Silent (but Deadly) Night

by Jo Nesbo

  Lisa read the black, rather scary letters that said: THE LONELY TOMBSTONE PUB.

  “Wooo-wooo,” Lisa said, making a spooky sound.

  “Wooo-wooo-wooo,” Nilly said.

  “And now, children, you’ll get to meet Santa too,” Doctor Proctor said, and walked over to the door.

  “I wish I were you right now, Doctor Proctor,” Lisa said.

  “Why?” our inventor asked. He grasped the door handle, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  “So I wouldn’t have to be so scared!” Lisa whimpered.

  “Oh?” Doctor Proctor said, propping his feet against the door for leverage. “Who says I’m not scared?”

  Then he pulled as hard as he could and the door opened.

  Tuesday Evening in a Rather Spooky Place. Or . . . ?

  WHEN THE DOOR of the Lonely Tombstone Pub flew open, light, warmth, yodeling, laughter, and the scent of tobacco, beer, and doughnuts poured out.

  They scurried inside and closed the door behind them.

  “This isn’t so scary after all!” Lisa said. She had to yell to be heard over the yodeling and the noise of people talking in there.

  When you walked in, the first thing you saw was an Advent calendar hanging on the wall right in front of the door. It had little doors that opened for each day of Advent, but the doors were covered with wide strips of orange tape in the shape of an X. Someone had written in black felt-tip marker on the tape: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE BY ORDER OF THE CHRISTMAS POLICE.

  A plump woman with a tray full of beer steins came out from behind the counter and spotted them:

  “Meine Damen und Herren,” she said. “Ich bin Nina. How may I help you?”

  “We’re looking for Stanislaw,” Doctor Proctor said.

  Nina stopped and raised her eyebrows at them.

  “Santa Claus,” Nilly explained.

  “Oh, uh, he’s just kidding,” Doctor Proctor said. “You look puzzled, Nina, but I distinctly recall this being Stanislaw’s regular hangout. I believe he usually—”

  “The reason I look puzzled, Liebling, is that no one ever asks for Stanislaw. He’s sitting in the corner, over there.” Nina pointed to the back of the room.

  They wove their way through the tables populated by men and women who were slightly past their prime, talking and laughing and saying “cheers” as they clinked their massive beer steins. And when they noticed our three friends coming, they yodeled, “Guten Abend!” And after they walked by, “Auf Wiedersehn!” as they raised their funny little green hats with the feathers in them.

  But at a table way in the back, in a dark corner, sitting all by himself, there was a man who was neither talking nor laughing. He was half hidden behind an enormous boot-shaped beer stein, but as our friends approached, they could tell he was a tall man with long black, wispy hair, droopy skin under his chin, and bulging bags under his eyes like a lizard. He had big blue circles around his eyes, as if he had a couple of black eyes he couldn’t shake.

  Doctor Proctor cleared his throat and said, “You’ve lost a lot of weight, Stanislaw.”

  The man looked up sleepily over his boot-shaped beer stein. And sounded kind of surly when he responded: “And what the Christmas kind of skeleton are you, coming in here and saying something rude like that? You want a clock for Christmas, or do you want me to clean your clock? Or maybe just clock you one? How ’bout a kick in the pants, a walloping, or a wedgie? You want it by mail or down the chimney?”

  “Don’t you recognize me, Stanislaw?”

  “Tell me your name and I’ll tell you who you are, you fool.”

  “Victor. Victor Proctor.”

  “Victor What-y-what?”

  Doctor Proctor leaned over and whispered to Lisa and Nilly, “His memory is starting to go, but that’s probably to be expected when you’re two hundred and forty years old.”

  Nilly and Lisa stared at each other in disbelief.

  “Entschuldigen,” Nina said, trying to make her way through the room behind them with a platter of pork chops. “I wouldn’t stand right there if I were you, Liebling with the delightful, wonderschön red hair.”

  “Why not?” Nilly asked.

  “Die Uhr is almost seven o’clock.” She nodded at a massive cuckoo clock hanging on the wall right beside Nilly. Then she hurried off to a table where they cheered her arrival. “Get out your fork! Here comes the pork! Hurray for Nina!”

  “I helped you for years, inventing faster sleighs and gift-wrapping robots for you,” Doctor Proctor said. “I’m the son of Doctor Hector Proctor, the grandson of Doctor Thor Proctor.”

