Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  He grimaced at the pain in his abdomen as he crawled over to the table. He longed for the small bottle, the one filled with the remedy. But it was gone and in its place was a small handkerchief with the name 'Jahobe ' stitched into it. It was a gift from the old woman, who came and retrieved her remedy.

  The pain was unbearable, worse than before. The cancer had spread from his abdomen to his stomach and pancreas. Three places now, three places of pain, and no room for relief. The pills all made him sick and he refused hospice care. He'd rather lay up in his apartment and waste away. Or, perhaps as his cruel fate had already dictated, he would suffer through a fourth Christmas.

  Zak Tran did make a list this year. It seemed that Santa didn't deliver to his apartment. He only asked for one thing. Surely the man could accommodate his one wish-death.

  Kealan Patrick Burke

  SNOWMEN

  THE TWO MEN standing in Ryan’s backyard were like irises in the eyes of winter.

  And they were looking right at him.

  The boy stood in his bedroom, the cold licking his wrists and ankles. He shuddered. His bed stood only a few tantalizing feet away. The window was even closer.

  But he couldn’t move. Not yet.

  It was as if those faceless men playing statues in his back yard wouldn’t let him look away. Wouldn’t let him call his parents.

  Not that that would do any good anyway. Dad had come home drunk enough to fill the entire house with the smell of sweat and whiskey. Mom was asleep on the couch, exhausted after carrying his father up the stairs and roaring abuse at him. They wouldn’t be in any mood to entertain Ryan now. Just your imagination, they’d say.

  But it wasn’t his imagination. Nor a dream. He had blinked his eyes once, twice, three times. He’d pinched his arm hard enough to force him into stifling a yelp – there would be an angry red welt there tomorrow. He’d gone to the bathroom to pee and splashed cold water on his face…and when he’d returned they were still there. Two of them. One large, one small.

  Faces in shadow, staring at him. He knew they were staring at him, could feel their eyes on him.

  It was snowing again now but that didn’t seem to bother them. They simply stood, unmoving, watching him with fierce interest. Waiting for something maybe. But what?

  Again he thought of rousing his parents. So what if they didn’t believe him or were angry? At least he wouldn’t be alone. At least then he could drag them in here and let them see for themselves that he wasn’t lying, or imagining things.

  But would the men still be there?

  Courage bloomed in him like a warm flower and he willed his legs to move.

  In a heartbeat he was padding across the cold floor. He yanked the door open and the narrow hallway beyond yawned into view. His father was closest, so he hurried down the hall to his parent’s bedroom and tapped once on the door – a matter of formality – then entered the room.

  And stalled on the threshold, halted by memory. His eyes searched the dark, finally straining the shape of a bed from the meager light spilling in from the hall. An uncertain pale oblong held the crumpled shape of a wild-haired shadow, open-mouthed. Gasping and gurgling. Gasping and gurgling.

  Can’t wake him, Ryan thought, fearful. On his cheek, the latent print of an old wound rose like a submarine from the deep and brought a flush to his skin. The sound it brought echoing inside his skull was a mere whisper but the remembered threat was enough.

  Wake me again you little bastard and I’ll break y—

  No. Suddenly afraid his presence would be enough to rouse the sleeping man, Ryan eased stealthily back, wincing in time with the creak and groan of the floorboards. He paused once more on the threshold, listening.

  The shape on the bed shuddered, fell silent. Ryan’s heart stopped.

  He waited, hair prickling, for a sleep-muddled grumble. “Whhhat’re you doinginhere, punkkk?”

  But it did not come. Waiting until the awful gasping and gurgling resumed, Ryan moved out into the hall, a heavy sigh momentarily drowning out the machinery of drunken slumber. He slowly turned the knob as far as it would go so the door would shut without a sound and was relieved when it did so without betraying him.

  Safe. He was annoyed at himself for even thinking his father could help him. He knew all too well from past experience that Dad was a mean drunk. Worse when roused from sleeping it off. And yet Ryan had intended on doing that very thing.

