was in some way Nick and Pitch. The other was smaller and younger, dressed in a long, once white robe which trailed in the dust. Both men were filthy and covered in cuts and bruises on every visible part of their bodies. As 105 watched in silence, the young man spat bloodily on the ground. Where the bloody sputum landed a familiar dust cloud began to form, whirling tightly round on itself. Soon, one of the little devils stood before the two men. Stood expectantly, it seemed to 105. 'Watch carefully,' Pitch whispered in his ear, as though 105 might grow bored sometime soon.
Hairy Man knelt down in front of the little devil. He beckoned for the young man to do likewise and then, when the two men were both at the same level as the devil, pulled a knife from within his dirty robes and pressed its tip against his own ribs. The young man placed a hand on top of Hairy Man's and, with a nod, quickly pushed on the hilt. Briefly the blade struggled to pierce Hairy Man's skin but the end result was inevitable. With a sigh audible to the two men hiding on the hilltop, Hairy Man fell to one side as blood pulsed thickly and pooled in the dirt around him. Without conscious thought, 105 began to rise, but for a third time Pitch held his arm and prevented him from action. He shrugged off the red man's hand, but remained where he was, because something new was happening in the village below.
The pool of blood round Hairy Man had rolled along a narrow channel in the dirt and formed a short crimson river and, as 105 turned back, an elongated typhoon effect was playing along the bloody stream's entire length. As the dust cleared, 105 was unsurprised to see the blood was gone. In its place, a pale white snake uncurled itself. The jaguar head on the end of the snake body was, 105 thought, the least surprising thing of all. I may be becoming too blasé, he decided with a wry smile. He turned to pass the thought onto Pitch, but the demon was staring intently at the tableau below him and seemed unaware of 105's presence. As the snake began to speak, Pitch mouthed the strange, foreign words along with it.
105 could make no sense of the speech, which sounded a little like Spanish but was not. However, he could see the results plainly. Down in the village, the young man placed his hands over Hairy Man's wound, from which a pale, white mist flowed. Within a few moments both men were obscured from sight.
When the mist cleared the snake was gone and in place of the two men stood Nick and what was - unmistakably - Pitch. At their feet a dozen or more little devils stood as though awaiting instruction. No, thought 105, not a dozen. As he looked at them more closely, he could see that half of the little men weren’t devils at all.
They were elves.
‘At the most simple level, our relationship boils down to this. For every good thing he does, I must do something equally evil. The eternal balance requires it, though it doesn’t actually work both ways. If I do something terrible, he’s under no obligation to do something wonderful to even things up. That’s why there always seems to be so much more evil than purity in the world. Because there is.’
Pitch and 105 were sitting at the edge of the jungle, sharing a drink in the wet heat. Pitch was explaining the solution that the Jisa had come up with. ‘None of us were strong enough to kill our friends when we had to. I said to the people, no, not strong. Evil. For we were strong in many things, only not killing. And I said to the people that I would split myself in two, as the cayman with the jaguar face had instructed me. I would tear myself into two parts – one peaceful and good, the other evil and violent. The good half of me would take the uninfected people into the jungle and hide, while the evil part took the little devils and slaughtered those for whom it was too late.’
Pitch’s voice had taken on the sing-song rhythm of ritual and 105 again wondered if he’d been hypnotised. In some part towards the back of his mind he knew that he’d been far more passive over the past couple of days than usual, but he couldn’t decide if that was down to outside influence or the fact that Pitch was surprisingly good company. Not for the first time he wondered how this intelligent, well-spoken gentleman had ended up as the barely sentient beast who had attacked him at the Pole?
Pitch was still speaking, however, so stored the question away for later.
‘And that’s how it was. While my other self – Nick, Santa, Father Christmas, he’s had plenty of names over the centuries – told the villagers stories in the forest and his elves protected them from danger, I took my little demons and I eviscerated men and women I had known all their lives, crunching their bones and turning their bodies to ash. It was the only way to be sure the infection was destroyed. It meant that we won...’
