The giant elf grabbed her shoulders, pinning her to the roof. The troll lumbered around the sleigh and knelt down beside Tracy. His rock-like fist hovered over her face while another sparkle drifted toward her eye.
“Stop it!”
Tracy turned her head to avoid the dust. Her brain throbbed with the motion, and she didn't know if she could trust her eyes anymore. She trusted her instincts though, and they said to get away.
Before any more dust escaped the troll's fist, Tracy grabbed the elf's arms, twisted them and shifted her weight, propelling him off of her and into the troll. Both went tumbling across the roof in a tangle of rapidly shrinking arms and legs. She rolled in the opposite direction, barely stopping herself from plunging over the roof's edge.
She pushed herself to her feet and watched in awe as both the large elf and the troll assumed the shape of Santa's elves. And there were more of them, eight total. She rubbed her fists in her eyes trying the remove the dust. When she looked again, the semi circle of creatures was still there, advancing toward her as they shifted into a pack of wolves. Several of them snarled, revealing razor sharp teeth. Finally, she admitted to herself that she was afraid.
She peeked over her shoulder at the concrete driveway. It seemed so far away. Even worse, she had no idea where she was. She could be in Orlando, or Tampa, or Miami, with nowhere to run and no way to get home. Still, that was a better option than the growling pack of wolves that was one leap away from tearing her to shreds. Hallucination or not, all she could think about was getting home and away from these nightmare creatures.
She took a deep breath and jumped.
CHAPTER SIX
Santa Command—Control Room 8
December 24th
2352 hours
Phil watched with horror as Tracy plummeted to the concrete driveway. She landed with a crack, her arm twisted unnaturally beneath her. The wolves jumped off the roof, transforming back into Inklings in mid-air and sprouting wings in the process. They landed softly beside Tracy, each one of them looking to Sasha, who pulled a handful of dust from her pocket and stepped up to Tracy's body.
Tracy's still image filled the entire twenty foot screen. In addition to the broken arm, she had a line of blood running from her forehead, down her cheek, and into her hair.
Phil looked to his boss, who had turned away from the screen, occupying himself in some task that didn't really need to be done. He knew what Walt was thinking. This was Paige Murphy all over again.
Phil had been the one to see Paige's body go slack. Horrified at what he'd done, Phil had transported himself to her house and woken Paige's family in the middle of the night. He didn't tell them the truth though. He claimed to be driving home from a party when he saw her lying motionless on her driveway. Paige's bedroom window had been open, and her parents assumed she had fallen while trying to spot Santa. Paige, of course, wasn't talking, and it was likely she never would again.
The memory of Paige was enough to give Phil a lifetime of nightmares. No secret was worth adding another child to his list.
Sasha's fist hovered over Tracy's face, her fingers opening one by one. A speck of dust drifted onto the girl's eyes. And then another speck.
“Stop!” Phil ordered into the Inkling's ear bud, knowing full well the trouble he was about to dump on himself. “I rescind my order. Transport her back here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tracy
Sound came to Tracy first—muffled tinkling that made her think someone was talking to her, but she couldn't hear the person through all of the static buzzing in her head. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she realized the static wasn't in her head. It was coming from the black speaker that hung in one of the corners. “Frosty the Snowman” was playing, and the lyrics danced through Tracy's mind.
The second thing that came to Tracy was her injuries. She remembered jumping from the roof as those things chased her and the terrible pain that had shot through her arm. Now, her arm was encased in a yellow sleeve that wasn't anything like the cast she'd gotten in 3rd grade after jumping off of her swing set, playing Superman. This cast felt like it was made out of jelly. When she touched it, a tingly feeling shot through her bone, chasing away the pain. There was no bandage on her forehead. It didn't hurt either, although there was a small amount of dried blood clumped in her hair.
But how had she ended up in what appeared to be Santa's dressing room?
She tapped her pointer finger against her chin as her scientific mind whirled into high gear. They had wanted the boy to fall back asleep, so she assumed they'd made him see sugar plums. What if they had wanted to make her afraid, scare her away so she'd go back home? That's why they had showed her trolls and wolves. She shivered at the memory. They hadn't expected her to get hurt, and when she did, Santa gave them no choice but to bring her to his house and bandage her up. That had to be it!
Once Tracy had all of that figured out, she felt a lot better, especially since being at his house meant she'd be able to gather even more evidence for her experiment. With that in mind, she sat up on the overstuffed red couch and pressed her palms against her eyelids once more to make sure she wasn't dreaming. No, this was more than a dream. It was a dream come true! She was in Santa's dressing room complete with a Christmas tree shaped armoire and a gold framed mirror mounted on the wall opposite her.
Around the mirror hung at least a dozen motivational posters. Some of them were the same ones her English teacher had displayed in her classroom with captions like, “Teamwork: Many hands, many minds, one goal.” Others looked like they had been custom made for Santa, like the one with him placing a pink bicycle under a tree that said, “Christmas: You're doing it right.” Tracy laughed as she pictured Santa chanting, “Go, Team, Go!” as he put on his hat every Christmas Eve.
