A frantic crashing and banging noise pierced the silence. This was accompanied by loud disembodied yells of ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ which went on for nearly ten minutes before unexpectedly coming to an end. All the kids broke out in frightened whispers.
‘What’s going on?’
‘It . . . it . . . it sounded like a ghost!’
‘I want my mommy!’
‘Quiet!’ Adriana barked. ‘Use your head. We’re right near the residential quarters. This is the elves’ doing!’
Some of the kids still looked afraid while others looked like they wanted to believe her. She ordered them all to be quiet again and tiptoed to the door of the elves’ room. She opened it silently, expecting to find the source of all the commotion amongst them, only to see them all fast asleep. Adriana staggered back in astonishment. ‘It’s not the elves,’ she said, utterly disconcerted. She looked around at the others. Every single one of whom looked thoroughly frightened.
‘We’re being haunted!’ one of them wailed. ‘This would have never happened if the sun was out!’
Adriana locked the door before replying. ‘We’ve never had nightly hauntings before this,’ she commented drily. ‘There’s something fishy going on.’
‘We’ve never been haunted before because we’ve never captured a factory and kidnapped any elves before!’ Ren cried out. ‘It’s the Christmas ghosts! This is where all our wicked schemes have led us! We’re being punished!’
This startling declaration by their junior leader distressed the kids even further. Some of the younger ones started to cry. ‘We want to go home!’
Adriana couldn’t think of anything to say so she led them back to the main factory. However, as soon as they entered, they saw that the room was full of dense white fog. The heavy mist reached right up to the ceiling and they could barely see anything. Everyone stepped back in alarm. They looked at Adriana for an explanation but she looked just as mystified as everyone else.
Suddenly, Adriana and a few of the kids standing at the front of the crowd could see a hazy image appear in the fog. They craned their necks and scrunched up their eyes to see what it was. Adriana did a double take when she finally figured out what she was looking at.
Santa Claus was gently bobbing in the distance. He also happened to be wholly transparent. Catching a glimpse of this apparition through the fog was the eeriest thing Adriana had ever witnessed. All the kids around her cried out in terror.
Even as more kids started to howl and moan, the phantom Santa started speaking through the gloom.
‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you that stealing is bad?’ his low voice growled.
Everyone gasped. ‘Sa-Sa-Santa?’ Oscar squeaked nervously. ‘Are—are you really here?’
‘It’s not just me you’ve annoyed, you know,’ came the reply. ‘Now the factory’s mad too. And pretty soon, the entire village will turn against you.’
The kids filled the room with muffled cries and whimpers. ‘The first mistake you made was trying to wreck Christmas,’ the voice continued. ‘Actually, the first mistake you made was locking yourself up in this factory at night.’
‘We thought Christmas was cancelled anyway!’ a girl’s voice called out desperately. ‘We thought you were lost!’ ‘My getting lost is not cause for celebration,’ the voice said coldly.
‘We weren’t celebrating!’ Ren responded. ‘We didn’t think those toys were going to be of any use to you!’
‘Which is why you decided to sell them and keep all the profits,’ the voice pointed out.
‘We haven’t sold them yet!’ a little girl protested. ‘We were going to put up a stall on Christmas day.’
‘That does not excuse your terrible behaviour!’ The voice did not sound happy. ‘All you had to do was—XANDER!’
This sudden exclamation startled the frightened audience of kids.
‘COME BACK WITH THAT! It is not a toy!’
Adriana raised her eyebrows suspiciously.
‘NO! It does not belong in the fire. Xander don’t—’ There was a loud crackle and hiss, and then silence.
