by Marc Franco
“He’s just a little heavy,” Shig said gruntingly. Fleep and Koji were struggling with the other leg.
“This is not good,” I said under my breath then ran upstairs. As I approached the top step, I heard my dad. He was still in Jordan’s room.
“Baby, you had a bad dream. Santa is not dead. He’s probably delivering presents as we speak, so go back to sleep, okay?”
“But Daddy, Jakob’s downstairs with Fleep and Logan and Shig and Koji and dead Santa.” She’d stopped crying. “Go downstairs and check.”
“I think I’ll check on Jakob first, but not until I get you back to sleep,” my dad said.
Well that was good news—my dad wouldn’t leave Jordan’s side until he was certain she was asleep, so her antics actually bought me some time. I went back downstairs to help my friends.
Things were looking better. Santa was almost to the closet. Logan barked an ultra-quiet order to stop so I could join in. I quickly grabbed Santa’s other arm. I nodded and silently mouthed a countdown from three, and everyone heaved. We’d gotten maybe two feet when Santa’s helmet slid off, quietly landing on the carpet.
We all froze for a second, captured by the sight of Santa’s strikingly bald head. I set down his arm and quickly knelt beside him.
“I can’t believe it,” I said.
“Wow. Forget everything you know about Santa,” Logan said in an awestruck whisper. “He’s young, not old … tall, not short … muscular, not plump. And he dresses like a Special Forces dude, not in a red and white coat.”
His face was also unlike anything I’d expected. There were no rosy cheeks and white beard; instead his skin was dark, his features exotic and finely chiseled. But it was his expression that intrigued me the most. It was a combination of commanding, yet gentle. He was handsome and strong, but peaceful too. He was even smiling in his sleep. Slowly I reached out and touched his face. It had this glow to it. I was in complete wonderment. I stood, still looking down.
“We don’t have time for this. Admire later. We have to hide, remember?” Shig—once again cool and collected—reminded us to get a move on.
It was a struggle, but we had managed to get Santa almost completely into the closet when Logan dropped his leg, lost her balance and crashed against the wall. At the sound of the crash, I dropped Santa like a lead weight and beelined it out of the closet—hoping to create a diversion for my dad’s inevitable awakening. On my way, I spotted a shiny metal object next to where Santa had fallen. It was a silver tag on a chain. I snatched it up, shoved it in my pocket, and ran up the stairs, pounding my feet heavily. Sure enough, my dad was waiting for me at the top of the stairs as I started up the second flight. Perfect, I thought. Pretending to be caught in the act, I stopped short and looked guilty.
“What are you doing? And why are you dressed?”
Doh! I hadn’t thought of a cover story.
“I um …” I stalled and thought.
“And what was that thump?”
Jordan peered from behind him. “I told you, they killed Santa.”
My dad glanced over his shoulder and shushed Jordan, then looked down the hall toward his bedroom. “Whisper, Jordan.” I could tell he was frustrated. “You’re going to wake Mommy. Well, Jakob?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Yeah, it was me. I was—”
“Killing Santa,” Jordan whispered.
“Dad, tell her to stop it! She’s crazy,” I whined in whisper mode. He gave Jordan the look, and she quieted down. Finally, I thought. And, just in time, I finally came up with a cover.
“I was putting your present under the tree,” I said, kind of embarrassed-like.
“What present?” Jordan asked, crossing her little arms. “He doesn’t have any presents. Daddy, go downstairs,” she begged.
“If it will prove that you had a bad dream, then let’s do it,” my dad said.
My dad winked at me. I winked back. Wait, what was I doing? This was a bad idea. The gang was probably still trying to get the rest of Santa into the fort. My dad brushed past me with my devious-looking sister clinging to his back.
“Dad wait, you can’t go down there. My present—it isn’t wrapped and—”
By the time I caught up with them, they were already downstairs, staring at the tree. I casually looked to my left at the closet door, the door to the fort. My eyes bugged out. Santa’s black boot was sticking out! I ambled over to the door, leaned against the boot and pushed it in with my foot. My dad turned and faced me just as the closet door closed pretty loudly.
