Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (19 page)

Tenth Night of Krampus: “Raw Recruits”

by Mark Mills

Inspiration
: Mark writes, “Growing up in an area with a strong Germanic heritage, I can’t even remember the first time I heard about Krampus. Now that I have children, it’s clear that today Santa, as swell as he might be, inspires more greed than good behavior. Perhaps a little bit of Krampus might push some kiddies back onto the nice list!”

“Present arms!” Boss roars.

For the first time, the newcomers look scared. They finally notice all the old-timers’ switches, all vicious and razor laced. They know they have been tricked.

Boss stomps towards the first of them and grabs the switch from his grasp.

“You had a full year to make this and all you got is a twig? This wouldn’t cripple a cricket!” Boss drops the faulty switch and slaps his palm over the newbie’s head. “Looks like you’re on my list!”

Effortlessly, he yanks the newbie off the ground. The poor little bum only has time for his eyes to widen before getting crammed into Boss’s slobbering mouth.

The other newbies realize what’s happening and take off screaming; their crummy switches drop like bloody snowflakes.

Boss crunches a couple of bones before waving his hand. “Stop right there!”

The newbies freeze. You can tell by their tears that they’re struggling to move but they haven’t the strength to overcome the Boss’s magic. On Christmas Eve, the Boss is the second most powerful being on Earth.

Boss could have made it quick for them, but that’s not his way. Instead, he just struts down the line, picking out parts of the first newbie from his teeth, until he gets to me.

“Gimme that!” He grabs my switch out of my hand and holds it to his eye.

My switch is cut from the spine of a baby whale, dripping with spider venom, and cured in Klansman blood. It can rip through an elephant’s hide, and it hurts just to look at it. I colored it red and white like a candy cane just to be in the spirit.

Boss still frowns. “I guess this isn’t too lousy.” He sticks it into his squirming sack and continues to Besserton.

Besserton spent his life abducting young women and taking them apart in his basement. Before his execution, he hand-crafted instruments of torture so vile that the policeman who discovered them went through years of vomiting and psychiatric therapy. But now Besserton is sweating as Boss inspects his switch.

“I seen better.” Boss puts his face right against old Bessy. “You’re just lucky we had so many first-timers this year.”

Boss goes down the lines, inspecting switches and growling threats. He stops in front of Old Ozzie the Nazi and grins. “This switch won’t do at all. I’ve always wondered how you’d taste.”

He could have swallowed Ozzie in one bite but he stretches it out to eight. We knew one of us veterans was getting it this year, there had only been 99 new recruits last year.

After Ozzie, we relax a little. Sometimes Boss will surprise us and eat 101 souls or more, but this year, he just goes down the rest of the lines, stuffing switches in the sack. When he finishes, he starts eating the frozen newbies—he eases up his spell a little bit so they can beg. So that’s our Christmas carols until the Adversary arrives on his sleigh and Boss leaves for another night of merriment.

“Poor Ozzie,” Besserton sighs. Nobody else even pretends to care.

* * *

Boss gets back at daybreak and passes out. He’s at his weakest now and there’s always talk of rebellion. Nobody does nothing—all of us combined haven’t got the muscle of a hamster. Even over a year, it’s a strain just putting a single switch together. For all the fuss that Boss makes, demanding that we construct the switches for him, you’d think he’d give us enough energy to work.

The new recruits will be arriving soon. None of us say anything, but we’re all hoping. Some years we get classes of 150 or more which means even newbies have a decent chance of surviving Christmas Eve.

A cloud starts to form at the mouth of the cave. Boss lurches up to greet it. Out of the mist, a group of new recruits comes stumbling—skinless, boneless misshapen souls, still praying and begging for mercy. “Help me, Jesus” and “Too young to die,” indeed!

“Congratulations!” Boss calls out to them. “You worthy souls are invited to my workshop to make toys for good little children each Christmas!”

It’s his little joke. He makes it every year and it never gets any funnier. But through the haze of the cloud, Boss appears enough like the Adversary to get a few of the newbie’s hopes up.

He waits until the cloud completely dissipates and they get a good look at him. There’s no hope anymore.