  Stanislaw scowled at the inventor as he scratched his lizard neck, grumbling to himself. Then he laughed, a loud, booming laugh.

  “Oh, I’m just messing with you, Victor. Of course I remember you. I remember that first Christmas Eve when you were just a lad and came to the Santa Cave with your dad. And you got to sit on my sleigh. We flew over Akershus Fortress and swooped down over the Oslo Fjord. You laughed so hard you peed your pants.” Stanislaw giggled and grinned, divulging a row of teeth where the few that remained were brown and pointing every which way.

  “I remember, yeah,” Doctor Proctor said. “But I didn’t pee my pants because I was laughing so hard. It was because I was so scared.”

  “Don’t listen to him, kids,” Stanislaw said, waving his hand dismissively. “He loved it. All kids love that kind of thing.” He paused and looked at Lisa and Nilly. “Well, Victor, who are these kids?”

  “These are my neighbors from Cannon Avenue. Lisa is the smartest, nicest girl in town. And Nilly is the bravest boy. Well, he’s also quite nice, too.”

  “I know that,” Stanislaw said.

  “How does he know that?” Nilly whispered to Doctor Proctor.

  “Santas have an inborn niceness detector,” Doctor Proctor said. “They can tell how nice you’ve been from miles away.”

  Nilly cleared his throat and said, rather loudly, “You don’t look like Santa Claus, Mr. Stanislaw.”

  “I don’t?” Stanislaw gave Nina’s rear end a playful pinch as she walked by, but she didn’t care. “So you’re saying you’ve met Santa Claus?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Well, there you go.” He picked up his beer stein again. “Anyway, I have to get back to drinking now, before my beer goes flat, so have a nice night.”

  “If you’re Santa, prove it!” Lisa demanded.

  He lowered his beer stein. “Excuse me, young lady?”

  “Prove it,” Lisa repeated.

  “Why should I? Get out of here, now.”

  “If you were Santa, you wouldn’t be sitting in here three days before Christmas, lazing around, drinking beer and pinching the server,” Lisa said. “You’re a liar.”

  “Indeed, I am,” Stanislaw said. “A liar, a drunkard, and a ladies’ man. And I’m not Santa Claus. So, cheers!”

  “Stanislaw,” Doctor Proctor said, “aren’t you even wondering why we’re here?”

  “Not really, Victor. I just want to be left in peace. You were a nice kid, by the way . . . .”

  “We want you to help us save Christmas, Stanislaw. Have you heard the news? A businessman bought Christmas.”

  “And now only people who buy a ton of stuff from his store get to celebrate the holiday,” Lisa added.

  “Really? Whatever. It doesn’t have anything to do with me anymore.” Stanislaw brought his beer stein to his lips.

  “Doesn’t it?” Doctor Proctor said, leaning in closer to Stanislaw. “Or is that why you’re sitting back here in the corner, hiding? Because you’re embarrassed that you’re no longer doing what you were meant to do in this life? Making Christmas a bright spot for all the children in this world who look forward to this one day each year.”

  “I seem to recall that there’s some fussy, scruffy, goggle-headed fool who usually pokes his nose in here once a year and tells me that same thing.”

  “That’s me, Stanislaw,” Doctor Proctor said. “But this tim
e it’s more important than ever! Mr. Thrane wants to deprive everyone of Christmas. You can’t just sit here and let that happen, Stanislaw. You have to help us.”

  “Now, you listen up, Victor . . . ,” Stanislaw said.

  “You claim you’re not Santa Claus . . . ,” Doctor Proctor began.

  “You and those two friends of yours should just give up on these things. It’s no use. Believe me.”

  “ . . . but you were Santa Claus, Stanislaw. And you could be him again.”

