Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (21 page)

Some of them saw me. Their eyes grew wide, and their mouths stopped moving long enough to form a perfect O. But they didn’t cry out. Maybe they knew instinctively that I wasn’t like him. Just to make sure, I put my finger up to my lips.

I had been afraid before. A little afraid, and shamefully curious. Not so, now. Now I was enraged, enraged enough to kill someone.

I took out my case of knives and picked the biggest one. I’d never stabbed someone, not before him, but I’d done plenty of chopping, hacking, sawing, slicing… you do that, when you’re a cook.

I aimed for the spinal cord. Figured that since he looked… well, almost like the rest of us did, he might have the same weak spots.

I don’t have to tell you exactly how I did it. I don’t really want to think about it. Do you think I’m proud of murdering a demi-god? With those young faces, staring? I’m not like one of your old heroes, I don’t expect songs around the fire. I’m a cook, not a butcher. And giving these kids trauma to carry around for the rest of their lives? Well, they probably already had those. But I don’t doubt I made them worse.

The first time I chopped I got it wrong, I knew it as soon as I swung. It cut through his immaculate suit and hacked into his spine at an angle. He let out a roar like a bull, threw his head back. His sharp horns gleamed in the strange, gloomy light of his lair. If you’d seen those horns like I had, if you’d realized what they might do to you if you weren’t quick enough, you wouldn’t wonder why that cave was a study in scarlet, a butcher’s floor. People do terrible things when they’re terrified. And we don’t like it afterwards, we don’t brag. We try to be calm, cool, for the sake of the kids.

No surprise that they didn’t want to come with me. I found keys in his pocket, after I found his pocket, and eventually the key to the cages. The same old skeleton key for every cage. Not very good security, but a distinctive kind of personality, elegance, antiquity. Like its late owner, I suppose.

They couldn’t bear to look at me, let alone follow me, and I couldn’t blame them. I must have looked like another kind of demon. I left the door propped open when I left, and I climbed up the forever stairway, back to reality. Back to the world. I told myself it was probably best that they didn’t come out behind me. Imagine explaining to a bunch of policemen why I was covered in blood with 30 or so missing kids.

Of course, I didn’t think I’d end up here, either.

So there you are. Can you judge me? Do you have the capacity? Have any of you known fear, compassion, or horror? Do you understand the need to protect lives other than your own? Can gods really empathize with us mere mortals? Or has your power over life, death rendered you so far above it all that you don’t understand me, even now?

Well, cast your judgment, then. I don’t fear it.

* * *

Cheresse Burke lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. In her spare time she reads submissions for Grimdark Magazine, and writes short stories and novels. “The God Killer” is her first published short story.

Twelfth Night of Krampus: “A Krampus Carol”

by Scott Farrell

Inspiration
: Scott loves all sorts of off-beat, quirky ethnic and regional holiday traditions, from Caga Tio to the Viking Sunwheel and, of course, the Krampus. For years, he has diligently maintained a Facebook page called “Americans Who Love Krampus,” despite the fact that many of his friends and family members think celebrating the holidays with songs, decorations, and depictions of a horned demon is a little crazy. Scott will proudly be wearing his “Happy Krampus Day” tee shirt this Christmas morning, just like he does each year.

Santa’s sleigh seemed to have come down in a crash landing, leaving packages scattered all over the lawn. Eight plastic reindeer, freed from their harnesses, were humping one another. Santa himself was face down in a snow bank with his robe hitched up ’round his jolly ol’ bowl full of jelly, and a staff of holly shoved up his keester.

Not even a week into December, and that little bastard who lived on the corner had literally turned Christmas into a wreck.

John Nast ran a hand over his buzz-cut white hair as he shook his head in disgust, surveying the debris of what, just the night before, had been his holiday lawn ornaments. The very same ornaments his late wife, Maggie, had loved so much.

The latest masterpiece in petty vandalism from Chad Brooks, John thought. Somebody’s gotta take charge and bring this to a stop. Drastic measures were needed, and John had a few in mind.

