He rocketed through the sky to heed Jack’s call.
Flash saved the elf, stopping his fall!
“Jack! You made it!” Dee said, “I’m glad you’re okay.
“Flash the flying reindeer really saved the day!”
“That he did,” Jack said, “But the perp got away.
“I’ve got to track him down without delay!”
So Jack rode home, the pilgrim’s collar in his hand,
“If this clue breaks the case, it sure would be grand!”
Back inside his igloo, Jack made a few calls.
The cub had trashed his house; floor, ceiling, and walls.
“Yo! What’s up?” said the voice on the globe’s other end.
“Funk Master Fred, I’ve got some work for you, my friend.”
Jack turned to leave but what he saw had him booing
The little bear cub in his living room was pooing!
Jack broke out the towels, disinfectants, and sprays,
Without out a doubt, his home had seen better days.
“You better be glad you’re still just a pup,
“Or I’d have you scrubbing this mess and cleaning it up!”
Chapter 8
Fred, or Funk Master Fred, as he currently prefers to be called, is not your normal Christmas elf. He is a true prodigy, and by happenstance, a virtual outcast among his own kind.
Computers? Video Games? Humans may have created them, but it was Fred who perfected them (Heck, he created the cure for iron sickness all magical beings suffer from. That’s why the elves are able to build mechanical toys. Next time Santa puts a Transformer under your tree, thank Fred!).
You see, Fred has always been fascinated with humans. They have been his muse and teacher now for millennia. He even tries to pattern himself after them. He spent their dark ages running around in kingly robes, doth-ing this and thou-ing that. During their 1960’s, he wore a modest suit and tie and told everyone not to ask what their Christmas could do for them, but what they could do for their Christmas!”
In recent decades, he’s discovered what the humans call hip-hop. I’m not sure what that means. You’d think it involved jumping, but I’ve yet to see Fred take the first leap. Instead, he tends to wear baggy clothes and gaudy jewelry and say “Yo” a lot. But eccentricity is just part of the genius package, I suppose.
I reach Fred’s house in the village surrounding Christmas Castle and knock.
“Who knocks, yo?” Fred’s voice calls from the other side of the door.
“It’s Frost. Open up.”
The door opens in front of me, releasing light into the nighttime darkness. “Yo, J-Dog!” Fred is not dressed in typical toymaker attire. No, he’s Funk-mastered-out in sheeny red warm-up gear and what he refers to as bling. And his green cap is on backwards, of course.
Upon greeting, he insists in doing what he calls bumping fists and hugs me in a very awkward way. I return both gestures as I’m used to this odd behavior by now.
“Step on up to my crib, J.”
I enter Fred’s house and hear the thumping bass and indiscernible chanting that’s always playing in the background when I visit.
“You like that, J?” Fred says, noticing me noticing the noise.
“It’s the new Crunk X joint.”
“Crunk X?”
“He’s a rapper.”
“Then why’s he making that awful noise? We can always use gift wrappers here at the Pole, after all.”
“Yo,” Fred says, laughing, “You’re whacked, J!”
“Whacked? No one’s hit me. However, I did take a nasty fall, earlier.”
Fred rolls his eyes dismissingly and sits down at his computer. “Yo, I was just kicking it RPG-style before you came in.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Never mind, J. It ain’t no thing. What’s up?”
I hold out the pilgrim’s collar for Fred to take. He does and sniffs it.
“Yo, this smells like wet dog.”
I shrug. “A pilgrim wearing this tried to ice Father Time.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
“Yo! That’s some hardcore gangster—” Fred glances up at me sheepishly, catching himself. My heritage haunts me as ever.
“I think it has to do with Pop’s kidnapping. Or, at least, that’s what I’m supposed to think.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Yo, that’s whacked! Whatever I can do to help, know what I’m saying?”
“See those hairs on the collar?”
“Word.”
“I thought you could check them out under that fancy eye of yours.”