13
How to haunt a factory:
1. Record the only Christmas song you know all the lyrics to.
2. Get word to the hostage elves via radio about when and how to make a ruckus.
3. Pour a lot of water on to a lot of dry ice to create a roomful of fog.
4. Project Dad’s picture right in the middle of the foggy room and hope nobody comes in for a closer look.
5. Use the sleigh’s radio and Avery’s vocal acting skills to conjure a fake Santa Claus.
When day broke, the South American elves had taken us down to Duende where we met a few of their friends in the village. The villagers were genuinely nice; they had no idea what their beastly kids were up to and they fed us all sorts of delicious things. Coral was thrilled at finally getting some fish and meat and would have probably gobbled everything in sight without giving the rest of us a second thought. Luckily, we managed to salvage some spicy chicken, lemony fish and large red capsicums stuffed with egg and a mystery meat.
In return for their generous hospitality, we ransacked their houses looking for anything we could find to use for our plan. Having the factory elves along seemed to grant us some sort of magical free pass. The villagers were only too happy to help us out, no matter how seemingly random our requests. Of course they had no idea we were going to use those things to terrorize their children.
The music player, remote-controlled car and the buckets of water were easy. And Gilmore produced Dad’s photograph from his pouch. I didn’t even want to ask what it was doing there. I was just happy to go along with Coral’s ideas. Finding enough dry ice to create a foggy room, however, almost took us all day.
Coral hooked the music player on to the car. It had a record of the elves and me singing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town extremely out of key. We then climbed up to an air vent in the back wall of the factory and let the car loose there. Leo was familiar with the path (apparently, he and his friends used to explore the air vents when they were younger) and guided the car first to the main factory room and then to the residential wing.
We had already sent word to the elves inside to start banging and yelling as soon as they heard the music outside stop. We were counting on the kids not actually stepping into the room to investigate. If they had, they would have seen that half the elves were only pretending to be asleep while the other half were hidden in the cupboard just inside the entrance.
We had to time everything just right. We had spent all day going through the details of the plan and deciding who was going to do what. While all the guards and the kids were distracted by the elves, we managed to crack open a window and sneak into the factory.
Once inside the factory room, we set up all our equipment. The dry ice was most important because we needed it to mask the shakiest part of our plan—the fake Santa.
‘They’re going to find out it’s a scam in two seconds,’ Lucia insisted as we set up the projector.We had lucked out when we discovered that one of the villagers was a movie buff who owned a projector to screen films in the park.
Looking at Dad’s image that shimmered unconvincingly, I had to agree with Lucia.
‘Let’s hope the fog covers it up,’ Bean said grimly.
We had dismantled the sleigh’s radio and reassembled it below Dad’s shimmering form. We then stood against the wall at the other end of the room where we were sure nobody would spot us through the haze.
We heard the kids gasp and groan in horror and looked at each other in glee. It was working! Even Adriana was convinced that the factory was being haunted by an enraged Christmas spirit.
And that’s when my brother started screeching like a madman.
Avery’s distracted commands led to confused murmurs among the kids. Adriana, though, was much quicker on the uptake.
‘It’s a trick!’ We heard her stomping around for a bit and then the room was suddenly filled with light. The fog
might have still kept us hidden but it was already clearing up.
Adriana saw us crouching in the corner. She looked around and spotted Dad’s image, which had almost become invisible amidst all that light. She walked up to it and caught sight of the portable radio on the floor. She turned and noticed the projector in the other corner. She spun around to face us and grinned in triumph.
‘Illusions!’ she exclaimed contemptuously. ‘This was all just a hoax!’
The kids blinked in confusion. They looked at each other as Adriana continued to lecture them about using their brains and not falling for foolish tricks.
‘I don’t know what you’re going on about,’ I interrupted her outburst. ‘You believed in the ghost just as much as they did.’ Some of the kids looked like they agreed with me but quickly rearranged their expressions when Adriana turned to glare at them. She then redirected her scorn towards me.
‘You might have got away with it if you hadn’t been stupid enough to get caught,’ she sneered.
‘But we did outsmart you,’ Bean pointed out smugly.
