Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel

by Laura Resnick

  Miles ignored my protest. “You’ve worked there before, so you know what to do, right? Greet people as they arrive, point them toward Solsticeland, and promote Karaoke Bear.”

  “Must I?”

  “You must.”

  I sighed in defeat and resigned myself to singing through chattering teeth as I did karaoke duets with an animated stuffed bear that was dressed like Lady Gaga crossed with a gangsta. Strategically placed at the store’s busiest (and—did I mention?—coldest) entrance, this elaborate and expensive product was one of Fenster’s featured Christmas items for the privileged children of the oligarchs. Many youngsters who saw Karaoke Bear on their way to Solsticeland expressed a fervent desire, when visiting Santa, to find the musical mammal under their Christmas tree—or within the tree’s general vicinity, Karaoke Bear and his sound system being too big to fit under anything.

  “Well?” Miles prodded. “Is there a problem, Dreidel?”

  “No. I’ll do it,” I said in resignation. But I decided I’d go to my locker first and get my coat. Fenster’s wasn’t paying me enough to freeze to death. If I got too cold down there, I’d put it on and dare Miles to fire me when he was so short-handed.

  I turned to go off and work my new post, but I paused when it occurred to me that Max and Lucky would need to know where I was. So I said to Jeff, “If, um, anyone asks for me . . .”

  “Who’d ask for you?” he said crankily. “It’s not as if anyone we know is going to come here.”

  “At Christmas, everyone comes to Fenster’s,” Miles reminded him.

  I stared hard at Jeff, trying to get him to wise up. “I mean, if the new elves want my help . . .”

  “What new elves?” Miles asked alertly. “We don’t have any new elves.”

  “You didn’t get the memo?” I glanced at him briefly, then returned to trying to mind-meld with Jeff. “A couple of, um, emergency elves have come on board for the final days of the season.”

  “Really?” Miles frowned. “I should have been informed! I’m the senior manager of this floor.”

  “Emergency elves?” Diversity Santa’s eyes widened when he finally got it. “Oh! The new elves.”

  “Oh, right,” said Eggnog. “Sugarplum and, um . . . Snickerdoodle?”

  “Belsnickel.”

  “What sort of elf name is that?” Miles asked.

  “A very traditional one.” I added, “They have a pretty convincing reindeer with them, too.”

  Jeff snorted. “Convincing? I thought she looked like . . . Um. Never mind.” He’d caught my warning expression. “Okay, if they turn up, I’ll tell them where you’ve gone.”

  Satisfied, I left the throne room and went to the ladies’ locker room to get my coat. I put it on but didn’t bother to button it, and I headed toward the escalators. I went via the Kwanzaa exhibit and Solstice Castle, deliberately avoiding the Enchanted Forest. (Once strangled, twice shy.)

  As I passed the castle, my nostrils stung a little. I noticed a wisp of smoke curling out of one of the castle windows. Princess Crystal was having a forbidden cigarette in the tower.

  I reached the escalator and spent the next few minutes riding down to the ground floor. Once I got there, I started making my way through the vast cosmetics department. I use makeup a lot in my profession, as well as having a reasonable supply of it for my daily life, but I always felt overwhelmed by the range and quantity of cosmetic products on display at Fenster’s, as well as bewildered by their descriptions.

  Did any woman—even one who worked as a psychedelic circus clown—need a compact with thirty shades of eye shadow? When had a “revolutionary four-stage process” replaced a tube of mascara for enhancing eyelashes? Was I the only woman here who thought that the lipstick colors “burgundy,” “cabernet,” and “merlot” all looked identical? Would spending half a week’s pay on a three-ounce bottle of moisturizer really “transform” my face—and if so, what would it be transformed into?

  “Hi!” a maniacally grinning salesgirl said to me. “Want to try Compulsion, the scent he won’t be able to resist?”

  “No, thanks, I’m—Agh!” I staggered backward, coughing hard after she sprayed the cologne directly into my mouth.

  “Oh, my God! Sorry, sorry!” she cried. “Are you okay?”

  My eyes watered as I kept coughing.

