Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  Santa looked Taylor in the eye, a single tear running down his rosy cheek. “This is real life, my dear boy, not some bedtime story. Naughty children don’t really get lumps of coal in their stockings. They come to work for me.”

  Michael Bishop

  SEASONS OF BELIEF

  IN THE DEAD of winter, in a high-ceilinged room in a drafty, many-gabled house, a family had gathered to pass the twilight hour after supper. Father was reading a book, Mother was busy with thimble and needle at her quilting frame, and the children were stretched out in front of the room’s copper-colored space heater with their crayons and several big yellow-grey sheets of newsprint.

  It was not long before their bedtime. The silence in the room had grown as thick and muffling as the coverlets of snow on the house’s gables and windowsills. In everyone’s mind was the half-formed thought that the first word spoken into this stillness would seem as loud and unexpected as a Fourth of July firecracker.

  In everyone’s mind, that is, except Stefa’s. Stefa was five. She had suddenly grown tired of drawing trees across her paper and of worrying about explaining to everyone else what her fine treelike trees were really supposed to be. Father would mistake them for people, Mother for tornadoes or big green bananas, and Jimbo, willfully, for scribbles. Stefa was also tired of sharing the crayons, even though the box contained at least a hundred of them. Only a few were good honest colors like red, yellow, blue, green, and orange.

  All the rest were imposters like burnt sienna, aquamarine, raw umber, goldenrod, or colors equally shady; and what, exactly, were they good for?

  Stefa threw her good honest green crayon on the floor and watched it roll under the space heater. “Tell us a story,” she demanded.

  Her brother, Jimbo, who was seven, jumped as if a Fourth of July firecracker had just exploded. But after looking disapprovingly at Stefa, he turned to his parents and repeated his sister’s request: “Yes, tell us a story. We’re tired of drawing.”

  “Your turn,” said Mother, looking directly at her husband. “Last night I told them about rollerskating to the circus.”

  The children hurried across the room and crumpled the pages of Father’s book climbing into his lap. When they were finally settled on either side of him in the big green chair, Stefa said:

  “A scary story, please.”

  “All right,” Father told them, finally adjusted to their presence. “This is a story about the grither — because Stefa wants a scary story.”

  “What’s a grither?” Jimbo asked.

  “A grither is a creature,” began the children’s father, “who lives in the wreck of an ancient packet ship in the ice floes of the Arctic Circle. There is only one grither in the entire world, and each time he hears his name spoken aloud by any member of the human population, he sets off to find that impertinent person and make sure that he never says his name again. He has very, very good ears, the grither does, and he cannot tolerate being the object of anyone’s gossip.”

  “Don’t tell this story,” Stefa cautioned her father. “I don’t want you to tell it.”

  Mother looked up from her quilting frame. “It may be too late to stop him, Stefa. Your father has already mentioned the grither’s name, and the creature is probably on his way to our house right this very moment.”

  “He’s only just started,” the father said. “It’ll take him a while to get here, of course, and if I’m careful to keep this story short, the grither may not be able to reach our house before I’ve finished. He depends on hearing his name several times to get to where he needs to go.”

  “Don’t tell it,” Stefa pleaded, hoping that her father would go on to the last possible moment before their safety was irrevocably compromised and the grither sprang into the room to devour them.

  “Do you know why the grither is called a grither?” Father asked, looking first at Stefa and then at Jimbo.

  “Why?” the children asked together.

  “Because the grither has fists as big as basketballs and arms as long as boa constrictors. When he finally locates the human busy- bodies who have been tossing his lovely name around, he opens up his fists, reaches out his arms, and — grithers’em in! Just like that, Stefa and Jimbo, just as if he were hugging his cousins at a family reunion — he grithers’em in!”

  Jimbo and Stefa shuddered and pressed themselves more tightly against their father.

  “Is the grither a bigfoot?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Father responded. “The grither isn’t a bigfoot, or an abominable snowman, or any of those other doubtful monsters that people sometimes think they’ve seen. The grither has never been seen by anyone — except, of course, by the people whom he grithers in and gobbles up. And those unfortunate folks are no longer around to tell us what he looks like.”

