Shelby’s heart thundered in her chest, a smile breaking over her face.
Hot breath brushed against the back of her neck as something wet and rough slithered up the flesh on her right cheek. Repulsed, she turned to see a long pointed red tongue retract into the jaws of the Krampus. She wanted to scream, but as she stared into those burning blood-red eyes in that wicked face, all the breath felt sucked out of her throat and her mouth opened in soundless terror.
“Mom, look out!” Luke yelled from behind.
Shelby wiped the saliva off her cheek as she backed up.
“Get out of the way, Shelby,” Clark said, stepping forward, the knife gripped in his hands.
Shelby stumbled on something and she toppled over backward onto the floor, pain shooting up her tailbone. She clenched her teeth.
Krampus took two steps forward, his cloven hoofs thudding on the wood floor. How had she not heard his approach before? She must have been too enthralled with the release of her kids from the cage.
“Stay back,” Clark said to the beast, brandishing the knife back and forth.
In Krampus’s right hand he held a switch of birch and waved it back and forth in a mocking gesture. Shelby swore the creature was smiling, its tongue flicking out between its pointy teeth. The beast stepped forward and Clark raised his knife.
With one swipe of its free hand, Krampus smacked the knife from Clark’s grip, sending it sailing across the room. It stuck in the wall of the attic with a vibrating thud. Before Clark could react, the creature gripped his face in its clawed hand and shoved him back. He landed across the floor in a heap.
Tucker charged forward with a grunt, lead pipe raised menacingly over his head. Krampus dodged him like a bullfighter, stepping aside quickly. It slammed its hand across Tucker’s shoulder, knocking the big man off balance and sending him tumbling to the floor. The boards shook under his weight. The lead pipe dislodged from his hand as he landed, rolling across the floor into the shadows.
Macey crawled out the open door of the cage and ran to her mother’s side. Shelby clung to her, relieved to feel her daughter’s embrace, but terrified at the scene playing out before them.
Krampus stood in the middle of the room. It glanced back and forth at the two men lying prone at opposite ends of the room. Clark got up first and the beast turned to face him. Tucker scrambled to his feet with tremendous effort and charged its back.
The beast spun, catching Tucker’s throat with its left hand, choking him. Clark pounced on his back, trying to wrestle the grip away. Krampus shot back its right elbow, caught Clark under the chin and flung him off as easy as shooing away a fly. Clark fell to the floor in a daze.
Krampus lifted Tucker up off the floor by his throat, continuing to choke the trucker, whose eyes bulged as his breathing strained. His arms hung limply by his sides.
“Stop!” Shelby yelled, and the beast turned its red eyes on her, its grin spreading. It was enjoying the torment. If the creature could easily dispatch these two strong men, what hope did she and her children have? She looked over at Luke, who crawled to the opening of the cage, but stopped, as if fearful to leave the security of his prison.
Krampus slammed Tucker’s head up against one of the rafters and the big man’s eyes rolled up. The creature let go and he dropped into a heap on the floor with a groan. He reached up to rub the back of his head.
Still conscious, Shelby thought. She saw that Clark wasn’t moving though.
Krampus loomed over Tucker, raised the birch switch and began beating the man with it, pounding lash after lash upon his helpless body.
“No, Nana!” Tucker cried out, holding his arm over his face for protection. “No, please! I won’t be stupid anymore!”
Shelby thought the man must be delirious. She couldn’t say she blamed him. Krampus cackled as it continued raining lashes down on him. The sound of the creature chilled her. She let go of Macey, rushed toward the creature and began pounding on its back with a clenched fist. It swept her aside with its free hand, sending her crashing to the floor. Macey rushed to her side, wrapping her arms around her mother. Clark started to stir and Shelby tried willing him to his feet.
Krampus stopped whipping Tucker and bent down over him. Its free claw reached menacingly toward his throat. Shelby squeezed her eyes shut. I don’t want to see this, she thought. She’d seen too much horrible death already.
“Stop!” yelled a small voice. It was Luke.
Shelby opened her eyes to see her son on his feet, approaching Krampus.
“Luke! Get back!” she cried helplessly. She wanted to get up off the floor, but Macey clung tight to her, arms wrapped around her neck, weighing her down.
Krampus turned away from Tucker and cast its eyes upon Luke, who approached the creature with slow steps.
“You’re supposed to take the bad kids,” Luke said to Krampus, his tone strong. “But we’re not the bad ones. We’re good. We’re not the ones who deserve this.” He continued toward the creature.
Shelby looked on, half with fear, half with pride at how brave her son appeared. Krampus stood still, its face full of puzzlement. Clark began to stir, rising up to his knees, shaking his head to clear it. He looked up at Luke confronting Krampus in the middle of the room.
“You need to leave us alone,” Luke told the creature. “You need to let us go home. It’s Christmas.”
The boy now stood before Krampus, who looked down upon him. Shelby saw the expression on the creature’s face change, from bewilderment, to embarrassment, to sadness. Its grin faded, replaced with a pout.