He tailed off and stared with blank eyes into the night. Just when 105 thought he had fallen asleep, he spoke again. ‘Once you have that much blood on your hands, though, it’s not possible to wash it all off, even where you can see it. He and I met again – afterwards. It was back at the canal, and we weren’t alone. We were told how it had to be, what the price would be for ridding ourselves of the invaders. You’ve heard of Pandora’s Box? This was the same sort of thing. Once you unleash evil in its purest form from within, you can’t just shove it back inside, as though it were a sock in a drawer.
‘He would continue as Santa, dispensing gifts to the children of the world, keeping a list of the good and the bad – and letting me know about the ones who made neither list. The Truly Awful. I would deal with them, and with any other evil bits and pieces which came up.’
105 was struggling to keep up. ‘So you kidnapped Nick in order to revenge yourself after millennia of him playing the hero, while you were always the reviled villain, even though you are really the same person and only split yourself in two to save the world?’
For the first time since they had arrived back in time, Pitch looked as angry as his bestial twentieth century self. He snarled at 105. ‘No! Nothing so pathetic! I don’t want to hurt him, or avenge some slight which doesn’t even exist. I want to join with him again. I want to be a whole person again. ‘ His eyes were pleading as he turned to 105. ‘Is that too much to ask?’
No, 105 thought. But it may be too much to achieve. ‘How do you intend to do that?’ he said aloud.
‘It’s simple. I take Nick and pass through the portal at the exact same time as him, all while saying certain key phrases which will bind us together. When we pop out the other side, we’ll be as though we were never separated.’
'That's all?'
'You expected something more, Señor?'
'Not more necessarily. But yes, I expected something different.'
'Different how, if I might ask?'
'Different from everyone thinks I'm the bad guy, boo hoo I suppose. It seems a small thing to worry about in the grand scheme of things, especially considering all the terrible things you have done over the last two thousand years. I suppose I don't expect the Prince of Lies to care about marketing and PR, when it boils down to it.'
Pitch sat, saying nothing. 105 feared to break the silence. He felt that he was on the verge of discovering something closer to the truth regarding Pitch's true motivations.
Finally, the demon spoke though he never looked directly at 105 and the wrestler was unsure if the words were intended for him or for Pitch himself. 'There's no place for me anymore. Two thousand years of mayhem, destruction, betrayal and greed and now...nothing. You've seen the world, you've seen how the hippies are winning. The 1970s will be the most peaceful, prosperous and pleasant decade the world has ever known. Peace, love and freedom, man. Makes me sick to my stomach.' He lapsed back into silent brooding.
Feeling as though he were doing something wrong, 105 decided to treat Pitch's words as part of an ongoing discussion. 'But even if that is the case – and I hope to my heart that it is – there will still be a need for your...particular skills. Amongst all this goodness, surely the world will need a little bit of badness, just to keep things interesting?'
Pitch snorted. 'Badness? Like stealing cookies from the cookie jar? Not declaring the proceeds of a yard sale to the IRS
? Is that what you had in mind? I who convinced a pedestrian Austrian watercolorist that maybe he should go into politics? I should be happy with pranks!' He took a deep breath, calming himself. 'And besides, there are ever-increasing practical problems. I told you – I have to do something evil for every good thing he does. Do you know how hard it is to keep up my side of that bargain when everybody's a do-gooder and there are fewer truly awful guys every year? I'm miles behind, you know. I'm still doing evil things to counter-balance good stuff from the fifties.' He shook his head. 'It's just impossible. My time is done.'
105 had no reply. He could hardly re-assure the demon that the world was bound to become more vicious again soon. He tried a different tack. ‘Where's Nick?’ he asked.
Pitch nodded, seemingly grateful to change the subject. ‘No harm in telling you now. He’s back at the North Pole, about six foot down that hole I found you trying to get into. You could probably have reached him just by saying his name sufficiently loudly.’
He laid the portal carefully down in the long grass. ‘So, shall we go back and get him?’ he asked and began to chant under his breath.
In the panic which followed 105's disappearance,
Senor 105 and the Secret Santa Page 10