  “What does he look like?” asked Jimbo.

  “Well, besides his basketball fists and boa-constrictor arms, the grither has a body as tall and supple as a poplar tree. You can see right through him, though, as if he were made of melting, colorless gelatin. He looks a little bit like a plastic road map because inside his legs and arms and chest and face you can see the tiny red-and-blue veins that twist through his body and help to hold him together. The blue’s for fear, the red’s for rage, and these feelings, flowing through his veins, help to keep him warm, too. As you may imagine, it’s very chilly in the hold of a packet ship stuck in the pack ice—much chillier, my children, than it ever gets here.”

  “Then why doesn’t he leave?” Stefa objected.

  “He does,” Father said. “Every time he hears anyone speaking his name aloud. When I first started telling this story, the grither snaked his way out of that shipwrecked vessel’s hold, slithered over the gunwales, and began loping across the blue-white Arctic deserts toward the sound of our voices. He doesn’t like gossip, as I’ve already told you, but he’s always glad for the chance to go somewhere to stifle it. He’s coming now. Listen.”

  “No!” shrieked Stefa, covering her ears and shutting her eyes. But even so she could hear the sighing of the wind in the naked oaks — a sound as sinister as a siren at midnight.

  “Where is he now?” Jimbo asked. The boy peered at the room’s solitary, icy window, sneaked a look at the door, and glanced suspiciously at the innocent ceiling.

  “That’s hard to say,” Father replied. “But as he comes to get whoever’s gossiping about him, he always sings this song.” And, narrowing his eyes and doing something strange to his voice, Father showed them how the song was sung:

  “I am the grither, gruesome and hungry.

  Here I come, folks,

  All the while grimacing.

  You cannot escape me—it’s simply impossible.

  Don’t even try.

  I am the grither, crude and most grum.

  Pleading is useless.

  So are your prayers—also your rabbit’s feet.

  The grither is greedy

  For only one thing:

  To silence your gossip, folks.

  That’s why this song says

  Your moments are numbered.

  I’m quite sorry for you.

  I’m quite sorry for you.

  So please do accept

  My most heartfelt apologies.”

  Scandalized, Stefa protested, “That doesn’t even rhyme! There aren’t no sound-alikes!”

  “‘Any,’” Mother interjected.

  “There aren’t any sound-alikes,” Stefa corrected herself.

  “That’s true,” Father admitted. “And the grither doesn’t sing very well, either.”

  "But where is he now?” Jimbo asked.

  Father tilted his head and listened to the sound of the grither’s mug as it was apparently borne to him on the sighing winter wind. "Maine,” he said. “The grither’s in Maine — but he’s heading relentlessly south and taking all the shortcuts he knows.”

  “Stop!” cried Stefa. “Don’t tell any more!”

  “It’s cheating,” said Fat
her, “if you don’t finish the story. You just have to be sure to finish it before the grither arrives — that’s the main thing. Now that the grither’s on his way, it would be terribly unfair to leave him stranded in Bangor. He doesn’t like short trips, you know.”

  "It isn’t fair to the people in Maine, either,” Mother pointed out. "He’s always traipsing back and forth through their state, and we can’t allow that revengeful critter to impose on their hospitality any more than he already manages to.”

  “No, we can’t,” Father agreed.

  “Well, then,” said Stefa impatiently, “please hurry up and finish telling the story.”

  “Yes,” said Jimbo. “Maybe you can leave him stranded in New Jersey or Virginia. Virginia’s a pretty state.”

  “That’s an idea,” said Father, contemplating this notion. “All right, then. I’ll go on with my story. You may be wondering where the grither came from in the first place. Well, the fact is —”

  Just then the telephone — which hung from a wall in the kitchen, right next to the pantry door — began to ring. Stefa thought that the burring noise it emitted was exactly the sort of sound you could expect a statue in the park to make, if only statues could come alive in the cold to shiver and suffer.