“The microscope? You got it, J.”
I follow Fred out of the front room into his workshop—a place that would make any human Einstein or Gates-types jealous. We reach the microscope and, after a bit of tinkering, Fred places a slide of the hairs from the collar beneath its lens. He adjusts the microscope’s knobs as he peers down through it at the magnified follicles. I watch as Fred’s jaw drops.
“Yo, check it!”
“Whatcha got?”
Fred looks up from the microscope and gestures for me to give him a second. He searches through a few of the drawers in his bench until he pulls out a long, dark, halogen bulb. He presses a button along its housing and the bulb glows an eerie blue-black.
“This bulb is designed to give out ultraviolet light, like the sun.” Fred slips out of hip-hop mode without realizing it. It always happens when he gets technical. That’s when the real Fred shines through.
“Sunlight. Got it.”
“Now watch.” Fred holds the bulb over the Pilgrim’s collar where it lies on the bench. It’s once white surface now glows the same blue-black as the light.
“I don’t follow you.”
“Look closer... .”
I lean in and peer at the hairs lining the collar. I feel my brow furrow as I watch them literally shrink under the ultraviolet light.
“Yo, this collar didn’t come from no pilgrim, J.”
“Yeah?”
“The wet dog smell; the hairs shrinking under the UV-light—I hate to tell you this, but it looks like you got a Halloweenian on your hands, J—a lycanthrope.”
“Lycanthrope?”
“A werewolf.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. Very afraid.”
Still at the Pole, Jack went to Fred’s pad,
For he needed some help finding his Dad.
Now Funkmaster Fred wasn’t your typical elf.
After the humans of the world, he patterned himself.
He’d been a doctor, a lawyer, a fireman too.
Now he was a rapper of the hip-hop crew.
In all things scientific was where Fred’s true talents lay.
He was the elf who invented the mechanized sleigh.
Jack had come to borrow Fred’s smarts,
To find his father using scientific arts.
“Can you help me out?” Jack asked with hope.
“You know it,” Fred said, “My skills are dope!”
“Look at this collar,” Jack said, “If you don’t mind.
“Give it a once over. See what you can find.”
Into his microscope, Funkmaster Fred gazed.
What he saw left him quite phased.
“Yo, J, check it! Do you see these hairs?
“They don’t belong to a human, but a creature who scares!
“That wasn’t any pilgrim who shot at the mayor.
“It was a werewolf, dog! A Halloweenian, player!”
Chapter 9
Nutcrackers! This is bad. Very bad. But then, it always is when you get Halloweenians involved. They make the long departed Awgwas look like kindergarteners by comparison.
The October Country government is token—so corrupt one wonders why they even bother. It’s Samhain and his crew in Necropolis who really run things. And if Santa’s kidnapping and the botched hit on Father Time reaches to his level, well, this is
going to get even uglier!
Not that all Halloweenians are bad people, though. In fact, in my rebellious youth, I spent some time in the October Country—more to spite the Old Man than anything. Unfortunately, it broke Mom and Pop’s hearts, too. But I eventually got out. Most of the good ones do. Take Dee, for instance. She couldn’t put the October Country in her rearview mirror fast enough, to use a human expression. She was always meant for bigger and better things and she knew it.
I bid Fred goodbye and rode Flash through the Northern Lights for Holiday Town once more. H-Town was built in the nexus between all worlds and serves specifically as the gateway between the different holiday realms.
I make a mental note that when all this is chilled and frozen, I’m going to have to rethink moving my office over here to cut down on the commute, if nothing else.
Plus, the fact that I’d be closer to Dee wouldn’t hurt.
We fly through the night around City Hall until I spot Dee talking on a crystal ball through her office window. We pull alongside and I knock. She jerks her head around, startled, then relaxes when she sees it’s me.
I see her mouth the words, I’ll have to call you back, and then the crystal ball goes dim. She gets up from her desk and opens the window.
