Krampus

Chapter Fourteen Dark Spirits

Dillard drove his cruiser up to the General’s compound and stopped, sat there with his engine idling, staring at the open gate while his wipers shoved the slush back and forth across his windshield. He couldn’t remember that gate ever being left open. There were no fresh tracks coming or going in the snow. “This ain’t right,” he said under his breath. He’d tried to call the General last night and most of the day, at least a dozen times now. It was getting near dark and still no answer. He’d even tried Chet—nothing. Dillard liked to run a tight ship, needed to know what was going on at all times, needed to be in control, and he sure as shit didn’t feel in control right now. Not with all the insanity that’d been going on around Goodhope the last couple of days.

He pulled into the compound and up behind Jesse’s truck. There were still plenty of vehicles, and again, judging by the snow, not a one of them had moved since last night. He didn’t like it, not one bit, because unless they were having a slumber party, they shouldn’t still be here. The bay doors were all down, but the side door hung open, been open, he could see a good dusting of snow piled up in the entranceway.

Dillard killed the engine. There’d be no calling in backup, not on this one, last thing he needed was Noel nosing about—raise too many questions. No, he was on his own. Dillard rubbed his eyes, his head still hurt. He hadn’t made it to bed until six that morning, running from one call to the next. When he finally did get to bed, he’d hardly slept, worrying over why the General hadn’t returned any of his calls. “Getting too old for this shit.” He pulled the coffee cup out of the holder. The coffee was cold and stale, but he drank it anyway, then got out of the cruiser and sloshed his way up to the door.

He pushed through the entranceway and hit the hall light. Tracks, at least three sets of brownish footprints, led out of the bay. He knew it was blood, was working hard to convince himself it was Jesse’s blood . . . that it had to be, because he didn’t want to consider the alternative. He tugged out his pistol, pushed off the safety, and followed the tracks to the steel door leading into the bay. He set his hand on the knob and gave it a turn, pushed it inward. It was dim, the only light coming from the red Christmas bulbs, but it was enough to see that the men lying around in heaps were not sleeping. He snatched his flashlight from his belt, clicked it on, and braced it snug beneath his revolver, keeping the gun trained on the beam as he searched the room.

His heart drummed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered, swallowed, forced himself to hold steady. He’d seen plenty of death in his thirty years on the force; it wasn’t the blood that bothered him, it was the savagery of the carnage before him. These weren’t typical gangland-style murders, these men had been ripped to pieces, arms, legs, and guts strewn everywhere. The smell of the gore overwhelmed him. He coughed, gagged, pressed his nose into the crook of his arm, all while trying to look everywhere at once.

He found no sign of a living soul, heard nothing, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he began to relax a notch. He guessed by the congealed blood that this carnage had taken place many hours ago, convinced himself that whoever had done this must be long gone. He scanned each body, searching for the General, peering into faces, some so badly mangled he couldn’t recognize them. He didn’t find the General—nor Jesse, for that matter—but he did find the chair Jesse must have been taped to, saw the sheared duct tape. Someone had cut him loose, someone had got him out of here. “How’d you do it, Jesse? How the hell did you pull this off?” His hands were shaking. Things were getting out of his control. Hell, they were out of his control. Dillard forced himself to take several deep breaths.

A light still shone from the upper floor in the General’s office. Dillard walked quickly across the bay and up the stairs. The door stood open. He peered in. This is wrong, everything about this is wrong. Nothing appeared touched, no rifled drawers, no damage to the safe, and he found no sign of the General, either. Dillard decided they’d probably taken the man with them—extortion perhaps, or maybe just for the pleasure of torturing him to death.

Tough titties for him, Dillard thought. Got my own problems. He glanced back down at the bodies. Like how the hell I’m ever gonna cover up this clusterfuck? Again, he felt his heart speed up, that pain in his chest. Wait. I’m overthinking it. Maybe I don’t need to cover anything up? Might just be the blessing I’ve been praying for. He nodded. Solve a lot of problems. Especially one big one by the name of Sampson Ulysses Boggs. Don’t have to worry about his erratic behavior no more, about him blowing everything and taking me down with him. And . . . and since every dumbshit he had working for him is laying down there with their guts torn out, there ain’t a soul left needing to be shut up. All I gotta do now is . . . shit . . . no. He shook his head. “Jesse. There’s that goddamn Jesse.” And Jesse will talk. Oh boy will Jesse talk. Tell them everything he knows about me and then some. Of course that’s assuming they bring him in alive. What are the chances of that? Dillard didn’t know, but he didn’t like loose ends. He liked things all tidied up, just like his color-coordinated Tupperware bowls—bowls on the shelf, lids in the lid drawer.