  “Would you mind getting that?” Mother asked Father. “I’ve almost finished quilting this square.”

  “Oh, no!” cried Jimbo and Stefa in unison.

  Father shrugged amiably, eased himself out of the big green chair, and disappeared into the kitchen to make the phone stop ringing. He caught it on the sixth or seventh burr.

  Stefa and Jimbo, with a warm dent between them in the cushion, looked at each other and made worried faces. They lived in the South, but not that far south, and the grither was descending upon them like a ravenous avalanche. Stefa could not understand her parents’ lack of concern — they were usually very sensible people. “Where is he now?” she moaned. “Where is he now?”

  “Boston, maybe,” Mother said, without looking up from the quilting frame. “Or Philadelphia, if he’s flying.”

  “Flying?” said Jimbo. “How?”

  “Well,” said Mother, briefly pursing her lips as she forced the needle through two layers of cloth and the cotton batting between them, “the grither’s ears — which are invisibly small to start with — get bigger and bigger each time his name is spoken. By the time it’s been spoken ten or twelve times, they’re big enough to carry him wherever he’s going; a pair of miraculous transparent wings.” Mother took off her thimble, kissed her thumb, and tugged thoughtfully at her ear lobe. “I’d imagine our grither’s over Philadelphia, or maybe Baltimore, by now. He ought to have an extremely nice pair of ear-wings — we’ve been gossiping about him for quite some time.”

  “Daddy!” Stefa screamed at the kitchen. “Daddy!”

  Father came strolling back into the living room with his hands in his pockets. “Here I am,” he said. He sat down between the children.

  “Hurry,” Stefa advised him. “Finish telling the story.”

  “Who was that?” Mother asked, nodding her head toward the kitchen and the telephone.

  “I don’t know,” Father responded mysteriously. (Stefa was not sure if he had winked at Mother or not.) “Someone who knows who we are and who wondered if we were home. I said we were, of course.”

  “Was it the grither?” Jimbo asked, his face betraying both excitement and alarm.

  “I don’t know that, either. You see, Jimbo, the caller didn’t say who he was and I’ve never heard the grither speak before. How do you suppose I ought to be able to recognize his voice?”

  “You sang his silly song,” Stefa reminded him.

  “Right,” Father said. “But that was from memory.”

  Neither Stefa nor Jimbo understood the precise meaning of this explanation, but it kept them from asking any more questions about the grither’s voice. It didn’t, however, keep them from worrying about the telephone call.

  Pounding her kneecaps, Stefa urged Father to finish the story. "Washington, D.C.,” Mother noncommittally informed her family. “I believe he’s over Washington.”

  "Please,” said Stefa.

  "Well,” said Father, trying to take up where the telephone call had interrupted him, “the grither came into existence when a royal packet ship steaming between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portsmouth, England, was blown ridiculously off course by a storm and driven up Baffin Bay toward the Pole. Not a soul aboard that ship survived — but before they all drowned or froze to death, they lifted their voices into the storm to remind the heavens that they were under the King’s protection. The grither was born from the fear, rage, and disappointment of those who died. And it has ever since been merciless to those who speak its name because the storm was merciless to those who had to die to give the grither life.”

  "Is that all?” asked Stefa.

  “Richmond, Virginia,” said Mother. “He’s soaring over Richmond — on his way to Winston-Salem.”

  "No,” said Father, looking at his little girl. “Not quite all. The story goes that the grither won’t cease to exist until—”

  There was a knock on the door. Mother looked at Father. Stefa and Jimbo looked at each other. The wind, as it curled around the gables of the house, set the walls and floorboards a-creaking. The light bulb hanging from its cord in the center of the room began to hob and dance.

  And a voice beyond the door was singing:

  “The grither is greedy

  For only one thing:

  To silence your gossip, folks.

  That’s why this song says

  Your moments are numbered.

  I’m quite sorry for you.

  So please do accept

  My most heartfelt apologies.”