Luke turned and walked over to Shelby, and she couldn’t have felt more proud as the boy – no, young man – helped her to her feet. Macey released her grip but grasped her mother’s hand. Luke held the other, leading her toward the door.
Krampus stood in the middle of the room, head turning, following them with its red eyes. Clark got up and went around the creature to where Tucker lay. He helped the big man stand. Then Clark pulled the kitchen knife out of the wall and led Tucker toward the door, where Shelby waited with her kids.
Luke opened the door, but before they left, Macey released Shelby’s hand and walked over to Krampus.
“Macey, don’t,” Shelby said, afraid to raise her voice too loud and startle the suddenly docile creature. Clark started forward, but Shelby stopped him, not quite sure why. Maybe after seeing Luke’s effect on Krampus, she trusted Macey’s sudden bravery.
She watched from the door as her daughter removed the snowflake pendant from around her neck and held it out for Krampus. The creature looked down at it, eyes unsure, and then dropped the birch switch and held out its hand, unfurling its fingers. Macey dropped the pendant onto its palm, and the fingers curled around it.
“Everyone deserves something for Christmas,” she said to the creature, before turning on her heels and joining the others at the door. When everyone was safely in the hallway, Clark closed the door behind them.
“How are you feeling?” Clark asked Tucker, who was rubbing his head.
“I’ll feel a whole lot better when we get the hell out of this place.”
Clark grinned and looked at Shelby and the kids.
“Do you think that thing will come after us?” she asked him.
“Let’s not stick around too long to find out,” he answered. He banged the hilt of the knife against the doorknob, breaking it off. “Come on.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Tucker said. He took the lead and headed for the stairs. For a big man who’d just taken a vicious beating, he moved quickly. When he reached the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the hall, the floor fell out from beneath him and he disappeared into the hole.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As soon as Clark saw Tucker drop through the trapdoor in the floor, he rushed down the stairs past the others. He feared the worst,
but when he sank to his knees beside the opening and peered down, he saw him clinging to the edge of a metal chute that extended down into the darkness.
Fright gripped Tucker’s face, his teeth clenched, knuckles on his dark hands white from the strain. Clark set the knife down, reached into the opening and grabbed onto his left arm.
Clark was reminded of the laundry chute in his grandparents’ old house, but that was in a bathroom closet, not in the middle of a hallway. He had a feeling this chute didn’t lead to a laundry room in the basement.
“Hold on,” Clark said, trying to get a good grip on the man’s arm.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Tucker said, his voice high-pitched.
Clark felt Tucker slipping as the weight dragged him down. The man was heavy. He didn’t know if he could keep holding on or pull him up out of the hole, but he didn’t dare let go.
He didn’t have to. Shelby dropped down by his side, reaching down to help grab hold of Tucker’s other arm. The two began pulling him up.
“Help us out!” he cried to Tucker, who immediately began pushing his feet up along the metal chute. Once they got him halfway out of the hole, he gave a final shove and collapsed beside them on the floor.
“Oh, Christ!” Tucker said, rolling onto his back, wheezing. “That scared the shit out of me.”
Before getting up, Clark looked down the hole, wondering what lay below in the darkness.
“Can we get out of here?” Shelby said, rising and gathering her children in her arms.
“I want to go home,” Macey whined, almost on the verge of tears.
“Soon,” Shelby said, stroking her daughter’s hair.
Clark thought about that, wondering about the likelihood of getting back to where they’d come from. But he wasn’t even sure where they were. Clark had seen too many things he couldn’t begin to explain. A realm, Sledge had called it. He didn’t know how easy it would be to escape it. Ferrin had found a way out apparently, but he was already dead so it didn’t matter. They were still very much alive. For now.
“This way,” Tucker said, not afraid to take the lead again despite his close encounter. He strode down the hallway and the others followed. Clark kept close to Shelby, who stood between her children holding their hands.
When they reached the rear staircase, Tucker was about to descend.
Clark grabbed his arm. “Stop!”
Tucker tossed him a confused look. “What gives?”
“What’s the matter?” Shelby asked.
Something gnawed inside Clark’s mind. Something Ferrin had said.
“This just has a bad feel to it,” he said.
“This whole house has a bad feel to it,” Tucker said.
Clark peered down the stairs, thoughts spinning in his head. He recalled pieces of conversations he’d had today with both Sledge and Ferrin. What had Ferrin said about this place? Sledge created it as a big game board. Clark looked back down the hall to where he could still see the opening in the floor from the trapdoor.
“Snakes and Ladders!” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Shelby asked.
She hadn’t seen what he’d experienced since he’d woken up in this house, nor heard the things Sledge had talked about. What else had the man said? Games have rules.
“We can’t go down.”
“Why?” Shelby asked.
“It’s like a Snakes and Ladders game. Going down is bad, like that chute back there.” He pointed down the hallway. “And who knows what’ll happen if we go down this staircase.” He thought about what Sledge said about the game, about its roots in morality, where the game board represented a life journey with virtues going up and vices going down, depicted by the snakes and ladders. He tried explaining it to the others.
“You’re not making sense, man,” Tucker said.
