Scary Holiday Tales to Make You Scream (11 page)

"What the f…How did you know about that?"

"I know a lot of things, Malcolm. So many things… I know what a naughty boy you've been in your time as well. Haven't you?"

"Naughty…?"

"Does Wendy know about Officer Kelly? No, I don't think she does, does she?"

Mal's mind was reeling. This was impossible, nobody knew about the fling he'd had with Kelly, not even Norm.

"And that druggie. Wasn't your fault, though. You did what you had to…"

"Shut up."

"Just like we all do."

"I said shut up." Mal stood and raised his pistol, aiming straight for the man's head.

"Go on, do it then…" said the Santa. "Wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

The crying got louder and now there was more screaming. "I mean it," shouted Mal. His hand was shaking, finger twitching on the trigger.

"Can't you see? All this," Father Christmas nodded at the grotto, "All this is bullshit. The world's changed, son. You know it, I know it. Everything's gone bad."

"Including you."

Santa didn't answer him, but Mal could see a tear trickling down his cheek, heading for the forest of white below.

"It really isn't too late, you know," said Mal.

"Isn't it? You really believe that? You really believe in anything anymore…?"

Mal fell silent.

"Thought so." Santa raised his rifle, ready to shoot. Mal briefly saw a picture of the drug addict he'd killed all those months ago, and froze. He heard the crying of the children - of the adults - in that store. Did he really want to do this in front of them? Time was running out and he had to make up his mind.

There was a shot. And Santa dropped his gun and his whiskey. Another blast echoed around the room, then the man was falling over, toppling against the golden throne. He raised a bloodied hand to clutch at the chair arm, but it slipped off, too wet to find purchase.

Mal looked down at his pistol, expecting to see the telltale smoke rising from the barrel. But then he realised he hadn't been the one who'd fired. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Norm there, along with a number of SWAT officers and, unless he was mistaken, a few Feds too.

They swarmed in, checking on casualties, ushering the children to safety, securing the area. Mal moved forwards with Norm and the SWATs to find the man dressed as Santa keeled over on the floor. They snatched the handguns from his belt, kicked away his rifle, and trained their own weapons on him. Somebody called for a paramedic, and Mal noticed that a number had already entered the grotto to treat the wounded. He feared it would be too late for this particular one, though.

Father Christmas coughed, and smiled at Mal. "Ho…ho…ho…" he wheezed. Then he winked from behind his pair of cracked half-moon glasses, before closing his eyes forever.

"You alright?" Norm asked his partner.

Mal nodded. Physically he was fine, if maybe a little shaken up.

"Jeez Louise, look at the hardware in that sack," said one of the SWAT guys. "Guess not everyone wants computer games for Christmas…"

Mal turned and started to walk away.

Norm jogged up alongside him. "Hey, where are you going?"

"Home," said Mal.

"What about the report? Hey…Mal, hey wait up…"

But Officer Malcolm Docherty was already on his way out of the den.

It began snowing while Mal walked the streets, but he barely even noticed. And it was close to midnight by the time he arrived back home. Mal let himself in, heading straight for Lauren and Brad's rooms first. They were fast asleep, their innocent faces as pale as angels on the pillows.

Mal left them in peace (heavenly peace…?) grabbed a Bud from the fridge, and walked into the lounge. The TV was on - the end of some stupid Christmas special featuring a variety of "Z list" celebs. Wendy was dozing on the couch; she only stirred slightly when Mal came in. He took a gulp from the bottle just as a news flash came up on the television.

"…in Crosby's tonight. The shootings left several people injured but only one person dead, the gunman - who has since been identified as a Mr. Christopher Cringle. A spokesperson for Crosby's said 'He has only been in the employ of this store for the last month, and his credentials seemed very impressive…"

Mal switched off the set and took another swig of the beer. The clock on the mantle chimed twelve. His eyes were drawn to the tree in the corner of the room, and the wish lists below it. He wondered whether those wishes would ever be granted, now that…

No, he didn't want to think about it. Didn't even want to consider the outrageous possibility that one of the last shining lights, one of the last symbols of hope was no more. That He'd been tainted by this world, driven mad by the demands placed upon him…

Cringle had just been some guy in a Santa suit, just another person who'd lost it and gone ape with America's favourite adult toys.

