by Caleb Huett
The wind, too, pushed the cloak away from Kris Kringle???’s body. At first it looked like a normal, thin body shape, like that of an old man. Below the waist, though, were thick furry legs with the knee bent the wrong way. At the ground, instead of feet, they ended in cloven hooves with sharp, curved claws.
As the snow shrunk and returned to the globe—which had no visible cracks anywhere we could see—the figure’s hood was blown back, too, and we saw first tiny pointed horns on the top of a bald head … and a long white beard on a face that looked a lot like the Kris Kringle portrait.
“Ramp!” I yelled. “It is Ramp!”
A few seconds later, Ramp was back at the entrance, where Santa had just entered to investigate. Ramp waved the bundle of sticks, and this time a cloud of some kind of sleeping powder was visible as it settled over Santa’s face. Santa fell to the ground, and Ramp twisted the Kringle in his fingers. Snow encircled Santa and Ramp, and when it dissipated, Ramp was wearing Santa’s Big Red Suit and Santa was wearing long johns. Other than the little horns and feet, Ramp could have been the Kris Kringle.
“We have to go.” I turned and pushed the hatch open, slipping on the snow as I dragged myself out of the hole on all fours. “He took a sleigh, reindeer, and the Kringle. He’s leaving. We need to—we need to tell someone, or stop him, or—”
Celia ran after me and grabbed me, which I was glad about because I didn’t really know where I was going. “There’s no way we can catch him now. We need a plan.”
I nodded, and tried to swallow my fear. How was Ramp also Kris Kringle? Why was he stealing the Quantum Kringle? Why did no one tell me Kris was short for Kristopher? What if Christmas is over? I felt like I was going to faint, but I focused and fought through it.
“I’ll call our friends.” I pulled out my phone.
“Which friends?”
“All of them. Everybody.”
Celia nodded. “Tell them to meet us by the takeoff zone. I’ll meet you there. I’m going to work on a plan.”
“But the last trial!” I said. “You have to be there in just a few hours! You need to study and sleep.”
Celia made a face at me that said, Come on, dude. “It kinda seems like we need to save Christmas, right?”
“Right, you’re right. That’s way more important. Let’s for sure save Christmas.”
A few hours later and all my friends were assembled in a hangar near the takeoff zone. It was like my birthday party, except Ramp wasn’t there, and no one was happy, and it was nothing like my birthday party but it calmed me down to think about it like that, okay? Thunder rumbled outside, because of course it was a stormy situation.
Celia arrived last, wearing her Santa suit like the rest of us who had them. “Did everyone bring what Ollie and I asked for?”
The group collectively turned from our long conference table and nodded.
“Great. Karl, tell them what you told me.”
Karl stood up and clicked a button on a remote—a big TV someone had wheeled in clicked on and started playing a regular human news story somewhere in America. The headline read SANTA PRANK? Sleigh spotted flying through the air above local neighborhood.
“About an hour ago, Ramp was spotted in Bellville, California.”
He clicked the remote, and the news changed to a different station in America. “A few minutes later, this aired in Huntington, West Virginia.”
EVIL SANTA INTERRUPTS ANNUAL COMEDY GATHERING.
He clicked quickly through several more. “He’s already been to Warsaw in Poland, to Kabul in Afghanistan, to Trondheim in Norway, to Abuja in Nigeria … he doesn’t seem to be following any particular pattern. And the humans are starting to put it together that something is wrong. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but then I saw this interview.” He clicked again.
A little girl about Polly’s age was crying on a German news station. Subtitles translated for us. “I wrote a letter to Santa asking for my goldfish to be able to talk. Santa came and used magic … and now my fish only says mean things!” The little girl lifted a goldfish bowl up in front of the camera.
A big bubble floated out of the fish’s mouth, and when it popped at the top of the water, it said, “Your favorite movie is actually not very good.” Another bubble popped. “Those shoes, with that scarf?”
“I’m not even wearing a scarf!” the girl cried.
H.O.R.S.E. whinnied. “HORSE-REFERENCED WITH WISH DATABASE. RAMP IS TARGETING AREAS WITH RECENT POWERFUL WISHES.”