“I gotta find that boy. Gotta get to him before someone else does. Gotta shut him up for good.” Dillard headed out, made it to the bottom of the stairs, and stopped, his face clouded. There’s two other complications, aren’t there? If they brought Jesse in alive and Linda and Abigail collaborated his story. Hell, even if they didn’t bring Jesse in. Linda could hang him. With the General gone, she might just come forward on her own. If they called in them Internal Affairs boys, he’d sure have a lot of explaining to do. He just couldn’t afford to have anyone raising suspicions, period. Can’t just make Linda and Abigail disappear, not that easy. No, he’d managed to get rid of one wife without raising a stink, but having two women mysteriously disappear from his life wouldn’t sit well with folks. Add a little girl to that and someone was bound to catch on.

Dillard’s eyes raced back and forth across all the carnage. “Fuck.” His chest began to tighten again. He found Ash staring at him, staring on and on without blinking, his mouth torn into something resembling a smile, not a mocking smile but the smile of someone who knows the answer to a riddle before you do. “What? What is—” Dillard’s mouth clamped shut. He nodded slowly. He got it, and it was a doozy. All at once he found himself smiling back.

“So, Ash, correct me if I’m wrong, but the last I heard was that Jesse’s running with a bunch of murderous maniacs. If, say, Linda and Abigail turned up dead, victims of a savage home invasion. People would have no problem believing that, would they? Whaddaya say, Ash? Makes perfect sense don’t you think? An estranged husband full of jealous rage.” Dillard nodded. “Then all I got to do is lead them to you and your dead pals here. Folks will make the connection real fast. Why, it’ll all fit together like a pretty puzzle. No one would suspect my hand in any of it. Nope, they’d be too busy feeling sorry for me.”

He slipped on his gloves and headed back down to the shop. He found a plastic bag and gathered a roll of duct tape, a knife, a few tools, and left, wiping down the doorknobs, careful to smear his boot tracks as he went, to clean the blood from his soles in the slush. He planned on coming back, to be the one to call it in. Because it would be best for him to be the one that discovered the crime scene, the easiest way to explain any evidence he might’ve left behind. But it never hurt to be too careful, to keep things tidy, just like his Tupperware.

He opened the door on Jesse’s truck, popped the glove compartment, and added a few of Jesse’s things to the sack, some evidence to leave behind for the forensic team. He climbed back into his cruiser, got the engine running, sat there until the window defrosted, then drove off, heading for home.

IT WAS APPROACHING dusk when Jesse awoke. He sat up fast, surprised that he’d slept so long, so soundly. He found Isabel and Lacy sitting at a makeshift table with a bag of oranges, a lump of cheese, a jug of milk, and a few king-size biscuits before them. Lacy peeped out from beneath the panda cap, wearing a milk mustache and munching away on a biscuit. Jesse guessed Krampus must’ve snatched the food from someone’s kitchen using the sack, probably someone they’d visited. He wondered if by chance that someone had been lucky enough to witness Krampus’s disembodied arm plucking food off their counter. Jesse looked for Krampus, but saw only Chet and Vernon curled up on the pews, and the lame wolf over by the potbellied stove.

“They went to bury him,” Isabel said.

Jesse nodded and hoped that getting your chest blown wide-open wasn’t the only way out of this madness. He tugged his boots back on, feeling the deep ache in his hands. He wiggled his fingers. They were almost back to normal. He sucked in a deep breath, felt a twinge in his chest and back from the knife wound, but was breathing fine now. He noticed that his skin had grown darker, that as the healing effects of Krampus’s blood took hold, so, too, did the outward changes. He crawled to his feet and strolled over, noticing a pie pan full of bloody lead pellets sitting next to the stove. “They get ’em all out?”

“What?”

