Clark thought of the soul he'd seen escape before being sucked into Sleath's blade and the bell that appeared on its hilt after the soul was captured. He hoped he wouldn't become a bell dangling from Sleath's knife.
"So, I'm bait."
"Afraid so."
"We're not heading towards Coit Tower, though."
"And I don't want to be. I want you as far away as possible. You're unfinished business and I'm banking on him coming after you."
"And you'll protect me?"
"I'll do my best."
"You'll do your best? Christ, Jakes, don't sound too confident."
"Sleath is a formidable killer."
"I know. I've seen his work-up close."
Jakes slammed on the brakes. Clark was hurled against his seatbelt-his breath blasted from his chest. The Ford's brakes locked up and the vehicle went into a skid that seemed to have no end. Clark didn't have to ask the lieutenant the reason for all the drama. Sleath was charging down the middle of the street towards them with his knife in his hand.
"Get us out of here, Jakes!"
It was too late. Before the policeman could spin the car around and hightail it, Sleath was upon them, his speed inhuman. He burst through the windshield, showering the occupants in glass.
"Hello again, friend," Sleath said to Clark.
Clark recoiled into his seat.
"I believe we were interrupted. I've come for your eyes." Sleath brandished his knife and four bells tinkled.
"Not this time," Jakes announced, unholstering a hand-cannon and taking aim.
Sleath was lightning fast. His knife-hand whipped around and severed Jakes' gun-hand at the wrist. The hand still clutching the gun bounced into Clark's lap. He couldn't touch the abhorrence lying there.
Clark was a spectator to what happened next. It was so fast, he didn't know what happened until it was over. With Jakes clutching his handless arm, the Ford careened out of control. Sleath aimed his next blow at Clark. The cop hurled himself in the way of the arcing blade, smothering Clark. Sleath's knife buried itself in Jakes' back. The lieutenant threw open the passenger door. The car swerved violently and Clark found his seatbelt had been unbuckled.
Sleath ripped the knife from Jakes' back. It yanked Jakes off Clark. The policeman lay sprawled in the driver's seat as Sleath oozed deeper into the car through the shattered windshield. He raised the knife again. The forked blade trained on the cop's eyes. Jakes knew it was the end and glanced at Clark. Acceptance was in his gaze. Although finished, the lieutenant could do one last thing. He booted Clark out the open door.
Clark's back smacked the pavement, the snow providing no cushioning. His spine crackled with pain. He realized he still had momentum and had the wherewithal to curl into a ball, protecting his head. He came to an untidy halt some two hundred feet from his first impact.
Clark unraveled and stood, just in time to see Jakes' unmarked disappear into a vacated Starbucks, exploding on impact. The explosion tore through the storefront, killing anyone inside the Crown Victoria. Clark thanked the cop for his sacrifice.
But his relief was momentary, as a phoenix rose from the flames and soared into the sky. Clark knew the flaming survivor was no legendary bird.
"Sleath," he muttered.
Clark had to get to Coit Tower before Sleath could destroy Christmas.
A MUNI bus shuddered to a halt before Clark under a popping cacophony of asthmatic airbrakes. The driver's face was a mosaic of confusion. Clark rushed to the door and slammed his fists against the Plexiglas. "Let me in!" he shouted.
The doors clattered open. "What the hell happened?" the wire-haired woman demanded.
Clark clambered aboard. "I need your bus."
"You ain't having my damn bus."
"I don't have time for this. Gimme the bus." Clark spotted three passengers towards the rear of the bus staring at him and out the window. "You'll have to get off too."
"No one's going anywhere," the driver insisted
"Get off the goddamn bus!"
Clark ripped open the driver's protective door. He yanked the overweight woman from her comfortable perch and bundled her out the door. He didn't have to ask the passengers twice. One glance from him and they flew out the rear exit.
Dropping into the driver's seat, Clark instructed, "Call the cops. Tell them Jakes is dead, that their witness has gone to Coit Tower, and to send back-up."
"You're in a whole world of shit now," the driver insisted.
