Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (23 page)

The Taser leads dropped to the ground as John released the weapon’s trigger. Had he hit Chad with the contact barbs? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure it really mattered.

What he did know was that that kid had come to smirk, gloat, and admire the job of Christmas vandalism he’d done.

And he’d left in a terrified, painful, piss-soaked panic.

Another triumph for the Krampus treatment! Worked like a charm every time.

Listening to the sound of Chad’s footsteps dashing through the snow, slipping and falling on every sidewalk crack and patch of ice, John leaned the holly branch against his garage wall and had himself a good, long Christmas laugh.

Ho, ho, friggin’ ho!

* * *

John knelt in front of his workbench and laid the black balaclava back in the trunk. Before replacing the Taser in its holster, he popped off the electrode unit on the front and carefully coiled the tiny wires around his hand. Early tomorrow morning, he thought, he’d have to go over to the Target at the mall in Butler and get rid of that in the store’s dumpster. His deniability would be shot to hell if someone spotted Taser wires dangling out of his trash can on pick-up day.

John was carefully stuffing the spent Taser cartridge out of sight when he heard something—just the faintest creak from outside the garage door.

I wondered if that might not happen, John thought. Little hoodlum got all the way home, then pulled his shit together and now he’s come back here looking…

Before he could finish the thought, the whole garage rocked with a powerful boom, like a tree had fallen on the roof, or a car had come up the driveway and run into the door.

“What the hell?” John growled as he slammed the lid of the chest shut and leapt to his feet. He imagined Chad outside the place using a sledgehammer on his wall. “If you damage this house, you little bastard, you’re going to discover a new definition of the word sorry!”

John yanked open the door and charged out into the walkway. Whatever that boy was doing, he was going to put a stop to it, and if he caught Chad vandalizing the place red-handed, he wouldn’t need any Krampus disguise. He’d just call the police and have the kid arrested. He still had connections on the force; he knew how to make things happen.

But when John came around the front of the garage to the driveway, there was no one there to be seen. Just the distasteful display of face-down Santa and his eight horny reindeer.

John looked around in confusion for a moment, wondering just what on earth had happened to shake his garage to its foundation. Whatever had caused that tremor, it had even displaced Santa from his resting place in the snow bank. Looking carefully for any clues, John noticed something lying in Santa’s impression in the snow. He stepped closer and was surprised by a familiar sight: a greeting card with a drawing of a black, curly-tongued devil man and three words: Gruss vom Krampus.

How the hell did that get underneath his defaced Christmas ornaments? It had been a lot of years since John had seen one of those.

As he pondered, he heard another noise from behind the garage, the sound of one of his trash cans tumbling end over end. “That’s enough!” he threatened as he rushed along the walk and into the back yard, ready to grab whoever was there.

John rounded the corner and came to a stop. In the dark yard, the only things John could see were two glowing little stars that had come peeking out from behind the clouds. Then he realized that the two shining points of light he was looking at weren’t stars, and they weren’t in the sky. They were suspended up in the air above him against something that looked like a big, dark wall.

Suddenly a gust of air, hot, fetid, and damp, washed over his face. Then the dark wall he’d nearly collided with shifted, and John saw it outlined against the cloudy night sky: long curling horns; dull, red eyes; and a mouth full of carnivorous fangs.

A flicker of disbelief passed through John’s thoughts. This had to be a fake, a hoax, just another prank. Except the thing was so goddamned big. That butcher-shop reek coming off of it wasn’t something you bought at a costume shop.

John heard the thing take in a rumbling, ragged breath of air that seemed to stretch on for a dozen heartbeats, like it was filling lungs the size of propane tanks. And finally, its inhalation complete, the thing spoke in a voice thick with mucous and teeth:

“John Nast,” it rumbled.

Reason tied to assert itself in John’s mind. Whoever or whatever this thing was, it knew his name. There had to be a logical explanation.

But the last thread of rational thought snapped when he heard the clanking of chains.

The dark shape came at him with a ponderous, malevolent gait, and suddenly his grandfather’s words, as harsh and frightening as the first time he’d spoken them, came to John’s mind, “Das Krampus vill come for you!”