“The buckshot . . . from Krampus’s shoulder?”

Isabel followed his eyes to the pan. “Think so.”

A bright red bow sat atop Isabel’s head. Jesse noticed two more stuck on the back of her jacket, one on the milk jug, and at least half a dozen all over Lacy. He spied a couple of bags of peel-and-stick bows, along with several rolls of old wrapping paper spilling out of one of the cardboard boxes. Jesse smirked.

The little girl regarded him timidly. She looked better, her eyes alert, some color to her face, but Jesse knew that such emotional scars ran deep, wondered if this girl would carry them the rest of her life, hoped she’d be lucky and her mind would suppress the worst of it. He sighed, knowing that was rarely the case, that more often than not the cycle of abuse and dependency just kept going round. Jesse slid a box over and took a seat next to her.

“Hey, kiddo, how you doing?”

The girl shrugged and scooted closer to Isabel. Isabel put an arm around her, gave her a squeeze. Jesse noted the way Isabel looked at the girl, wondered how well she would take it when it came time to give her up. Jesse tugged one of the furry panda ears, pulling the cap down over Lacy’s eyes. “Like that cap, don’t you?”

The girl pushed the cap up and nodded shyly.

Jesse plucked the red bow off the milk jug and stuck it on the tip of his nose. “You got any kin around?” he asked. “Y’know someone who might take you in?”

The girl glanced up at Isabel, her face troubled.

Isabel gave Jesse a warning look and rubbed the girl’s back. “Don’t you worry, doll. No one’s gonna be taking you anyplace you don’t wanna go.”

Jesse shrugged. “All right then . . . that settles that.” He plucked the bow from his nose, sat it atop his head. “Lacy, any chance you’d be willing to share one of them gi-normous biscuits with me?”

Lacy nodded and handed him one.

“Hey, Lace, watch what I can do.” Jesse opened his mouth as wide as he could and crammed the biscuit in. He stared at her with his cheeks puffed and lips taut about the girth of the biscuit. She gave Isabel a quick, unsure glance, then Jesse began chewing, snorting, grunting, and making piggy noises.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Isabel asked, her nose wrinkled in disgust. To which Jesse burst out laughing, blowing biscuit crumbs across the table and into Isabel’s lap.

“Oh, yuck,” Isabel cried, but Lacy’s entire face lit up and she laughed and giggled the way a little girl was supposed to. A good laugh, Jesse thought, and felt there just might be hope for her after all. Isabel’s scowl softened to a grin. “He’s real funny, huh? A real Bozo the Clown.”

Lacy grinned back, nodding her head back and forth and side to side, and the silly way she did it so reminded Jesse of his Abigail that he felt someone had socked him in the chest. He felt the sting of tears, suddenly missing his own little girl so badly it physically hurt. Jesse pulled the biscuit from his mouth, stood up, and walked over to the window, not wanting anyone to see him blinking away his tears. Where was Abi now? Was she safe? He propped his elbows atop the old piano and stared out across the winter landscape, at the approaching dusk. Had Dillard found out about the massacre at the General’s? If so, what would he do about it? What lengths would he go to to cover his own involvement? Were Linda and Abigail in danger? He won’t kill them, won’t go that far. Jesse pushed his hand through his hair. You’re fooling yourself. You know exactly what that man’s capable of. He’s gonna want them out of the picture, and sooner than later. “Fuck,” Jesse whispered.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.

“You’re worrying on your little girl,” Isabel said. “Aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Do anything just to give her a big hug right now.”

“It’s hard, I know. That feeling of someone needing you and you can’t be there for them . . . can’t do nothing about it. Tears you up inside.”

Jesse looked at her, could see she needed to say something. He waited, giving her space.

“The other day . . . when I told you about trying to kill myself . . . there was more to it.”

“Thought there might be.”

“My boy . . . his name is Daniel.”

Jesse couldn’t hide his surprise, tried to understand how Isabel could possibly have a child.

“I miss him . . . every day.” She waited for him to say something, but Jesse had no idea what, not to something like that. “It wasn’t some cheap fling,” she continued. “I ain’t like that. I loved him. Loved him very much. Named his boy after him.”

Jesse nodded.

She studied him a minute. “Can be hard sometimes for folks to understand. They tend to think the worst of you.”

