Never Fear (21 page)

“
This is just BS,” she
muttered to herself, starting to feel like this had all gotten away
from her.

Maisey came out of a patient’s room
holding the elf on the shelf straight out in front of her, like it
had been pissed on. She brought it to the nurse’s station and
dropped it into the trash.

“
What are you doing?”
Grace asked her.

Maisey just shrugged. “I’m getting rid
of it.”

Grace was amused. So Miss Perky had
lost a bit of her holiday cheer.

But then Patrick started yelling and
she and Maisey went running. What they found made Grace’s stomach
sink. “Holy Jesus…”

It was Sam. He was in the storage
closet right next to the back door. He was dead, eyes wide open.
His chest had been torn open and there was blood all down his
abdomen, his pants stained red. It was a shocking and brutal death
and Grace backed up, afraid she was going to vomit. Maisey started
screaming, a high-pitched hysterical shriek that harmonized with
the holiday music still raging over their heads and it all collided
into Grace’s head, paralyzing her.

She breathed hard, in and out,
grappling for the door to close it shut behind them, blocking them
all from the terrible view of Sam.

Maisey turned to her and held out her
hands, her eyes glassy and filled with shock.

“
What-

A knife dropped from Maisey’s hands,
clanking down onto the linoleum floor, its blade stained. “I found
it in my pocket,” Maisey said. “I don’t know how… I didn’t do
anything… oh, God.” She turned and threw up all over the wall,
hunching over, not even pulling her hair back.

Grace watched, horrified. Disgusted.
This was wrong. All fucking wrong.

Maisey stood up and grappled at the
doorframe, trying to hold herself up. Her face was tear-stained,
makeup running, vomit splattered all over her uniform.

Not so pretty now, was she?

*

After the police left, and extra staff
had been called in, and all hell had broken loose and settled back
down again, Grace sat outside by the dumpster, ass on the curb of
the driveway. She took a long swig off of her flask and passed it
over. Following it with a long drag on her cigarette, she blew the
smoke out as she spoke.

“
You went too far, you
know. There was no reason to kill Sam. I just wanted the blonde
fired.”

She didn’t expect a response and she
didn’t get one.

“
He was a nice man. A good
man. The best.” She was already buzzed. Her stomach was tight and
before long she’d probably be tossing the vodka back up but she
couldn’t stop herself. There were tears in her eyes, blurring her
vision. It was freezing outside and she wasn’t wearing a coat, but
the wind cutting through her felt fitting, appropriate. She needed
to be jarred.

“
You’ve got to promise me,
you won’t do anything like that again. Do you understand?” She
reached back to retrieve her flask, ashing her cigarette into the
slushy snow.

The elf winked at her.

Grace stood up on shaky legs, and once
back inside, put him prominently on the countertop of the nurse’s
station.

“
I love the Elf on the
Shelf!” the cheerful temp nurse said, poking him in the gut like he
was the doughboy. “OMG, I had one of these when I was a
kid.”

It was the last thing she wanted to
deal with tonight. Her shift was over. She was going home to spend
her Christmas Eve alone with takeout and her Smirnoff. But she
didn’t want to return to work and have to deal with Perky, part
two.

She met the gaze of the elf. “I
changed my mind.”

“
What?” the new nurse
asked in confusion.

“
Oh, nothing. I was just
talking to myself.” Grace smiled and grabbed her purse.

She whistled along to the Christmas
music as she left.

He knows if you’ve been
bad or good…

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
TERROR

CHAPTER
7

“
Oh, yuck!” Nancy said.
“Didn’t Aunt Jeannie buy Francie an Elf on the Shelf? I’ll never
get my kids one now. If I ever have any, that is. Ick!”

“
I thought it was cool,”
Nick said. “Aaaand... “He waved his finger around his sister’s
nose.

She slapped his hand away. “Aaaand,
what? Aaaand you’re a dork.” She poked him in the gut.

“
Hey, that’s not nice,”
Nick said, belching and rubbing his stomach.

“
God, you’re disgusting,”
Nancy said, turning away.

“
Anyway... aaaand... I got
rid of my hiccups. Which means now I get to read.” He grabbed the
book from Jack. “I don’t know what it is about this book, but I
can’t wait to read the next story.” He flipped to the next story.
“Then again, maybe it’s all the coffee I’ve had.”

“
Or the brandy,” Jack
added.

“
Actually... I kind of
feel like that too—as much as I don’t want to agree with him. About
the stories, I mean,” Nancy said.

Judy made busy cleaning up some
doughnut crumbs. Grandpa looked pensive.

Dan said, “Go ahead, read the next
one. What’s it called?”

“
Oh! We know this one,”
Nick said. “
’Twas the Night
Before
...”

“
I have a feeling it’s not
the poem we know,” Judy said. “But go ahead.”

‘
TWAS THE NIGHT
BEFORE…

RICHARD DEVIN

There was a tale of Old St.
Nick.

A tale of doom, with a hypnotic
trick.

The tale was too true for holiday
cheer.

So tales were told for those who
fear.

That tale was told and told
again.

It was told so much that a legend set
in.

A legend of holly and holiday
cheer.

A legend of sleighs and tiny
reindeer.

A legend of gifts and good girls and
boys.

