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

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  “Listen, Nathan. Do you people have a car? You know, drive?” He made a steering gesture with his hands.

  “I know what a car is, sir. We may be religious, but we’re not stupid.”

  “Right. Sorry. Then there’s a car around here?”

  “We have an old Chevy out back. Once a month someone gets special dispensation to go to Pelham for supplies. It’s never a happy time. But they won’t let children go.” He paused. “Why?”

  “I was just thinking. It’s so nice here, I might just stay for a day or two.”

  Nathan stepped back, then turned away. He looked as if he were deciding whether to run screaming for help. Still looking across the common, he said, “You can’t stay here. They won’t let you. Please, you’ve caused enough trouble. Leave us alone.”

  Max smiled. “Tell you what. We’ll make a deal. You give me something, a gift maybe, and I’ll leave. I’ll even make it look like you forced me out.”

  Nathan looked back at him. “What kind of gift?”

  “Go get the battery out of that car and bring it here. That’s it. My Chrysler at home is dead. You give me your battery to take home with me, and I’ll be gone faster than your townspeople can scream.”

  “That’s stealing.”

  “Not if you give it to me. That’s my offer.”

  After a moment’s thought, “I’m not supposed to leave you.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  He watched the boy running toward a dilapidated shed across the grounds. Max wasn’t sure if his plan could technically work, but it’d be worth seeing their expressions when he tried.

  Once Nathan disappeared from sight, so did Max. He emerged from the trees onto the narrow stretch of highway, a hundred yards up-road from the truck. It still suffered under the spitting and battering of the old men. David was there, glancing nervously up the path. Max would have to do this quickly. Under the cover of the darkness, he ran across the road into the trees beyond.

  * * *

  Everyone wore black shoes. They poked in and out of the robes on the other side of the trailer. The old men knelt along the roadside. Max stepped slowly, quietly. Flickering light from lanterns cast wavering shadows around the rig. One foot on the cab’s step. His eyes rose above the passenger window. There was David, looking the other way. Max’s heart beat out the excitement and fear of the moment. He’d come this far.

  Be quick. The lock was up. This was a good thing, since keys make noise. He lifted the door handle.

  Click. The inner dome light snapped on. Max whispered, “Shit.”

  Voices. He reached under the seat and grabbed the Wal-Mart bag. It crinkled its plastic scream as he jumped down.

  “Who’s there?” David’s voice. Footsteps. Max ran into the woods. As he moved between the trees he took hold of the tangled mass of Christmas lights and tossed the white bag away. No sense giving them a beacon. He ran parallel with the road. A quick look behind revealed dark figures moving into the woods. They quickly changed direction and returned to the roadside.

  “Mister Tanner!” David’s voice again, more distant. At least they weren’t following. Max had a good idea where they’d go next. Time was not on the side of this plan. He turned towards the road. Without checking if anyone was looking he crossed the pavement in four steps.

  The common looked no different than when he left it, with the exception of a teenage boy standing near the outhouse, battery in his hand. Max ran to him. How long did he have? Sixty seconds? He giggled involuntarily.

  Nathan sagged in relief when he saw Max approach, then abruptly stiffened when he noticed what hung from the man’s fist. Though he’d never seen Christmas lights, he had a good idea that’s what they were.

  “Where did you go? What are those?”

  “Never mind. Is that battery working?”

  Nathan began to hand it over, then everything made sense. “Dear God! Those ARE lights! What are you doing?”

  Max grabbed the battery with both hands, careful not to crush any of the small colored bulbs in the process. He ran to the maple in the center of the common. Distant voices drifted up from the roadside, growing louder.

  Max took out a pocket knife from his coat, cut the ties binding the wires. It took an eternity to sort through the chaotic mess and hook the three sets together. A yellow glow spilled onto the grass from the pathway.

  Here they come. He cut the plug from one free end, peeled apart the wires. He suddenly had to go to the bathroom again. He could barely make out the thin white line on the positive feed. “Good enough,” he said aloud, then tossed the string of lights into the bare branches of the tree.