“I ain’t in no position to be judging anyone. Wouldn’t think no worse of you if I were.”

“I know you wouldn’t. Don’t care much what folks might think about me, not anymore, not about that anyhow. But I do want you to know why things went the way they did. Why I would leave my own baby.”

They watched Lacy take one of the biscuits over to Freki. She wasn’t much bigger than the wolf’s head. Freki sniffed the biscuit, then licked it right out of the little girl’s hand. Lacy giggled.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends,” Isabel said. “Seeing how I was a Mullins and all. Folks tended to steer clear of us Mullinses on account that mental issues ran in the family. I know it’s why my daddy ran off, because of Mama’s fits. I’d known Daniel since I was six, he was the only real friend I ever had. But that made no matter to Mama. She wouldn’t let us date. Said I was too young, and maybe I was. But that didn’t stop us. We took to sneaking around; dated in secret for near on a year. And during that whole time we didn’t do much more than kiss and hold hands. I mean Daniel made a few halfhearted advances, but he was just so shy about such things. He’d always been rather awkward, the other kids liked to tease him about it, y’know. But that’s what I liked about him . . . he was such a goof. There was such a sweetness about his way.

“Then he got drafted. Vietnam. Those bastards sent him his notice just one week after his eighteenth birthday—one goddamn week. Off he goes to Fort Bragg. And that two months he was gone to Basic, that was the longest two months of my life. The Army gave him just four days leave before he was to ship out to Vietnam and he spent most of it on a bus coming home to see me. You wanna know what he’d done while he was at Bragg?” Isabel looked at Jesse.

“Sure.”

“He’d saved up all his pay and bought me something special.” She tugged a cord out from her jacket. A gold ring hung from the end of it. “Had to hang it around my neck on account it won’t fit my finger no more. He couldn’t afford a diamond, but it is solid gold. And it was then, that night, after he gave me this ring, after he promised to marry me, that’s when we laid down together. We planned on getting hitched just as soon as he got back. It was our secret. A thing only between us and that made it all the more special. But things don’t always go the way folks want . . . or hope. Life ain’t like that.”

“He didn’t make it back, did he?”

“He stepped on a mine. First month he was over there. One step took him away from me forever.”

“Isabel, I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. She sat down on the piano bench. “So there I was, knocked up and without a man. Not the first girl to ever find herself in that predicament, but you couldn’t have told me that, not then.

“About the time they shipped his body back I was starting to show. I was so small and the baby rode high, so Mama found out soon enough and when she did, she locked me in the closet, read me Scripture through the door for two days. When she let me out she told me I was gonna have to get rid of it. I told her that was against the Bible. But Mama tended to only hear what she wanted to from the Good Book. Told me she was takin’ me to see some woman she knew over in Madison . . . a fixing woman.

“That baby was all I had left of Daniel. There weren’t no way I was gonna let ’em kill his flesh and blood. And I told her so. Made it clear she’d have to kill me first. And . . . well,” Isabel cleared her throat. “She tried . . . that woman starved me, even tried to feed me poison once. She wouldn’t let me leave the house, kept the shades down, such was her fear someone might find out.

“But somehow I had that baby, had him on the bathroom floor. And when I did, when I saw that baby boy, then I knew that Daniel’s spirit was watching over us, because our baby was alive . . . alive and healthy. Had a strong set of lungs and let the world know he was here. I could see his daddy in his face, even that small, I swear I could. Gave him his daddy’s name.

“I made it to my bedroom and passed out with him suckling at my breast. When I come to he was gone. Found them in the living room, Mama leaning over him, whispering, talking her God talk. At first I thought she was dressing him, thought maybe seeing his face had softened her heart. Then I saw, and what I saw turned my blood cold. She had a pillow over his face, over my baby’s face. I could see his little hands clutching at that pillow. I snatched the crucifix up off the top of the TV and smashed it against the side of her head. Not once but several times, until she lay still on the floor. I think I killed her, but don’t know, not even now. Because after I done that, I picked up my baby, wrapped him in a towel, and run off. And even though my insides felt like they’d been torn open, I walked the two miles over to Daniel’s parents’ house.