“This guy Sledge, who lives – I mean inhabits this place. He was a game manufacturer. This whole time he’s been playing games with us.” He looked from Shelby to Tucker and then down at the kids. They all looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “I know it all sounds absurd, but you haven’t seen what I have. You have to trust me.”
“I know I’ve seen enough to believe you,” Shelby said.
“So what do we do?” Tucker asked.
“We go up.” He heard a thunk from the other end of the hallway that quieted them all. They stared down the darkened end. He realized the sound was the closing of the trapdoor in the floor, as if the house knew they were coming that way and was resetting its obstacles. “Come on.”
Reluctantly they followed him, Shelby holding tight to the young ones’ hands. Each step heightened Clark’s nerves as he searched the surroundings for any other surprises. He imagined they were walking along a game board: roll the dice, take a step, lose a turn. The hall seemed to go on forever, as if the actual floorboards had stretched out like an accordion.
As the group passed each closed door, Clark tightened his grip on the knife, anticipating something springing out at them. His head swiveled from side to side as he prepared for a response from the rooms beside him. When he was close to the opened door to the third-floor stairs, he stopped, holding his hand out to prevent any of the others from inadvertently stepping too close to the spot on the floor where the trapdoor lay like a hungry mouth waiting to swallow them whole.
“Careful here,” he whispered, guiding them all along the wall to keep away from the spot.
He signaled each of them to head up the stairs, starting with Tucker, followed by Shelby and her kids. She gave him an anxious look as she passed. He kept right behind them as they ascended.
At the top, the others awaited his direction.
Clark glanced at the two doors, the one with the missing knob and the one leading to the room they hadn’t checked out. He pondered what to do now as the others looked at him for guidance. One room they definitely couldn’t go in, the other….
So far they hadn’t had much luck in this house. They needed to find a way out. They had ascended to the top – where else was there to go?
He looked down the end of the landing to the light that came in from the large circular window. “There!” he said, pointing.
Clark rushed to the window, followed by the rest. He looked out its frosted glass onto the front yard and the maple tree that had attacked him. His eyes scanned down to the roof that he remembered covered a second-floor balcony. Beneath that balcony was the roof of the front stoop.
“We get out here,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Shelby.
“What?” Tucker exclaimed. “Are you kidding?”
“We can do this.”
“In what world?”
“I thought you said going down was bad,” Shelby reasoned.
“We got as high as we can. Now we get out and off the game board.” He turned around. “We can make this work.”
Shelby nodded.
Clark faced the window. “We just need to smash out this window.”
A thunderous thud came from behind, drawing their attention. It was the door that led to Krampus’s lair. Clark’s pulse quickened and he saw the harried looks on the others’ faces. The kids moved behind their mother.
“You better hurry,” Tucker said.
Clark turned back to the window. He began pounding on the glass with the hilt of the knife. It should have shattered, but it didn’t. Was this another trick? A tease? A window on the floor below had been broken by an icy snowball, but he was pounding with all his might on this glass, the impact reverberating up his arm to his shoulder, and it was no use.
A loud crack and splintering of wood erupted behind him and he turned to see the Krampus burst through the attic door. The creature stood in the hall looking at them, its red eyes burning.
“Mommy!” Macey whimpered, clinging tight to her mother’s side.
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Clark moved in front of the others, brandishing the knife as the Krampus took several steps toward them. He could see the glittering snowflake pendant now around its neck. He had thought the gift had softened the creature’s heart and appeased it somewhat. Now he had doubts.
Krampus shifted its eyes from one to the other, as if surveying his victims. It raised one clawed hand and waved it to the side. Clark was puzzled, not sure what he was seeing.
“Get out of the way,” Shelby interpreted. She moved the kids to the side of the circular window. Clark understood, and he and Tucker backed up against the side wall.
Krampus charged down the hall toward the big round window. Clark watched as the creature leaped and burst through the glass, sending shards scattering, and landed on the roof of the balcony below with a thud.
Clark stuck his head out the broken window, cold air blowing against his face. Krampus sat on its haunches on the roof below. It craned its neck to look back up at him. It grinned and then its powerful legs launched itself off the roof to the snowy ground below. It bounded up in a spray of powder and scampered off into the woods.
After watching it disappear from sight, and hoping the creature had found its own escape, Clark looked back at the others.
“We now have an exit,” he said.
Tucker came up beside him and peered down, shaking his head. Then he looked at Clark with an eye roll. “I ain’t looking forward to this part.”
“You want to live,” Clark said, “we get through this.”
Clark used the hilt of the knife to smash out the jagged remnants of glass in the window frame. Then he tucked the knife into his belt and helped the big man up onto the edge of the window and eased him out, lowering him down onto the pitched roof of the balcony. Tucker secured his footing in the snow on the roof, managing to remain steady. He gazed up at Clark, a dubious expression on his round face. Clark smiled back.
“Easy as pie,” he said.
“I could go for some pie right now,” Tucker replied.
Clark ignored the comment. “How’s the footing?”
Snowball Page 25
