A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (4 page)

The golems were again intrigued. “Is that phone one of the new models?”

The other said, “Does it have Angry Vultures on it? Or Curses with Friends?”

I knew if the golems started playing games on Robin’s phone we would never get past the gate. “We need to have a look, bring that boy back to his parents.”

The first golem had a stony expression on his clay face. “Sorry. We can’t let you inside. Elfis is very strict.”

The other golem looked intimidated. “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good.” In tandem, they shook their smooth clay heads and pointed upward. “Security cameras.”

Time for Plan B. I removed a folded sheet of paper from the inside pocket of my jacket and showed it to the two golems. “We have a duly authorized search warrant to enter the premises, signed by Judge Hawkins herself. This grants us unfettered access to all parts of the North Pole South warehouses so we can find and rescue the young man.”

The first golem guard took the sheet of paper and studied it intently, while Robin shot me a questioning glance. She craned her neck to see what the guards were looking at. McGoo could barely keep the smile off his face.

The other golem took the sheet from his partner; they both had frowns on their clay faces. “All right then. We’re security guards, sworn to uphold the law.” They opened the chain-link gate for us. “Go on inside. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Robin was perplexed, but she glanced down at the blinking light on her Track Werewolf app. Buddy was definitely close, inside the big factory building ahead of us. With his best I’m-an-authority-figure gait, McGoo marched away from the guard golems. Robin hurried alongside me. When we were out of earshot, she asked, “What was that all about? When did you get a search warrant?”

“It wasn’t a search warrant,” I said. “It’s the fine-print listing of Elfis Originals I took from Just Dug Up Collectibles.”

McGoo worked at the warehouse door; it was unlocked. “Golems can’t read,” he said. “At least most of them can’t. That’s why they couldn’t pass their UQ Police Department exams. Good work, Shamble.”

Robin was astonished. “Then we got in here under false pretenses, and I have real ethical problems with that. We’re trespassing.”

“We’re rescuing a missing child,” I said. My boundaries were a little more blurred than Robin’s, but I did manage to get things done.

Robin was about to continue her objections when McGoo opened the loading dock door. The dark, noisy factory hangar was worse than the worst New Year’s Day hangover. It was a true holiday of horrors.

9

I doubted children opening their gifts on the morning of Christmas Eve Eve (if Elfis and his minions delivered on time, as promised) would want to know where their presents really came from.

We were seeing the ugly side of holiday cheer: appalling labor conditions, thick smoke, clanging hammers, grinding gears, and jets of steam venting from pressure valves. Foul water trickled out of rusty pipes overhead. A labyrinth of rattling conveyor belts rolled toys along to packaging lines. Sparks flew and blazing fires roared out of open furnaces fed with black coal that poured from supply hoppers in the ceiling. A separate set of conveyors dumped defective metal toys into a smoldering furnace. It was as if the Island of Misfit Toys had an active volcano.

Robin looked around in horror, shocked by what she saw. McGoo’s face was stormy with anger.

Most appalling of all, though, were the kids shackled to the assembly line, hunched over the conveyor belts, red-eyed, dirt-smeared, waifish. They toiled at assembling dolls, painting action figures, stuffing collectibles into boxes. There were werewolves, zombies, ghouls, even human children, all looking dejected and haggard.

As I scanned the faces, I recognized many of the kids featured on the Have You Seen Me? pictures from the Talbot & Knowles blood bars. I saw one gray-furred werewolf boy, mangy and yet somehow still cute, chained to a station where he was applying black button eyes onto Raggedy Ann dolls. Either he was confused by the instructions, or the dolls catered to an entirely different type of unnatural, because he sewed three eyes on each doll.

“That’s Buddy Tannenbaum!” I said.

The boy heard me even over the factory din. He turned, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, and his eyes lit up upon seeing us. He dropped the doll onto the dirty factory floor and leaped toward us, but was brought up short by silver shackles that bound his wrist and ankle.

“I’ll be good! I promise!” he yelped. “I won’t be naughty anymore. I don’t want to be on the list!”

Robin was ahead of us, grim and determined. “We’ll get you out of here, Buddy. Your parents hired us to find you.”

“My mom and dad? But Elfis said they didn’t love me anymore.”

“Of course they love you,” Robin said. “Parents love even naughty kids.”