“Daniel’s parents didn’t know about the baby, not even about mine and Daniel’s engagement. I showed them the ring and told them our story. I had no idea how they’d take it, but I didn’t have no other place to go. Well, I never seen folks so happy to see a baby. It was all over their faces, it was as though I’d brought them their son back. I knew then that little Daniel would be safe with them. Told them I had to go get something out from the car. Of course I didn’t have no car. I just walked down the driveway and kept going, didn’t really know where I was headed, not then, just kept walking and walking, all that day and into the night until I found myself up in them hills.

“Well, y’know what happened after that.” She shook her head. “Jesse, not a day goes by that I don’t regret leaving my child. Not a day.”

Jesse let out a long, heartfelt sigh. So he wasn’t the only one hurting, no big surprise there. He wished he had something profound and uplifting to say, something to make her feel better, to make himself feel better. But sometimes there seemed to be so much bad in the world it was hard to see much of anything else. He set his hand on her shoulder, squeezed, and that was about the best he could do.

Lacy was now sticking bows all over Freki’s fur. The giant wolf just lay there, looking at them as though pleading for help.

“Maybe Krampus will let us go soon,” Jesse said with little conviction.

“Maybe.” Isabel walked over to Lacy, picked her up, spun her around, and hugged her. Lacy giggled and hugged her back. Isabel beamed.

Jesse thought Isabel would make a wonderful mother, started to say so when he caught movement outside.

Three figures trudged through the light snow, followed by a lumbering wolf. Krampus and the two remaining Shawnee walked with their heads down as though from the weather, but Jesse knew better.

KRAMPUS AND THE Shawnee marched up the steps and into the church, tracking slush and mud across the floor. Krampus made his way to the wood stove and sat down heavily upon a cardboard box. Freki limped over and lay down next to him. Krampus began absently stroking the big wolf’s mane.

Jesse hesitated. Krampus looked weary, beaten down . . . sad. Jesse knew it wasn’t a good time to bring up Dillard. But when was it ever? Maybe he owed Krampus something, and maybe he didn’t; regardless, he still had to find a way to take care of Dillard. And the longer he waited, the greater chance that Dillard might harm Linda or Abigail.

Jesse swallowed, walked over, and took a seat next to the Yule Lord. “I’m sorry about Makwa. Sorry for your loss.”

Krampus didn’t answer, didn’t even look up, just stared at the fire.

Jesse’s mouth felt dry, he wet his lips, cleared his throat. “I need to go and take care of Dillard.”

“I know.”

Jesse waited for more, but Krampus just kept watching the flame.

“I can take care of things on my own, y’know. Just need you to let me go. Won’t interfere with your goings-on at all. I’ll even swear to come back once I’m done.”

Krampus clasped his hands together, let out a long sigh. “What do you believe in, Jesse?”

“Huh?”

Krampus looked at him, peered deep into his eyes. “What do you believe in?”

Jesse shrugged. “I dunno.”

“There’s nothing you believe in?”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“You have to believe in something. Your muse . . . your music perhaps?”

“No,” Jesse said bitterly. “I’ve given up on that.”

“God?”

“God? Well . . . hell, maybe. Sometimes I do, anyway. Y’know, when I’m scared or want something really bad.”

“You are a religious man? A Christian?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m certainly a God-fearing man.”

“There are other things besides gods in which to put one’s faith. Earthly things.”

“I suppose.”

“Do you believe that the shadows are full of dark spirits waiting to prey on the unguarded?”

“What? No.” Jesse laughed, then caught the sullen look on Krampus’s face. “Well, okay . . . sometimes when I’m alone at night I can get pretty creeped out if that’s what you mean.”

Krampus didn’t laugh, or smile; his gaze returned to the flame. “I am fearful most men of this age are like you. They have forgotten what it is to huddle in a hut with the beasts and demons howling outside their door. They no longer have want of a great and terrible spirit to protect them. They have lost their fear of the wild and with it their need to believe. And I cannot blame them, for they now have the power to chase away the shadows with a mere flick of a switch. So I must ask myself, what role can I play in a world where men worship the moving-picture box, where they make and consume potions that eat away their own brains, where they ravage and pillage entire mountains, kill the very earth itself?