  Dumb jerk.

  There was not a doubt in his mind that his father loved him (even if he never said as much), and would never intentionally lay a hand on his son. But when he was drunk, he changed. Became possessed. He was a monster, who forgot the people who shared his cave and lashed out at them as if they sought to invade his territory. He hurt them, then wept in the morning when he saw what he’d done. A broken finger, a bleeding nose…a cut cheek. A broken heart.

  Ryan’s breath whistled through his nose as he approached his bedroom. The door was opposite the stairs and now indecision cut through him. Wouldn’t it be wise to check and make sure the men were still there before trying to wake his mother?

  Sure it would. But what if they weren’t there? It might mean they’d left, their staring game spoiled now that he’d moved away from the window, or it might mean they’d moved, looking for a way into the house to get him. The thought chilled him. But not nearly as much as the one that followed it: What if they’re already inside?

  Ryan swallowed, braced a hand against the wallpaper to steady himself. He listened to the sounds of the house. Creak, groan, sigh, creak, all in time with the soughing of the wind through the eaves. But weren’t those creaks like footsteps mounting the stairs? Wasn’t that groan like a stubborn door being carefully shut? The sigh – the inexorable breath released at last by someone who’d been holding it?

  Ryan began to tremble.

  Creak, groan, creak…

  Someone on the stairs.

  Creak, creak, sigh…

  “Hello?” Ryan’s voice was tiny and quickly swallowed by the shadows hanging in the corners of the hall.

  Creak. Creak. CREAK.

  “Who’s there?”

  The wind answered him. “Ryyyyaaaannnn,” he was sure it said.

  The footsteps drew closer.

  This was not imagination either. Ryan felt his bladder let go, soaking his pajama bottoms as tears welled in his eyes. Not imagination at all and that was unfortunate, for at that moment, the lights flickered, just as the maker of those creaking sounds reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto the landing.

  And there was no one there.

  Lights buzzed. Shadows leapt, but the hallway was empty.

  And from his father’s bedroom, the suddenly reassuring sound of a hacking cough quickly became a gurgling snore once more.

  Shivering, Ryan looked down at the puddle between his feet. He would have to clean it up before he got in trouble, but that could wait. He was already in trouble, but this kind of trouble was the very worst kind. The kind of trouble where you’re not sure who’s after you or why. All you know is that they are.

  He stepped around the puddle, hand still splayed against the wall, the floor creaking and cold, the wallpaper he’d always hated whispering beneath his fingers, and swung into his room. The moonlight was splashed across his bed, smothering darkness in the folds where he had thrown back the covers when something had woken him up and drawn him to the window.

  As it drew him to the window now, his body tensed, eyes wide and still moist.

  They won’t be there, he knew. They won’t be there because they’re in the house with me, probably creeping up the stairs right now. His certainty was reinforced by years spent watching horror movies at his best friend Larry’s house on Halloween. Horror movies he knew his parents didn’t approve of. Larry’s parents didn’t care. Sometimes they even joined them in watching them. In horror movies, the Thing That Was After You always stood motionless when you caught sight of it. Then, when you brought your parents back
, babbling and screaming about the monster in your closet/on the ceiling/under your bed/outside your window and pointed at where you’d seen it, it would be gone. Making you a victim of something almost as bad as the monster – enraged parents. It would wait then until Mom and Dad were sound asleep before creeping out to kill you.

  Now, he slowly stepped up to the window, his breath held, the feel of the wet pajama pants unpleasant against his skin.

  They won’t be there.

  But they were.

  In exactly the same positions as before. A sudden need to throw open the window and shriek what do you want why are you standing in my yard? down at them struck Ryan hard in the chest and he almost acted on it, until reason kicked back in and he stopped himself. That would be crazy. Opening the window might be just the move they were waiting for. His breath fogged against the glass and warmed his face.

  He noticed something then, something awful, something he should have noticed before.

  The air around the figures was still, unbroken.

  They have no breath.

