by Paula Guran
Home again, they played dominoes on the kitchen table.
“What do you think Santa’s going to bring you, Eric?” Uncle Gregg asked.
Eric smiled and looked innocent. On the Christmas Eve of his sixth year, when he and his brother were going to bed, Daniel had casually said, “You do know Mom and Dad are just pretending when they say there’s a Santa Claus, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Eric had replied, his voice quavering slightly. Idolizing his big brother, who sometimes teased but never lied to him, Eric, not without a period of mourning, thereafter realigned his theology.
Still, adults had to be placated in this planet-wide game of pretend, so Eric said to his uncle, “I want Santa to bring me a baseball bat and a Monster Hero video game.”
“Are you sure you’ve been good enough for that?” Gregg asked, in feigned surprise.
“He’s a pretty good boy,” Mom said. “But who knows what Santa will do?”
Having found where his mother kept the unwrapped presents two weeks before, Eric had a fairly accurate picture of the intentions of the Claus organization.
Once upstairs in bed that night, Eric turned on the flashlight and shone it around the room. He sighed. He would never go to sleep; the night would last forever, and it was going to be seven centuries before his parents let him get up to open presents.
With images of Monster Hero dancing in his head, he drifted off sooner than he would have thought possible.
The chiming of the grandfather clock roused him. He counted the beats—eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. It was only midnight. Hours to go before morning. He groaned and rolled over. Dumb old clock! If it hadn’t woke him . . .
A crash came from downstairs, the splintering of wood, the breaking of glass. Eric sat up in bed. Remembering the dark elf, he lay back down and pulled the covers close. Maybe something had fallen downstairs. Maybe the Christmas tree had toppled over. Any minute, he expected to hear his dad’s feet padding down the hall to check. He strained to listen, but there was only the screeching of metal on wood floors, the thuds of falling objects.
What if his dad went downstairs and the elf was there? Would even his father, a veteran of Desert Storm, be able to stop him? Dad always kept a gun at the house, but he didn’t have one here.
For an instant, Eric lay frozen, afraid of what would happen next. Afraid for his father. Afraid for everybody. Death on Christmas Eve, the elf had said. His parents slept with the door closed. Maybe they couldn’t hear the noise.
When Eric was five, Daniel had accused him of being afraid of the dark, a brutal denunciation since it happened to be true. Ashamed and angry, Eric had refused to turn on the light any time he walked into his bedroom, stepping fists swinging into the blackness to wallop the waiting monsters. So he had beaten the dark, mastered it, brought it to leash. But lying in bed listening to the chaos downstairs, he knew his conquest had only been temporary.
He got up, grasping his flashlight, but not turning it on. It was a black night; no moon peeked through the blinds. He stepped into the hall, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet despite his feather-light efforts.
Daniel’s room was closest to his, but he passed it by, going straight to his parents’ door. He reached for the knob, but it wavered and eluded him—surely a trick of the dark. He snapped on the flashlight and tried again. The knob bulged inward, avoiding him. He tried to knock, but the wood danced away from his fist. He called, softly at first, but with increasing volume. He waited a lifetime, but no one came.
Eric!
He jumped. A voice ethereal as mist beckoned from below.
Eric!
He rushed back to Daniel’s door and ran straight at it, straining to reach the knob. It receded, ten yards, twenty, thirty, the door frame stretching like rubber. He halted and found himself standing in the hall before the closed door.
Eric! Come down!
The voice, an insistent humming in his head, sounded louder now.
He clenched his fist and gripped the flashlight. He passed Laura and Gregg’s room without even trying the door. There was no one to help him and it wasn’t fair! He was the youngest, the littlest, and it wasn’t right for the elf to pick on him, for him to be punished just because he was the one who had seen the creature.
As his hand touched the newel post at the top of the stairs, a dim glow rose from below. The sounds of violence ceased.
He crept down the steps, shaking with dread. At the bottom lay the remains of the outside door, splintered wood and broken glass sprawled across the kitchen floor. As he descended, step by step, looking over the banister rail, more of the living room came into view. The fireplace was lit, soft patter of flickering flames.