A legend of workshops and elfin-made
toys.

A legend to deceive and mask away
fears.

A legend now told down through the
years.

A legend of Santa so gentle, so
jolly.

A legend of good tidings, filled with
such folly.

A legend unlike the fable of
truth.

Where vampires fangs and blood are the
proof.

So good tidings to tales of jolly old
Nick,

Know the beginnings to the devil’s old
trick.

’
Twas the night before
Christmas and all that you know

Is not as it seems and never was
so.

And Saint Nick is not the saint that
you seek.

For he is not jolly nor ever so
meek.

If he finds you, awake, not
asleep.

‘
Tis blood, a child or
soul’s what he’ll keep.

If an elfin ending is what you
desire,

Then
this
St. Nick is sure to
inspire.

A wonderland of toys and musty old
tales,

Will serve for all time, for Nick
never fails.

Legend – a tale told when the truth is
too unbelievable.

’
Twas the night before
Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was
stirring, not even a mouse.

The stockings were hung by
the chimney with care,

In hopes that St Nicholas
soon would be there.

Steam spewed with a nearly deafening
whistle from the old, rusted, heavy machinery as it drove the
piston—hissing, lifting the hammer, releasing in a cloud, and
smashing the hammer down onto a metal plate. Then with a great
rumble, the cycle began again.

The workshop was filled with a
cacophony of thuds, clangs, whistles, and bangs. Smoke filled
sunlight streamed through small rectangular windows frosted over by
the never-ending, frigid arctic air held at bay beyond the
walls.

Scampering about the workshop, rushing
from one of the massive machines to another, in a curious
choreography of near collisions, squat elfin creatures scurried,
hauling, pulling, plying, and maneuvering the toys that popped from
the ancient machinery.  They handed off the toys down a line
of bearded, grease-covered elves in a game of “new toy” hot potato
until they reached the decorating tables. There, the metal and
wooden toys were painted, then glossed and trimmed and bejeweled,
by younger elfin boys and girls.

Laboring elves pulled trolleys laden
with newly made toys, down tracks in the flooring. When they
reached the ramp leading to the loading dock, they clambered behind
the trolley, pushing on it with short stubby legs that strained
under the effort.

Trolleys and carts were haphazardly
parked with their burdens of toys by the receiving dock, where
slightly larger elves hauled the toys up to the dock and stuffed
them into animal-skin bags trimmed with the fur of the once living
creature.

Then, filled to near bursting, the
bags were loaded into the back of a black sleigh that lacked any
shine or ornate decoration. Worn, chipped, and dented, the sleigh
faced two great metal doors. Scenes of high walled castles were
depicted on thick, mammoth tapestries that hung from the top of the
doors, and despite having been closed and latched with a rusted
iron rod the size of a telephone pole, snow and wind managed to
creep in at the corners where the doors met, leaving slight mounds
of ice-crusted snow on the workshop floor.

The children were nestled
all snug in their beds,

While visions of
sugar-plums danced in their heads.

And mamma in her
‘kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our
brains for a long winter’s nap.

Snow blanketed the fields and woods
surrounding the sagging, ramshackle cottage that we called home. A
fire burned and crackled in a corner of the only room. From a
distance, the cottage and nearby barn—that was in only slightly
better condition—looked charming dusted with snow. Smoke rose in a
twisted column from the stone chimney, and tree-trunk fence rails
bore a burden of windswept snow. It was a winter wonderland to the
mind’s eye. And hell to us who were its inhabitants.

The past growing season had not been
fruitful. The less-than-normal rains meant fewer than normal crops.
Most, we harvested and stored for the winter, keeping the two cows
and donkey fairly well fed, but they were by no means fat. For me,
Milan, my dad, Mickel, and my mother, Jenia, there was little food
to spare. As winter had settled in, my parents rationed what we had
in storage, making it last as long as possible by mixing it in
soups and stews with the rarely snared bird or rabbit.

We made the cabin look the season as
best we could. My dad and I felled a small, unshapely evergreen
tree, and along with my mother, decorated it with bits of straw, an
old bird’s nest, and red berries found in the nearby woods. Then we
set the tree upon a rickety table, placing both the table and tree
near the fire nook, with a silent prayer that neither would go up
in flames.

The tree was there, decorated and
beckoning, but morning’s break would find no gifts under this
tree—despite tonight being the ending of the eve of
Christmas.

When out on the lawn there
arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to
see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew
like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and
threw up the sash.

All were asleep. I stayed awake to
tend the fire so that Christmas morning wouldn’t find us all
frostbitten and shivering. I stoked the fire with one log, not
wanting to use up the dried kindling too quickly and force me to
the outside and the windy, cold night.

A baying from the barn outside caught
my attention and drew me to the window. I glanced toward the barn
and fields, where not a creature stirred. Then a shadow in the
night sky drew my eyes upward. There, the darkness of the sky
nearly consumed the black, sleek sleigh that careened through the
star-filled abyss, driven forward by creatures colored even blacker
than the night. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would have
mistaken the sleigh that flew with such soundless speed for a moon
shadow.

The moon on the breast of
the new-fallen snow

Gave the luster of mid-day
to objects below.

When, what to my wondering
eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh,
and eight tiny reindeer.