Never Fear (40 page)

*

Joy had finally come to the tiny brick
house during the harsh winter months. It was Christmas Eve and all
was well. Young Ryan lay fast asleep, snuggled up in his bed;
dreams of vengeance and blood danced in his head. His mother and
father almost danced in their room, for news most wonderful had
just been revealed.

“
When did this happen?!”
exclaimed Julie, her tiny body shaking with excitement that could
be seen even through her favorite pink robe.

Mark stood tall and proud beside the
massive pile of wrapped gifts he had brought up from the basement.
“My promotion went through a few weeks ago, just in time for me to
get my first check and the company’s holiday bonus. No more money
worries, baby. No more bad Christmases.”

Mark and Julie embraced. Things were
finally going to start getting better. Julie kissed her husband
hard, lips pressing into his fever of growing desire. But she broke
off the kiss with a sly smirk on her pouty lips.

“
Why doesn’t Santa head
downstairs and set up all the gifts. I’ll start filling the tub,
and get his special gift all ready.” She winked as her pink robe
slipped from her slender form, exposing her pale body as she swayed
enticingly into the bathroom.

The sway of her hips, the smell of her
perfume, and finally the sound of the tub turning on spurred Mark
into action. Grabbing the gifts, he carried them downstairs. In
total, it took him four trips. Each time he stopped at the bottom
of the stairs, setting the piles of gifts next to one another
before he separated them. Of course, Ryan’s pile was massive. The
stack of wrapped gifts would tower over their growing son, a
literal mountain of presents. Next, was his wife’s, her pile small,
but the things inside he knew she would love. She had been wanting
that diamond heart pendant for years, but he could never afford it.
That was all going to change now. Only the best for the love of his
life from now on. He frowned as he was placing the gifts, his eyes
drawn to a spot on the carpet in front of the fireplace. It was
hard to see with only the tree lights on, but he saw the outlines
of clear tree ornaments. Mark wandered over, bending down to
inspect the carpet and what lay there. There were a few of the
clear ornaments from the tree, although the metal tops and hangers
had been taken off.

“
What the hell are you
doing here?” Mark looked to his bare feet and was grateful he had
not stepped on them. Suddenly Mark’s thoughts flashed back to an
hour ago, when Ryan had gone downstairs to get a drink. He had
taken a while and Mark had to yell at him to get his butt upstairs
or Santa would pass over them.

“
Christ, not again.” Mark
groaned, as he began to pick up the small little traps his son had
left. “Oh well, after this year there will be no more of this
shit.”

Mark spent the next few
minutes looking around, and to his horror, and slight amazement, he
discovered a plethora of booby-traps. Mark found a string of
fishing wire set along the fireplace, meant to trip Santa so he
would fall on the ornaments, and small lumps under the false snow
surrounding the tree indicated hidden mousetraps. Mark even found a
bunch of his son’s small toy cars, which he had stopped playing
with a long time ago, spread out around for some unknown reason on
the carpet. He assumed they were meant to have Santa step on them
and slip. He gathered all of these up, after disarming the
mousetraps, of course. The loud snaps filled the mostly silent room
when he set each one off. He put them all in a large pile in front
of Ryan’s gifts. All except the ornaments, which he put away, not
wanting to risk them getting broken and having shards of glass on
the floor. Normally he would be furious. He should be furious. But
the relief bestowed upon him by his promotion, and the hope, no,
not the hope, the fact that he
knew
, that this would be the last
year, calmed his hand. Plus, his wife was waiting for him. He
quickly headed to his office, grabbed some parchment paper and
scrawled a simple phrase onto it.

You win

Mark placed it on the pile of booby
traps. Next, he grabbed his wife’s and his own pile. He placed
Julie’s on the far side of the tree away from Ryan’s gifts. His own
gifts he placed closer to Ryan’s, but he was less concerned if his
got opened by his son. Now that this was all taken care of, he had
something to take care of himself.

Mark turned and almost leapt to the
stairway. But his body lurched to a stop when he passed the
cookies. He chuckled warmly and reached down, speaking to the
cookies, a villainous accent affecting his speech.

“
Ahh, Mr. Cookies, you
thought you could escape my notice. How wrong you were!”