  “Oh, no! Help! Medic! Medic!”

  Did we have medics at Fenster’s?

  I waved my hand at the wide-eyed girl, trying to get her to calm down. “I’m . . .” Cough, cough. “. . . okay.”

  A plump, middle-aged woman elbowed her way through the dense crowd of shoppers and demanded, “What’s the problem? What’s going on here?”

  She had applied her makeup with a trowel, and she was so heavily drenched in a rival cologne that one whiff made me start coughing again. I didn’t recognize her, but I could tell from her nametag and her manner that she was the girl’s supervisor. I wondered whether Fenster’s specifically trained its managers to be officious or if that quality was just a standard prerequisite for the job.

  “I think I’ve harmed this figure skater!” the salesgirl confessed.

  “I’m an elf,” I corrected, dabbing at my watering eyes. “Good guess, though. And at least you didn’t mistake me for a hooker.”

  The scent-drenched manager flinched. “You can’t say that word on the floor.” She’d obviously realized that my pointy ears signified I was a Solsticeland character.

  I said to the girl, “You might want to exercise a little restraint with your spritzer.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have a quota. I’m supposed to spritz fifty people at every post before I can move on to my next location.”

  While she spoke, my still-misty gaze beheld a couple of tall, buxom, blonde elves looming behind her, their red-and-green outfits considerably skimpier than my blue one. Their faces bore a familiar combination of vacuity and malice, and I felt a little shiver run through me.

  Or maybe that was just from the chilly breeze whipping down this aisle from the nearby north entrance. I pulled my coat more tightly around my body.

  In any case, while the girl gestured with her bottle and explained that she still had to spritz nineteen more people before she could move on, Naughty—or maybe it was Nice—gave her a deliberate shove. Foreseeing the inevitable result, I jumped back to avoid being spritzed in the face again when the girl’s hand reflexively squeezed the bottle as she stumbled. The floor manager, who had not recognized the imminent danger, shrieked when the girl squirted cologne into her eyes, and clapped a hand over her face. Naughty and Nice giggled and started to slip away, using the dense crowd for cover.

  “That does it!” I said.

  Sniping comments, snickering, and sly looks were one thing, but now they were assaulting people. Enough was enough!

  While the horrified cologne girl was trying to help her startled, shrieking boss, I tried to get around the two of them to grab those half-naked holiday hags. I didn’t really know what I would do once I got my hands on them, but banging their empty blonde heads together until their skulls cracked might not be a bad place to start.

  “Come back here!” I shouted as Naughty shoved her way through the crowded aisle.

  She looked over her shoulder at me and laughed.

  Nice got separated from her, her way blocked by a couple of heavyset women in fur coats carrying a voluminous burden of shopping bags. She turned back in this direction, looking for another escape route.

  In my eagerness to shake Nice until her nasty little head flew off, I tried to move the manager out of my way. I was too excited to be gentle, and she shrieked anew, with her hands still covering her eyes, as she stumbled into a customer.

  The customer caught her, staggering a little under the sudden impact, then said to me in outraged tones, “What are you doing?” I realized she thought the manager was covering her face and shrieking because I was brutalizing her.

  “Help!” cried the guilt-stricken salesgirl.
“We need help!”

  Nice giggled as she dashed behind the manager and the customer. I lunged for her.

  “Stop it!” said the customer. “What is the matter with you?” She was an older woman, a little smaller than me, and tidily elegant in a forest-green winter coat.

  I tried to shove past her. “Move! She’ll get away!”

  “What’s going on?” asked the manager, her eyes squeezed shut.

  “That’s what I want to know,” the customer said sternly.

  Looking over the woman’s shoulder, I saw Nice stick her tongue out at me. Unbelievable.

  Still trying to get past the two women in my path, I pointed my finger at Nice and shouted, “You’re done, you snarky bitch!”

  The manager flinched. “You can’t say that on the floor!”

  Freddie Junior had to get rid of those girls! What if someone really got hurt the next time they pulled a prank?

  The salesgirl had given up shouting for help and was now apologizing profusely to her boss.