“You have some explaining to do, Mister.”
Oh no, did he see the boot? My heart slammed against my ribcage, and my head was beginning to throb from the tension. “Dad, I can explain.” I just didn’t know what it was I was explaining.
“You’d better.” He held up the empty elvish cup. “Did you drink this?”
Whew.
“I was thirsty,” I confessed. I hated being so sneaky with my dad. Jordan was ogling the cup.
“What were you thinking? Santa hasn’t even come and you drank his eggnog? At least refill the cup.” He handed me the cup. I took it as I glanced around the tree. The gang had hidden the presents. Good thinking.
“Hey … that’s not the cup Mommy put out for Santa. She used her snowman cup. I know. I helped her,” Jordan said accusingly. I froze and watched my dad. He bent down and leaned toward her.
“Didn’t you hear me, Missy? Santa hasn’t come. See, look under the tree. Those are our presents, not the ones from Santa. Jakob hasn’t even had the opportunity to kill Santa.” Dad winked at me.
“They must have buried him!” Jordan said sadly.
“Dad!” I protested, still whispering.
“Alright, that’s it. I’ll deal with this in the morning—off to bed, let’s go.” My dad scooped up Jordan and trekked up the stairs. He stopped halfway up, turned around and whispered, “Don’t forget the eggnog.”
I nodded. After they left, I tapped the door once, then twice to signal all was clear and walked to the kitchen. I could hear my sister telling my dad that I had just used a secret knock on the door to the fort, and he had to go back down and check.
“Everyone must be in the fort,” she said.
I heard him pause at the top of the stairs. I leaned over by the open refrigerator and looked up at my dad. He took the last step, then turned around and looked down at me, smiling. I knew right then and there that I was in the clear. I stood up, raised my index finger to my temple, and made circles like the crazy hand motion. He nodded and that was it for Jordan, at least for the time being.
I shifted gears and began to think of ways to wake Santa. Water, I thought. A splash of water should wake him. I walked back to the living room, carrying water in the elvish cup and eggnog in the snowman cup. My dad wouldn’t remember that the cup was different. After I placed the eggnog on the glass table beside the sofa, I walked to the closet.
“… not Santa,” Fleep whispered to Logan as I entered the closet.
“What in the world—”
Logan held up her hand to my face, gesturing me to shush, then turned to Fleep.
“We know what your parents said, and you need to get over it.” Logan paused.
“Jakob, try the water.”
I shot Fleep a mistrusting look, then carefully stepped over Santa’s legs and settled down beside his head. I still couldn’t believe how big he was. I looked back. Everyone was watching from the closet door. I took a deep breath.
“Come on, Santa. We need you.”
I began with sprinkles of water.
Nothing.
I escalated to drops, then to a slow pour, and, finally, just dumped the remaining water on his face. Still nothing.
“Why isn’t he waking up?” Logan asked, worried.
“Because I did something stupid. Something really stupid,” I said, shaking my head regretfully. “I accidentally gave him too much tea.”
I stood, shoulders sunken.
“How?�
� Logan begged. “You were only supposed to give him seven pinches.”
Shig patted me on the back. “It doesn’t matter now. He just needs some time, you know, to sleep it off. He’ll wake up, he has to.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
“Look, Shig and I will do some recon, see if we can find the reindeer and the sleigh. Maybe there’s a Santa first-aid kit or something,” Logan said.
I was already shaking my head. It was a great idea, but there was no way was I letting Logan go on a recon mission.
“Nope, not happening,” I began, careful to keep a low voice. “S.R. is out there. I should go.”
“Yes, it is happening.” Logan replied with determination as she tossed me the flashlight. “You need to be here in case he wakes,” she said in a forced whisper, then turned to Shig and motioned for him to follow her. Shig turned to me for approval.
I shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “Whatever.” There was no sense arguing; she was right. I felt terrible that Santa wasn’t waking up and had to think of something. I nodded. “OK, but take Koji home too and, hey …”
“Yeah?” Logan said, stopping.
“Be careful.”
After they were gone I returned to the closet and remembered my Kringle Chronicles book. Maybe there was something in there that would tell me how to wake Santa. I told Fleep to wait while I went to get my book. When I came back to the closet, Fleep was staring at Santa.
“I need light,” I said, showing Fleep the book. While Fleep stood beside me, shining the flashlight, I skimmed through looking for a mention of anything that could possibly help us. About a quarter of a way through the book, I found something that stopped me short—my comics. They had been absorbed onto the pages, and looked like they had always been part of the book. I passed at least ten pages of comics then stopped. The next pages were blank. It wasn’t the invisibility thing, because I was holding the book. Maybe I had to rub the pages. Nothing. Odd, I thought. Then the really weird happened. The book vibrated so strongly that I dropped it. Only it didn’t fall. It floated.
“No way!” Fleep said. “Now that’s cool.”
Then the pages fanned backwards to the first blank page and, amazingly, text appeared. It was as if an invisible hand was writing.
After Fleep steadied the flashlight on the book, I noticed the oddest thing. The text was in my own handwriting, and read from a first-person perspective, as if I’d written it. It read:
I didn’t know it at the time, but the moment Santa had felt his knees tremble, he’d pressed down on his belt buckle. That sent an alert to the nearest listening post, which was Baum’s location in Christmas, Florida—Santa’s Western Hemisphere Command Center.
Remember that communications tech room, high above on the forty-fourth floor, with the two dwarves? Well, they were tracking Santa and monitoring holographic interfaces when the alert came across the screens.
The black-bearded dwarf, Ira, tapped his finger on one of the holographs, which created an image of the state of Florida. He double-tapped the image, and the holograph zoomed in on the Central Florida area, then beyond the roads and lakes, and finally settled on a single house in Winter Garden—my house. The dwarf stared at the holograph for another second, hoping the alert would reset. Sometimes Santa accidentally hit the polar bear belt buckle, what with all the lifting presents and such.
But with every passing second, the dwarf’s hope for a false alarm faded. He looked at the timer on his holograph. Thirty seconds had passed with no response from Santa. That was confirmation enough: the alert was real. The dwarf reached down and pressed a silver holographic button. A mini-microphone slithered out from his tiny earpiece. Ira’s voice was deep and monotone.
“Crystal Palace to Dasher,” he said.
“Dasher, go.” The reply was a raspy whisper over the speakers.
“Resetting Polar Bear alert. Attempt to contact Sierra Charlie.”
“Vixen and I are uncloaked. We have a lock on Sierra Charlie’s beacon and are en route,” Dasher said.
“Wait,” Fleep said. “What does Sierra Charlie mean?”
“It’s military talk. It’s on the Military Channel all the time. Sierra stands for the letter S, and Charlie is for the letter C. Sierra Charlie is Santa Claus,” I said, looking down at Santa. The red polar bear eyes weren’t flashing. They’d been reset. No way. Things were happening as we read.
I looked at the book. Another block of text had been written. I read fast.
A faint alarm began sounding as Ira spoke: “Crystal Palace to all units: Sierra Charlie is off the grid. Repeat, Sierra Charlie is off the grid. This is not a drill.”
He pressed the silver button again, then drove his hover-chair over to the other dwarf’s station to study a particularly large holograph. It displayed nine sets of vital signs like heart rate and body temperature. There was a silhouette of each creature being monitored, six looked like Clydesdale-sized reindeer, and three were undeniably human. The reindeers’ vital signs suddenly spiked, and the reindeer images morphed into human silhouettes. The animals were actually humans, using cloaking devices to hide their identities.
Ira pointed to another holograph that looked like an aerial view of my house. There were six blue dots between mine and Shig’s house, and two more in my back yard. The elves zeroed in on two red dots which had just appeared and were slowly moving toward the blue.
