by Tom Fletcher
The most obvious thing about him, though, was just how incredibly posh he was. He looked posh. Smelled posh. Walked and talked posh. Even the way he was crouched behind the chimney was posh! In fact, he was so posh that his socks were made of pure gold thread, and he only blew his nose on real ten-dollar bills!
The Hunter was the elder son of a very wealthy man, and when his father died, the Hunter had inherited piles and piles of family gold. He kept it all to himself in a huge vault inside the family mansion and refused to let anyone else inside. He shut himself away from his family. From the world. Even the annual Christmas cards from distant relatives couldn’t drag him away from counting his wealth.
He loved money.
He loved gold.
But most of all he loved hunting.
He started hunting poor innocent animals when he was a little boy. While his filthy-rich parents were away on long exotic vacations, he would be left at home with his nanny, who was too busy looking after his perfect baby brother to pay him any attention.
First, he hunted the neighbors’ cat with a trap made of leftover chopsticks (the ones that no one ever uses) from Chinese takeout.
He enjoyed it so much that the next day he set his pet hamster free in the garden-hedge maze, then hunted it down with a slingshot made from the neighbors’ cat’s bones.
Then he released his goldfish into the moat and hunted it using a pool cue from the billiards room as a spear.
Back then, when he was little, the Hunter was known as Huxley. But during one long winter holiday at home from boarding school, he managed to track and hunt every single animal in a twelve-mile radius of the family mansion. From then on he became known only as the Hunter.
Huxley was no more.
Over the years, the animals he liked to hunt had become more and more exotic, and the rarer the animal, the more he wanted to kill it!
He’d hunted lions and tigers. Bears and monkeys. Zebras and giraffes. But they weren’t anywhere near rare enough for the Hunter anymore. He liked to hunt really ridiculously rare animals, creatures so rare that most people have never heard of them (but they’re all very real).
He had the horn of a unicorn, which he’d hunted in the glaciers of Greenland.
He had the paw of a pink polar bear he’d shot with a crossbow at the foot of a rainbow.
He had the ears of a pandaroo, the gills of a horseshark, the tail of a snailwhale, the tongue of a fanglebeast, the snout of a pigfish, and the wings of twenty thousand flying ants he’d swatted in Sweden on Flying Ant Day.
He hunted creatures of all sorts, and once he’d shot them, he had their heads mounted on the walls of his great mansion.
Wherever the Hunter went, his loyal dog, Growler, followed. Growler had been the Hunter’s trusty companion for many, many years. He did anything the Hunter told him to—because if he didn’t, he knew he would end up as a head on the mansion wall!
But why were the Hunter and Growler hiding on a rooftop in the snow on Christmas Eve, and why had they been secretly spying on William for the past few weeks?
Well, I was just about to tell you before you interrupted me!
You see, one Christmas Eve a very long time ago, when the Hunter was still called Huxley, he had seen the most fantastic sight any boy could ever see. He had seen flying reindeer.
His younger brother had heard something in the sky over the mansion: someone was singing. Then all of a sudden, a gigantic sleigh had burst through a break in the snow clouds. The little boy had called for his brother, and that’s when Huxley had seen them…nine Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer.
Flying reindeer!!!
“By golly gosh!” Huxley had said. “Flying reindeer? I don’t believe my eyes!”
“They have to be the rarest creatures in the world!” exclaimed Huxley’s little brother.
And they were.
“I must have one!” Huxley had cried.
From that night on, the Hunter’s life had changed. All he thought about, all he wanted, was the head of a Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer hanging on his wall, above his fireplace. It was all he dreamed about.
Ever since that night, he had focused all his hunting efforts on tracking Santa down to get a clear shot at one of those rare creatures. And a few weeks ago, he had seen something that gave him a wickedly evil idea. A young, sad boy sitting in a wheelchair, with his ridiculously festively dressed father.
It was William!