Heart pounding, he reached the bottom. He had to step over the shattered door, avoiding nails and diamond-glistening glass to reach the living room carpet. A silverware drawer lay upended onto the coffee table. Slashes crisscrossed his uncle’s recliner, leaving strips of hanging cloth. Torn presents were scattered around the room; the baseball bat Eric had asked for lay in the middle of the floor, half-covered by the Christmas stockings from the mantel.
Eric sucked in his breath to keep from screaming.
The elf stood by the front window, behind the Christmas tree, peering out from between the branches, razor nose crinkled, mouth gaping a grin, like a kid playing a game of hide and seek.
With deliberate slowness, he stepped from behind the tree, raised one hand toward the boy, and displayed the decapitated body of the Christmas angel.
“Come to me, little one,” the elf commanded, beckoning with his other hand. His eyes twinkled like broken glass.
“Who are you?” Eric demanded. He tried to sound brave, but his voice came timorous and thin. “This isn’t your house. What do you want?”
The elf laughed. “Such cheek! Such courage in the face of disaster. I am an ancient nemesis of your people, locked out of your world centuries ago. Tonight that will change. This very evening, your blood will permanently secure the passage between my dimension and your own.”
“I called the police,” Eric said. “They’ll be here any minute. You better go.”
“You called no one,” the elf sneered. “Do you think I can’t overcome your childish technology? You haven’t any idea. What fun I shall have, playing with you poor mortals.”
Eric stood shaking, wanting to run, to flee through the broken door into the cold night. He glanced into the darkness of the yard.
“Don’t bother,” the elf said. “Even if you chose to desert your family, you couldn’t leave the grounds any more than you could enter your parents’ room.”
The elf stepped forward, backing Eric against the wall. “Do you know what night it is, little one?”
“Ch . . . Christmas Eve,” Eric stammered.
“That’s right. It is also three days after the Winter Solstice, the longest and darkest night of the year. There are principles and dominions of which you know nothing, Eric, powers which humans can neither imagine nor cope with, creatures too terrible for mortal understanding.”
The elf glanced at the fireplace. “There are awful places in the world, places with dreadful names. Auschwitz, the Colosseum of Rome, the Solovki Gulag. Wherever your pitiful human lives have been cheapened, wherever the darkness of human hearts manifests itself, the barrier between my dimension and yours is weakened. This is Hostage Canyon, a minor outpost in your long history of atrocities. I began crossing over on the night of the solstice, but it takes three days to fully manifest.”
The elf glanced at the fireplace again. “It is a shame to slay one so young.” The creature’s long fingernails gleamed like knives in the firelight. “Let’s at least have a bit more light, so I can do the job efficiently.”
Leaving the boy pressed against the golden wallpaper, the elf threw a heavy log in the fireplace. The flames blazed, making the shadow of the Christmas tree dance.
“Much better.” The elf returned to Eric. This close, Eric could smell hi
m, an oily odor, sickeningly sweet. While the child watched in petrified terror, his breath coming in strangled gasps, the elf touched the tip of his fingernail to Eric’s throat.
“A single slice and it’s done.”
Eric howled, shouting for his father and big brother, but his yells echoed uselessly around the room. He fell into quiet sobbing.
“Are we done?” the elf asked. “Good. I like to work without distractions.”
Eric closed his eyes, waiting for the terrible pain. The grandfather clock ticked away, second by second, while he anticipated the first cruel cut. The elf’s fingernail tapped against his throat. His whole body shook.
The moments passed; the stroke did not come. The creature abruptly withdrew his hand. Eric’s eyes fluttered open. The elf looked at him thoughtfully.
“I don’t want to do this, you know. So young! Such a tragedy! It’s necessary, but I don’t like it.”
He put his hand to his cheek in thought. “There is another way. It isn’t often done, but it could be, in a special case. I could use a substitute instead of you. Someone else. Would you like that?”
Tears running down his face, Eric nodded, too frightened even to speak.