“Mankind has lost its connection to the land, to the earth, to the beasts and spirits. They gather their food not from the forest and fields, but from plastic bins and ice boxes. Their lives are no longer tied to the cycles of the seasons and the harvest, no longer do they need the Yule Lord to chase away the winter darkness and usher in the light of spring. Man has only himself to fear now . . . he has become his own worst devil.”

Krampus picked up one of the branches that the Shawnee had gathered, snapped it into manageable lengths, and shoved them into the potbellied stove. “While sitting in that cave, I read the newspapers, read of such changes, but could not grasp their true meaning . . . their true effect. Not until I witnessed it with my own eyes.

“I fear Baldr might have spoken truth; that the world has indeed moved on, that there is no longer a place here for me. I now see how he sank so low. Baldr foresaw all this, tried to warn me. He gave them what they wanted, a pretty lie, and they believed, because a pretty lie is easier to believe than an ugly truth.”

Krampus scratched at his shoulder, digging at the scabbing wounds with his long fingernails. He grimaced, pulled out a piece of buckshot, rolled the bloody pellet between his fingers. “How will I make a people who do not understand the power of belief believe? And without their belief Mother Earth will wither and Yuletide will fade . . . and so, too, will I . . . like all the spirits and gods before me.”

NIGHT FELL UPON the little church, the spreading gloom matching the spirit in the room, and still Krampus sat staring into the flame, a bottle of mead in his hand, the sack at his feet. The Belsnickels kept their distance and even the wolves avoided him.

Jesse sat cross-legged upon the floor in front of a game of Chinese checkers. Lacy had discovered a box of old games and had managed to recruit Jesse and Vernon to play with her and Isabel.

“Go,” Lacy said and prodded Jesse.

“What?”

“It’s your turn . . . still,” Vernon put in. “Perhaps if you kept your mind on the game, we wouldn’t have to keep reminding you.”

“Oh, sorry,” Jesse said absently, and moved the first marble his hand came to.

“Ha!” Isabel said, a triumphant grin spreading across her face as she used Jesse’s move to advance her marble all the way across the board.

“That was brilliant, Jesse,” Vernon said. “I cannot even find the words.”

Jesse nodded, hardly hearing him, maintaining his vigil over the Yule Lord, hoping Krampus would come around so they could finally get the show on the road. But over the last several hours, Krampus hadn’t done much more than mutter to himself. And sitting there like that was certainly not getting Jesse any closer to Abigail. Jesse wanted to go over and shout at the beast, prod him, poke him, do something to get Krampus moving, anything besides sitting on the floor and playing checkers.

“Watched pot won’t boil,” Isabel said.

“This ain’t working for me,” Jesse growled, shaking his head. “Sure as shit it ain’t.”

“Get used to it,” Vernon said. “He’s in one of his black moods. Back in the cave he’d get that way and stay like that for weeks, months sometimes. Just curl up into a ball, not moving, hardly even breathing, as though he were dead. Only we were never so lucky as that.”

“Weeks?”

“Yes, certainly. Or he’d work himself into a foul temper and there’d be no talking to him.”

“Abigail doesn’t have weeks,” Jesse said and started to his feet. Isabel grabbed his shoulder. “Can’t keep pushing him, Jesse. You’re gonna go too far, and more likely than not just gonna make matters worse.” Jesse pulled away, stood. “Worse for who? Not for Abigail?” He marched over to Krampus and stared at the Yule Lord. Krampus did nothing to acknowledge him.

Jesse bent, picked the sack up off the floor. He cleared his throat and held it out toward Krampus. “It’s night. Can’t be no Yuletide without the Yule Lord.”

Jesse waited.

Krampus continued to stare at the stove.

“Are you giving up then? Is the Yule Lord turning his back on Yuletide?”

He saw Krampus stiffen, knew the beast heard him.

“I guess he won after all. Santa Claus . . . he beat you.”

Krampus’s troubled frown deepened and the end of his tail twitched.

Jesse sat the sack down on the box next to Krampus. “You might have your sack, your freedom . . . might have his head, but it appears he still won.”

Krampus took a sip from the flask.

“You were asking earlier how to go about making people believe. Well, I say if you want them to believe . . . you have to give them something to believe in. You have to get out there and be great and terrible. You have to make them believe.”