“Look at this boy here, Growler—that useless lump of sadness in that wheelchair,” the Hunter said to his dog. “Hmmmm…a young, sad boy in a wheelchair. Tut, tut, how very pathetic…,” he continued with a cunning smile growing on his face.
The Hunter had had an idea.
“By golly gosh, Growler, I do believe I know how to find those flying reindeer!” he cried with an evil twinkle in his posh black eyes. “We’ve been trying to find them for all these years, but we’ve been doing it all wrong, my furry fiend!” He thumped his dog on the back with horrid excitement. “We need to let Santa bring those fantastic flying beasties to us! Don’t you see, you stupid mutt? How could Santa possibly not pay this poor, pathetic boy a visit this Christmas? Of course he will! You idiotic little fleabag, don’t you understand? We’ll follow this boy, set up camp on the roof, and wait until Christmas Eve. Santa will swoop down from the sky on that garish sleigh of his, and when he slides down this boy’s chimney, those magical deer of his will be left all alone, in plain sight! That’s when I’ll do it. I’ll shoot them, Growler. I’ll shoot them all!” The Hunter let out a cackle as he rubbed his greedy hands together with delight at the thought of shooting Santa’s flying reindeer. “We’ll finally have them, the heads of the rarest creatures on the planet, hanging on our glorious wall, above the fireplace!”
He let out an almighty maniacal laugh. Growler just huffed out a sigh of relief, thankful that he was a dog and not a flying reindeer!
So the Hunter and his dog followed William home, staying hidden in the shadows. They watched his every movement. They saw him get creamed at the supermarket. They were waiting inside the mailbox. And now they were sitting on the rooftop opposite William’s wonky little house, waiting for Santa’s sleigh to appear, for tonight was Christmas Eve. Tonight the Hunter would shoot the Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer!
Everything was still. The Hunter and his dog, Growler, stared out across a snowy white desert of empty rooftops, keeping their sights firmly set on one in particular: William Trundle’s.
At midnight, a chime from the town clock tower echoed through the streets, filling the air with a loudCLONG…then another…and another…. It was almost time. The Hunter could feel it in his evil bones. Growler sensed it too as he shuffled nervously in their snowy hideout.
Suddenly, everything seemed to stop.
The snow stopped falling. It just hung in the air as if someone had pressed pause.
The chimes of the clock tower had stopped early too.
Time seemed to be standing still.
Santa had arrived.
The enormous sleigh burst out of the clouds with such a clatter it’s surprising the entire town didn’t wake up at the jingle of sleigh bells and the Christmas carols blasting out of the swirly brass horn of Santa’s gramophone.
The Hunter’s beady, greedy eyes lit up as the rarest creatures on the planet swooped directly over his head. He could have reached up and touched them if he’d dared, but that would have given the game away, and if he wanted their heads to hang on his wall, then he needed to stay hidden.
The Hunter cracked his gnarly knuckles and tightened his grip on his most prized possession: a hunting rifle. It was an awful machine for an awful man, and he never left home without it, even if he was just popping out to buy milk! It had a long barrel that was so straight you could use it as a ruler, and on top was a telescopic sight so powerful that if
you looked down it on a clear day, you could see all the way around the world until you saw the back of your own head.
Santa circled the sleigh above the town a few times, making sure he’d found exactly the right house. (He’s been known to make some mistakes in the past!) Finally, he landed the sleigh on William’s rooftop. It was a smooth landing, although the roof was a tight squeeze for such a large sleigh and a herd of galloping reindeer.
The Hunter couldn’t take his eyes off them. There they were, the creatures he’d been dreaming about for what felt like his whole life.
“Oh my…,” he whispered to Growler. “They’re even more magnificent than I remember!” And they really were. “Now get out of your sleigh, fatty, and disappear down that chimney!” the Hunter muttered under his breath as he watched Santa climb down from the sleigh.