“Hmm,” the elf said. “Who would serve? Let me think. Who could I possibly use?”
The creature closed his gleaming eyes in concentration. He opened them and snapped his fingers and said with a smile, “I have it. Your brother will suffice.”
A short cry escaped Eric’s lips.
“Now understand me, little one. I would be quick. Just slip up to his room and do the deed. He wouldn’t know it was coming. It wouldn’t be like you, standing here awaiting the blow. He wouldn’t feel a thing. A pillow over the face and he’s gone. And your parents would never know. Natural causes, they’d think it was. And Daniel would go to heaven to be with the angels.”
“Please don’t take my brother,” Eric said, shaking his head.
The elf glanced at the ornamental bells on the Christmas tree. “Now let’s not be irrational. It has to be one of you; you haven’t any choice in that. But let’s think about it. Your brother has had a lot longer to live. And he hasn’t always been kind to you, has he? Oh, I know he isn’t one to hit you, but isn’t he always bossing you around, telling you how to act, as if you’re supposed to be as old as he? And lately he’s been distant. Listening to loud music, ignoring you. Talking to his friends on his cell. You’ve admired him, it’s true. You’ve looked up to him. But you know in your heart you’ll never live up to what he is. He’s stronger than you, smarter than you. All your life you’ll stand in his shadow. I can take care of that right now. You say the word and I’ll slip right upstairs. It’ll be so much easier.”
Eric’s tears abruptly ceased as he realized the elf was asking permission to kill Daniel.
“There isn’t any other way, Eric. One of you has to go. There are rules you know nothing about. And think of your mother. Hasn’t she always told you how precious you are, how special? Don’t you know in your heart you’re the most important one to her? She’ll miss Daniel, of course, but not like she’d miss you. The grief might kill her. Kill her dead.”
Eric thought. Though his mother never actually said she loved him more than Daniel, he was sure she thought him extra-special. Wasn’t he the compliant boy, her good little man? If there wasn’t any choice, if one of them had to die . . .
“I can see by your look you’re coming around to my way of thinking,” the elf said. “Come now, Eric, let me finish my job. For your mother’s sake. It’s the right thing to do.”
Eric faltered, for in mentioning what was right, the elf had stirred something within him. Eric’s parents always told him to do what was right. His mother insisted on it. His dad said a man was measured by it. It was like the heroes in books, like Captain America in the comics. Cap didn’t let someone else die in his place. Besides, when the older kids in school tried to pick on him, didn’t Daniel stand up for him? Shouldn’t he do the same for his brother?”
A log in the fireplace popped and the elf started and whirled toward the sound, his whole body twitching.
He’s afraid of something, Eric realized. As powerful as he is, he’s afraid.
For the first time, Eric found his courage, as if he were again swinging his fists in the blackness of his bedroom, facing the darkness. He had to stall until he figured out what the monster feared.
“I need to think about it,” he said.
“No need to think, and no time for it, either,” the elf said smoothly. “You know what you should do.” He brought his hand back toward Eric’s throat. “Death is dark, Eric, filled with darkness. Unending darkness. Darkness forever and ever.”
“You said Daniel would go to heaven.”
The elf’s eyes blackened, but immediately grew softer. “That’s Daniel. Big brothers are different. If you decide to let me take you instead—why, that would be like suicide. And suicide is bad, Eric. Everyone knows that.”
“I don’t know how that works. Can you explain it?”
The elf shook his head. “No, I can’t, Eric. There isn’t time. Your time is up. Your brother or you? Which is it?”
Eric felt the sharp edge of the fingernail against his neck, pressing, cutting.
With a sound of collapsing air, the fire went out, plunging the room into darkness.
“No!” the elf shouted out of the blackness. “It was nearly done!”
A figure stood beside the mantle, a tall shadow in the ebony. Broad. Powerful. Eric choked back a cry, thinking it must be something awful, perhaps something even worse, if the elf feared it. Perhaps the monster’s terrible Master.