“Bad time?” I ask.
“Right this minute or in general?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, don’t just hang out there like an icicle. Come on in.”
“Love to. But I’ve got places to be. That hunch I was telling you about...”
“Yeah?”
“Came up silver and gold. The pilgrim get-up was all for show, like the feathers in Pop’s bedroom. Dee, the shooter was from your world. We’re dealing with a Halloweenian.”
“Oh my! What are you going to do?”
“Go to the October Country. Sniff around. See what snow I can shovel up.”
“Oh, Jack, do be careful. If you stir the wrong cauldron there—!”
“Don’t worry. Remember, I’ve been Halloween side before.”
The pale flesh of her cheeks fills with color. “Of course I remember. How could I ever forget?”
I place my hand beneath her chin, holding it between thumb and forefinger. She tilts her head to the side, cradling my hand against her shoulder. We release one another and, without another word between us, Flash carries me away for the H-Town cemetery.
Flash halts at the gate of spiked black iron, refusing to go any farther. “I don’t blame you, boy.” I pet his neck. “Go find you some food. Check back every so often. If I’m not back after you’ve had three meals, go home.” Flash huffs and then is off like a shooting star.
I turn and survey the cemetery. On the other side of the fence, gnarled trees and broken tombstones rise from a lake of eerie mist. I’m definitely on the edge of October Country.
I open the gate and wade into the mist. I reach the crumbling, marble tomb serving as the cemetery’s heart and shove my way past the Tomb’s stone slab of a door. The tomb’s ceiling has long fallen in, so in the moonlight it’s easy to see all the creepy-crawlers skittering about the piles of bones they’ve claimed for house and home. I make my way to an ancient stone sarcophagus rising out of the earth at the tomb’s center. It serves as the door to the October Country. With considerable effort I push open its lid and look inside. A gaping mouth of darkness lies before me as deep as the eye can see. It gives even me chills.
I climb inside, my feet landing on descending stairs. I move forward and the stairs soon peter out for earthen floor. This is the opposite of traveling through the Northern Lights. I sense things moving far out in the darkness around me—enormous, nameless things older than time itself. I try not to think what would happen if I lost my way and came face to face with one of them.
I breathe a sigh of relief when I see a pinprick of dim light ahead in the distance. Soon, the light has enlarged to the point I can see it’s the mouth of a cave—one I’m now in. When I exit, the first thing I notice is the gigantic moon hanging bright and full in the night sky. It shines down upon Necropolis—a city of haunted Victorian mansions and tall, gothic cathedrals huddled away from the forest in the valley below.
The howl of a wolf goes up into the night. It turns my attention to Samhain’s base of operations—a twisting black castle that crests the opposite side of the valley. Great Ak help me if I have to cross his path!
“For Pop,” I tell myself and then start down the mountainside for the village.
Jack gathered his courage and swallowed his pride,
For he had to journey Halloween-side.
“This just got worse,” Jack said as he went,
“The Halloween monsters have wicked intent.”
But that’s not exactly true, Jack then thought.
Dee’s done very well, for a better life she’s fought.
Speaking of the Devil, Jack wanted to see her.
So he went to City Hall and was pleased to meet her.
“What’s the latest, Jack? Tell me what you have learned.”
“The pilgrim was a wolf, Dee. My attention, he has earned.”
“So what will you do?” Dee asked. “It’s not clear to me.”
“Go to Necropolis,” Jack said, “And see what I can see.”
To the H-Town cemetery Jack then traveled,
Into a tomb of crumbling block and gravel.
Down into its stone sarcophagus he went,
Deep in the darkness where time and space are rent.
When Jack emerged, he shivered in fear,
For the haunted town of Necropolis was now very near.
Keep it together, Jack thought. Don’t let your nerve drop!
Then Jack strode into Necropolis, looking for his Pop.
