a mission. I suddenly cared about what he did when he was working, about where he went and who he
really
was. And I know I shouldn’t have, but I started to follow him.

At first I was quiet about it, I didn’t want to get caught. I couldn’t help thinking about those goat horns, about how they’d feel, cold and snow-kissed, sliding through my windpipe. But, well, maybe he was deaf. Or maybe that same power that lets me see his kind also kept him from seeing me. When I figured out that he didn’t notice me, I got a lot bolder. I just walked behind him, with my eyes fixed firmly on his back. It was perfect. Nobody else saw him and passers-by assumed that I had a purpose, a goal of some kind. In reality I couldn’t think past that figure in front of me. All that angry energy that had led me to this meeting, it had turned into some ridiculous, childish excitement. I could hardly keep from skipping, hopping or tilting my head back and whooping out to the world. I could have done it, I guess. He wouldn’t have seen me, and to everyone else I would have been just another weirdo.

I followed him down side streets that twisted and curved. He wasn’t at all the jovial creature that I’d seen passing the bottle to Old Nick. He didn’t laugh, didn’t booze, and though he seemed to move with no sense of destination, there was definitely something of a purpose to his steps. I followed him for around 15 minutes before his pattern took on any sort of meaning.

We’d come far from the canals and wandered to a dirty street lined with graffitied brown brick apartments. Krampus stepped delicately around cans and old burger wrappings that created little hills under the snow. I tramped through them.

He stopped at the gate of a small apartment complex, then opened it and slipped through, so quickly that I didn’t have time to follow. Even though I hadn’t seen a key in his hand, the gate was firmly locked and did nothing more than rattle when I pushed at it. Krampus paused at the noise, and glanced back, and for a moment my blood turned to snow. I was certain he’d seen me, or heard me. But he only turned, and walked away from the gate and into one of the apartment buildings.

I was worried that he lived there, that I had followed him all this way for nothing. I hung around for a while, hoping that he’d come out, that someone else might go in, that no one would call the police on my loitering, that I hadn’t just hallucinated another episode with the Devil-Man.

When you’re waiting for something, time always seems too slow, so that you can have about a million paranoid thoughts per minute. So even though I was convinced it had been an hour, I can’t have been waiting long. I hadn’t yet pulled myself away when he came back and opened up the gate.

He herded five dazed children in front of him, out of the apartment complex and onto the street. I’d say they were in the five to seven age range, if I had to guess. But I haven’t had kids, and I was an only child. So don’t sue me if I’m wrong.

As soon as I saw those kids, all the hairs on the back of my arms stood up. On end. They just looked… wrong. Like they were all sick or doped or something. They swayed like they were off-balance, and their eyes were glazed. Weirdest of all, they just
stood
there. Maybe that doesn’t impress you too much, but anyone who ever observed anything about kids knows that they act like baby elephants with ADHD. They don’t stand around like they’re in a trance, and they don’t keep quiet, especially when there’s nothing interesting to be looking at. And believe me, there’s nothing of note anywhere in that neighborhood. No, they were all entranced by the shadowy figure that stepped out from the apartment gate. When he started to walk down the street, they all followed, like little ducks in a row after their great horned mama duck.

If any of you cared about humans, about kids, you wouldn’t be wondering why I followed him after that. I
knew
something was gonna happen with those kids. So there we went, down each street. He must have done something to make the kids invisible, too, because no one wanted to know what a little troop of screamers was doing wandering around in the middle of the night. He never looked left or right, or even behind to make sure that they were all with him. He just walked, and walked. Every so often he’d stop, disappear inside a building, and pick up some more. I could never get in after him, not until the last. He was always too quick, slipping around the side of the gate and letting it lock after him. But finally I got my chance.

He had 14 kids when he moved in on the last. Yes, 14 exactly. I counted, I knew it was important. That fifteenth kid, he lived on the bottom of one of the old apartment buildings, most in need of renovation. Those old ones didn’t have gates, anyone could wander in. The window was open, and I could hear him screaming at his mother. It was a raw, angry sound, without words, and he wouldn’t stop no matter what she tried.

Well, the big guy stopped, and cocked his head, and listened. Behind him 14 children swayed in the snow. They didn’t cry or complain, they didn’t even shiver. And then there was me.