“Exactly.” Bertrand nodded. “And look at the headline.”
KRAMPUS GREIFT AN!
“Krampus?” I frowned. “I thought that was a myth.”
Kurt laughed. “Yeah, and a lot of the world thinks we’re a myth. Not for long, though.”
“He’s using the Quantum Kringle in broad daylight some places.” Sally tapped her fingernails nervously on the table. “There are going to be a lot of questions.”
“I have one: Why is he doing this?” Buzz wasn’t even sitting down, he was so anxious. He’d even brought his axe and had it resting over his broad shoulders. “I thought he was just some harmless old dude trying to be the next Santa.”
“I know why.” Everyone turned and looked at Bertrand. “Well, I don’t know why why, but I get what he’s trying to do.” He adjusted his bow tie and looked at the table, obviously uncomfortable with everyone staring at him. “The Wish Generator only works because those kids were making wishes. If he convinces enough people that Santa is going to ruin their wishes, and they tell their friends, and those friends tell their friends …”
“No one wishes at all.” I put my head in my hands. “And if the Wish Generator doesn’t work—”
“Then it’s not just this Christmas that will be ruined. We use too much energy for traditional sources, like fossil fuels. The North Pole would have to shut down. Our inventions wouldn’t work. We’d all have to move back into the real world.”
The reindeer shifted uncomfortably. Crasher flattened her ears. “The Stable takes care of us with that energy. We’d have to go back to bein’ wild animals. I don’t think I could do that.”
“Well, luckily I’ve got some good news.” Celia tapped some buttons on her laptop and changed the TV screen to a map of the world with a bright red dot zipping around it, pausing for a moment before taking off again. “He took a sleigh I made, which means we can track it.”
“How do you catch the old fogey, though?” Frank and her brothers were standing in the corner, like they weren’t sure whether to trust us yet. “Nothin’s as fast as the Kringle.”
“I actually have an idea.” Celia grinned. I was jealous she could find something to be excited about; we hadn’t even started, and I already felt like we’d lost. The red dot on the screen was zipping all over the place—how were we supposed to compete with that?
“Bertrand,” Celia continued, “did you bring your wish engine?”
“Yeah, but … you saw how it worked in the race. There’s no way we could reach light speed on our own.”
“You won’t be on your own.” Buzz started smiling as he figured out Celia’s plan. “We could get everybody at the North Pole wishing.”
Bertrand seemed less convinced. “I could work with my mom to see if we could transmit some wishes to you … but still, I don’t know how fast we could get. The Kringle goes faster than light without breaking a sweat.”
“For now, we should focus on trying to stop Ramp from doing any more damage to Santa’s reputation.” Celia was already grabbing Bertrand’s engine and hooking it into my sleigh. “I think we should chase him, fix what he breaks, and deliver presents as we go.”
“You want to deliver presents on Christmas Eve? During the day?” Sally crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.” I was starting to get pumped, too, the more I understood. “He’s already pulled us into the spotlight. We have to make the best of it.”
“And this will be quite a laborious activity, for we are good pals but not trained Santas.” Gadzooks, who had been watching quietly with owls on either shoulder, finally chimed in. “More time is an exemplary idea.”
“Great.” Celia stood at the head of the table in her Big Red Suit, looking like she belonged in charge. It was awesome. “Karl and Bertrand have to stay behind as support, which leaves me, Ollie, Kurt, Sally, the triplets, Gadzooks, and Buzz.”
“The Big Nine only work with Santa.” Rocker looked around at the other reindeer. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d be happy to help.”
Slammer, Jammer, and Treason 4 the Season all nodded silently. Snoozer snored in an affirmative way, and Truther flicked her tinfoil hat with her ears while darting her eyes around the room nervously, which I guess was as close to agreement as she would get.
“We’ll be the Little Nine.” Crasher snorted. “I’ll take lead, like before.”
Slammer didn’t argue, and all of us seemed to be in agreement.