The room had one window and if she had any doubt about where she was, it was erased as she looked through the glass into the surrounding forest. Nestled between two pine trees, there was a candy cane striped pole with a sign that read:
North Pole
Population: 2 humans, 582 elves, 8 reindeer
Snowflakes the size of cotton balls floated past the window, blanketing the ground in a perfect layer of ice. Tracy was enchanted. She had never seen snow and desperately wanted to see what it felt like. She tried to lift the window. At first, it didn't budge because she could only use one hand, but then she put her shoulder into it and raised it high enough to stick her fingers under it. When she did, the scene on the window fizzled into static like a broken TV. Tracy jumped backwards, letting the window slam shut. The snow returned, same as it was before.
“What the—”
She ran her fingers along the ledge, and in the right hand corner she found a thin wire painted white to match the rest of the ledge. That wire connected to one on the window. She lifted the pane again, breaking the connection between the two wires. The scene fizzled just like before. This time, she kept lifting the window. It was heavy, but she got it high enough where she could turn her head sideways and get her left eye close enough to the crack to see outside. And she saw…
Nothing. No snow. No lights. There was a forest, but it looked nothing like the enchanted landscape she had seen through the window. No evergreens, just tall, bare trees that felt like they were crowding the building, reaching for it with giant claws. An icy wind rushed through the crack, and Tracy dropped the window again.
More illusions? What was going on? This was no longer holograms for the benefit of people peeking out their windows. This went deeper than any of that.
She grew a little frightened, but not enough to cry or panic. She just kept reminding herself that being at Santa's house was like being the first man on the moon. She had to think like a scientist. It had been a warm winter. Maybe they hadn't had any snow and the scene on the window was just to help Santa get in a Christmas-y mood.
She went to examine the rest of the room. There was a table beside the couch
with an origami-looking reindeer lamp. The dim light shined down on a few photos of Santa and his wife. One shot was taken at the beach with Santa wearing an old fashioned red bathing suit and holding a surf board. It was just like the post cards they sold in all of the tourist shops back home. That bit of familiarity settled Tracy's thoughts.
She moved on to the armoire. Before she touched the brass door knob, she pulled four items from her neck pouch: cocoa powder, a white index card, a paintbrush, and tape. She used the items to lift a smudgy fingerprint from the knob. She didn't know what information Santa's fingerprint would give her, but it didn't hurt to have it.
Once her evidence was stored safely in the pouch, she twisted the brass door knob and pulled it open. Inside, hung three identical Santa suits. That all seemed pretty normal, but what stood out was the tag inside the collar. Tracy had expected it to read something like, “Sewn with love by Mrs. Claus.” Instead it had a name stitched in sparkly green thread: E. Higgens. It reminded her of how her mother had sewn a label that said “T. Tam” into all of her clothes last year for summer camp.
Who was E. Higgens? Was he the one who made the coat? Elf Higgens?
Tracy reached into her pocket for her phone. She needed a picture of this. When the phone wasn't in her pocket, she began to panic.
She ran back to the couch. “No! No! No!” she said while tossing the candy cane shaped throw pillows onto the carpet and digging between the couch cushions. “No! Where is it? Where is it?” She sunk down onto the sofa, her bottom lip trembling as she knew where it had to be—shattered in a million pieces on the little boy's driveway all the way back in Florida.
“No,” she whispered into the chocolate scented air.
She flopped back on the couch, wondering if she had any hope of completing the project without her phone. Those pictures were at the heart of her project. Her eyes drifted once more to Santa's photos on the table.
Maybe she could take those photos with her. Or maybe…Tracy touched her finger to Mrs. Claus' chubby smile, and an idea settled in her mind. Santa obviously wasn't home, but maybe his wife was.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Santa Command—Control Room 8
December 25th
0022 hours
Phil focused on number crunching, trying to gain lost seconds here and there. If Santa skipped one toy every three houses, he had a good chance of making up that time by 0530, which was when the Santa program ended.
Phil was so busy, in fact, that he had put Tracy out of his mind. She was sleeping the night away in a dressing room, the only part of Santa Command she would ever see. The Inklings had worked their magic on her injuries, and when the time came to take her home, she would be good as new. Until then, Beth, who maintained the children's wish lists, was watching the video feed of the girl from her office. Once Tracy woke up, Beth would talk to her and convince her she'd been to Santa's house. Then, Beth would make Tracy promise never to tell another living soul. He figured this would be done through a pinky swear. That's what little girls did, didn't they?
He had done the right thing. He didn't need to worry. Walt didn't need to worry. Phil's plan was solid. He was an expert in predicting how kids would react in different situations. Tracy would be no exception.
CHAPTER NINE
Tracy
The door was locked. She tried it about a hundred times, hoping for a different result, but it stayed locked no matter what she did. She even tried picking it with a paperclip, but that only worked in the movies. What good was packing an emergency supply kit if it didn't help in emergencies?