“Oh, what a wonderful night!” cried Santa to his deer. “Lovely soft landing, that was, my dear deers. Well done! Jolly smooth indeed. I can tell you’ve been practicing hard. Pays off when you get a wonky little roof like this. Doesn’t leave much room for error.”
But the deer weren’t paying attention to Santa. They were sniffing the air. Something smelled funny. Something was stinging their nostrils. It was smoke.
Pipe smoke!
The deer grunted and shuffled nervously, but Santa paid no notice to them.
“Oh, hush, my dearies. I won’t be a minute, and then we’ll be back up in the clouds!” Santa said as he shuffled to the back of the sleigh and reached in with one arm to retrieve William’s gift. “Where…is…it?” he said as he fumbled around. “Aha! Here it is!”
He gave it a tug, but it didn’t want to budge. He tugged it again, but it stayed put, almost as if something were pulling at it from the other end. “Hmmm, that’s very odd!” he said as he tried one last time. He put his big, shiny black boot on the lip of the sleigh and pulled with all his might. Pop! It came free, and the dinosaur-shaped package flew out of the sleigh and into Santa’s arms.
Santa gave a little chuckle and plodded over to the chimney. Then something very strange happened. It was almost as if the entire world grew very large all of a sudden, while Santa remained the same size! Faster than you can say jingle bells, everything grew: the rooftop, the sleigh, the sky, the reindeer, the house, and especially the chimney. They all blew up like massive, magical balloons, but Santa stayed exactly as he was.
Now that everything was extra-large, Santa was just the right size to plop his fat belly into the mammoth hole in the top of the chimney and slide down it with ease.
The Hunter was dumbfounded. He’d never seen such magic before. It gave him the spooks! He quickly forgot about that, though, for he suddenly realized that the time had come. The moment he’d been waiting for. His horrid plan was working perfectly!
He raised his hunting rifle until the super-zoom scope was pressed firmly against his bloodshot eyeball. Down the telescopic sight he could see, sitting perfectly still, eight Magnificently Magical Flying Reindeer. They were in plain sight, clear as day—sitting ducks! He put his long, posh finger on the cold metallic trigger and lined up the crosshairs in his sight.
“It’s almost too easy!” the Hunter whispered to Growler. “Even you could take this shot!”
He took a deep puff of the pipe that hung from his chapped lips and held his breath for a moment to steady his aim. He squinted down the sight, and a tear of evil excitement plopped over his bottom eyelid and ran down his scarred cheek.
“I finally have you….”
But as his finger tightened on the trigger, just before he took the shot, the Hunter saw something. Something was moving in the back of the sleigh!
“What the devil?” he said as he realigned his scope to get a better look at what was causing the commotion. Toy sacks were bumping around, bobbing up and down as if something were underneath them!
And that’s when he saw it. A shiny, scaly blue head popped up from the sacks.
“I d-d-d-don’t believe my eyes…,” the Hunter stuttered as his pipe dropped from his open, gobsmacked mouth. He was staring at a real, living—
The Hunter’s life had once again changed forever. Everything he’d thought he wanted he suddenly didn’t want anymore.
“A real, living dinosaur! Growler, do you know what this means?” the Hunter said frantically as he wiped the lenses on his rifle scope and had a second, third, and fourth look, just to check that what he was seeing was real. “Take a look, you stupid hound!” he said, shoving the scope up to Growler’s eye.
“Those reindeer mean nothing to me now….Look, there’s a rooftop full of them! Hardly what you would call rare!” he said as he yanked back the rifle to get another look for himself. “But there’s only ONE dinosaur! That scaly, oversized blue animal over there is without doubt the rarest creature on the planet! The only one in the world, and I must have his head on my wall! Why, if I had the head of that dinosaur on my wall, I would be famous! I’d go down in hunting history. I’d be…the Greatest Hunter of All Time!”
At that moment, he tightened his grip on his rifle and took aim at the dinosaur.