“Great.” Celia gestured to our sleighs, which were already connected. “I built a replacement sleigh to connect to Ollie’s, so we’ll all fit. It looks like we’re ready to go.”
“Not quite yet.”
My face turned red at the voice. The whole room turned and looked behind me at the hangar entrance, but I already knew who it was.
Andrea walked over to the table, putting her red hair in a knot on top of her head and sticking her Santa hat over it. “I want to help.”
Lightning struck, and thunder rumbled. The whole table looked to me. I still couldn’t make eye contact with her.
She sighed. “For real this time. I promise.”
There was another long silent pause while I thought about all the different things I wanted to say. I settled on:
“Cool. Cool coolcool. That’s cool, except, I think it probably isn’t, because it seemed like it was for real every time? And all those times you were lying, which was pretty not cool. So it is probably safer for us to assume that this isn’t cool, either. Probably not even a little, if that makes sense? Maybe not at all. I’m thinking most likely not at all.”
“Ollie means no.” Celia stared Andrea down. “Why would we trust you?”
“I only lied about Ollie because Klaus promised a home for my family at the North Pole. If the North Pole shuts down, none of it matters.”
“And if Celia isn’t even going to the trial, Klaus wins by default.” Buzz shrugged. “It makes sense.”
Myrle spat on the ground. “Doesn’t sound fair to me. We’re the ones tryin’ to save Christmas out here while he’s ignorin’ all our phone calls.”
Bertrand shook his head. “We didn’t know Ramp was evil. What if she’s trying to ruin Christmas, too?”
“She’s telling the truth about the deal with Klaus.” Sally looked at me apologetically. “He was bragging about it the other day.”
“Celia and I would have helped you,” I said quietly. “And we wouldn’t have made you do anything.”
“Well, now I know.” Andrea looked at her watch. “Clock’s ticking, though.”
“I vote no.” Celia looked at me. “But you get one and a half votes.”
It didn’t take me long to decide. “You can come. But everyone here heard you admit you lied. So after we save Christmas, you have to tell everybody else.”
“Deal. Can we get a move on now?”
All of us split from the conference table and prepared for the day. Sally took the harpoon gun from her sleigh and attached it to ours. Buzz fit his giant wheels onto it in case we had to traverse more difficult terrain. I called Karl and told him to spread the word, and the rest of us went to gather toys from The Workshop’s warehouse.
“Mom said to let you use The Bag,” Bertrand explained while we headed down into the basement levels of The Workshop. “It’s down here with the toys.” The door opened, and Bertrand led me to an unassuming cloth bag hanging on a peg on the wall. “It looks old, but it’s tough. It goes around your shoulder like this.” He wrapped its ropey cord around one of my shoulders so The Bag rested against my hip.
I squeezed it, and it felt like there was nothing inside it at all. Bertrand took a huge dollhouse—one of the haunted ones I had made myself—and pushed it into The Bag, which opened wider than it looked like it would. He cinched it closed, and it still felt like there was nothing in it. He reached his hand back in, said, “Dollhouse,” and showed me that he could pull the dollhouse back out.
“I’ve always wondered how it works,” I said as everyone who came with us started grabbing toys and loading them into The Bag. “Is it, like, some kind of dimensional portal with a rudimentary AI that can hear what you ask it to find?”
Bertrand paused and looked at me, surprised. “I thought Celia was the science one.”
“I design toys, too. I know stuff. Celia just knows more stuff, and learns it faster. I’m more about making things fun, and pretty.”
“Well, you’re right. The Bag was one of Kris Kringle’s inventions, so we don’t totally understand it, but that’s the best I’ve come up with, too. You can be as general as you want with it; it’s smart. Also, don’t be afraid to ask it for things we didn’t put in there. You never know what might have gotten left behind.”
The triplets, Kurt, and Gadzooks started making it a game—throwing huge toys at me to catch with The Bag. It never got any heavier, even when loaded full of thousands of presents. Amazing. It was slow going on our own, though, and a bunch of elves who worked in the warehouse helped us fill it just like they would have with Santa.