  It caught in two places. The rest fell to the other side. Before Max could round the tree Nathan rammed into him like a linebacker. They rolled across the lawn.

  “This is wrong,” the boy puffed. “I have to stop you. You shouldn’t be here.” He was strong, but Max guessed Nathan was too afraid to realize it. He stood up, shoved the boy to the ground.

  “You should thank me, kid. Christmas is for everybody. Even loonies.” He tossed the wires back into the tree. Loops of lights hung like snakes.

  “Mister Tanner!” The voice of Nathan’s father. Max turned around. David power-walked across the common. Behind him, the townspeople followed with lanterns. A few others brandished burning torches. This wasn’t good. The mob looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie. Behind the torch bearers, mothers tried in vain to usher children into their homes.

  Out of time. Max ran to the other side of the tree. He re-emerged with the exposed wires and the battery. Nathan remained on the ground, uncertain of what to do. The horde was less than ten feet away. David suddenly stopped. His people did likewise. They stared first in wonder, then slowly-emerging horror at the tangle of wires draped across the maple. The elders of the group, both men AND women this time, pushed their way through the crowd and kneeled without fear before Max and his demon. Sticks pounded the ground. Spit poured like wine towards the tree roots.

  David said, “What... what are those?” His voice was shaky, like a child seeing something he didn’t understand, but was pretty sure he didn’t like it.

  Max knelt and pulled apart the wire ends. Positive in his left, negative in his right. He hoped. Even if this didn’t work (and he was more and more certain it wouldn’t as the seconds ticked by), it was all worth seeing the wonder-struck expression of the crowd.

  “What, THESE?” he said. “Let’s just say it’s an early Christmas present.” David’s glaring expression left no room for doubting it was now or never. Max shrugged and smiled. “Ho. Ho. Ho!”

  He lowered the wires to the battery.

  Color and light exploded from the tree. Reds, greens, yellows, blues, falling across the faces of the townsfolk. The elders lifted wrinkled hands in defense. As one, they opened their mouths to scream but made no sound. Faces twisted, elongating within frayed cowls. Their skin stretched and faded to burnt charcoal gray. Lights danced like swarms of flies about them. Then no features at all, just light. The robes fell to the ground, covering piles of ash.

  Like a vampire facing the rising sun, David’s face hollowed and sunk, retreating from the colors dancing across it. Behind him, others stood likewise, in painful rapture of the splendor.

  The battery glowed brighter and brighter. As in a nightmare, Max couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. His hands were held by a preternatural gravity. A burning shape writhed within the battery, two red eyes opening in the midst of the Die Hard.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Nathan dove across the abyss into Max’s face. The connection broke. As he rolled and pushed the boy off of his chest, Max saw the Christmas lights explode in a hundred tiny pops. He clambered to his knees to look back at the motionless crowd.

  One by one, the residents of Holy Refuge sagged to their knees as if in prostration. They fell forward, faces hitting the ground in a group thud.

  Everything became very quiet.

  Then figures stirred, mov
ing slowly at first. The children walked, then ran to their parents, screaming at them to wake up. Nathan moved to his father’s prone body, turned him over, cradled the pale expressionless face in his lap.

  “Dad? Father? Wake up! Please?” He looked at one of the discarded robes in front of him. “Grandfather?”

  This was too much. Max walked to the boy’s side.

  “Is… is he all right?” The question woke not only Nathan but the rest of the children from their terror. Anger and hatred, all turned toward the stranger, activating alarm bells in every part of Max’s body.

  Fight or Flight. Better Run Now.

  “You ba... ba... bad person!” Nathan dropped his father’s head like a bug-infested melon, stood and pointed. “He did it! He killed our families!”

  Better Run Now. Better Run Now.

  Max ran.

  As one child then another moved to intercept, Max battered them aside. A forest of arms and fists. On the path leading away from the common, he looked back. The comparison to Frankenstein couldn’t have been more appropriate. Nathan led the mob, a burning torch held in front of him. Others grabbed the remaining lights and were one step behind.