Chapter 10
Despite it being late at night—or in this case, I suspect because of it—the cobblestone streets of Necropolis are bustling with activity. Jack-o-lanterns sit at every doorstep, each a flickering homage to the town benefactor, Samhain himself. Crowds of monsters dance and shriek while their blind-folded ghoul children beat piñatas and bob for apples.
I grab the arm of a zombie shambling by me. “What’s all the jingling about?”
The zombie looks at me with sunken, glazed eyes and moans a response. “Niiiieeeght. Fooooreeeehveeeeer.”
Night forever. Like I said, the Thanksgiving folk aren’t the only Holidayers who would benefit from Santa’s sleigh being grounded. Want suspects? How about a gazillion undead!
I hold up the pilgrim collar for the zombie to smell. “Do you know this wolf?”
He grunts in negative.
Hey, it was worth a shot.
“Thanks.”
I walk away, leaving the zombie bent over, his mouth wide open where he was slowly leaning down to take a bite out of my arm.
I scan the crowd, looking for a certain acquaintance of mine from the old days. At last, I spot his hunched back at a stand offering hearts, spleens and other internal organs as snack food. I push my way through droves of ghosts, goblins, and witches and sneak up behind him, wishing to catch him off guard. I grab his arm, his filthy, ragged sleeve greasy to the touch, and spin him around.
He sees me and his one good eye goes large with shock as he drops the jar containing the brain he was holding. It shatters at our feet.
“Master!”
“Hello, Smeagor.”
Without another word, I drag him out of the crowd and into an alley where we can talk in private.
“It’s been so long, master!” Smeagor snivels.
“I was your boss, Smeagor. Never your master. You know that.”
I’m sad to say, before I got into the P.I biz, I had a gig as a day courier for Samhain here in October Country. I only took legit work. Honest.
Centuries later, I realize I did it to rebel against the Old Man more than anything—working for the competition and what not.
Smeagor used to be one of my package carriers. He also tried to erase me from existe
nce, but that’s another story.
“Yes, master. As you say, master.” Smeagor scratches the hump on his back. It’s one of his many annoying nervous ticks.
I raise the collar for Smeagor to see. “I’m looking for the lycanthrope who wore this.”
“Smeagor know nothing, master!”
“Don’t hold out on me, Smeagor. I’ve known you almost a millennia, and anytime something more rotten than usual went down Halloween side, you were always smack in the middle of it!”
“Smeagor promise! Smeagor know no werewolf! Smeagor know nothing!”
“Don’t make me give you the Eye, Smeagor!”
Smeagor collapses into a mass of flailing appendages trying to hide his face. “Pleassse, not the Eye, master! Not the Eye!”
“I’ll do it, Smeagor! I’ll do it if you don’t tell me who’s this is!”
No I wouldn’t. He’s slippery, but he’s pitiful, too. I couldn’t bring myself to use the Eye against him. But what he doesn’t know...
“Yes, master!” Smeagor pleads. “Smeagor know! Smeagor take you! Please, no Eye!”
“Okay, Smeagor. No Eye.”
Smeagor peeks up at him from between his folded arms. “No Eye?”
“No Eye.”
Smeagor jumps to his feet, clasping my hand appreciatively in both of his as he smiles up at me.
“No Eye,” he says, his breath rancid in my face. “No Eye. Smeagor take you to werewolf. No Eye.”
I jerk my hand away from his. If Smeagor notices my revulsion, he doesn’t show it.
He grins from ear to ear and motions for me to follow him deeper into the alleyways. “Come. Smeagor take you to werewolf.”
Smeagor leads me through a network of decrepit, twisting alleys until we reach a staircase leading down into the Necropolis subway tunnels.
“Down there, master!” Smeagor says as he points at the subway entrance. “Wolf down there!”
Unlike the rail cars in the human world, these tunnels house iron beasts powered by steam and black magic—not that I can see them in the darkness below right now.
Long Silent Night Page 4