A steam whistle blew. More coal dumped out of the feeding hoppers, and the furnace burned brighter.

Then the elves came—evil elves, and ugly enough that they might have been disowned by even the G-side of the family. They carried cattle prods painted like cheery candy canes; others brandished icicle spears that dripped in the intense heat of the factory floor.

McGoo and I drew our guns and stood next to Robin. The ten elves closing in didn’t look afraid of us at all. Too late, I realized that they were just a distraction.

Two other hench-elves stood up from behind the conveyor belt and hurled snowballs at us—icy snowballs with rocks in the middle. Cheater snowballs. (I did say they were evil elves.) Their aim was supernaturally true, and with one hail of hard snowballs, they knocked the guns out of our hands.

Then the hench-elves closed in, wielding icicle spears and candy-cane cattle prods. They overpowered us, shoved us to the factory floor, and used tough strands of satin ribbon to bind our wrists. We were going to have a black-and-blue Christmas. An evil elf even slapped a coordinating stick-on bow on each of us before they herded us toward the back of the factory.

“Elfis is going to want to see you,” said one of the guards.

“Oh, by gosh, by golly, that was on my Christmas wish list,” I said, which earned me a jab from one of the cattle prods. Since I’m a zombie, it takes a lot to shock me, but the experience was still unpleasant. I was more worried about McGoo and Robin, who could indeed be permanently damaged.

Elfis was at a raised supervisor’s station near the warmth of the big furnace, sitting on a high director’s chair with a small worktable beside him. Black dust from the coal hoppers left a gritty film on everything, but somehow it didn’t affect his white sequined jacket or his blue suede shoes. He was perusing a rolled parchment filled with names—countless names, sorted into two columns, one marked N and the other one marked N. He muttered to himself as he used a large goose quill pen to check off names.

“Naughty … yes, got that one. Naughty … yes. Naughty … we have a very high success rate.” Then he sneered at a line, crossed it out vigorously with the nib of his quill pen. “Somebody slipped up—this kid’s in the Nice column! People tend to notice when
nice
kids go missing.” A supervisor hench-elf scurried off to rectify the error.

Elfis picked up a bullhorn and began shouting toward the factory floor. “Listen up, kiddies! I have plenty more applicants to choose from, so if you want to be promoted in my criminal organization, you’ve got to produce, produce,
produce!
Only the best can survive this boot camp—also known as the Holiday Season! If you work hard, you’ll be real henchmen by Easter.” Elfis then started to laugh. “We’re going to put that damned bunny out of business, too!”

He slid his sunglasses up on the bridge of his narrow nose as his fiendish hench-elves pushed us forward. He seemed surprised to see us. “Mr. Chambeaux and friends—have you come to negotiate on Santa’s behalf again? Well, it’s too late. I’ve already got the holidays sewn up in a body bag, and now you’ll never stop me.”

When all else fails, when things look grimmest, I like to state the obvious. It puts villains off guard and usually gets them talking—too much. “You said you didn’t have Santa’s list of Naughty and Nice. That was dishonest.”

He held up a long finger. “No, that was
misleading
. I said I didn’t steal the list in order to earn brownie points or to make Santa look incompetent. I stole it strictly for my own purposes.” Elfis waved the parchment, showing us the long list of names. “It’s a recruitment tool, like a screening folder for job applicants. Santa already identified the
naughty
children for me, the ones suitable to become part of my operation.”

“But you put them to work as slave labor,” Robin said.

Elfis shrugged. “Well, they are naughty. Even criminals need to know the consequences of their actions. You do the crime, you pay the time. Community service for
my
community.”

I struggled against the satin ribbons binding my wrists. It reminded me of my childhood, trying to snap the ribbons so I could open my presents. Now, as then, the ribbon had supernatural strength.

Elfis leaned forward, opening both of his hands to warm them at the nearby furnace. The conveyor belt continued to clatter, dumping defective toys into it, plastic ones as well as metal. “It’s so nice to be warm for a change. And you three will be all toasty, too. I’m afraid I can’t allow my plans to be foiled—or tinseled. Into the furnace with them!”

The hench-elves swept forward like a blizzard of evil. Even though I’m a zombie, I had no desire to be cremated. And speaking for my two human friends, I knew that neither Robin nor McGoo wanted to tour the interior of the furnace either. I had to get us out of there.