I don’t think that he intended to get any more kids that night, but when he heard that one, he made a quick decision. He swung the front door wide open and went inside. This time, I was ready for him. I caught the edge of the door and swung round it. It didn’t even double back, not that he’d checked. But I was in.

He walked right up to the apartment door and rapped, three times. The sound was crisp and clean and loud, and even normal people must have heard it, because soon after I could hear footsteps approaching the door. Krampus put his hand in his pocket, then drew it back out as a closed fist. When the door jerked open and the mother’s mousy, dirty face peered out from behind the rape chain, Krampus brought his fist up to the level of her eyes, uncurled his strong fingers, and blew something from his hand into her face with a powerful huff.

She tried to twist away, but she wasn’t quick enough. A strange, shining powder settled over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, on her eyelashes and around her thin lips. Some must have gotten into her eyes or nose, maybe her mouth. I couldn’t see that much in the thin strip between the frame and the door. But he managed to get her somehow, because her face went slack and her eyes dulled, and she turned away from the door without closing it. Without saying anything, or hearing anything.

I could tell when she picked up the kid. His voice rose and he started wailing and beating at her. His fists thumped against her clothes, her bare skin. She just ignored him, though, and she came right up to the door and undid the rape chain and Krampus blew his strange powder in the kid’s face, and suddenly the kid got all docile, like a marionette without strings. He slid from his mother’s limp hands and stood at the door, waiting for his new master. He followed Krampus just like all the others, out the door and down the street in a neat little line with me at the end.

I’m not sure why I didn’t stop things right there. I guess I could have. But I’m no cold-blooded killer. I was horrified. Maybe a little fascinated. But I wasn’t angry, yet.

We traipsed along for another 20 minutes, until we came to an abandoned building. Maybe it used to hold one bankrupt firm or another, or maybe it had always looked that way—uninteresting, worthless. Safe for Krampus. All the glass in the bottom row of windows was gone, the rooms inside were dark and empty. I doubt the door security worked, but Krampus didn’t even try. He went around the corner to a side door and opened it without a key. He had to hold it open until all the kids could get through, and I managed to squeeze in beside the seventh.

We found ourselves in a gray service stairwell, lit only by the dirty fluorescent lamps that illumine all such stairwells. He started to descend, and we followed. Down and down we went, floor after floor, silently trooping. When we started, my fleet slapped and echoed so loudly in the concrete space that my fear of discovery was renewed. But Krampus still didn’t notice. To him, I simply didn’t exist.

I can’t say how far down we went. It was a long way, it felt like forever. By the time we got to the bottom, my feet didn’t echo on the stairs anymore. I didn’t make any sound, actually. I couldn’t even hear myself breathe. We finally came to a door, the only one I’d seen on the stairwell since we’d entered the building. Krampus opened it, and held it open as his little captives shambled through. I squeezed in with the seventh child again. I think I jostled him a little bit. He stumbled and my whole body flushed with wild paranoia. And he looked at me, I swear he looked right at me—and through me, to whatever was behind.

I guess this is where we get into the big problems between me and you, isn’t it? I suppose you would have just left them there.

Someone told me once that people didn’t think of Hell as a hot place until Dante’s
Inferno
became a classic. But Dante only wrote of Purgatory as a fiery pit. Where everyone got their sins burned away.

This was not purgatory. It was as cold as ice, down in Krampus’ lair. Everything was grey, as if carved from stone—what kind of stone sits under Amsterdam? And I could see, even though there was no light. It was like the walls themselves pushed out their grayness until that was all you could look at. That, and the kids. And the cages.

I don’t care how bad they’d been. Who does that to kids? Their cages lined a long, straight path, made from the same gray material as the rest of this world, round like eggs, or cocoons. The cages had been fashioned into bars, so that they could see out. So that they could see what stalked toward them, past cage after cage where the shivering brats huddled together, three or four cramped in where even one would have had to stoop. I guess his powder wore off eventually, because these weren’t little zombies anymore. They cried, some loudly, some softly. A few screamed, until they saw him coming. Then their voices seemed to fail them, and they began to shake. Some of them pissed themselves. And I could see them close their eyes as he went past, twist their lips into silent prayers. What were they thinking? Who were they praying to?