DESCENDING INTO MADNESS

by Brown, Stacey Marie

  My lids fluttered open to the noise of gravel scraping, my gaze landing straight on Scrooge as he drew himself up in a sitting position. His head jerked out in the night, tilting like he was trying to listen for something.

  A dollop of fear scooped at my gut, getting me up with a start. “What is it?”

  He whipped around to me, his finger on his lips, before turning back out. Moving slowly, I went to his side, on alert to hear whatever he had. My heart pounded in my chest.

  An object scuffled over the snow, vaulting terror up my throat.

  “Holy stuffing,” I yelped, dropping to the ground, grabbing Scrooge’s arm in terror.

  A stunning white fox darted by and halted for a moment to peer at us before slinking over some rocks and vanishing into the darkness.

  “You can take on gremlins, but a furry fox is what freaks you out?” He grinned over his shoulder at me. Relief erupted from my mouth, my forehead falling onto Scrooge’s sculpted arm.

  “Frickin’ thing came out of nowhere.” I chuckled, tipping my head up to him. “And knowing this area, that cute little fuzzball could probably tear me a part.”

  “Most likely,” he rumbled, his eyes darting over my face, the smirk on his face dropping away. Suddenly, I was very aware of our proximity, my hands clasping his bicep, his skin warm under my fingers, and his mouth only inches from mine.

  This man didn’t just look at you, he shredded everything you had built around yourself, even the few layers of clothes left. His gaze slipped over your skin, dousing you in fire.

  “Or he might curl up on you lap.” His eyes dipped down to my mouth. “You never know here.”

  “No.” My voice barely lifted over my tongue, knowing I was no longer talking about the fox. “You don’t.”

  So many questions rattled in my head. What happened to his son? How did he become the Queen’s knave? How was life growing up here? But not a word reached my mouth, getting jammed by the way he could claim every cell in my body, surging them with need.

  We sat there staring at each other, somehow our faces getting closer.

  “Ms. Liddell.” His breath whispered over my lips, like a warning, but I didn’t care. I buzzed with anticipation, wanting the feel of his mouth on mine more than anything.

  “Alice.”

  My mouth moved, brushing so lightly over his; I didn’t know if I imagined it or not, though a shot of electricity crackled down my spine. I heard him suck air through his nose, like he had felt it too.

  Somewhere in my gut, I knew if I really kissed him, nothing would be the same. He would destroy me, incinerate me into ashes.

  I may jump into relationships quickly, but I always stayed behind a wall, no one seeing the real me. I never gave my full heart, knowing the guys weren’t truly worth it.

  With him, I couldn’t seem to keep that wall locked around me. The pull he had over me was too strong to ignore, the desire burning in my gut and down my thighs. He seemed to put every previous relationship to shame with just a look.

  “Al-ice.” He said my name so low I felt it in my toes. “This is a bad idea.” His mouth scarcely skated over mine.

  “Perhaps.” I breathed, my heart jackhammering against my ribs, afraid if I moved, I’d pop this bubble we were in.

  “You should walk away.” His nose flared, his irises burning like blue flames, his voice tight. He probably hoped one of us had the strength to do it.

  He was out of luck.

  “Please.” He begged me to move away as he slowly leaned into me. I didn’t budge, the desire for him pinning me in place.

  His mouth touched mine.

  “Ahhhhhh!” A chilling scream tore through the cave, bounced off the walls, and slammed into my chest.

  Scrooge and I jumped a part, jerking toward the cry. Hare sat up on the blanket, his glazed eyes wide, as he shrieked. “No. Please!”

  “Shit.” Scrooge darted to Hare, crouching in front of him. The rabbit still stared ahead, wailing with agony. “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. You’re all right.”

  “No… Don’t take it. Please!” He was still asleep. I could tell by the faraway stare in his expression he was reliving a nightmare. Growing up, my sister had gone through a night terror phase. This was exactly the same as that. But his was filled with truth. Real live horrors. His foot being hacked off by a cruel queen.

  My body rattled with the grief and pain in his cries.

  “Shhhhh.” Scrooge tried to comfort him. “It’s all right. You are safe now.” He lightly touched his friend’s arm. “She won’t touch you again. I promise you.”