  Max ran a bit faster.

  One old man remained beside the truck, rapping his heavy staff rhythmically against the trailer bed. Max ignored him.

  Keys. Where are the keys? Here. Which one? He jumped onto the step, opened the door and slammed it shut. Which one? Here. The torches and lanterns slid down the pathway like lava. Key in the ignition. Half turn. The glow plug activated. The red “Warming” light flashed. Max sat alone in the cab, waiting. “Come on....” His jaw ached from tension. The driver’s window shattered, a torn arm grabbed his throat.

  Nathan screamed, “I’ll kill you, you son of a... I’ll kill you!” The boy meant what he almost said. Max gripped his own shaking fingers in a fist and pistoned them into Nathan’s face. The boy fell away.

  The green “Ready” light flashed. Press the clutch. Turn the key. The engine roared to life. In the side mirror, Max watched the mob toss their lanterns and torches over the railings, into the pile of hapless trees.

  Max released the clutch. Shift. Gas. Shift. He drove as fast as possible without risking stalling the engine.

  Bright, fiery sparks shot into the air. The last of the children fell from the burning truck, while others searched for rocks to throw after it. The eighteen-wheeler raced around a corner like a comet, then was gone.

  * * *

  Max stopped talking. He still held the broken cup.

  McGovern, realizing the story was over, leaned back in the metal folding chair.

  “Mister Tanner,” he said finally. “That was quite a thrilling tale. Though none of us want in any way to affect your testimony, are you sure that’s what you want to say?”

  Max shook his head. “I swear to God, it’s all true. My truck. You saw my truck! Ruined. Burned away.” His voice faded on the last words.

  The stubble-faced officer behind Max stepped forward. “Sir, permission to continue this discussion another time? It’s almost midnight, for God’s sake. Bernie and I’ll lock him up for the holidays. Maybe after he’ll decide to tell us what really happened.” As Jamison spoke, he moved towards the door.

  Max thought of his words. Christmas was lost to him forever. Burned away in the faces of those pathetic old men and woman. He killed them. Then he noticed Jamison reaching behind the darkened Christmas tree.

  “I think we can plug this thing back in, don’t you?”

  Max tried to stand. “No! Please don’t -”

  McGovern raised a hand in weak defiance. “John, now, leave it unplugged. We don’t know - “ But it was too late. The officer had the wires in the outlet.

  Red and yellow lights stabbed like needles across the room, knocking Max back into his seat. They filled the driver’s mouth and eyes. For a moment, he seemed to breath them in.

  Then Max screamed.

  Outside, “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” drifted like snow from the speakers, across the parking lot and the smoldering eighteen-wheeler. Christmas was in the air.

  James Powell

  SANTA’S WAY

  LIEUTENANT FIELD PARKED behind the Animal Protective League van. The night was cold, the stars so bright he could almost taste them. Warmer constellations of tree lights decorated the dark living rooms on both sides of the street. Field turned up his coat collar. Then he followed the footprints in the snow across the lawn and up to the front door of the house where a uniformed officer stood shuffling his feet against the weather.

  Captain Fountain was on the telephone in the front hallway and listening so hard he didn’t notice Field come in. “Yes, Commissioner,” he said. “Yes, sir, Commissioner.” Then he laid a hand over the mouthpiece, looked up at a light fixture on the ceiling, and demanded, “Why me, Lord? Why me?” (The department took a dim view of men talking to themselves on duty. So Fountain always addressed furniture or fixtures. He confided much to urinals. They all knew how hard-done-by Fountain was.) Turning to repeat his question to the hatrack he saw Field. “Sorry to bring you out on this of all nights, Roy,” he said. He pointed into the living room and added cryptically, “Check out the fireplace, why don’t you?” Then he went back to listening.

  Field crossed to the cold hearth. There were runs of blood down the sides of the flue. Large, red, star-shaped spatters decorated the ashes.

