Black Friday: An Elders Keep Collection Special Edition

by Jeffery X Martin

Brittney walked down to the rope and before Nick knew it, there was a nine year old boy sitting on his lap.

  "Well," Nick said. "You certainly got up here fast! Ho, ho, ho! What’s your name, young man?"

  "My name is Brian, sir. Brian Cameron."

  "Ho, ho, ho!" Nick chortled loudly. "And how old are you, Brian?"

  "I am nine years old," Brian said. "Thank you for asking."

  Nick shifted in his seat a bit. "You’re a very serious young man, Brian Cameron. What can Santa bring you this year?"

  Brian looked into Nick’s eyes. "Are you the real Santa Claus?" Brian asked.

  There he is, Nick thought. There’s the one kid who is on the fence between belief and disbelief. Nick had decided early in his Claus career that he would never be the one to shatter a youngster’s dreams. That’s what parents were for.

  "Pull my beard, Brian," Nick said in his most serious Santa voice.

  Brian reached up and tentatively gave Nick’s beard a tug. When it didn’t slip, he gave it a harder yank.

  "Ow!" Nick cried, as he rubbed his face. "You’ve got a pretty good grip, young man!"

  Brian laughed a little.

  "Now," Nick said, "hit me in the stomach. Not too hard, now, but go ahead. Give it a punch."

  Instead of a full-on gut punch, Brian simply pushed on Nick’s stomach. He probed with his fingertips, looking for the edge of a cushion or the corner of a pillow. When he found nothing but skin and fat, Brian’s eyes grew wide. "So, are you the real Santa Claus?"

  Nick belly-laughed."Ho, ho, ho! Well, of course I am!" Nick said.

  This revelation caused Brian to look down at the floor and shake his head a little. It wasn’t the reaction Nick was expecting, and he hurried to cover over whatever mistake he had just made.

  "Now, Brian, there’s no reason to be afraid," Nick said. "Everything is perfectly okay. Now. Let’s get down to business. What do you want for Christmas?"

  Brian looked into Nick’s eyes again. It was a strange feeling. Every time the kid looked him like that, part of Nick wanted to hide. He felt dirty, like the kid could see his secrets, knew about the drinking, knew about the violence in his past.

  "I want Bamelyn," Brian said.

  "What?"

  "I want Bamelyn," Brian repeated.

  Nick had no idea what a Bamelyn was. Probably some new Asian cartoon character, some crazy half-werewolf dragon riding motherfucker with big round eyes and a pet sugar cookie. Who knows?

  "A Bamelyn you want, a Bamelyn you shall have," Nick said. "I mean it!" He laid his finger alongside his nose again, a meaningless motion that no one performs but Santa. Perhaps that would help cement Nick’s back story. Nick reached into his pocket and offered Brian a candy cane. "Happy holidays, Brian," Nick said.

  Brian looked at the candy, shook his head and slid off Nick’s lap without saying a word. Nick watched as he walked back out into the store, catching up with some friends and shaking his head. The friends turned and looked at Nick for a couple seconds, then they all disappeared into the crowd.

  "You can go feed the reindeer now, Santa," said Brittney. "I’ve already put the sign up."

  "What a fine elf you are, young Brittney," Nick said, and he headed towards the back of the store, where the employee’s restroom awaited him. Damned if he was going back to the shithead manager’s office. He would rather take a saintly piss with the common folk than try to swordfight with that Dick.

  After a lunch that consisted of three bottles of water, four ibuprofen, a fast food fruit pie left over from breakfast on the road and five cigarettes, Nick went in to finish in his shift.

  "Hey, Brittney," he said, before the kids start coming back in, "what’s a Bamelyn? Have you ever heard of that before?"

  "No, I haven’t," she replied, sweetly. "How come?"

  "That last kid that came up before lunch said he wanted one. If one kid asks for a toy, other kids will too. I just want to sound like I know what I’m talking about."

  "I bet it’s some cute talking animal thing," Brittney said. "It sure sounds like that. It probably looks like a penguin."

  Nick shrugged. "You’re probably right. Okay. Let the festivities begin again."

  Brittney brought the next child to him, a girl just barely out of diapers named Dakota. "And what can Santa bring you for the holidays, good little Dakota?" Nick asked.