"We all are," Clark said, thinking of Sleath destroying the Christmas Bell. He closed the doors and roared off, pulling an illegal U-turn on the one-way street.
Luckily, Clark knew how to handle a bus from a temporary job as a summer school driver during his third year of college. His skills were rusty, but he'd get there. But, stealing a bus wasn't the best idea he'd ever had. Getting to Coit Tower required negotiating a number of narrow switchbacks, which had the added obstacle of parked cars clogging the roads. Clark brushed cars aside with destructive intent. Vehicles lost more than door mirrors. The bus removed fenders, crunched doors, blew out windows and reduced full sizes to compacts. Buildings faired only slightly better. Even with no cars, some bends were so tight that Clark collected stucco and siding.
The bus didn't make it to Coit Tower's parking lot. Clark called it a day when the bus ploughed into two cars parked on either side of the road. He leapt from the vehicle's rear passenger exit and raced up the hill to the screams of protesting neighbors.
Out of breath and with starlight popping in his gaze, Clark rounded the tower to find he was too late. Jakes' guards were on their backs with their eyes missing. Both men still had their weapons in their hands. Having twice seen Sleath at work, he doubted the cops had even fired off a round. Clark stepped between the corpses.
He froze.
Echoing laughter trickled down the coiling stairway. Clark knew Sleath had found the Christmas Bell. But he guessed he didn't have seven slay bells dangling from his knife. Jakes and the cops made four, five and six. Without a seventh victim, Christmas was safe and the bell couldn't be broken. Clark accepted he was probably Sleath's seventh and final victim. Better him than some other poor unsuspecting sap. He checked his watch-five minutes to twelve.
Clark smiled. Time wasn't on Sleath's side. The elf had to claim seven victims before Christmas Day. Clark guessed he could last five minutes. Or die trying. He bent to take a gun from one of the dead cops.
Clark grasped the automatic. The dead cop snatched his wrist. Clark stiffened and gasped. The cop stared at him with an eyeless gaze.
"You'd better be a good guy," the blind cop demanded.
"I am," Clark replied.
"Take the gun, if you want." He released his grip on Clark's arm. "It won't do you any good, but this will."
The cop produced a remote control device. Clark took it.
"What is it?"
"We guessed we wouldn't hold him back. The place is wired."
Clark patted the cop on the chest. "I'll get help when I can."
"Don't bother. I don't wanna live. I saw his knife pierce my brain. I even saw my soul escape."
The cop continued to ramble but Clark had already entered the tower. Climbing the steps, he called out. "Hey, Sleath! You killed seven yet?"
A rasping chuckle greeted Clark. "My little friend. The one that got away. Is that you? I thought it was-I can smell you. Come on up and I'll tell you what I know."
"Sure you don't want to come down here? By my reckoning, you're out of time." Clark thumbed the detonator.
"Who says I'm waiting for you? Who says I don't have a little friend up here now?"
"Momma!" a little girl's voice shrieked.
"You son of a bitch!"
Clark raced up the steps, clutching the remote control tightly. He couldn't let the explosive off now. Not with a kid up there.
The burden of time wasn't Sleath's. It was Clark's. If Sleath's time ran out, he could always sacrifice the child. He checked his watch
-two minutes to twelve.
Clark burst onto the observation level. The place was lit with Christmas lights. His clothes singed, Sleath sat in a chair with the Christmas Bell on his lap. He poked at it with his blade. Six bells tinkled from the knife's butt. The child was nowhere to be seen.
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
"Don't piss about. The girl. Where is she?"
"Oh, her." Recollection crossed Sleath's face. "I was always good at mimicking people. Drove Saint Nicholas mad."
"What?"
"Momma," Sleath said in the child's voice.
How dumb had he been? Clark couldn't describe how big a fool he felt. He glanced at his watch. There was time for one last thing.
Sleath rose. "Give me your soul."
"I don't think so." Clark brandished the remote. "The bell is wired."
Sleath smirked and shook his head. The elf rotated the bell to show its underside. All that was there was the clapper.