She folded her arms across her chest and huffed as she sagged back against the door. If she was going to find Mrs. Claus and grill her for information, she had only one option. She marched over to the armoire, where she pulled out one of E. Higgens' handmade coats. But before she put it on, she grabbed hold of the name tag in the collar, ripped it out, then slipped it into her neck pouch. Evidence, because she doubted anyone would let her take the coat home with her.
The coat hung down to her knees, but when she tightened up the black leather belt, it fit more like a dress. More importantly, it would keep her from freezing to death in the Arctic as she searched for another room from the outside.
She grabbed the lip of the window and heaved upward, putting way more muscle into it than she had before. It moved a few inches, but she forgot to be careful, and her broken arm screamed in pain.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! OW!” She jumped up and down, clutching her arm to her chest.
Then, she remembered to be quiet. Santa didn't want her leaving the room, so he'd probably frown on her going out the window. But gathering evidence was essential to saving Pim. Surely, Santa would forgive her, especially if she got everything she needed before he found out she was gone.
Tracy pushed the window up, taking a lot more care with her arm this time, and climbed through it. As she popped out onto the crunchy dried up grass, the window slammed shut behind her. She whirled around and nearly fell over. Santa's house was gone! It was as if she were standing in a small clearing with the skeletons of dead trees closing in on her.
This was the second time that night she had been truly afraid. What happened to the house? How was she going to find her way back in? How was she going to find her way home?
She closed her eyes and forced herself to calm down. There had to be a rational explanation. Buildings didn't just disappear. It was probably some trick of light or mirrors designed to keep anyone from accidentally stumbling onto Santa's house. She hadn't heard of many people hiking around the North Pole looking for Santa, but if she had been brought there, then others had probably been brought there too. Santa had to have some sort of plan to ensure people couldn't find their way back.
With trembling hands, she reached out in front of her, swishing them through the air until her fingertips brushed against the cool concrete. She pressed her palms and her forehead against the wall and sighed with relief.
The house was still there. It was simply…hidden.
It felt strange, because it looked like she was leaning against absolutely nothing, but the wall was there. The scratchy concrete told her so.
Once she knew the building hadn't gone anywhere, she ran her hands along the wall, trying to find the window again. She had no intention of going back in that way, but she needed to know that it was an option.
She found the window. The problem was, there was no way to open it again. No edge that she could tuck her fingers under, and no way to muscle it open by pushing up on the glass. She hoped the other windows weren't like that, but figured they probably were. Well, maybe she could find a back door or something.
Tracy held her breath as she scuffled forward, dragging her fingers along the wall, searching for an opening. The North Pole was supposed to be wondrous, but this place reminded her more of a graveyard at midnight than a magical toy shop.
The silence made her ears feel like they'd been stuffed with cotton. Nothing skittered. Nothing squeaked. Every now and then, a slight wind blew, and the bare tree branches scratched against each other, rattling Tracy's nerves. Even the building felt rough and uninviting. She scrunched up inside the red velvet coat, but it wasn't enough to stop the chill from spreading through her bones.
As the minutes piled on top of her, she continued inching her way down the building.
Maybe my window was the only way in, she thought. The night was beginning to feel like an episode of Doctor Who. Elves that turned into trolls. Windows that weren't really windows. Buildings that disappeared when you looked at them. What if she really wasn't at Santa's workshop? What if she'd fallen into some other dimension or had been kidnapped by some alien masquerading as Santa?
She was just about to let her imagination take her to a different planet when a large column of light appeared in the middle of the forest. It was maybe a football field away, and it shot up into the sky as if the ground had opened up. To confirm her theory, Santa's sleigh
whooshed overhead, zooming straight toward the light.
Well, that's more like it.
Tracy ran through the trees, ducking as the branches snagged on her coat and pulled at her hair. Santa's sleigh hovered in the beam of light for half a second, then lowered down, disappearing behind a large outcropping of rock. By the time she reached the spot where the light had appeared, both it and the sleigh were gone. In their place sat a small, perfectly still pond. A cave framed one side of it, and dangling above the entrance, reaching down toward the water, was a line of icicles that looked like a frozen chandelier. The icicles were too perfect. Each one was roughly the same size, and they were spaced evenly apart.
Something about the pond was off too. She had never seen one that calm, and it didn't smell like earth or mold. It smelled like that car factory her parents had once taken her to—oil and metal. She approached the edge and swished her hand through the water, finding exactly what she expected. The water wasn't there. Another trick of light, just like Santa's house. She reached down further and instead of finding mud, her hand touched something hard and smooth. She tapped it with her fingernails, and it echoed slightly, like a tin drum. Tracy smiled, the kind of smile where crazy ideas start to make sense. She held no hope of getting the ground to open up for her, but she didn't think she needed to.
Those icicles stretched down just like a gate, but they didn't quite reach the surface of the water. Lifting up the hem of her coat, just in case, Tracy waded into the pretend pond. The illusion swirled around her ankles, but her assumption held true. There wasn't a single drop of water in that clearing.
When she got to the icicles, she looked closely at them, noticing each one had a thin, metal tube running the length of it. Yep, those icicles had a purpose. They certainly were real though. And cold.
Tracy Tam: Santa Command Page 3