“Right! None of you are very worthy in the least. Each one of you committed the unpardonable sin of stealing Christmas presents and now you’re mine. Forever! You owe me a switch and you got until next Christmas Eve to make it.”

Boss yawns. “If you got any questions, ask one of them.” He gestures to us as he walks back to his sack. As he passes, just before slumping down for his 12-month nap, he hisses to us: “Only 86!”

We stare at the recruits. Boss eats at least 100 of us every year. With only 86 recruits, 14 of us are doomed. Besserton is already in tears.

* * *

“Just do your best,” all the old-timers tell the recruits. “You’re already here. There’s nothing old Krampus can do if your switch isn’t perfect.”

We do that every year—set up the newbies for failure, stacking the deck in our favor. But this year is different—more of us old-timers will be eaten than in memory. That isn’t fair. Across the Christian world; there had to be more sinners stealing of Christmas presents than just these 86. Maybe people are better at protecting their gifts or perhaps some higher power saw fit to torment us even further.

Some souls get to thinking that getting eaten is an escape; some even ask to be eaten, believing it will be an end to their suffering. No such luck. If I went up to Boss right now and stuck my ear to his belly (and, believe it or not, Boss likes this), I’d hear old Ozzie and the rest of them screaming. Up to the end of the year, just before Boss goes to his outhouse, you can still hear them screaming inside of him. Then, and I know this from the times Boss sticks our heads in, they’re still screaming in the hole… and that screaming goes on forever.

No, I don’t want to be eaten.

Besserton sees me scribbling on a parchment and stops his work on his new switch.

“Why are you wasting time? You’d better start working.”

I shrug. “I’m doing something more important than working.”

Besserton gawks.

I get back to my writing. “I’m grass-root campaigning.”

* * *

My mother was considered odd for giving Christmas presents, for celebrating Christmas in general. Years ago, Boston had outlawed Christmas celebrations, and, for most of the country, December 25 was still considered a work day.

Yet my mother gave gifts to even those who mocked her for it. But most of all she gave presents to my sister and me. Typically it was a single gift, unwrapped, very different from the experiences of spoiled children today. Unwrapped—that was why I saw the ring to begin with. That was why I came to Krampus.

The ring was simple garnet. My relatives often wore jewelry finer and more valuable, but the moment I saw it, I had to take it. I left my gift, an oak carving of an eagle in the cupboard, but crept to the garden and hid the ring beneath the rose bush.

I woke late for Christmas morning. My mother was rushing about the house, tearing open drawers, overturning furniture. She never suspected me, for what boy would fancy jewelry? Besides, I seemed out of sorts, as if I’d been beaten during the night with hellish switches not confined to my dreams.

In the spring, I dug for the ring but never found it. I had meant to sell it and start off into the world. In the end, it gained me nothing but switches for Krampus.

And yet, during my lifetime, switches became my calling. Long before the invention of the automobile, switches for steeds, slaves, hounds, and children were of high demand. Few men of my generation could sustain themselves simply crafting switches but I was regarded as a master. Fellow artisans looked upon my work with envy; boys in my neighborhood feared my name. The least of my switches was a bloody work of art. Even in my present state, if I slept, I could churn out greater switches than anyone else in the workshop. Over the years, I had made a backup switch for just such an occasion.

There would be no shortage of recruits when I was done.

My backup switch was flawless. Cut out of nightmare and midnight, laced with Satan’s beard, a switch fit for Krampus’s own backside—I’ll have a year of peace while the others scramble.

While I lived, before the slave rebellion in Haiti, I traveled the trade routes and learned secrets that would have damned my soul even if I’d never touched my sister’s ring. One of my wealthiest clients ruled over his plantation with knowledge that cursed men’s souls. He tore open the veil between the living and the dead, called up spirits he called the loa, even commanding the dead to walk. While I never pursued these arts so intently, what I had learned could serve me well, even after death.

For years here in the workshop, I’ve been contacting the world of the living, whispering in the minds of politicians and businessmen. Before I only had time for the occasional persuasion, but now I had a year of full-time lobbying.

It wouldn’t be hard. These men wanted to do what I whispered to them. They wanted to steal Christmas toys.