"I think someone's been lying to you. Now, gimme your eyes."
Clark looked up at the ceiling in despair, then smiled. Sleath was wrong. Clark hadn't been lied to. He'd just misunderstood. It was the Christmas lights. Tied to each light was a chunk of plastic explosive with a wire running from each piece. Clark smiled.
"Do yourself a favor, Sleath. Take a Christmas off."
Sleath growled and raced across the floor.
More out of good fortune than anything else, Clark was standing next to the elevator. He punched the down arrow. The doors slid open and he dived inside, striking the door close button. The door eased shut.
Through an ever-narrowing gap, Clark watched Sleath charge towards him. Sleath made a final lunge, but was too late. The doors closed. His knife pierced the metal door, but the elevator descended unabated.
Clark heard Sleath hurl frustrated insults. He laughed and checked his watch-ten seconds.
"Merry Christmas to you," he said and pressed the detonator.
The explosion rocked the elevator before something snapped and the elevator car plunged. Clark was weightless as the car fell but was thrown to the ground as it struck bottom, its walls buckling. The doors were parted, wrenched open by the impact. Clark slipped through the gap. He tore out of the tower, into the parking lot.
He was greeted by strewn rubble. He whirled to gaze at Coit Tower's peak. It wasn't there. The observation level was gone. A smoldering stump remained in its place.
He wondered if he'd been successful. There was no sign that Christmas hadn't arrived, but the absence of Sleath's remains caused his heart to flutter in the fear of failure.
Then, he spotted his proof-the Christmas Bell. He rushed towards it. Not a scratch was on it. And why would there be? Jakes said it was indestructible. And as if to confirm that Christmas was safe, Sleath's knife was lying next to the bell, just as unharmed, and the six bells from his six victims were missing. He gathered up both items and struck the knife against the bell. It rang loud and proud above the wail of police and fire sirens.
"Merry Christmas, everyone!" he cheered.
Kealan Patrick Burke
VISITATION RIGHTS
“DID YOU GUYS already have dinner" I ask the two little girls in the rearview mirror. The green dashboard lights lend my face a ghoulish cast.
Isabelle continues to stare out the window at the late Christmas shoppers dashing through the snow. Her arms are folded. She's not done sulking.
Kara, a year younger than her sibling, so perhaps not yet mature enough to completely absorb the full potency of her mother's hatred of their father, joins her sister in watching the snowy streets and stores blazing with multicolored lights, but shakes her head.
"Well then I'm glad I put a turkey in the oven!" I tell them. It's a microwave meal, but they don't need to know that, though I'm sure the taste will give it away. "Everyone hungry?"
No response. Isabelle has tears in her eyes.
In the mirror, my smile looks desperate, and frail.
I return my gaze to the road. I shouldn't be driving in this. The snow makes the windshield look like a TV screen with bad reception. Half-glimpsed figures rush through the lights, heads bowed, as unaware of me as I am of them. My attention is focused on my daughters, who have brought the cold of this Christmas Eve into the car with them.
"You excited about your presents?"
Again, Isabelle says nothing. Kara only blinks.
Somehow I manage to guide the car out of the shopping district without incident. The festive lights and their associated—if alien—cheer vanish, replaced by whirling dervishes of snow turned red by the brake lights as I turn into our—into my—neighborhood.
Here the houses are vague, dispirited, dark-eyed shapes hunkered against the cold. The wheels of the car slide a little in the slush, but I keep my small, battered Toyota from hitting the curb and offer the girls a reassuring smile neither of them sees.
Then my home, which looks no less unwelcoming than any of the others, and I kill the engine. Listen for a moment to the ticking of the snow against the windshield as it tries to erase the outside world. Listen for a moment to the hitching breath from Isabelle's mouth as she struggles not to cry. Listen to the sniffling as Kara bravely fights with a cold.
"All right girls...we're here!"
And I listen to the erratic thumping of my own heartbeat as I swallow and open the door.
* * *
"Makes yourselves at home. Go on. Take your coats and boots off," I tell the girls as I hang my coat on the rack by the front door.