  "Bamelyn!" Dakota said.

  "Bamelyn," Nick repeated. "Honey, can you tell Santa what a Bamelyn is?" He smiled widely.

  Dakota got shy. She put her hands over her mouth and when she shook her head to say no, her whole body swayed.

  "It’s all right," Nick prodded. "You can tell old Santa what a Bamelyn is."

  Half whispering and half giggling, Dakota said, "A Bamelyn is a Bamelyn, silly!"

  Great. Cryptic bullshit toddler answer, he thought. The candy cane, the pat on the head and get this one off my lap.

  ***

  THE LAST CHILD confessed their Christmas wishes to Nick right before the store closed. His legs hurt from the constant climbing and kicking of boisterous young legs into his lap. He watched young Brittney cordon off the pathway to Santa’s Kingdom. Good lord, that green shining illegal ass was amazing.

  "Quit looking at the jailbait," came Dick’s voice from beside him. "That’s one of my kid’s friends. I don’t want to hear about you trying to show her your freshly wrapped beef log, you know what I mean?"

  Nick rolled his eyes and nodded his head. "No worries, Dick."

  "Good," Dick said, as he flipped through pages on a clipboard. "You had a decent first day, Santa. Numbers look okay. Should be better over the weekend. Push the pictures, all right?"

  "Yeah, yeah," Nick said. "I can do that. By the way, Dick, do you guys sell Bamelyns?"

  "What the fuck is a Bamelyn?" Dick asked.

  "No idea, man. I figured it was some kind of hot holiday toy. I had a couple kids ask for a Bamelyn."

  "These goddamn kids," Dick said. "I never can predict what the little shitlickers will want. I’ll see what I can find out. Go change, Santa. Put some real clothes on. See you tomorrow. Rest up."

  Nick nodded. All of those suggestions were good ideas, even if none of them sounded particularly caring coming out of Dick’s mouth. A cheeseburger and French fries and some of that amazing Southern sweet tea were definitely calling his name. So was his smartphone. He had a little internet research to do over dinner.

  ***

  THE LOOKS NICK got walking into any restaurant were always delightful. He imagined it was like the looks long-haired boys got during the 1950’s. Shock and despair, a hint of confusion, incongruous looks, the scattering of dichotomy. He felt the stares of everyone in the joint upon him. Santa just came in wearing jeans and an old Gravity Kills t-shirt. No one said a word, though. Nick often wondered if it was because even the adults were afraid that they’d be gettin’ nuttin’ for Christmas if they called Santa Claus a dirty hippie.

  Nick sat down at a table. The waitress, a 40-ish Southern belle named Delores with cleavage deep enough to lose a pipe wrench in, came to take his order. "What’s the wi-fi password, honey?" Nick asked.

  "You don’t need one, sugar," Delores said. "Not for here, anyway. Do you want to know what it is at my place?"

  Nick raised one eyebrow. "Sounds like someone’s feeling naughty," he said. Delores snapped her chewing gum at him seductively. He smiled and shook his head in disbelief. The South will rise again, he thought.

  He pulled his smartphone out of his pocket and hit the web. There were three or four different ways he could think of to spell "Bamelyn," so he just did the best he could.

  Your search term yields no matches. Zero results.

  "Well, that’s a crock of shit," Nick said, a little too audibly. He looked up to see an elderly woman giving him a chastising look. He waved slightly to apologize. She smiled a little. All was forgiven. Public relations were a constant concern for Santa. Nick, however, gave no fucks what that old lady thought of him.
>
  He spelled the word a different way.

  Your search term yields no matches. Zero results.

  Delores brought Nick his food. She had included onion rings along with his French fries. "Don’t tell the boss," she said. "That’s on the house."

  "You’re a sweetheart, Delores," Nick said. "Some more tea when you get the chance?"

  She winked at him and hustled off towards the kitchen. Nick turned his attention back to his phone. How could this Bamelyn thing not exist? There was no record of it on the internet, nothing even close to it. Was there anything so new that the kids would all know about it but there was no web presence for it? Nick was no marketing expert, but he knew that you couldn’t sell much of anything anymore without a website, and the Bamelyn didn’t have one.