  Hare’s wails ebbed, his chest puffed up and down, and his lids started to blink, waking himself up. His head jerked around looking at Dum and Penguin awake and sitting up next to him, then to Scrooge, finally falling on me. His jaw tightened, his nose wrinkling up.

  “Get the fuck off me.” He yanked his arm out of Scrooge’s grip. “I’m fine,” he muttered, leaping up on his one foot, ire curling his paws. “My watch anyway.”

  Scrooge bobbed his head, standing. “Actually, I let you all sleep. We better get moving since we’re awake anyway.” Scrooge leaned over Dee, placing a hand on her forehead. “We shouldn’t stay in one place for too long.”

  Hare grumbled something, halfway to the door already.

  “How is she?” I moved over to look at Dee. Her chest rose and fell in deep pulls. Many of her wounds appeared to be healing, but she was still pale and sweaty.

  “Burning up, but hopefully where we are going there will be some medicine for her.” He wiggled his arms underneath her body and lifted her up to his chest.

  Dum hopped up, like a string connected them.

  “Oh dear.” Penguin got up, waddling after. “I hope she will be okay. Maybe if we got some breakfast? Don’t cranberry scones sound divine? Or cinnamon buns? Hare concocts the best cream-filled balls.”

  “Pen…” Scrooge headed for the entry. “Please stop.”

  “Oh, Ms. Alice, you need to try his finger biscuits.”

  “Think I’ll pass.” I leaned down to grab him.

  “But Hare makes them so moist.”

  “O-kay, please stop now.” I cringed, too many bad images running through my head. “Why don’t you sing a Christmas song or something?” I couldn’t believe I was asking him to do that, but it seemed a lot better than the road he was going down.

  “Or how about you play the silent game?” Hare snapped, grabbing a torch and hopping out into the snow.

  “Oh, I love that game.” He clapped his fins together. “Though they say I don’t really understand the rules, and say I lose every time, but I swear, Ms. Alice, I know perfectly well how to play.”

  “Do you?” Scrooge shot over his shoulder.

  “Yes. In the silent game, you must be silent. And the first person who talks is out.” He turned back to me in my arms. “See, Ms. Alice. I know. They just act like I don’t… I know how to be quiet. It’s so easy. You just don’t talk. I know what being quiet means…” Penguin continued to prattle on.

  Scrooge peered back at me with a wink, our eyes connecting. I couldn’t fight the smile growing on my mouth and the hiccup of excitement in my chest.

  “What happened to your clothes, Ms. Alice?” Pen cocked his head at me, just now noticing my minimal attire. “Did they slip away during the night? I know they can do that. Happens a lot when Hare meets his lady friend.”

  “Penguin!” Hare barked from his front position, heading back to the trail. “Shut. Up!”

  “For someone who can make such sweet treats, he really is a sourpuss. What song did you want me to sing?”

  “Anything.” Hare groaned. “Just do it silently.”

  Pen started singing, “Silent Night,” causing Hare to groan.

  He kind of asked for it.

  Scrooge had not lied about the trek being hard. Steep, jagged rocks lined the thin trail, the only barrier between us and falling to our deaths. Pink colored the white snow under my feet, my heels cut
and bleeding.

  Sluggishly we climbed the peak, the thick fog whistling in our ears telling us to turn back. “Stop,” I muttered, batting at my ears, when another icy voice whisked past my ear, speaking of danger and death.

  “Ignore it, Ms. Liddell.” Scrooge had told me. “The warning wind is a bit fanatical.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Hare scoffed. “Just a bunch of whiney winds.”

  “Listen to us… You are heading to certain death,” it hissed in my ears, coiling around my head. “Don’t trust him. He’s leading you to doom.”

  Scrooge rolled his eyes, not helping the slight wariness their voices cast on me. Where were we going? I tried to ask several times, and he never really answered the question. I wanted to demand he tell me, but after a while, even thinking was too much for me. How my body continued to move forward with no food, drink, or energy to speak of was a complete mystery. I shut off my brain and somehow put one foot in front of the other while Pen grew heavier in my arms. A few times I set him down to rest from the added weight, but he would waddle too close to the ledge or get stuck in the deep snow and face-plant.