They look inclined to do no such thing. They just stand there, looking small and miserable, and lost. Isabelle is still pouting, but as frustrating as it is, I know better than to chastise her for it. It's one of the many privileges I lost with custody, and one that would only exacerbate things now. Kara is shivering despite the cloying heat in the apartment. It's always warm in here, but today I set the thermostat higher knowing the kids would be coming back with me. I guess I didn't think getting them here would take as long as it did.
I stamp snow from my shoes and offer them reassuring smiles though it hurts my heart to see them standing close together as if seeking solace from some terrible threat. Nightly I relive the warm cherished memories of their faces lighting up at the sight of me coming home from work, especially on Christmas Eve, my arms laden with gifts I made a show of pretending were not for them. I remember the clean scent of them as they wrapped their arms around me, the softness of their lips against my cheek, the laughter, the joy.
The love.
"Right then," I say, rubbing my hands briskly together and moving past them to the kitchen. "Off with those coats or you'll be more roasted than the turkey. I'll get dinner on the table and we can eat. And after that, we can exchange gifts."
As I tug open the fridge, I wince. Using the word "exchange" was a force of habit. Of course they have no presents for me, nor should I have expected any. I promised them gifts last Christmas and on their birthdays and forgot on each occasion thanks to self-pity and a bottle with a man's name on the label. So I expected wariness and doubt. I expected awkwardness. I didn't, however, expect fear, distrust, and coldness.
"What I mean is," I tell them, yanking three microwave dinners from the fridge and nudging the door shut with my knee. "You guys can unwrap the gifts I got for you." The chill from the boxes feels like Heaven on my calloused fingers. I set the meals down beside the microwave and turn to look at the girls. "Come on in here! Sit down! I won't bite."
They don't move. They just keep staring at me, their eyes moist. I notice they've moved closer together though. Kara's hand has found its way into the crook of her sister's arm. Isabelle has her gloved hands shoved into her pockets. Both of them have their hoods still up.
I turn back to the meals. Maybe the smell of food will entice them to join me.
"Not quite as fancy as the dinners your Mom makes," I explain as I set the timer. "But I think you'll like it. The secret is lots of gravy." I chuckle to m
yself to keep from sobbing.
It's been over a year since I've seen my children. A year is a long time to be misrepresented by an ex-wife who hates you. And she has every right to hate me. I was a drunk, and a violent one, and yes, I hurt her more than once. Sometimes, physically. Often, emotionally. But I never hurt our children. Never did anything but love them, and it angers me to see what she has done to them.
I turn back again to face my girls. Still standing there, still watching.
"Girls, I want you to come in here. I want you to come in here and sit down."
They don't.
I try to measure my tone, but it's getting more difficult. They're looking at me like I'm some kind of a monster. Maybe I was, once, but never to them. Never. She has no right to make them think of me that way, and they have no right to believe it.
"Isabelle...Kara...I'm not going to ask again. Please come in and sit down so I can talk to you. You're not being very nice to me right now, treating me like this."
Kara's lower lips trembles.
A tear spills down Isabelle's cheek.
I begin to tremble. "Isabelle...why are you crying? I haven't done anything to you, have I? I thought we were just going to spend a little time together for Christmas. I thought we were going to have a nice Christmas Eve dinner and—"
"I want Mommy," Kara whimpers, and now she is crying too.
"What?" I heard what she said, but I don't want to have heard it. It's a cold finger against my heart, a clenched fist in my throat. I don't want them to want their mother. Just once, just for a little while, I want them to want me.
Snow patters against the windows. The wind moans in the eaves. A symphony of loneliness that will never have a reason to change.
"Ok, ok." I say, and throw up my hands. Force a smile. "Gifts first, then dinner, and then I'll take you home, how does that sound?" I head into the living room, resisting the urge to grab my children as I pass them and throttle the sense their mother has contaminated back into them.
"We don't want gifts," Isabelle sobs. "We want to go back to Mommy."
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 28