There was light. A single shaft at first, rising to a silver glow. Eric blinked against the brilliance, and when he could see again, he discovered the newcomer had drawn a long sword, a blade capturing every stray illumination in the room: starlight from the windows, lamplight from the houses across the lake, the shine from the refrigerator panel in the kitchen, focusing it into a dazzling radiance.
The figure was a man with ruddy cheeks and an ivory beard, broad-shouldered, easily a head taller than Eric’s father. He wore a red suit with white fur fringes, and his eyes were as piercing as the sword he carried.
But the creature had drawn a weapon too, an ebony blade darker than darkness.
Eric had only one thought. There is a Santa Claus and the elf is going to kill him.
But this wasn’t the Santa of the old stories, with a belly that shook like a bowlful of jelly. He was big, but there was nothing fat about him, and his suit wasn’t felt, but crimson body armor polished to an exquisite sheen. Not Santa Claus at all; Saint Nicholas come to slay dragons.
Without a word, Santa darted forward, his speed belying his size, inserting himself between Eric and the elf, his blade a wall protecting the boy.
They struck swords. The fighting was furious, swifter than Eric believed possible. The elf attacked with savage desperation, and Santa parried, blow after blow, incredible impacts so deafening Eric clutched his hands to his ears. The noise boomed through the house, rattling the walls, sending pictures clattering to the floor.
Back the elf drove Santa, until he pressed him against the wall. Eric’s hopes fell. It looked as if it would be over before it began.
With a savage roar, St. Nick began his counteroffensive, his face a gray grim mask, his eyes merciless and terrible. Two of his blows nearly beat through the elf’s defenses, sending the creature stumbling back. Santa was on the attack.
They destroyed the living room, splitting the coffee table like a tomato, sweeping the lamps aside, slicing hunks out of the couch. The Christmas tree fell; ornaments and Christmas presents rolled and bounced across the carpet.
Back and forth they fought, grunting with their efforts, neither speaking as they dueled. Eric did not understand what it was about; he only knew his family’s lives depended on the outcome.
Santa took a bad stroke to his side, and though his armor held, the b
low slowed him. The elf closed. For an instant, they fought face to face, blade to blade, one arm locked against the other. The elf pushed with all his strength, and Santa slipped and fell.
The dark blade whirred above Claus’s head. Santa’s own sword was down, caught beneath his enemy’s booted foot. A triumphant grin lit the elf’s blood-red lips, the exultant anticipation of victory.
The baseball bat Eric had wanted for Christmas lay at the elf’s feet. The creature kicked it away as he repositioned his foot for the final blow, rolling it to where the boy stood.
Without thinking, without a plan, without considering the power he was up against, Eric snatched the bat, pulled it to his shoulder like Daniel had taught him, and swung with all his might. It was a good, solid blow against the elf’s back, a solid thump.
The elf swept his blade backward, a streak of darkness, and Eric was holding the bat-handle while the rest of the bat clattered against a wall. For an instant, he thought his fingers had gone with it, but they were all still there. His eyes passed across a label taped to the handle: To my little brother. From Daniel.
Puny as the effort had been, it was enough. Santa freed his sword and blocked the elf’s stroke. Claus scrambled to his feet, striking right and left, moving the blade in a dance of death, while the light from his weapon grew to brilliant intensity. Unable to recover from the change in fortune, the elf parried poorly. Santa’s blade tore through the creature’s upper body.
The elf’s eyes widened in shock. He gave a whistling gasp, a shrill whine ending in abrupt silence. Then the monster was gone, vanished in smoke and steam, leaving only an oily stain on the carpet.
Eric and Santa stood facing one another in the ruined room, the warrior bent, hands to knees, panting for breath from his exertions. Eric looked into those fierce blue eyes, as terrible and frightening as the elf’s, and burst into tears.
For an instant Santa merely stared, until Eric was certain the warrior would turn his wrath on him. But Claus’s dreadful glare abruptly softened.
“Here, now,” he said in a deep voice, between gasps. “What’s this? And after fighting so well? It was a blow well-struck. I owe this victory to you, Eric.”