"I know you…You've been a bad boy…"

Mal took out his notepad and pen, and scribbled something down. He walked over to the tree, bent over, and left the note there. Then he joined his wife on the couch, slumping down beside her, and waited till morning to see if his wish would come true.

PAUL KANE

is a horror author from Derbyshire in the UK. He has had stories published in many magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, in all kinds of formats. His first two collections Alone (In the Dark) and Touching the Flame have been highly praised by writers, critics and trade magazines alike, and his most recent collection is Funnybones (from CGP), this time gathering together all of his humorous horror fiction. In addition, Paul is also editor of the Shadow Writer, Terror Tales, and Top International Horror anthologies.
He has a B.A. and M.A. from Sheffield Hallam University and in the past has worked as a photographer, an artist, an illustrator/cartoonist, a professional proofreader, and a freelance writer and reviewer. He is currently working as a lecturer in Film & Media studies and Creative Writing, and is at the moment working on a Hellraiser Film Book for Indigo, an interactive role playing adventure, and his second novel. Paul's website can be found at http://www.shadow-writer.co.uk

By Quentin Crisp

Childhood, legendry, love - all these things share one thing in common, a sense of misty, uncrossable distance. And that distance is also the depth of our longing for them; and that distance is an old song crafted from sadness. The song has always been old; its age and its sadness are one.

Poets, philosophers, sages - since words have been at their disposal they have devoted those words to one of the three above. But is it not strange that love - for that is the word in question - which has no sure existence in this world at all, should be the object of so much elegy and debate?

Sometimes, swollen with sighs, I would add words of my own to this debate. My words would be thus: that true love is another world that has existence only in the lover's solitary heart. Upon contact with the harsh air of this, our world, it dies away. And to illustrate my words I would retell a tale of childhood - perhaps in some form known to some already - and one that belongs to the no-time of legend.

Both the latitude and the age, as befits a tale of legendry, were isolated from all maps and history. We can say that the town was in the north, and by that understand that its streets were grey and cold, that these events took place in the olden days, and by that understand that barefoot children in threadbare clothes played hopscotch and whipped hoops through those streets. But amongst those children was one child who could not play such games.

The boy had not spoken a word since his birth, though his hearing was sharp enough. That in itself would not have forbidden him from playing with the other children. There was simply something wrong with him. It seemed he could not bear to look another human being in the eye, as if he was afraid of what they might see in his own. And so people were just as uncomfortable with him as he was with them, until he acquired the title of idiot and everyone felt much relieved. As an idiot he could have his place in the town, and even if he was not respected exactly, he was ignored.

So while other children chanted their skipping rhymes he would sneak from one dank, crumbling alley to the next as if he wished himself invisible. Indeed, all around seemed to abet his invisibility so that, to a stranger, his exaggerated stealth must have looked comic and pathetic.

Out past the last alley, the last brick wall and all the unspoken mourning that is reared with stone and clay, the town gave way to meadows and hills crowned with copses. At this boundary the boy would suddenly run, bursting with a mixture of excitement and release.

The open fields, the sky pupilled by clouds slow with peace and wonder: these were the boy's schoolroom. Life to him was as unfenced as they. He did not count the years, nor did he reckon how he should act or what he should feel according to how many had passed. He foraged for pine-cones and chestnuts amid leaves. Where the water stilled and swelled at the bend in the stream, he lay flat and reached out to tickle the bellies of trout. He found out the nests of all the birds and watched the progress of their eggs and their fledgling young. In the vine-crowded tower of the broken old lime kiln he waited for bats to waken or to come home.