‘If we had been in your place,’ Adriana growled, ‘you would have wanted to evaporate to the moon out of terror. All you did was impersonate a very bad magician whose rabbits escape from his hat before he’s even on stage.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘As fun as this has been, we really have other things we’d rather be doing.’ I motioned for the elves to move towards the exit.
‘We can’t let you go now,’ Adriana decided. ‘You’re troublemakers.’
‘Bit hypocritical, don’t you think?’ I countered.
‘But they couldn’t have done all those things by themselves!’ a young boy declared fearfully. ‘They’re conspiring against us with ghosts!’
‘Oh shut up, Oscar!’ Adriana snapped. ‘There are no ghosts. Only lousy, underhanded tricks.’
‘We can lock them in with the elves,’ another boy suggested.
Before Adriana could reply, loud jingling bells echoed throughout the room.
‘Stop that,’ she told me grumpily.
I looked at Bean and the South American elves. ‘Um, isn’t that a bit much?’ I asked. ‘They already know the haunting was fake.’
Bean furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. ‘I didn’t know we had anything else planned.’
‘We didn’t,’ Gael assured her. ‘Besides, the sound is coming from outside. All of us are in here.’
Adriana and her band realized he was right. Before they could stop us, Bean and I ran out to the grounds to see where the sound was coming from. We were followed by a small group of elves and a considerably larger horde of perplexed children.
‘Look!’ The boy called Oscar pointed to the night sky, his voice shaking with fright.
We all gazed upward to see a white shape flying over the village, enveloped by a heavy mist and bright flashes of light.
My jaw dropped open. ‘What is that?’ I exclaimed.
All the kids around Adriana stared at the strange shape openmouthed. They seemed to have been unnerved by the mid-air sound-and-light show. The shape flew in a circle over the village and then headed back for another lap, the sound of jingling bells following it wherever it went. Just as everyone was getting their breath back, a voice rang out around the grounds.
‘Duendians!’ it boomed. ‘It was your duty to protect the factory. It was your responsibility to look after what was entrusted in your care. AND. YOU. HAVE. FAILED.’
The voice was loud enough to wake the sleepiest villager. We could see doors open as people started coming out of their houses and stared at the sky in bafflement. ‘Your children have been greedy and spiteful,’ the voice continued. ‘They have gone against the very spirit of Christmas.’
The puzzled villagers glanced at the factory grounds where their children were huddled with the elves. Some of them broke into hurried conversations while others made their way towards us.
‘What’s going on?’ asked the first man who reached us. ‘What is it talking about?’
‘Mama!’ Oscar ran to hug a lady who had just walked in through the gate. ‘Take me away from here! I’ve been a very bad boy but never again!’
‘What did you do, bambino?’ she asked. ‘You told me that the elves invited you to work with them.’
I snorted. ‘If by work with them, you mean hold them hostage and steal all the toys,’ I announced to the large group of parents who had now assembled on the grounds.
‘This insult cannot be tolerated,’ the voice interrupted me. ‘The factory will be moved to a new location.The Duendians will lose the blessing of Christmas.’ With this, the flying shape made one last lap, complete with loud bells and brighter flashes, before disappearing in the trees behind the factory.
The villagers and kids wailed in despair. I had never heard of the ‘blessing of Christmas’ but it looked like they took it very seriously in these parts. When they remembered that I was Santa’s daughter, they ran up to me and begged me to change my mind.
I managed to keep a straight face and replied,‘It’s not my decision. Dad can’t risk anything like this happening again.’
The kids promised that they would behave themselves while the parents assured me that they weren’t going to let their kids out of their sight.
‘I’m not making any promises,’ I warned. ‘But I’ll see what I can do. Any more schemes like this one, though, and we have to move.’
The villagers herded their kids home while I turned to grin at the elves. That’s when I saw the unwelcome guest who still hadn’t left.
‘This is another one of your tricks!’ Adriana thundered. ‘I bet you’re not even allowed to move the factory! You’re just a bunch of rogues!’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ I blinked at her innocently.