  Just then the cuckoo clock began to rumble. The pub suddenly went eerily quiet, and everyone turned toward the sound. The rumbling got louder and louder, like a spring being wound up. And then the shutter doors on the front of the clock flipped opened, and an enormous orange and black spotted head with big, beautiful eyes, little Martian horns, and an open mouth full of teeth shot out. The molars were the size of cookbooks, but nowhere near as frightening as the vampire teeth that thrust out like two sabers. The head was attached to a neck that just kept coming and coming out of the cuckoo clock, and Nilly only just barely managed to duck as the head passed over him. He glanced up. The gaping-jawed, spotted head had now reached the middle of the room here at the Lonely Tombstone Pub, where it was bobbing around at the end of a neck that seemed to go on forever. There was a loud bang every time the teeth chomped together as it snapped at the patrons, who leaped up and jumped out of the way, while the clock on the wall cried cuckoo-cuckoo. Which was a little odd since that thing that had emerged from it wasn’t a cuckoo bird at all, but rather a . . . a . . . a . . .

  On the seventh cuckoo, the head abruptly retracted into the clock, and the doors slammed shut again.

  People looked up from their tables, exhaled in relief, and then the murmur of voices resumed. Soon there was laughing, clinking glasses, toasting, and yodeling just as there had been before seven o’clock.

  “That—that—that was a . . . ,” Nilly stammered, pointing.

  “That was,” Doctor Proctor agreed. “Lisa noticed it too, didn’t you?”

  “Yup,” Lisa said, and then sighed.

  “So, what do we need to say to Nilly, then?”

  “I’m sorry, Nilly,” Lisa said. “Vampire giraffes do exist after all, and even though I can’t promise I will always believe everything you say, I will at least try to believe a bit more. Do you forgive me?”

  But Nilly wasn’t listening. He was just staring at the cuckoo clock. “That—that—that was . . .”

  “Is something wrong with the boy?” Stanislaw asked.

  “No,” Doctor Proctor said. “Something is wrong with the world, Stanislaw. When you’re sitting in here and kids out there don’t get to celebrate Christmas, something is seriously wrong.”

  “I guess,” Stanislaw said, and finished the rest of his beer. “It’s been wrong, and it’s going to stay wrong. It’s unfair now, and it’s going remain that way forever. Nothing to be done about it.”

  “That . . . was . . . a . . . vampire gir—ouch!” Nilly turned to Lisa, who had just pinched him.

  “Follow my lead,” she whispered. “We need to convince him!”

  Then she turned to Stanislaw and said in a pleading, high-pitched, innocent-kid voice, while fluttering her eyelids as if she were on the verge of tears, “Are you sure that you can’t . . . help us?”

  Nilly took a step forward, made his voice sound as emotional as he could, and said, “Not even . . . a little?”

  “Those are the best sad faces you can do?” Stanislaw said, wiping the beer foam from around his mouth. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, kids, but there’s a reason I quit being Santa Claus.”

  “I think maybe you ought to tell them the story, Stanislaw,” Doctor Proctor said.

  “Maybe we should spare them. It’s a sad story.”

  “I loooove sad stories,” Lisa protested.

  “Does she really?” Stanislaw asked, furrowing his brow. He looked at Doctor Proctor and Nilly, who both nodded.

  Stanislaw sighed. “Well, you’ll have to help me remember it all, Victor. My memory is starting to go a little.” Then he turned and bellowed over all the yodeling, “Another boot over here, Nina!”

  Stanislaw Tells a Rather Long (but Completely True) Story

  “NOT MANY PEOPLE noticed it, but I quit being Santa more than twenty-five years ago,” Stanislaw said, and took a gulp of his beer. “By that point young Victor here had taken over his dad’s job of inventing everything it took to deliver Christmas presents to so many people in just one night. Everything kept needing to get faster and faster, because people wanted more and more stuff. There were just more and more presents every year. But you know when I really had enough? When microwave ovens came out.”

  “Microwave ovens?” Lisa said.

  “I think you should tell it from the beginning,” Doctor Proctor said.

  “I guess so.” Stanislaw sighed. “Well, I started delivering Christmas presents around the time Napoleon was ravaging Europe.”

  “But that was more than two hundred years ago!” Lisa said.