  A noise in the hall made him jump. Creak.

  Creak. Thump.

  Ryan started to turn.

  And one of the men in the yard moved. Ryan gasped.

  The move had been slight. So slight he almost hadn’t caught it. The one on the right had tilted its head at him, as if confused by his actions, or the lack of them.

  But as much as it seemed he had to, he couldn’t dwell on that now. Because this time, there was definitely someone out in the hall. The creaking of the floorboards he could have explained away as the same phantom walker he’d imagined on the stairs, but the thump could be nothing but a footfall.

  Thump. There it was again.

  Heart hammering madly, Ryan cast a quick glance over his shoulder, almost expecting to see the people in the yard had flown up and were leering in at him, their dead faces pressed against the glass. But no, they were still down there, watching. Ringed by leafless walnut trees.

  Ryan padded slowly across the room and stopped a few feet from the door.

  Somewhere out in the hall, a door opened. No attempt had been made to hide the sound of the knob rattling or the hinges creaking. Unsteady footsteps thumped one-two-three across the hall. Stopped.

  Ryan’s breath rasped. He shook. Folded his arms to steady himself.

  Silence.

  The fear within him seemed caught on the scale dead center between relief and outright screaming terror. The footsteps were too confident, too uncaring to be those of an intruder.

  Dad?

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Again they stopped.

  The only bathroom in the house was downstairs. Ryan seized on the memory of many nights waking to the sound of his drunken father struggling to negotiate the hallway, blinded by the light. His old man had even fallen down the stairs once and sprained his ankle, though the following day he’d claimed he’d twisted it while playing baseball with his cronies. But Ryan knew different. He’d heard it all, the rattling calamity, the startled cry, the hiss of pained breath through clenched teeth, the call for Mom.

  The footsteps started again and he almost cried out his father’s name.

  But isn’t that what they want you to think? a voice inside him cautioned and he clamped his mouth shut. You’ve seen two of them down there. Who says there isn’t a third?

  That was true. What if that was another one of them out there, pretending to be his father? Trying to coax him out by fooling him into feeling safe?

  But the footsteps…They’d come from up the hall, from the direction of his parents’ room and not the stairs.

  You were asleep. One of them might have crept into your father’s room.

  He hadn’t thought of that.

  Call for Mom.

  Yes. That was it. That was the thing to do.

  But wait. What if that was one of them out there. Wouldn’t calling Mom lure her right into its arms?

  His thoughts felt tangled, confusion overwhelming him until he found himself crying again. Soundlessly. Why is this happening?

  Thump, thump, thump, thump, THUMP! The footsteps jerked him to attention and he hastily wiped the tears away with his sleeve and focused on the door. Something grazed the hallway wall. Close.

  The thumping stopped.

  Ryan’s gaze fell to the light beneath the door. Twin shadows in the amber light, cast by the feet of whoever was standing outside.

  “Dad?” he whispered.

  Quiet, but for the wind hushing the night.

  “Daddy?” he repeated and almost screamed, almost died of fright when an answer came.

  “Ryyannn?”

  The boy stepped forward, then back, his arm outstretched, uncertainty making a dance out of his movements.

  It’s a trick! They’re trying to trick you!

  But how could he be sure?

  Don’t open that door! They’ll get you!

  But what if it was his father, squinting at the door wondering what the hell was going on? Wondering if he’d imagined hearing his son’s voice. Then he’d leave, go downstairs or back to bed. Leaving Ryan alone again.

  And that couldn’t happen.

  “Ryyyaannn? That youuuu?”

  The boy was at the door before he could change his mind.

  RYAN NO!

  Sobbing now, ignoring the ripple of fear that passed over him, Ryan tugged the door open. The light blazed in his eyes, momentarily making a hunched shadow of the thing standing there. A noxious odor rolled across the threshold.

  The voice inside him fell silent.

  The house fell silent.

  Then a board creaked as the shadow moved forward a step. “Ryan? What the hell’s goin’ on? Why you up?”