  He put the phone down and began eating. The food was greasy and delicious, and he silently put the stamp of approval on the damage it was doing to his arteries and his heart. He even asked for a little bit more mayonnaise, just to further clog things up. This was the challenge, he told himself. Could he eat a big meal like this and still be able to get it up so he could royally set a stranger waitress off with his pipe bomb?

  Delores slid up behind him, lightly brushing his shoulder. "Here’s your check, hon," she said. "But you take your time. Think about whether you want… dessert." And with that, she lightly licked the back of his ear. It was totally unprofessional behavior, but Nick thought better about filing a complaint with the management. Besides, the handwritten note on the back of the check informed him that dessert was only to be had at Delores’ apartment. Nick felt that old familiar swelling in his pants and smiled.

  Pipe bomb.

  He smiled, pushed out from the table and went to pay the bill and pick up the waitress.

  IV

  Delores

  HE COULD HAVE guessed that she smoked long menthol cigarettes, and he would have been right. Years of serving had made her calves rock hard and her thighs strong and taut. Nick was fairly sure there would be bruises in the morning. That seemed fair. Delores had whipped him around like a crippled kid on a rollercoaster. Some souvenirs were to be expected.

  "It’s not like you ever hear someone say they deliberately moved here," Delores was saying. "But nobody seems to move out, either. I don’t know. It’s weird. I think sometimes the Keep just calls people here and they show up."

  "I think most towns are like that, Darlin’," Nick murmured sleepily.

  "I don’t know, Nick," she said. "Some towns are just bad, you know? You feel it, walking around. You hear whispers or it feels like someone’s watching you when you’re totally alone. The town thinks, and you can feel it. You can hear it, but not like words. It’s like a drumbeat. It just feels bad, like the land is angry all the time."

  "Why don’t you leave then?" Nick asked.

  "I think about it," Delores said. "I think about it, but then I think if I left, the Keep would know. And it might get angry with me and try to bring me back. So I guess I might as well stay."

  "You’re kidding, right? You really think the town itself would come after you? You know how paranoid that sounds, right?"

  Delores shrugged and lit another cigarette. "You haven’t even been here for one night. You’re cute. And I like you. But you don’t know shit about Elders Keep."

  Nick raised his hands. "I’m not fighting you, Delores. I’m not an arguing man. You say the town is haunted, the town is haunted."

  "I didn’t say the town was haunted," Delores replied. "I said it was bad."

  Nick reached out with his left arm. "Come on, sweetheart. Let’s see if we can get a good night’s sleep in this bad old town." Delores giggled and snuggled up next to him. Nick looked at the cigarette, still burning between her fingers. He handed her the ashtray off the nightstand. She snuffed her smoke out, and he put the ashtray back. No sense in letting this bad old evil town get a chance to burn them both alive in their sleep.

  ***

  SHE HEARD HIM get up and checked the clock with one bleary eye. Seven in the morning. Why so fucking early? Then she remembered. It was Saturday, the first one of the shopping season. Santa was bound for a busy day. Poor, sweet guy.

  Not bothering to put on a bathrobe, Delores shuffled into the kitchen to make some coffee. She could go back to bed. Her shift at the restaurant didn’t start until the afternoon. But there was no rest for Santa. The least she could do was feed him.

  She heard the water turn off as Nick finished showering. "Towels are under the sink," she called.

  "Thank you," Nick called back. "These are very pink towels."

  Delores laughed. "I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a girl."

  "Not all girls like pink," Nick said.

  "This one does. How do you like your eggs?"

  "Are you cooking?"

  "You’re not real smart in the morning, are you, Nick?"

  He laughed. "Over hard."

  She set some water on to boil for grits and checked to make sure she had enough butter for toast.

  After a couple minutes, Nick came trudging into the kitchen. He kissed her bare shoulder. "You’re being awfully sweet to me," he whispered.

  "I’m a sweet girl," she said. "Hey, what time do you get off work tonight?"

  "I’ve got a long shitty day. Don’t get off until nine."

  "What are you doing after work, Santa?"

  The coffee was done and Delores poured them both a cup. Nick leaned against the kitchen counter. "I thought I would head to this restaurant in town I like," Nick said, smiling."See if I can pick up some hot waitress."