  A woman’s muffled voice said, “I heard somebody coming down the chimney.” A blonde in her late thirties sitting in a wing chair in the corner, her face buried in a handkerchief. She looked up at Field with red-rimmed eyes. “After I called you people I even shouted up and told him you were on your way. But he kept on coming.”

  Captain Fountain was off the telephone. From the doorway he said, “So Miss Doreen Moore here stuck her pistol up the flue and fired away.”

  “Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow,” said the woman, making her hand into a pistol and, in Field’s opinion, mimicking the recoil quite well. But he didn’t quite grasp the situation until men emerged from the darkness on the other side of the picture window and reached up to steady eight tiny reindeer being lowered down from the roof in a large sling.

  “Oh, no!” said Field.

  “Oh, yes,” said Fountain. “Come see for yourself.”

  Field followed him upstairs to the third-floor attic where the grim-faced Animal Protective League people, their job done, were backing down the ladder from the trap door in the roof.

  Field and Fountain stood out on the sloping shingles under the stars. Christmas music came from the radio in the dashboard of the pickle-dish sleigh straddling the ridge of the roof. Close at hand was Santa, both elbows on the lip of the chimney, his body below the armpits and most of his beard out of sight down the hole. He was quite dead. The apples in his cheeks were Granny Smiths, green and hard.

  Only the week before Field had watched the PBS documentary “Santa’s Way.” Its final minutes were still fresh in his mind. Santa in an old tweed jacket sat at his desk at the Toy Works backed by a window that looked right down onto the factory floor busy with elves. Mrs. Claus, her eyes on her knitting, smiled and nodded at his words and rocked nearby. “Starting out all we could afford to leave was a candy cane and an orange,” Santa had said. “The elves made the candy canes and it was up to me to beg or borrow the oranges. Well, one day the United Fruit people said. ‘Old timer, you make it a Chiquita banana and we’ll supply them free and make a sizable donation to the elf scholarship fund.’ But commercializing Christmas wasn’t Santa’s way. So we made do with the orange. And look at us now.” He lowered his hairy white head modestly. “The Toy Works is running three shifts making sleds and dolls and your paint boxes with your yellows, blues, and reds. The new cargo dirigible lets us restock the sleigh in flight.” Santa gave the camera a sadder look. “Mind you, there’s a down side,” he acknowledged. “We’ve strip-mined and deforested the hell out of the North Pole for the sticks and lumps of coal we g
ive our naughty little clients. And our bond rating isn’t as good as it used to be. Still, when the bankers say. ‘Why not charge a little something, a token payment for each toy?’ I always answer, ‘That isn’t Santa’s way.’ ”

  An urgent voice from the sleigh radio intruded on Field’s remembering. “We interrupt this program for a news bulletin,” it said. “Santa is dead. We repeat. Santa is dead. The jolly old gentleman was shot several times in the chimney earlier this evening. More details when they are available.” At that late hour all good little boys and girls were in bed. Otherwise, Field knew, the announcer would’ve said. “Antasay is eadday,” and continued in pig Latin.

  Field stood there glumly watching the street below where the A. P. L. people were chasing after a tiny reindeer which had escaped while being loaded into the van. Lights had come on all over the neighborhood and faces were appearing in windows. After a moment, he turned his attention to the corpse.

  But Fountain was feeling the cold. “Roy,” he said impatiently, “Santa came down the wrong chimney. The woman panicked. Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow! Cut and dried.”

  Field shook his head. “Rooftops are like fingerprints,” he reminded the Captain. “No two are alike. Santa wouldn’t make a mistake like—” He frowned, leaned forward, and put his face close to the corpse’s.

  “It wasn’t just the smell of whiskey on his lips, Miss Moore,” said Field. “You see, if Santa’d been going down the chimney his beard would’ve been pushed up over his face. But it was stuck down inside. Miss Moore, when you shot Santa he was on his way up that chimney.”

  The woman twisted the handkerchief between her fingers. “All right,” she snapped. Then in a quieter voice she said, “All right, Nicky and I go back a long way. Right around here is end of the line for his Christmas deliveries. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”