  Dum and Hare were the only two with torches now. Staying at the front and back of the group. The fire could be the very thing that attracts a predator to us, or it might be the one thing keeping them away.

  The wind told me that not even they would follow us to where we were going. Good news or bad, I no longer cared.

  “A little farther.” Scrooge turned back as I stumbled and fell again. He wasn’t fairing much better, grunting with agony to stop himself from dropping Dee in the snow.

  “That’s what you said hours ago.” I couldn’t stop the whimper leaking through my words as I pushed back up, Pen asleep in my grasp.

  “This time I mean it.” His voice was raw, his muscles along his arms shaking with fatigue. “Not much longer, Ms. Liddell. Just around the bend.”

  The howling, snowy wind curled around the top of the mountain, hiding where he was pointing. Around the bend could still mean miles from here. I bit down on my lip tasting blood, pushing my legs to take another step.

  When we curved around the bend, I came to a halt, tears filling my eyes. I had officially stepped off the sane train.

  “Fuck.” I shook my head. “I’m hallucinating now.”

  “What do you see?” Scrooge asked.

  “A mirage,” I choked, staring at the cozy one-story wooden cabin built into the side of the mountain. Smoke curled in loops from the chimney, disappearing in the snowy mist hovering around the top. The windows were colored with a deep buttery yellow from the light inside. A barn-style structure was built not far from the cabin.

  It looked like the kind of place in a storybook, the kind you wanted to rent for the winter with a lover and not come out until spring.

  “You’re not hallucinating.” Scrooge turned to stare at my profile, a joy I hadn’t seen in his eyes before glinting in the light. “It’s really there. We made it.”

  A sob spurted out without warning; afraid it really wasn’t real. To dare believe we had finally gotten to our destination.

  “Though I should warn you—” Scrooge’s words were cut off.

  The door abruptly swung open, cracking loudly against the interior wall. A tall, heavyset man stepped out, carrying a real rifle, one you’d find from my Earth. The sound of it being cocked filled the air as he took a step out onto the porch, his black boots hitting the creaky wood.

  “Get the fuck off my property. I will shoot you,” the man yelled. He looked to be wearing an open kimono robe and nothing else besides the unlaced boots. His white scraggily beard grew past his naked bits, hitting his thighs.

  “The wind should have kept you away. Move, or I will kill you right where you stand.” The man paused, leaning over, his lids squinting. “Scrooge?”

  “Oh good, he’s coherent today,” Scrooge muttered. “This could have been bad.”

  “What the hell you doing here?” The man took a step off the porch. I couldn’t move; my mouth parted as I took him in.

  “Oh. My. God…” Pen dropped from my hands, his body hitting the snow with a puff as I stared.

  “Not exactly, Ms. Liddell.” Scrooge snickered, turning back to the man. “Hey, Nick.”

  Holy holly wreaths…

  Naked and armed… but there he was.

  Santa Claus.

  Chapter 23

  “Thought I told you to never seek me out again.” Santa kept the gun pointed at us, taking another aggressive step toward us. “You wasted your time. Might as well turn around now.”

  “Come on, Nick. Look at us. Dee is injured. Bad.” Scrooge lifted the elf in his arms for Santa to see. “We’re starving. Wounded. Exhausted.”

  “Whose fault is that?” Nick grunted, but his gaze dipped to the tiny girl elf. “You knew what was waiting for you here… but you came anyway. I thought I made myself perfectly clear last time—if you or anyone came to me, I’d shoot to kill this time.”

  Whoa. This Santa Claus was not the lovable, kind, jolly St. Nicholas. This man was nothing but a cantankerous, gun-toting hermit.

  “Nick.” Scrooge growled, holding out Dee’s limp figure. “She is one who still loves you. Believes in you. Help her at least.”

  Nick’s jaw rolled, his shoulders tightening. He stared at us, the rifle still pointed our way before he let out a sigh, dropping it.

  “Fine.” He nodded his head at the cabin. “Get in if you’re going to. Don’t dawdle.”