Without so much as a willful impulse, John’s feet turned and started to flee toward the house, leaving the black, hulking figure behind him. As he reached for the patio door, however, John heard another jangling sound along with a wicked hiss of air being forcibly parted. The night exploded in a flash of white pain as a link of heavy chain collided with the back of his head like a wrecking ball. The impact sent John toppling away from the door and out onto the snowy back lawn.

The familiar pain of a blow to the head helped him clear his mind. He wasn’t a goddamned frightened little eight-year-old listening to his grandpa’s ghost stories. He’d been doing this sort of thing all his life. He’d absorbed more than his share of punches, and he wasn’t afraid to go to the pavement. Pull it together, Officer Nast!

John wiped the snow away from his face and rolled off the ground. He was halfway back up on his feet when the shape loomed over him again, raised one of its legs, and planted its sharp-clawed foot right in the middle of John’s chest.

John was astonished at its massive weight. And as it leaned down to glare at him like a lion over a gored gazelle, John thought his ribcage was going to collapse. Its face was so close that John could see its pale, glassy eyes looking pitilessly into his face. This was exactly the Krampus that he had seen in his young, frightened mind when Grandpa Nast first described the devil-man.

The Krampus’s horns seemed to dance in the air as it gave its furry head a shake. “You have summoned me, John Nast,” it growled.

Struggling to breathe, pinned to the ground under its weight, John could barely do more than squeak like a child. “I haven’t… summoned…”

“I have been summoned!” The thing’s voice roared like a jet engine. “On this night of the year, I am drawn to those in need of punishment. Corruption lures me, with the foul scent of hypocrisy and dissembling. I hunt those who commit the vilest offense, passing judgment on others without standing to be judged themselves.”

“But I haven’t…” John gulped hard and squirmed under the weight of the thing’s foot, trying to draw in enough breath to explain himself. “I didn’t hurt that boy. I just wanted to scare him. A little. Just to get him back on the right track.”

“Your list of grievances is long, John Nast,” the Krampus growled. “But I have not come to settle old scores. You have wrongly punished the innocent in the guise of righteousness. The most arrogant transgression of all.”

“That boy?” John sputtered. “Ain’t… innocent! Look! You see what he did? He deserves punishment!”

The voice of the Krampus rumbled through his bones. “You reek of sanctimony and prejudice. You are tainted by the guilt that you’ve sought to smear upon others. And thus, I will do to you what I do to all those so tainted.”

The monster straightened and lifted his foot from John’s chest, and he was finally able to fill his compressed lungs. He gasped and choked as twinkling spots wiggled along the periphery of his sight. Though he hardly felt like his legs would support him, John struggled to his feet and started to move toward the back door of the house.

But the lack of air was affecting his balance, his judgment, and his coordination. John bumped into a patio chair, fell against the barbecue, and went stumbling to the far edge of the porch.

The Krampus bared its fangs at John again. “I will cleanse the offense from you. I will purge you of your vices at last.”

With incredible speed the thing drew back its arm and sent the length of chain in its grip lashing forward like a whip. The blow caught John on the head again and sent him reeling, scattering plastic furniture and potted plants in every direction.

With no strength left, John let himself collapse to the ground. Whether this thing would kill him or not, he didn’t know, but both his breath and his will to struggle were gone. His head pounded from the beating he’d taken by its chain. He was accustomed to being the intimidator, not the one being intimidated. He had no idea what to do, other than to plead through his tears like a helpless child.

John felt himself being lifted roughly and thrown over the monster’s hairy shoulder. Step by jarring step it moved, carrying him past the garage and out to the front of the house, to the sidewalk beside River Street.

And at the edge of the walk the Krampus stopped. It lifted John like a rag doll, gave him one last, agonizing squeeze, and dropped him.

He hit the surface of what should have been hard, unyielding pavement and was surprised that instead of a thud, he landed with a splash. What little breath he had been able to recapture shot out of him again as he submerged beneath the surface of black, icy water.