‘You won’t get away with this!’ she raged. ‘Everyone’s frightened now but they’ll see sense in the light of day. We’ll be back!’
‘Adriana Baro Suarez!’ an angry woman shouted as she walked up to us.‘Threatening this nice girl and these poor elves. I don’t know where I went wrong with you!’
‘Mama!’ Adriana suddenly sounded squashed. ‘I was just—’
‘You come home this instant!’ And Adriana’s mother dragged home a thoroughly disgruntled girl, leaving behind eight very happy elves and one ecstatic Santa’s daughter.
14
Coral’s tips on how to pull off the perfect con:
1. Get ‘accidentally’ caught by the people you are conning after you instruct your brother to give the game away. This false sense of comfort of having ‘outsmarted’ the tricksters is very important to the to-be victims.
2. Leave behind two of your party, away from the scene of the original trick. Since the kids are not too familiar with the North Pole elves, a missing elf or two will be no cause for suspicion.
3. Equip your backup party with a sleigh and flying reindeer, a megaphone, torches and enough dry ice and water to create fog thick enough to hide the sleigh.
4. Let one of your backup team be a reindeer expert to prevent the animals from getting spooked by all the strange happenings they are going to be a part of.
5. An unidentified flying object, a mysterious disembodied voice, flashing lights and dire warnings of doom and despair will do the rest of the job for you.
‘You were great, Avery!’
The elves and I were on our way to the next factory and we were updating North Pole about our exploits.
The radio crackled with my brother’s laughter.‘Nothing compared to Coral’s genius,’ he chuckled.
I nodded enthusiastically even though he couldn’t see me. ‘Coral was pretty brilliant, wasn’t he?’
‘The master of psychological warfare,’ Avery agreed.
‘We had to stop him from shouting obscenities at the kids from the megaphone,’ I said. ‘But it all turned out spectacularly.’
Coral rolled his eyes at me. ‘It was nothing,’ he said gruffly.‘Even an ostrich could have come up with that pla
n. And those dimwit birds have brains smaller than their eyes.’
He wasn’t being modest. He genuinely believed the rest of us were stupider than ostriches. I sighed.
‘What happened to the captives?’ Avery asked.
‘We set them free,’ I replied. ‘When we last saw them, they were more excitable than Dad after he’s had four cups of coffee. Speaking of whom, any news?’
‘It’s getting a bit impossible.’ There was a sudden downward shift in Avery’s tone. ‘We have the best elves out there, but nothing.’
‘Christmas is only five days away!’ Gilmore was frantic. ‘What will the elves do if Santa’s not found by then?’
‘What if Dad’s really in trouble?’ I asked quietly. I had avoided thinking about it all this while, but the scary thought now set up home in my head.
‘You know he’ll be fine, right?’ Avery said.‘Dad is tough. He can handle anything.’
And what happens if he can’t handle everything? I squeezed that thought into the back of my mind. I couldn’t get distracted. ‘Why don’t you ask Granddad?’ I suggested. ‘He should be able to help.’
Granddad was Dad’s father. He always used to say that he never got to meet too many people as Santa Claus. So when Dad took over, Granddad travelled and made friends all over the world before settling down in the Himalayas.
‘That’s a brilliant idea!’ Avery exclaimed. ‘He’ll know what to do. Where are you guys headed now?’
I looked at Bean quizzically. She looked back at me, quivering with excitement.‘Egypt,’ she said, grinning. My eyes lit up. I could understand her glee. Bean and I seemed to be the only ones excited about getting to visit all these exotic places.
‘More sand,’ Coral scoffed. ‘Fantastic.’
‘The Egyptian factory isn’t in the desert,’ Gilmore replied. ‘It’s in the middle of a bazaar.’
‘How do you know that?’ Bean asked. She sounded a little offended at not being the only one who knew where we were going.
‘I spent six months there on an exchange programme when I was your age,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Nice place. A long way from the North Pole though.’
When Santa Went Missing Page 7