Bertrand split with us to meet Mrs. Claus at the Wish Generator. Back at the hangar, we all piled into the sleigh, and Celia hit a few buttons to start the engine powering up.
Bertrand spoke on our SweetTooth headsets. “Alright. Karl’s got a crowd of North Pole residents gathering outside to start making wishes. Make sure your personal gravity field is on—otherwise you could all get knocked out by the g-force. I’m locking on to the portable generator … you should receive a burst of energy starting … now!”
The sleigh sputtered and jostled, but the engine didn’t kick all the way on.
“One second—Mom’s checking my math.” Bertrand covered the microphone with his hand, but we could still hear his muffled voice. “I’m telling you, I looked at it! All the numbers are exactly, perfectly … oh, you’re right. I did miss that. Thanks, Mom.” His hand moved away from the microphone. “Okay, get ready. It should really work … now.”
The sleigh sped forward so fast the reindeer team had trouble keeping up. Thunder rumbled, and we would have been drenched if the personal gravity field didn’t have the added benefit of deflecting the droplets.
Celia checked the map. “Looks like he’s in San José, Costa Rica. We’ll head there first.”
I didn’t know what light speed looked like, but this definitely wasn’t it. We were flying fast—so fast it was hard to focus on the ground. But I could still comprehend what was going on.
“Where’s the music?” Kurt leaned over and pushed his music box, which he had installed into the dashboard. “I’ve got the perfect song for this.” The box started playing “Play This Song While You’re Saving Christmas,” one of LDB’s biggest hits from his first album. It was okay; his new album was better.
We arrived at a house on the outskirts of San José just in time to see a crackle of light and vanishing snow in the space where Ramp was. A girl was crying from atop a huge pile of books in her yard. Our onboard computer translated her Spanish so I could understand what she was saying.
“I wished for new books, and Santa gave me two hundred copies of this boring book The Fountainhead!”
“HORSE RECOGNIZED: SOFIA VILLALOBOS. PRESENT: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF MONSTER TRUCKS.”
“That wasn’t Santa. That was a bad guy.” I reached into The Bag and handed her the book. “Don’t ever stop making wishes.”
She stopped crying and
hugged it. “Thank you, little Santas. My favorite is when Gravedigger CRUSHES the competition on SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY.” She had a very good scary announcer voice.
I opened The Bag and scooped all the copies of The Fountainhead into it, then hopped back onto the sleigh.
“Now what? Do we deliver presents here?”
“I believe I may be of assistance!” Gadzooks flourished a plastic wand and whistled. Within moments, a huge flock of all different kinds of birds was flapping above us. “Kindly throw them the presents, Ollie!”
I stuck my hand in The Bag and said, “San José presents!” One by one they appeared in my hand, and one by one I flung them up into the crowd of birds. One or several would catch each present and then fly off to the address H.O.R.S.E. called out.
Celia asked, “Could that work while we’re flying, Gadzooks?”
“Absolutely, my dear friend!” she answered. “There are birds to help us everywhere.”
“Ramp—I mean, Krampus?—is moving so fast. It looks like he’s in … Atlanta, Georgia.” Celia kicked on the engine, and we took off again.
I held The Bag upside down off the side of the sleigh and yelled, “PRESENTS BELOW US!” As we flew north into the United States, presents streamed out of The Bag and were caught by birds to be dropped down the right chimneys or left on the right porches. It must have looked very strange to normal humans—getting their presents not just early, but from birds. I tried not to worry about it, or worry about all the attention we were going to get when we made stops. Right now we just have to catch Ramp. The rest can come later.
This time Celia stopped us several floors up by an apartment building. Ramp was already gone, but I could see a teenage boy inside staring at a video on an old computer and looking petrified. I knocked on the window, and he opened the door.
“Who are you?”
“We’re Santa. Sort of.”
“That man with the big horns said he was Santa.”
BIG horns? What? “Well, he lied. What did he do?”
“I wrote a letter to Santa—I didn’t even really know for sure there was one Santa—and asked to be famous. That guy with the horns came in and did something to my computer. Now this video of me farting in public is everywhere.”