  Delores lit her first cigarette of the day. "I could save you the trouble," she said, seductively.

  "Oh, really?" Nick asked.

  Delores shrugged. "I’m a pretty good cook," she said. "And I’m a pretty hot waitress, to boot."

  "That’s true," Nick said. "Well, I suppose I could be coerced into coming over again tonight."

  Delores smiled and turned to the stove. She cracked four eggs into a skillet. She shook her ass a little, as if she were dancing to a tune only she could hear. Nick watched for a second.

  "Do you approve?" Delores asked.

  "Do you have to ask?" Nick laughed.

  "Breakfast will be ready in about five minutes."

  "So, uh, maybe I go get the rest of my stuff out of the car. Keep it here for a while?"

  Delores nodded. "I think that’s a fine idea," she said.

  Goddamn, that was easy, Nick thought. He reached into his pocket for his keys. "I’ll be right back," he said.

  Delores poured the grits into the now-boiling water, slapped a lid on the pan and turned the heat off. She slid the eggs around in the skillet, making sure they weren’t going to stick before she flipped them. That was when she heard Nick yelling from outside.

  She ran into the bedroom, threw on her bathrobe and her fuzzy slippers, grabbed the baseball bat she kept under her bed and went to find Nick.

  "Goddamn it! Goddamn it all so much!" Nick cried.

  "Nick, what’s wrong?" Delores came up behind Nick, who was staring intently at the hood of his car. She looked over his shoulder.

  Nick pointed down at the car. The word, "Bamelyn," had been scratched into the paint in blocky, child-like handwriting. Below the word were three miniature candy canes. The ends had been sucked and twirled down into a sharp point.

  "These are the same candy canes I give out to the kids," Nick said. "What the hell is going on here, Delores?"

  "Come on, Nick. Let’s go back inside," she said. "It’s okay. It’s okay."

  But it wasn’t okay and it would probably never be okay again. Delores struggled to give Nick calm suggestions. He could call the sheriff’s office and report the vandalism. He could get in touch with his insurance company. He could collect himself and his thoughts before work. Necessary actions, rational reactions, instead of the great swell of anger and frustration. She would do anything to distract him, to make sure he could not hear what she did: that g
reat drum throb from underground, the screaming from where the lines converged, the terrible heart of the town itself raging on the edges of Delores’ brain and her peripheral senses, singing with madness.

  V

  Anxiety Descending

  "BAMELYN," SAID THE seven year old girl in the red and white corduroy dress.

  It had been two weeks since someone defaced Nick’s car. The sheriff was a nice enough guy, but he didn’t hold out much hope for finding out who did it. And, like everyone else, he had no idea what a Bamelyn was.

  "Bamelyn," said the four year old boy who insisted on bringing his chili dog into Santa’s lap.

  "To be honest, Mr. Vance," the sheriff said, "these kids could easily just be messing with you. Maybe they got together at school and concocted some elaborate prank. Ask Santa for something that doesn’t exist and screw with the visitor in town at the same time. See how long they can keep it up before somebody feels guilty and tells their parents."

  It was a feasible explanation, but not probable. There were too many disparate age groups involved for it to be some diabolical plot. Admittedly, Nick hadn’t been a kid for a long time, but he knew kindergarteners didn’t hang out with third graders. Third graders didn’t hang out with seventh graders. Honestly, seventh graders shouldn’t be in line to talk to Santa, but you always had a few stragglers, mostly homeschooled kids. Santa, dragons, faeries, Jesus, they were all in the same giant storybook as far as Nick was concerned.

  "Bamelyn," said the creepy twins, in perfect unison.

  Marshall had been as sympathetic as Nick imagined. "What did you do? Piss off some kid already and he’s taking revenge on your shitty Kia? You better not fuck things up down there. I’ve already talked to the manager down there, what’s his name, Dick? He seems to think you’re an all right guy. You’ve got a good chance to rebuild your reputation there. Don’t shit where you eat!"

  "I would really like a new bike. The one I got is all rusty and it’s too small for me," said the girl in the jeans and random boy band shirt.

  "A bicycle?" Nick asked. "Of course, Santa can bring you a bicycle! That would be fantastic."