Krampus shifted his weight as though suddenly very uncomfortable.

“Well, shit sure ain’t happening so long as you’re moping around, so long as you’re sucking on that bottle like it’s your mama’s tit.”

Krampus took another swig, a long swig, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes as though the world didn’t exist.

Jesse snatched the flask from Krampus’s hand.

Krampus’s eyes popped open; he stared at Jesse, utterly stunned.

“Ho, ho, ho!” Jesse cried and smashed the clay bottle to bits upon the floor. “Merry fucking Christmas!”

Krampus leapt up, gave Jesse a tremendous shove, knocking Jesse off his feet, sending him sliding backward across the floor and into Freki. The wolf yelped, hobbled to its feet, and limped away from the fray.

“I will tear your heart from your chest for that!” Krampus snarled and stomped after Jesse. Jesse sat up, met Krampus’s burning eyes, grinned. “There! That’s it!” Jesse cried. “Be terrible! Come on. That’s what you do, be the Yule Lord, not some sulking brat!”

Krampus stopped, glared. “Who are you to lecture me about giving up?” He sneered. “You, a music-maker who is afraid to face his own muse. Who turns his back on the great gifts bestowed upon him, and denies the very core of his soul.”

“Yeah . . . okay, great. You’re a loser like me. Way to go.”

“Bah,” Krampus growled, throwing his hands up in disgust. He turned away, headed back to the stove, and snatched the sack up off the chair. He held it a minute, crushing the lush velvet in his hands, appeared to be carrying on a silent conversation with it, his head nodding slightly. He let out a grunt, picked up the birch switches. “Let’s go.” He tromped out the door and into the night.

The two Shawnee exchanged a troubled glance, but hopped up and rushed out after the Yule Lord.

Vernon slapped his marbles down on the checkerboard, glared at Jesse. “Thanks! Y’know, this was probably the first enjoyable evening I’ve had in . . . oh, I don’t know . . . a hundred years. Now instead of playing games around a warm fire, I get to go creeping into people’s houses out in the freezing cold. Gosh, somebody pinch me.”

Jesse gave Chet a kick. “Wake up, fuckhead. Time to go.”

Chet groaned, sat up, looked around as though trying to figure out where he was. Once he caught on, he let out a pitiful moan.

“Tall, Dark and Ugly is waiting for you outside,” Jesse said.

Chet looked as though he wanted to curl up and cry, but managed to crawl to his feet and zombie-shuffle his way out the door.

Isabel grabbed Lacy’s jacket, quickly bundled her up, wrapping a thick scarf around her neck and face and tying the panda cap earflaps securely under her chin. Lacy had to pull the scarf down and push the hat up in order to see. “Are we going for another ride in the sleigh?” she mumbled through the scarf.

“We sure are, dumpling.”

“You can’t bring her,” Vernon said.

“Well, I ain’t gonna be leaving her here.”

“Isabel,” Jesse said carefully. “You know we’re gonna have to find someplace for her.”

Isabel shot him a cutting look. “We’ll just have to see.”

Lacy clutched Isabel, clung tightly to her waist.

“Don’t you worry, shug,” Isabel said. “You can stay with me if that’s what you want.”

Lacy nodded that she did.

Jesse sighed. “Isabel, you know this won’t work.” And he saw by her face that she did, but he also saw how much Isabel needed this little girl right now.

“We better get going,” Vernon said and headed out the door.

The wolves came out on the steps and watched them load up. Isabel and Lacy hopped up front, Vernon in the back, Jesse started to climb aboard, stopped. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?” Isabel asked, following his hard stare over to the fallen downspout.

“Santa’s head.”

They all looked, but there was no trace of the trophy.

“Coyote must’ve got it,” Chet said.

“No,” Jesse said. “Not with them wolves around.”

“Must’ve sprouted legs and wandered off on its own then,” Chet said with a snort.

Jesse noticed something even more disturbing: footprints in the snow, human in size and shape, they led a few steps away, then ended. As though the owner had just flown off.

Krampus stared at the spot where Santa’s head had been, stared for a long time, his face troubled. “It seems my time . . . it grows short,” he said under his breath. Then he slapped the reins and once again the Yule goats leapt forward and pulled them into the sky.