  “We Santa Clauses live for a long time. For example, my dad delivered a little drawing in 1503 that was a Christmas present from Leonardo da Vinci to a girl named Mona Lisa. We moved around from country to country so no one would discover how old we were and that we also possessed a number of unusual abilities. Which is to say that people have a tendency to burn you at the stake if they get it into their heads that you’re using black magic or other supernatural powers. I was born in Pole-land, up in North Pole-land, in a town called Adansk. There was a lovely beach there where the reindeer could go swimming at night when no one was watching. Apart from that it wasn’t such a great place, because there were so many wars there all the time. People kept coming in and taking over the city, and each time they would change its name. From Adansk to Bdansk and then Cdansk and so on. Sadly, late in the eighteen hundreds, my parents stepped on a land mine, and since I was alone I decided to move my operations to the most peaceful, boring place I could think of, which was Norway. That was back in 1905, and I took the ferry from Denmark. Onboard I actually met a guy who said he was going to Norway to take a job as the king. He was the great-grandfather of the current king. Nice people. Yessiree, his son was so nice that I gave him a pair of ski-jumping skis for Christmas one year, I recall. But enough history. Well, so I settled down in Norway and kept delivering Christmas presents all over the world. I might have been alone, but I was plump, jolly, and busy. I wrapped presents in the summer and fall. Then, on the day before Christmas Eve, I summoned my loyal reindeer from Australia, and we would set out shortly after midnight. We flew for dear life, like a jet, faster than the speed of sound. We were like a shooting star in the sky . . . .”

  Stanislaw pulled his pointer finger through the air dramatically to illustrate to Lisa, Nilly, and Doctor Proctor.

  “Down chimneys, in kitchen doors, I left presents in barns and on porches, in broom closets and French palaces, on every floor and in unheated garages, in dollhouses, in doghouses, beneath Christmas trees, here and there, for poor people in ragged clothing, even a nice—although lonely—millionaire . . . . We spread joy to the world. And it didn’t take much back then: a spinning top, a wooden stool, a pair of gloves. If someone had been extra nice, maybe they got a pair of ice skates. Simple as that.”

  “How wonderful,” Lisa said, enthralled.

  Nilly didn’t say boooring, but he did suppress a very large yawn.

  “Yes. I was happy,” Stanislaw said. “It was wonderful being Santa Claus back then, you know? The littlest things made people happy, and Santa Claus was beloved by all, children and adults, men and women.”

  “Especially women,” Doctor Proctor mumbled, and coughed.

  “Really?” Nilly said, immediately looking more interested. “Were you beloved by cancan dancers, too?”

  “Of course,” Stanislaw said, flashing his brown teeth and the black gaps in between where teeth were missing. “Oh, women just adored me, as I
did them. And why shouldn’t I? I was too busy to have a wife and children. And obviously, when a pleasantly plump, jolly man in his finest years with a sack full of presents suddenly encounters a beautiful woman alone in a warm, cozy living room in the middle of the night . . .”

  “Did you ever fall in love?” Lisa asked with bated breath.

  “I don’t want to hear this, blah-blah!” Nilly said, whipping his hands up to cover his ears.

  “Maybe,” Santa said, staring dreamily into space.

  Doctor Proctor cleared his throat and said, “Uh, back to the story, Stanislaw . . .”

  “Oh, right, the story! Yes, well, Christmas celebrations spread around the world. Soon everyone was celebrating Christmas, and they were demanding that their Christmas presents be bigger, more numerous, and more expensive. The reindeer and I needed an even faster sleigh to handle it all. So I contacted Victor’s dad, the famous inventor Doctor Hector Proctor, who had just invented the tractor.”

  “No,” Doctor Victor Proctor said. “My dad, Hector, invented the atomic reactor. You’re thinking of my grandfather, Doctor Thor Proctor, who was the chair of the engine systems program at the college of engineering.”

  Stanislaw looked at Doctor Proctor with his mouth hanging open for a moment before this seemed to click.

  “Right you are!” Stanislaw eventually said. “Well, then Thor built a faster sleigh. And when Thor got old, his son, Hector, came and built an even faster one. Yes, I became really close to the Proctor family. They helped me build better sleighs, and I would drop by their place every year with Christmas presents.”

  “Wow, the real Santa Claus actually did go to your house!” Lisa gasped. “It wasn’t just your dad or some family friend dressed up like Santa!”

  “My dad used to work back in the Santa Cave, keeping everything was running smoothly, from gift production to delivery. Right, Stanislaw?”

  “That’s right. Until he got too old, and then you built me that super-fast sleigh with those clever, aerodynamic modifications so the reindeer could fly at top speed without the sleigh growing scorching hot inside the clouds or breaking up on the turns.”