  “Shit! She got away,” I sputtered as Nice melted into the crowd and disappeared. I spun around, wondering if I could still spot Naughty in the throng. “Where’s the other one? Damn it!”

  The manager was by now practically hyperventilating over my rapid-fire breaches of store etiquette.

  Patting the manager’s heaving back, the customer said to me, “Young woman, control yourself.”

  Wondering if I should go in hot pursuit of Freddie’s femmes fatales or just deal with them later, I looked absently at the customer who was chiding me. She wore her red hair in a flattering twist and evidently made no attempt to hide the gray that was starting to creep in. Still a beautiful woman, she must have been a knockout when she was my age. She had kept her figure, and she certainly didn’t make the mistake of troweling on her makeup. She wore only some lipstick, a touch of powder, and just enough eye makeup to flatter her wide eyes, which were long-lashed and very blue.

  While keeping a wary eye on me, she pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and handed it to the manager, who thanked her and started dabbing her watering eyes with it. I looked around and realized that some employees behind the nearby makeup counters were staring anxiously at us—or maybe just at me.

  I said to the cologne girl, “We should take your boss to the ladies’ room.”

  “I can manage,” she replied. “You probably need to get back to the rink.”

  “I’m not a figure skater,” I said. “I’m Santa’s Jewish elf. I work here.”

  “You work here?” The redheaded lady was clearly appalled by this information.

  I decided I should probably make my exit. “Okay,” I said to the salesgirl. “If you can handle this, then I guess I’ll go to my post.”

  The manager said with dread, “Your post isn’t on this floor, is it?”

  “Sorry,” I said wanly.

  Still dabbing at her watering eyes, the manager said to the redhead, “The seasonal staff are sometimes . . . a little . . . That is . . . She’s not a regular here.”

  “Indeed?” was the crisp reply.

  “I’ll just go, um . . .” I backed away from them. “Bye.”

  As I departed, I heard the redheaded lady offering to help the salesgirl take the manager somewhere quiet to compose herself.

  I was still fuming about Naughty and Nice when I reached Karaoke Bear’s elaborate station, but I knew that Freddie’s protection meant those two elves were untouchable. And trying to explain things like professionalism and appropriate conduct to him was certainly a more hopeless task than I wanted to embark on. Oh, well. I decided to let it go. There were only two more days in the season, after all.

  Chilly air whipped through this area as the doors of the western entrance opened and closed for arriving and departing shoppers. My blue and white striped tights, abbreviated pants, and short sleeves weren’t much of a match for that cold air, but I decided to take off my coat, anyhow. I’d be moving around once I started performing, and that might keep me warm enough. I folded up the coat and stashed it beside the karaoke apparatus.

  Karaoke Bear awaited me on his sparkly performance platform (included with every purchase of the singing bear). He was surrounded by an elaborate seasonal display (not included); a dense little forest of snow-covered, brightly decorated evergreen trees formed a festive backdrop for the bear’s performances. I looked warily at the trees, recalling my asphyxiation incident; but they looked innocuous and inanimate.

  I stepped up onto the sparkly platform where Karaoke Bear awaited me in his outfit of sequins, rhinestones, denim, studs, and saggy pants. A little over three feet tall, the bear wore a jaunty cap and had a microphone in his hand, ready to rock. I picked up the other microphone, then turned on the system.

  Karaoke Bear jerked into automated motion, blinked his long-lashed brown eyes, brought his mike up to his mouth, and asked if I’d like to join him in a song. I replied, with a lively enthusiasm I was far from feeling, that I’ve love to.

  I selected a peppy pop tune released the previous year by Golly Gee, a singer/actress/headcase with whom I had worked on Sorcerer!, a short-lived Off-Broadway flop, earlier this year. The song was Golly’s only hit, the one that had propelled her onto the coveted D-list of fame. Considering Golly’s foul mouth and R-rated persona, I found it odd that a song of hers would be featured in a karaoke program aimed at children; but I had already learned that plenty of kids who came to the store knew this number.