  The tears came in a torrent Ryan was helpless to stop as he rushed forward and wrapped his arms around his father’s waist, almost sending both of them sprawling.

  “Ryan? Hey! What’s…?” Large muscular arms pried him loose and his father squinted down at him through eyes so full of red veins Ryan was amazed he could see through them. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Why are you crying?”

  “The win—” Ryan started to say, then wiped his eyes and rushed back into the bedroom. No. Had to check. The very worst thing that could happen now would be for him to tell Dad everything only to have the creatures in the yard vanish like they were supposed to. Like they did in the movies.

  “Ryan?”

  Everything was all right, Ryan realized, a surge of confidence brewing in his chest. Daddy was here now and even monsters with no breath would think twice before crossing his father. With the foul stink from the man clinging to him, a smell he now found infinitely comforting, Ryan closed his eyes and leaned forward to look out the window.

  Please be there. Please be there. Please.

  “Ryan? What are you doing?”

  Ryan opened his eyes. And grinned triumphantly.

  Relief swelled over him. “There’s someone in the yard. Come look. They’ve been watching me all night. Two of them. They’re not supposed to be there, are they Daddy? And they’re not breathing!”

  A weary sigh from behind him, followed by a click as his father switched on the light, casting a yellow oblong out onto the thick white snow beneath his window.

  “There they are. Come look!” Ryan said, narrowing his eyes, unable to stem the excitement now that his lonely night of terror was over. Whatever those things down there had come for, they wouldn’t get it now.

  He rubbed his fists over his eyes. Felt the grit of forgotten sleep come away.

  He looked down and pointed at the two figures, now bathed in hazy light.

  And froze.

  Even from here he could see the mistake he’d made in the beginning thinking there were two men down there. There weren’t. Nor were they the wicked monsters of his imaginings.

  One of them was a woman. The one with the tilted head

  (because it’s coming off)

  was a woman.
>
  His mother. Glittering in the light, ice forming a skin over her body, holding her in place, holding her still and firmly planted in the mound of snow at her feet.

  “Ryan? What are you doing?”

  Ryan began to tremble, a whine building in his throat, trapped there with all hope of a scream.

  Daddy sounded as if he needed to clear his throat. Daddy’s reflection grew bigger in the window. Beneath which, another version of Daddy, the real Daddy, stood in his very own mound of snow, arms pinned to his sides, skin alive with crystals, mouth open and filled with snow.

  Staring.

  The shadow filled the window, draping darkness over the figures frozen below.

  Ryan watched it, allowed his eyes to meet the reflection of the liquid blue sparks hovering just above his head.

  Gasping and gurgling, a sound he had mistaken for his father’s snoring. He now realized it had been nothing so innocent. As icicles met his skin and darkness filled his eyes, all awareness of pain and death swept away from him, leaving him with one single shred of a thought.

  That in the morning there would be three figures in the garden.

  Jon Alan Carroll

  REINDEER LOCAL 79: AN ORAL MEMOIR

  ME, DONNER, BLITZEN and a few of the boys are knocking back a coupla brews and playing some five-card stud. That little twit Rudolph walks up to the table, asks if he can buy in.

  No, Rudolph, I say, the game’s for journeymen only. You can’t play, ya dork. Jesus Christ, half these younger guys can’t tell their butts from third base.

  Santa’s alright, I guess. You see him walking around, cherry nose, suit that’s red, hat on head, the whole bit. You know the drill.

  They say he’s a good guy, but believe you me, Santa’s one tough negotiator. The elves, they got themselves a nonunion shop, and he works ‘em till they drop.

  Don’t get me wrong. It ain’t so bad, 364 days off a year, full dental, but it’s just a job to me.

  So Santa walks up and starts popping off about inclement weather conditions, poor visibility, the whole nine yards. Little Rudolph’s eyes light up like Angelina Jolie just walked naked into the corner beer bar and he says, Oh, Santa, Santa, I’ll pull your sleigh tonight.