Ripples spread out in every direction as John paddled helplessly, trying to reach the shore, to get to the sidewalk, to his home. But the Krampus had beaten all the strength out of him. There was nothing left to do but be pulled down into the deep, icy depths of River Street.

The Krampus stood watching in front of John’s house, with all the overturned Christmas decorations behind it. That’s strange, John thought, as he heard the monster’s final words:

“John, can you hear me?”

* * *

John reached up slowly and rubbed the lump on his head.

“John, can you hear me?” a voice said. “Now try not to move too fast. Are you hurt?”

John opened his eyes. He recognized the rafters of his garage workshop. He recognized the jumble of storage boxes around him that had toppled off of the workbench.

And he recognized the face of the man kneeling over him: Arnold Brooks, Chad’s father.

“Wh…” John blinked, trying to clear the confusion from his mind. “What are you doing here, Brooks?” he asked.

“Chad came and got me,” Arnold explained. “He told me all about what happened.”

“He did?” John asked. That wasn’t too good, considering that he was surrounded by a small avalanche of old police equipment. Going to be a little hard to deny attacking a boy with a Taser when his duty belt and uniform hat were on the floor beside him.

Arnold nodded. “Chad said he came down here to explain what had happened, but you were too upset to listen. So I figured it was time for me to set things straight.”

Okay, maybe the kid hadn’t ratted him out. Best not to reveal anything else. John nodded a little and let Arnold go on talking.

“Guess you don’t remember me, do you John?” Arnold asked.

“Uhn,” John said with a gentle shake of his head. “Arnold? Live down the street? Didn’t take that much of a knock on the melon, did I?”

John saw frustration, and a little contempt, come over Arnold’s face. “About 20 years ago, I was in a car with some of my friends. We got pulled over on the highway by the police. We were going a little faster than we should’ve been, and the kid who was driving was a bit of a smart-mouth to the cop who came up to the window. So the police pulled us all out, put us into the back of a couple of patrol cars, and took us off to some dark stretch of road.” Arnold gave John a questioning nod. “You know what I’m talking about?”

“I’m not sure,” John hedged.

“You were there, John,” Arnold said. “You threatened me and all of my friends. You roughed us up and scared the hell out of us. And you and those other officers made sure there was no possible way we could pin any of it on you. Sound about right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” John said as the pounding pain in his skull slowly began to recede to a mild ache.

“That night is the reason I went to law school,” Arnold said. “It’s why I became a defense attorney. I swore I’d work for real justice, and fight against that sort of abuse.”

“And what?” John asked. “You telling me you followed me since then? Been stalking me all that time, or something, to get some sort of revenge?”

Arnold shook his head. “No, finding you was just a coincidence, John,” he said. “When Kate and I came to the open house, I looked down the street and saw you out front of this place raking leaves.” He shrugged coldly. “But I wasn’t completely sure until the first time I saw the Christmas decorations in your yard. The stockings on the side of that sleigh.”

“My Maggie’s Christmas stocking?” John asked, wondering just what that had to do with it.

“I remembered seeing a photograph on the dashboard of your police car, while I was in the back seat. ‘Come home safely,’ or something like that. It was signed Maggie.” Arnold shook his head with a scowl. “Thinking of you with a family, living comfortably, happily. Seemed like it was a mockery of the good I was trying to do. It made me a little crazy. I decided I was going to buy that house no matter what, and then make you really sorry for what you’d done to me all those years ago.”

“You?” John said. “It was you that did all that?”

“Yes, all that,” he explained. All the pranks and vandalism, all the harassment and damage, it had all been done by Arnold Brooks himself. “Make no mistake, John. I wasn’t proud of it. Lots of times I flat out hated myself for the petty, juvenile way I was acting.”

“Not that boy of yours?” John asked.

“No,” Arnold said with a note of shame. “I hate to imagine what he thought his old man was up to. I could tell he had his suspicions. Earlier tonight Chad found that stocking, the one I took with your wife’s name on it, in my basement, and he put the clues together.”

“He did?” John wondered.