To the boy these things were familiar. They were his very own treasures. But enfolded in the valleys between these hills the boy had also found out something that was to him strange and enticing. Wilder than the ragged hills around, to the boy at least, was the farmhouse and the people who lived there. When the tide of evening drew in he would pause amid the long grasses of the meadow that looked down upon the house, and gaze at the yellow windows. He heard with distinctness sounds from the kitchen, and from without the barking of dogs and the restless clucking of hens.

Perhaps he would not have paused so long in the evening, listening for the different voices from within, if it were not for something he sometimes saw during the day. Her name was Leah. She was the daughter of the house and old enough to work around the farm. The boy would catch a glimpse of her now and then, on lucky days, when she sat on a stool in the barn to milk the cows. Without knowing why, the boy made this one division in his life, between the time before he had ever seen her and the time since. And yet he did not question his own fascination, and indeed, hardly thought about the girl except when he was near the farmhouse and remembered her again, as if afresh, like an animal curious at a scent it did not understand.

Time passed and the boy could now hardly remember his life before he knew of the girl. It happened that one day Leah failed to appear in the barn. When her absence continued the next day and the next, the boy felt downcast and was unable to enjoy his usual solitary play as before. Suddenly, all he could think of was when he would next catch sight of her. The boy was quick-eared and heard much that was not meant for him. He knew the girl's name already and soon he learnt from a few words let fall here and there in the town that she had taken ill. It seemed her illness was of a kind from which few recovered.

Now, when the boy passed near the farmhouse, the place seemed desolate. He was sure that even the sounds from within had become sad and subdued. As he stood and looked down from the upper meadow the thought struck him with peculiar sharpness that he might never see the girl again. The world that had begun with the first sight of her, and had grown almost to be the whole of his memory, might soon be gone. He felt as much urgency as helplessness, and beyond these two vying emotions a sadness as if he had only just woken to the sober, nagging loneliness of himself. It seemed appropriate that autumn was deepening towards winter, and that a frost was in the air.

The boy passed by the farmhouse no more and no less often than before. Without hope there was nothing else he could do than this. The light was short, the darkness long, so that the days were as nights and the nights seemed almost to meet each other in one unpassing night. And somewhere deep in the heart of this night, unable to bear the weight of his hopelessness any longer, the boy slipped out of his house. With all the world lost in dreams around him he realised this is what he should have done before.

The boy was fond of secrets. They were to him the most precious things in the world, and in this unexchangable currency he had long ago acquired riches. Who can say but that there was some deep link between his love of secrets and his muteness? As the wide night took him in its soughing embrace he knew that he was seeking the most precious secret of all. The girl's fate had been decided, and when one's fate is decided one is already moving and breathing in another world. The boy had to get close to that house, if only to hear her sleeping breath or to know that she was there dreaming with the night's vast and single dream.

As he emerged from the line of trees at the top of the meadow he heard an eerie, shivering sound, clear on the frosty air. Echoing in the loneliness of nature, it was not a sound of nature. He moved a little further, like a cautious fox. Leah was leaning from her open casement in the upper storey of the house, as if to release her sobs to the thrilling cold and endless freedom of the night where they would not disturb her tired family. As the moon gave to the clouds that fogged it a mystical effulgence, so it seemed to the boy, Leah's sobs leant the night a wondrous beauty. It was then that the mystery of love was disclosed to him, by Leah and by the night, more breathless and complete than the most ancient love poem. Love was hidden from the world in the shape of this child, to be revealed only to the eyes of another child. And the child whose eyes they were was one untutored in the uses the world has for things. He did not know there should be a use for or an object to anything. So this love simply was, and there was nothing for him to do but gaze and admire.

It is an irony worth noting that of all the love songs and poems that ever were, none of them succeed in recording any sense of what the being who inspired them was like. All that is recorded is the feeling of love itself. And yet for the author of the song or poem there was only one person who it could be meant for. Why is that person always lost? Why do they become nothing more than an anonymous 'you'?