  When the singing was finished, the knocking on the door grew louder and louder.

  “Who’s going to answer it?” asked Father.

  Stefa and Jimbo shrank back against the big green chair’s bolster cushion and gave their father disbelieving looks. When Mother saw their fear, she in turn gave Father a look of reproach and warning.

  “I’m sorry,” Father began contritely. “It’s really just—”

  But the door banged open with a crash, a huge furry figure leapt through the opening with a roar of Arctic air, and the double row of tiny blue flames in the space heater rippled and guttered as the same voice that had been singing the grither’s song cried out in malevolent glee:

  “GOTCHA!”

  The entire family gasped as a single person. Father, indeed, jumped out of his chair.

  Then they all saw that the figure who had sprung through the door was Stefa and Jimbo’s grandfather, dressed for the season in a raccoon coat and a Russian hat. Coming into the high-ceilinged room behind him, Grandmother had the practicality and presence of mind to close the wide-thrown door.

  “Grandfather sometimes gets carried away,” she apologized.

  “I telephoned to say we were coming,” said Grandfather unrepentantly, winking at Mother. “Didn’t this husband of yours tell the children?”

  Father’s mouth was still open. He had neither the practicality nor the presence of mind to close it.

  “I’ve finished with this,” said Mother, rising from her quilting frame. “Let’s go into the kitchen for coffee and doughnuts.” She led Grandmother and Grandfather, scolding each other and laughing, out of the dim and drafty living room to the comfort of the kitchen table.

  “Where’s the grither?” Stefa demanded of her father, wiping tears of fright from her eyes. “Where’s the real grither?”

  “Yes,” said Jimbo. “What about the rest of the story?”

  Father closed his mouth and put his hands in his pockets. Then he opened his mouth and said very slowly:

  “I hope neither of you really believes in the grither. You don’t, do you?”

  “No-o-ohh,” the children managed.

  "Good,” boomed Father jovially. “Because if you don’t believe in what
isn’t, it can’t do you any harm. Can it?”

  Stefa and Jimbo looked at each other. In unison, each prompted by the other, they doubtfully shook their heads.

  "It’s almost bedtime. Come into the kitchen for milk and doughnuts, and then we’ll go up to bed.” Father paused before leaving and looked at the floor. “But first pick up your crayons, please."

  Alone in the high-ceilinged living room, Stefa and Jimbo got down in front of the space heater to pick up their scattered crayons — the aquamarines and goldenrods as well as the reds and blues.

  "Winston-Salem isn’t too far from here,” Jimbo said as they gathered up the crayons. “I’ve seen it on a map at school.”

  And Stefa whispered miserably, “I wonder where the grither is right now.” For Stefa believed in the grither, and what she believed In could certainly do her harm, couldn’t it?

  “Look,” said Jimbo, and he pointed at the rime-coated window across the room. In the final moments of dusk, with the electric glare of the light bulb glinting off the glass, the window was veined with slender threads of red and blue, and the glass itself seemed to be melting - just like leftover Jell-O when no one has put it back in the refrigerator.

  But because they weren’t a bit surprised, Stefa and Jimbo didn’t even scream. . . .

  Robert E. Howard

  “GOLDEN HOPE” CHRISTMAS

  RED GHALLINAN WAS a gunman. Not a trade to be proud of, perhaps, but Red was proud of it. Proud of his skill with a gun, proud of the notches on the long blue barrel of his heavy .45s. Red was a wiry, medium-sized man with a cruel, thin lipped mouth and close-set, shifty eyes. He was bow-legged from much riding, and, with his slouching walk and hard face he was, indeed, an unprepossessing figure. Red’s mind and soul were as warped as his exterior. His insister reputation caused men to strive to avoid offending him but at the same tome to cut him off from the fellowship of people. No man, good or bad, cares to chum with a killer. Even the outlaws hated him and feared him too much to admit him to their gang, so he was a lone wolf. But a lone wolf may sometimes be more feared than the whole pack.