Zombies, for all of our fragile bodies and flesh that’s prone to decay, have very strong teeth. Some zombies use them for ripping into flesh and bone; now I discovered that my teeth were excellent at cutting Christmas ribbon. I tore into my colorful satin bindings, snapped the ribbon—and I was free.

But I couldn’t fight all those armed hench-elves. Thinking of only one thing that might save us, I jammed my hand into my jacket pocket and grabbed the loop attached to the emergency jingle bell.

It wasn’t much of a jing-jing-jingle—but it was enough to summon Old Kris Kringle.

The flames in the furnace brightened, then made a coughing sound. Black smoke swirled out, and with a whoosh of hot air Santa Claus slipped down the smokestack and made his dramatic entrance. The conveyor belt came to a screeching halt as the jolly guy in the magic red suit (which also proved to be non-flammable) emerged from the furnace like something out of
The Lord of the Rings
. He planted his gloved hands on his hips and bellowed, “Ho-ho-ho! Who’s been a naughty boy?”

Elfis nearly jumped out of his skin and scrambled down from the director’s chair so rapidly that his sunglasses clattered on the floor. With the empty cloth sack over his shoulder, Santa stalked forward like an avenging angel—and not the type that goes on top of a Christmas tree. He spotted his lengthy rolled-up list on the worktable and seized it, holding it up like a baton. “You have gone too far, Elfis. And now you’d better cry, because Santa Claus is coming to get you.”

The hench-elves were panicked. They dropped their candy-cane cattle prods and icicle spears and cowered. Their teeth chattered as if they had gone caroling naked on a cold winter’s night and no one was offering wassail, or even hot cocoa.

Elfis tried to run, but Santa quickly caught up with him. I couldn’t believe how fast the old bearded guy could move, but he had to have a secret power if he could hit millions of households around the world in a single night.

McGoo held up his bound wrists for me to bite the ribbons. Now
that
was showing a measure of trust! “Good plan, Shamble.”

“I call it Santa ex-Machina.” I picked bright green satin out of my teeth, then turned to free Robin as well.

Santa had cornered Elfis by the big coal hoppers, and the evil elf had no place to go. Santa didn’t need any help, but I was part of this, too—and I had a bone to pick with anybody who wanted to throw me and my friends into a furnace.

Next to me, one of the cowering hench-elves still had a sack filled with the icy rock-filled snowballs. I grabbed one and hurled it with perfect aim, proving that not all zombies are disoriented and uncoordinated. My snowball shot struck the release latch on the coal hopper just above Elfis’s head. The trap dropped open, and Elfis looked up just in time to see a black avalanche dump down on him. He was buried under lumps of coal.

Robin, McGoo, and I rushed over to Santa, who gazed with satisfaction at the mound in front of him. “Coal is what Elfis deserved … although I’d hoped he would turn his life around if given the chance. Such a disappointment.”

“You knew Elfis beforehand?” I asked.

Santa nodded. “He was one of my toy laborers, assigned to my workshop for community service, but he escaped, broke the rules of his North Pole parole. I was going to report him, but not until after the holiday season was over. It’s a busy time of the year, you know.”

We heard a groan, then a stirring. We moved the coal blocks away to reveal an Elfis now entirely covered in black dust. He plucked in dismay at his ruined jacket. “I guess I won’t be having a
white
Christmas.”

Santa unslung the sack from his shoulder, tugged it open, and strode forward. “Here comes Santa Claus.”

Elvis scrambled backward when he saw the yawning sack. “No, Santa! Please! No!”

“Naughty children get what they deserve.” Santa snatched Elfis, stuffed him into the sack, and cinched the opening shut. The captive kept squirming, but could not get out. Santa tucked his rolled up Naughty and Nice list under one arm. “Thank you all. I’ll start checking these names, see who deserves to be sentenced to the North Pole for a few years.”

“
Sentenced
to the North Pole?” Robin said.

“Oh-ho-ho, this list doesn’t just show me who gets presents and who doesn’t. The naughtiest of the naughty have to help me spread holiday cheer. Parents write me, too, you know. ‘Dear Santa, please help me with my child who keeps acting out.’ We have a community-service program up at the Pole, where naughty children can learn good behavior by doing good works.” He had a twinkle in his eye. “There’s a long waiting list, but our success rate is remarkable.”