This had been going on for a year now, since last December, when the Brooks family moved into the house on the corner of River Street, three doors down from John’s place. The real estate agent had welcomed them to the neighborhood with a big red Christmas bow on the door, like the beginning of one of those “very special” movies Maggie always got him to sit through on the Hallmark Channel. When Maggie had been diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, he’d lost count of the number of those shows he’d watched to make her happy. Probably hundreds, stuck in one of those damned uncomfortable hospital chairs at her bedside, half hoping she’d fall asleep so he could quietly switch the TV to a Pirates game or a good ol’ war movie. He knew those corny stories about big-city families moving out to farm country and charming the locals were a load of crap, and the arrival of the Brooks trio into this quiet Butler Township neighborhood was proof of that.

They’d pulled up in their minivan, right off the pike from Philadelphia, a rolling demonstration of John’s long-held claim that city parents had no idea how to raise kids. Let them do nothing but watch the boob tube and play their video games, and call it discipline when you give them a “time out.” John would’ve bet that was exactly how things went in the Brooks household.

From the moment they pulled in the driveway he’d spotted the clues. The bread-winner of the family, Arnold, had been making a call on his cell phone even before he’d gotten his seat belt unbuckled. The realtor had mentioned that Mr. Brooks was relocating because he had hired on with a legal firm in Pittsburgh. He was a defense attorney, which meant John had cause to dislike Arnold even before he laid eyes on him. Seeing him in his prissy clothes and his beauty-parlor perfect hair only sealed the deal.

As the van’s doors opened, Arnold’s wife, Katie, had made some kind of sarcastic remark. John was too far away to hear her words, but he could detect the woman’s disapproving attitude in her body language. She went to the back of the van and started unloading the stack of heavy boxes, a job Arnold didn’t even look like he was thinking about helping her with. As he walked up the front steps of his new house, Arnold barely took the time to glare down the block and acknowledge John with a little snort and a shake of his head. Guess that was how folks from Philly said, “Howdy, neighbor!”

That left Chad sulking alone in the back seat of the van with a set of those ridiculous, tiny headphones jammed in his ears like two spaghetti noodles. He must’ve sat there for half an hour—John kept tabs on things from his front porch—not even so much as making eye contact with either of his parents. Like getting a nice, new house for Christmas was the biggest inconvenience imaginable.

When the boy finally dragged himself out of the backseat, John watched him go moping inside, his long, brown hair drooping into his eyes and tails of his flannel shirt untucked, hardly even bothering to pick his feet up off the ground. Didn’t even take a moment to glance down the street and give a nod “hello.” At least his old man had had the courtesy to acknowledge John with a dirty look.

Yes, the Brooks’ arrival on River Street had been unpleasantly memorable. But hardly a week after that, things had gotten ugly real fast. The first shot in this year-long battle had been fired.

It started with that snowman, the one John’s grandson, Mark, had made when Nina and her husband Frank had come for Christmas dinner. They lived in an apartment in downtown Pittsburgh, near the bank where Frank worked, and little Mark was always delighted to come to his “Paw-Paw’s” house where he had a real yard to play in. Little guy’d spent a whole afternoon building that snowman. It put a smile on John’s face when he woke up—promptly at 5:35, each and every morning—took his cup of coffee out on the porch, and saw it standing there looking out over River Street.

But in the cold, pre-dawn light on New Year’s Day John saw the snowman had gotten some sort of makeover. Frosty’s hat and stick nose had been tossed away, and his whole head was bright red. His now-armless body was colored dark brown, and there was a thick pattern of black curls around its base.

As the sun broke over the horizon, John recognized what he was looking at: someone had used spray paint to turn Mark’s snowman into a giant snow boner in the middle of the night.

John didn’t holler, he didn’t swear, he didn’t go on a rampage. He just folded his thick, muscled arms, gave the thing a good long looking at, and let his investigative instincts take over. None of the kids around here have ever done something like this before, he thought. So what’s changed? What’s different? What new element’s been added to the equation?

Then he looked down the street, and he had his answer: Chad Brooks. Troublemaker.

John tried to get rid of it, but he had to hand it to the kid: This was one well-executed prank. As a result of a sunny afternoon and a few nights of freezing temperatures, the surface of the snowman was iced over good. The thing was too solid to dismantle with a shovel, and trying to hose the paint off just turned it all into a horrific, multicolored mess. By the time the neighbors were awake, John had realized that his yard was going to look like Picasso had thrown up there for weeks.