“Natsar, look,” Ira said to the other dwarf.
“I see them. They’re approaching Dasher’s team.” Natsar double-tapped on the holograph. It zoomed in on the two red dots.
“A human boy and girl,” Ira said.
I slammed the floating book closed.
“What are you doing?” Fleep whined.
“Logan and Shig! They’re talking about Logan and Shig in the book,” I said in a strong whisper. “Remember, they’re doing recon outside.” Just then the book fanned open to the page where we’d left off.
“Come on, it’s telling us to keep reading. Logan and Shig will be fine. Let’s read,” Fleep said. Reluctantly, I went back to reading.
Baum walked in the room. Natsar and Ira stopped what they were doing and saluted.
“As you were,” Baum said, returning their salutes. “Do we have visual?”
Natsar shook his head.
“We’re working on it sir. Two human children may have seen Dasher uncloak.”
“Not important. Those children are going to see a lot more before the night is over. Dwarves, you are now part of Covert Operation: Catch S.R.” Ira and Natsar looked surprised. “Unfortunately I’m shutting down the mission and issuing new orders: extract the primaries—Santa and Jakob.”
“What!” I gasped then stepped back from the book.
“They’re coming for you,” Fleep grinned.
I couldn’t believe Fleep. “This isn’t a joke. We’re reading text that is magically appearing in a floating book, and you’re joking around. They said they’re coming after me.”
“Come on, what could possibly happen?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. Commandos are going to come through that door.” I tried to sound calm, but I was freaking out.
“Come on, this is the best stuff I’ve read all year. Let’s read some more!” Fleep said.
“Fine,” I said, then stood beside Fleep and read.
“Tell them NEGATIVE on assault until I get there. I want perimeter containment on the trap house since Santa is still inside, and warn Dasher that Benji is battling enemies inside the vacant house west of their location. Advise them to use discretion. And get me a visual!” Baum barked.
“Crystal Palace to Dasher,” Ira said.
“Dasher, go.”
“That’s negative on assault. Establish perimeter containment on trap house, Santa is inside. Top requesting video, and Benji’s engaging enemies inside the vacant house to the west.”
“Bad guys to the west, roger that.”
Baum studied the holograp
h for another minute then stared at the nearest speaker as it crackled.
“Team six, Crystal Palace.”
“Crystal Palace,” Ira answered.
“Six is good to go. Standing by for Top,” a rapid, surfer-dude-like voice said through the speakers.
Baum gave the thumbs up and ran out of the room. TOP was military slang for MASTER SERGEANT, and that’s what Baum was—master sergeant of the Special Forces Kringle Elite Team Six, otherwise known as KET6 .
“Roger that. Top en route,” Ira said, then maneuvered his finger and opened another holographic image.
A large three-dimensional rocket of sorts—with six small, human silhouettes—appeared. Ira watched as the silhouettes lined up in the container. He clicked on each one, which brought up six new holographic windows. Each window profiled a team member, their handle (or nickname), and their vital statistics. This was Baum’s Special Forces team.
“Vitals good. KET6 prepare for launch in five, four, three, two, one.” Ira grabbed and pulled down on a holographic lever, and with that, KET6 was launched in their ballistic transport from atop the Crystal Palace en route to my neighborhood.
I wanted to slam the book shut, but what good would that do? Nothing. I wasn’t in control and it scared me.
The thought of being whisked away by Santa’s Special Forces didn’t bother me as much as the thought that they wanted to abandon the mission because Santa was unconscious. S.R. was outside my house, scheming and planning who knows what, and we had to stop him. Giving up wasn’t the answer and definitely seemed out of character for Baum and the rest of the commandos.
I held the flashlight beam on Santa while I stared and silently begged him to wake. He didn’t. Then I remembered what Benji said about the frontpack protecting Fleep, and I felt a sudden urge to put mine on.
Where was my frontpack? I followed the dim circle from the flashlight beam, unexpectedly found my shoes and quickly put them on, then spotted the frontpacks on the other side of Fleep.