  Hare, Dum, and Penguin advanced toward the cabin as Mr. Claus stood at the door, skeptically watching them enter his home.

  “So, Ms. Liddell, that is Nicholas,” Scrooge said dryly.

  “You told me he no longer existed. I thought he was dead.”

  “Santa Claus doesn’t exist anymore. The Queen made sure of that. Nick is not Santa. Not anymore.” He took off, heading for the cabin with me right on his tail.

  Nick glared at Scrooge when he passed, but a brief softness flickered over his features when he reached out, brushing Dee’s hair away from her face, seeing one of his elves hurt. He quickly stuffed away the emotion, standing taller. “Put her in the back bedroom.”

  Scrooge nodded, traveling deeper in the house.

  “Who. Are. You?” Nick leaned over, his gaze running over me with gruffness.

  “Al-Alice.” Wow, it didn’t seem to matter how old I was, when faced with Santa Claus, I turned into a little girl in awe of her idol. A hero who represented innocence, joy, and love. Not a naked recluse who looked to be spending his days on a nude hippie ranch.

  “Alice?” He huffed, leaning back, his disapproval twitching his pale cheeks. There was no glint in his eyes nor rosy cheeks written so famously about, just fatigue and distrust hanging off his features, under his bushy eyebrows and overgrown beard. “Who is Alice? There’s no Alice in Winterland.” He took a sniff of me, his eyes lowering. “You are from Earth. Human. How did you get here, Alice?”

  “I followed, Rudolph… fell down a hole—”

  “Rudolph?” His brows, which connected, inched down like a hairy worm wiggling on his forehead. “You saw Rudolph? On Earth?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, his eyes inspecting me, holding me in what felt like crushing weight. He might not be the man everyone had imagined as the sweet Santa Claus, but he still held so much… muchness. Larger than life. He had that thing that would make everyone take notice. Drawn to him in reverence from either fear or adoration.

  “That shouldn’t be possible. Especially someone your age.” He lifted his chin, folding his arms over his long beard.

  “Someone my age?” I jerked with irritation.

  “Are you a child?”

  “No…” Though my family still seemed to think I was.

  “IF someone was to see Rudy, it would be a child. They are open books, still wanting to believe in magic and that there is still goodness and love in this world.”

  “That would totally leave me out,” I snorted.


  “Exactly.” He inclined, getting right in my face. “I will ask again. Who. Are. You?”

  I was so sick of that question, and I knew repeating my name didn’t seem to answer the query for them.

  “I guess…” I moved into his space, staring up at the huge man. Don’t think about what’s so close to you, beneath the beard, I repeated in my head. Don’t think… Dammit! Ewww. “I guess I am a girl who still wants to believe there is magic in this world, fairy tales can exist, and Santa still cares about children and humanity. Not some crotchety hermit with a gun who threatens people who need his help.”

  He jerked at my words, his teeth grinding. “Do not speak that name here.” He growled with anger, his huge frame looming with threat. “Never utter it again.”

  “Nick.” Scrooge stepped out on the deck, his deep voice proceeding with caution. The feel of his body pressed into my ass. “Back off.”

  Nick slanted a look at Scrooge behind my shoulder. “You come here, bringing danger and strangers to my land unannounced and I’m the asshole.” He grunted, shoving past us, and stomped into the house.

  “Sorry about him.” Scrooge tilted his head, moving to face me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I let out an exhale, feeling the magic Santa still carried ease off, letting my shoulders drop. “He was not what I was expecting.”

  “I warned you Santa Claus doesn’t exist.”

  “Yeah, you did. Still…” I motioned to the door. “Seeing an icon naked except his boots and robe, ready to shoot us is a lot to take. And greatly disappointing.”

  Scrooge grunted, clasping my shoulders, rubbing his hands softly up and down. “It usually is when meeting an idol. When you realize they are real with lives and problems. Their own demons.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Mrs. Claus.” Scrooge glanced at the open doorway. “She brutalized him until he was stripped of everything that had made him Santa Claus. She rounded up every one of his followers.” I watched his Adam’s apple bob, his eyes going to the side laced with shame. “He watched hundreds and hundreds of his friends, his family, get tortured and killed in front of him. He eventually broke.”