* * *

“You call this a switch?” Boss snarls. “Let me show you what it’s worth.”

The newbie never stops screaming as he slides down Boss’s throat. Neither did Besserton when Boss rejected his switch. When he gets to me, I don’t flinch.

“Let’s…” His voice trails off. He stares, standing still longer than I’ve ever seen him, before mumbling something like “good job” and lurching to his next victim.

A bad Christmas Eve. The others don’t know that their present is coming.

* * *

Boss had just settled down for his Christmas morn nap when the cloud arrives. The 85 other veterans look at it, pressing their fleshless lips together, nervously tapping their stumps. Then, Boss is standing up front, smirking and taking puffs from his pipe. He blows a smoke ring at the cloud just as it starts to open.

He drops the pipe when he sees what’s inside.

Recruits pour out, hundreds upon hundreds, wailing and begging for mercy.

Boss forgets his usual joke; he has no idea what happened.

The Adversary is going to be surprised as well. His stinking deer will have the lightest load in memory.

Back when I was alive, Christmas was a work day. Laborers, even freemen, worked six days a week, 12 hours a day. A factory owner who gave his employees a half day for Christmas was considered a pansy.

It had been a challenge, but I planted those old ideas in the minds of millionaires and politicians. It saved them money so they bit. “Back to the Founding Fathers’ dream,” they’d proclaimed and pushed legislation to eliminate paid holidays and overtime pay.

This year, instead of exchanging gifts, mothers and fathers were at work. It was the greatest robbery of Christmas presents in history.

“We had to do it!” one of the recruits protests. “The company needed to be competitive!”

Boss lifts a finger to the side of his nose and grins. Next Christmas Eve, his sack will swell with switches. And Boss will be fatter and jollier than the Adversary ever was.

* * *

A Cincinnati resident, Mark Mills teaches composition and literature at Northern Kentucky University. He has published work in Necrotic Tissue, Tor.com, Brain Harvest, Short Story America, and Bards and Sages Quarterly. He has worked on and appeared in several local movies, including Evil Ambitions, Live Nude Shakespeare, Chickboxin’ Underground, Zombie Cult Massacre, No Second Chances, and April’s Fool. He currently is occupied with a large number of children, animals, and unpublished stories.

Eleventh Night of Krampus: “The God Killer”

by Cheresse Burke

Inspiration
: When initially pondering this story, Cheresse was inclined to write some great Wu Xia-style martial arts sequence between a god and his assassin. Then she started thinking about how much people might want to kill the Gods, and how the Gods might deal with that in terms of a tribunal or court. The end result was slightly different from the initial conception.

Yes, I know why I’m here. I have my doubts that it’ll make a difference, but I know.

And what do I care about you, all of you? What do I care about your grand tribunals, this whole circus? My testimony doesn’t mean anything, you’ve already made that clear. Are you going to think about my choices; are you going to listen? Or is this testimony a formality before I receive my sentence?

Well, I think my path was clear, from the moment I stepped down that passage. You can call me the God killer if you want, but you can at least reserve judgment of my person until I’m finished here. Then you can decide what sort of eternal torment I should get at the hands of… well, whatever. Whatever you are. No, I won’t call you gods.
Real
gods are responsible.
Real
gods care. But you decide the fate of the world without asking whether the world has a say.

Krampus isn’t—wasn’t—a real god either, was he? Demigod, I guess you’d call him. People hardly even believe in him anymore. It’s easier to believe in Santa, I guess. It’s that positive reinforcement thing. Everybody wants to be good for Santa, and nobody cares about not being bad for Krampus. But he had some power, right up to the end.

I used to watch those two in the cold winter months. That’s how I found out that I was different, that I was a Watcher. That I could see demigods as they went about their business on Earth. When I was a kid I would run up to the attic whenever Mama had a fight with one of her boyfriends. I would crouch at the windowsill and make up stories for all the bums drifting by. They had routines as regular as the canal boats. The jolly fat man and his friend were no different, meandering past my window at the same time every night. They would walk with their heads tilted toward each other, deep in conversation. They passed jokes back and forth, and sometimes they passed a bottle as well. The tall man and the short man. The young man and the old one. A devil and a saint.