But the dinosaur was moving around fast. The Hunter realized that the creature was sniffing the snow, searching for something. The dinosaur jumped from one side of the sleigh to the other, sniffing the footprints, ducking in and out of the reindeer’s legs. He was a tricky moving target for the Hunter, who had no experience of shooting dinosaurs.
“Keep still, you little…,” the Hunter mumbled as he climbed out of his hiding place on the rooftop and moved to get a better shot. He walked around the chimney, trying to keep the dinosaur in his sight.
The Hunter took one step, and the dinosaur skipped behind the sleigh.
The Hunter took another step, and the dinosaur hopped up onto the ledge of the chimney.
The Hunter took one more step and…
The Hunter stepped right off the edge of the rooftop and fell thirty feet into the bushes below with a thud, sending a shot ringing up into the sky. He’d been so transfixed by the dinosaur that he’d failed to realize he had been walking toward the edge of the roof.
The sound of the Hunter’s sky-bound gunshot made the Christmasaurus jump so hard that he lost his footing on the edge of the chimney and slipped right into the magically inflated hole. He fell down the chimney flue, into the sooty darkness of the fireplace.
The Christmasaurus was in William’s home!
The Christmasaurus landed with a crash in the fireplace. Luckily, the fire hadn’t been lit, because Mr. Trundle knew that you should never light your fire on Christmas Eve. The dinosaur got to his feet and stepped out into William’s empty living room.
The Christmasaurus had never been in a room like this before. He’d only ever known the oversized magical rooms of the North Pole ranch, and they were far grander than this wonky little room. But there was something he instantly liked about it. Something felt cozy. Warm. Happy. He could sense that the people who lived here were full of love.
But there wasn’t time to look around. He was desperate to see Stuffy one last time. He had to find his toy, say goodbye, and get back up to the sleigh before Santa caught him. He was being very naughty! His dinosaur eyes scanned the room, searching for any sign of the polka-dotted wrapping paper or shiny red ribbon. But there was nothing. There was a small Christmas tree, about the size of an elf (he’d never seen a tree so tiny before), with a scattering of small presents underneath it, but none of them were Stuffy.
Santa must have put it in William’s room! The Christmasaurus knew that Santa did that sometimes. So he tiptoed out of the living room, sniffing the beige patterned carpet, following the scent of Santa (who smelled like fresh mint chocolate and tangerines). The door to the next room was slightly ajar, and through the crack the Christmasaurus could just make out the shape of a small bed. Sitting in a sliver of a moonbeam on the bedroom floor was the beautif
ully wrapped, dinosaur-shaped present for which he was searching.
He slipped inside William’s bedroom but paused for a moment to take in all the wonderful dinosaur pictures and toys and books and posters and wallpaper….He’d never seen so much dinosaur stuff before.
It was dinosawesome!
As his eyes circled the room, they came back to Stuffy, perfectly wrapped on the bedroom floor. The Chirstmasaurus crept across the room as carefully as he could until he was face to face with where the stuffed dinosaur’s nose would be. Through a small slit in the wrapping paper, he could just make out the soft glow of the toy’s golden button eyes, staring out.
The Christmasaurus took a deep breath. This was it. This was goodbye. Goodbye to the first and only dinosaur friend he’d ever had. He gave it a crumpled hug through the wrapping paper, and over its cuddly shoulder he saw William lying snugly asleep in his bed.
It was at that moment that the Christmasaurus suddenly felt a funny feeling in his tummy, like the sinking sort of feeling you get when you drive over a bridge really fast. He glanced around the room at the photos of William and Mr. Trundle, then at the empty wheelchair next to the bed. He huffed a deep sigh through his nostrils and then straightened up the present so it looked as close to elf-perfect as possible. It was time to let Stuffy go.
That’s when he heard it.
It was the unmistakable sound of the toilet flushing, followed by Santa’s boots stomping speedily down the hallway.