  By the time Karaoke Bear and I finished the song, we had attracted an audience—which was the whole idea of having an elf posted here to demonstrate this apparatus, of course. I paused between songs to welcome the shoppers, explain to them how to get to Solsticeland from here, and tell the kids watching this performance how much Santa Claus was looking forward to meeting them. I also explained a little about how Karaoke Bear functioned, and I hinted that Santa would be receptive to requests for the singing bear as a Christmas gift. Then I sang another duet with my mechanical companion. Karaoke Bear only had a few limited dance moves, but he was always in time with the music.

  In addition to the people watching our performance, many shoppers passed my platform, coming and going on their quest for Christmas gifts. Some paused briefly to watch the show, but others just shoved their way irritably through the gathered crowd, barely slackening their pace. Some shoppers, while talking to each other or into their cell phones, raised their voices to a shout to be heard above the bear’s amplified speakers; I was by now too used to this to let it bother me. Other people asked me questions between songs—sometimes about Karaoke Bear, sometimes about where something was located in the massive maze of Fenster & Co.

  I had just answered several such questions and was about to launch into another song when a neatly dressed man who was holding a cell phone to his ear approached me and asked politely, “Excuse me, miss. Where am I, please?”

  “You’re at the Karaoke Bear station near the western entrance,” I replied.

  He looked puzzled. “The what kind of bear?”

  “Uh, the singing bear.”

  His English was crisp and well pronounced, but he had a foreign accent—Hispanic, I thought. This impression was confirmed a moment later when he spoke Spanish into his cell phone. He repeated a phrase loudly a couple of times, then switched to English: “The singing bear. Yes. Would I make that up?” He switched back to Spanish and then stepped away from the platform as the next karaoke tune blared through the speakers.

  After I started singing, the man finished his call and returned to the platform, standing directly in front of it and watching my performance intently, with a smile on his face. He clapped enthusiastically at the end of the number, then asked me, “Does the bear know any Christmas songs?”

  “I’m glad you asked!” I replied with elfin delight. I launched into my next “all about Karaoke Bear” spiel, explaining that the bear had a broad repertoire, including Christmas music, nursery rhymes, pop tunes, traditional songs, and so on
. Then, in deference to the courteous Hispanic man, I did a seasonal medley with my fuzzy co-star, including “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Winter Wonderland,”and “Happy Holiday.”

  For much of this medley, I played directly to the man who’d requested a Christmas song. This was partly because the crowd was thinning a bit, with some people leaving and newcomers arriving slowly, while he remained in place. And partly because he was an engaging audience, standing close to the platform, smiling merrily at me, and bouncing along a little to the music. He was a pleasantly ordinary-looking man, somewhere in his sixties, a little stocky and shorter than average height. He had mostly gray hair that had once been black, dark olive skin, a strong, plain face, and an air of gentle good humor. His most noticeable features were his warm, expressive brown eyes.

  He applauded again when I finished singing. “You have a wonderful voice!”

  “Thank you,” I said with a smile, enjoying myself now—an enthusiastic audience makes the day for any performer.

  “I must find my wife,” he said, looking at his watch. “She would enjoy this.” He pulled out his cell phone while saying to me, “Please, let’s have another song while I wait for her!”

  While I programmed the next song into Karaoke Bear, I heard the gentleman say into his phone, “Querida, where are you? No, I’m with the singing bear now. The singing bear . . . Oh, then I think you’re very near. Just follow the music and you’ll find it . . . No, but I spoke to him a few minutes ago. Yes, he’ll be here any moment.”

  The man pocketed his phone as I started singing “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Although he was still an appreciative audience, now he was mostly looking around for his wife rather than watching me. A half-dozen small children showed up, wide-eyed with wonder at the sight of the singing bear and his elf friend, and I played to them.

  What happened next was confusing and very quick, though it all seemed to occur in slow motion at the time.

  The nice man turned away from the stage, so that his back was to me and the bear, and waved to someone in the distance—his spouse, I assumed. At that moment, Karaoke Bear broke out of his mechanical pattern and came to horrible, menacing life. The bear suddenly crouched down, sprouted claws, and grew fangs.