All courtesy of the new kid on the block.

Now, a year later, surveying the obscene remains of his Christmas yard display, John saw a road running straight from the snowman spray-painting incident, through a year’s worth of firecrackers in his mailbox, toilet paper in his trees, and smashed pumpkins on his doorstep, to this. And he realized it was time to do something, to make that kid finally realize that when you mess with the big dog, you’re gonna get bit in the end.

Time to introduce Chad Brooks to the Krampus.

* * *

John rooted around in the back of his closet for his heavy parka, the old military surplus one he’d gotten for their vacation to Colorado, with coyote fur around the hood and cuffs. Maggie always hated that coat, said it made him look like a mangy stray dog.

It would be just perfect for the Krampus.

John had first heard about the Krampus at his grandfather’s knee. Grandpa Nast had come from the old country, and had a German accent as thick as dark rye bread. Around the holidays, when other kids were learning stories of Rudolph and the Little Drummer Boy, Grandpa Nast told John and his younger brother, Eric, about Krampus: the furry, horned devil-man who came to swat little kids with a switch. He’d make them scream and cry, then he’d chain them up, put them in his sack, and drag them down to the lake to drown.

“Und hif you are diso-pee-diant, talking back to your mama and dees-respecting your elders, das Krampus will come to visit you und…” then Grandpa Nast slammed his hand down on the arm of his chair with a bang. “There vill be beating! He vill rip your skin and bite your flesh vith his teeth, and throw you in freezing water. Then that is where you vill spend your Christmas.”

After that, John and Eric exhibited nothing but their best behavior whenever Grandpa Nast came to visit.

But other times, when Grandpa Nast wasn’t around, John’s attitude about the Krampus changed a little. He didn’t sound quite so terrifying. In fact, he seemed pretty cool, putting kids in chains. No one messed with Krampus, just like no one messed with Grandpa Nast. They got respect.

And young John wanted people to respect him, too.

So, one December night he’d gone to the closet and gotten an old, fuzzy gray sweater and wrapped it around his head and shoulders. Then he’d found an old dog collar in the garage, and rolled the morning newspaper into a stout tube. And then, on tiptoe, he’d gone quietly into his brother’s bedroom and woken him with a whap of the rolled-up newspaper on his dresser.

When Eric opened his eyes he saw the hairy silhouette at his bedside and heard the jingling dog chain, and he screamed bloody murder. By the time his parents came out of their room to find out what was the matter, John was already back in his own bed with his Krampus props stashed under his covers.

Through the wall, John heard his mother’s voice. “Eric’s had a pretty bad dream.”

“I don’t doubt it,” his father answered. “Pop’s been telling the boys those horrible old German stories. Christmas isn’t a time for monsters.”

Eric was still young. If it ever entered his head that it was really John, and not the Krampus, in his room, he never mentioned it. For years, any time John wanted to coerce his little brother into something, all he needed to say was, “Krampus will come to take you away if you don’t listen to me,” and Eric was instantly cooperative. In John’s book, that was respect.

Now, it was time for young Chad Brooks to get a taste of that. Only Chad wasn’t an innocent little boy snoozing with visions of sugarplums in his head. He was a jaded, teenaged delinquent, and he was about to learn that even in a quiet neighborhood like River Street, there were things that could scare some respect into a young man.

* * *

John’s old “cop junk,” as Maggie used to call it, was stored beneath the tool bench in his garage. He’d packed it all away when he retired from the force. Ten years on, everything was faded, tarnished, and wrinkled. But what he was looking for wasn’t in the boxes of old uniforms, duty logs, and other clutter waiting to be thrown out. What he wanted was that one chest full of the things that had been his day-to-day carrying gear when he was on the job.

John had spent his whole career on the highway patrol unit of the Pennsylvania State Police Force. No cushy desk job; he found field work particularly rewarding. It warmed his heart whenever he got to help a family whose car had overheated on their summer road trip, or come to the rescue of a senior citizen who’d hit a patch of ice on a freezing night. Lots of, “Thank you, officer!” and “I don’t know what we’d’ve done without you.” Good for the karma.