And as quick as that, he reached down
and gobbled up his favorite treat, leaving only a few uneaten bits
lying scattered on the tray before gulping down the accompanying
milk. His hunger sated, his mind once more turned to desires that
were not yet sated. He stalled once again when he heard a crumbling
sound, as part of Ryan’s gift-mountain collapsed. His haste to set
it up had left it unstable. Mark turned to rebuild the mountain. He
would just make it wider and not as tall. Ryan would still love it.
As Mark leaned down to the fallen gifts, close to the tree, his
eyes began to water. He stood to wipe them, and his throat began to
itch. He was overcome by a sudden burst of hard deep coughs, which
shook his body. The coughs passed a few seconds later, and Mark
straightened himself.

“
Whaa tthhhee helllll?” he
spoke, his words slurred as his tongue began to swell. His watering
eyes widened, and he frantically looked around. He was having an
allergic reaction.
How is this
happening?!
He needed his EpiPen! Mark
stumbled toward the stairs, onto a portion of the floor that was
covered by a thin autumn-colored decorative rug his wife had bought
for their living room coffee table. That area had been absent of
Ryan’s small cars for a reason. As Mark slammed his foot down onto
the rug, the small thumb tacks that had been carefully hidden
underneath pierced his foot, five in total embedded themselves into
the sole of his foot, blood began to dribble out.

Mark toppled forward when
his injured foot gave out under the sudden assault of small metal
spikes. He tried to cry out, but a dull croak was the only thing
that escaped. His throat was starting to close, breathing was
becoming harder as Mark lay there upon the floor. But he was not a
weak man, and his desire to live was stronger than the pain in his
foot or his chest. He pushed himself up, the tacks pulling out of
his foot as he drew away from the blood-soaked rug. Mark began to
limp his way toward the stairs, a trail of bloody foot marks
showing his agonizing progress. Then one by one, he hobbled his way
up the stairs. His vision was getting narrow. His heart raced
rapidly in his chest. He was not even sure if he was breathing
anymore. He could feel his tongue swelling up so large it stuck
obscenely out from between his lips. But he had to make it to his
room—to
Julie.

Despite the growing darkness and pain,
he made it to the top of the stairs, his eyes mere slits on his
bloated face. The door to his bedroom seemed like it was at the end
of a long dark tunnel. But he knew he could make it. Just one foot
in front of the other, that was all he needed to focus
on.

So focused on the task at hand, Mark
forgot about the damage done to his foot, the bleeding flesh could
not handle the weight placed upon it anymore, and with a whispered
cry of anguish his foot gave out, slipping on the blood that still
poured from the punctures. Mark began to fall backwards. His last
thoughts before his vision went dark and his mind shut off, were of
his wife, and her beautiful come-hither eyes.

Julie had just finished filling the
massive tub with hot steaming water, when from out in the hallway
there arose such a clatter. She sprang out of the bathroom to see
what was the matter. Away to the stairway she flew like a flash,
robe tied around her with a long pink sash. The flicker of red,
blue, and green tree lights filled the room below. And what to her
horror-filled eyes did appear?

Nothing short of the sprawled body of
her husband. His face swollen, eyes almost shut, and his tongue
protruding from his mouth. She screamed, a deep soul-wrenching wail
of terror and grief. She had seen this before, long ago, when they
were first dating: his allergy. She sprinted, not toward him, but
toward the small black case he kept in his dresser. Within seconds,
she had the Epipen in hand, her mind and body focused on one task:
Save Mark. In her crazed state, Julie’s rational thought process
was ignored. Her husband was in danger and nothing else mattered.
She jumped down the last few steps to land next to him. She heard
and felt her ankle break, but the pain did not come. She was too
focused, and the flood of chemicals in her body kept the pain away.
She collapsed next to Mark and slammed the needle into his thigh,
injecting the medicine into his system.

Once the needle was empty, she left it
in him, and her hands reached up to cup his face, to shake him, to
scream at him to fight, to not leave her alone. Only then, once she
had given him the medicine that would save his life, did she notice
his glossed-over eyes, and the strange angle his head was bent at.
The tortured cry that ripped from Julie’s throat would have rivaled
a banshee’s wail. She lay atop Mark, slender arms wrapping around
him, clinging to his still-warm body.

“
Mommy?”

The words pierced Julie’s grief when
she heard her son. She looked up, tears pouring from her beautiful
eyes. Ryan had wandered from his bed after hearing all the
commotion. He looked confused, but excited, as he made his way down
the stairs.

“
Did I get him? Did I get
Santa?” He stopped and frowned, seeing the body of his father
laying there. His head tilted in slight confusion. “Why is Daddy
down...?”

“
Baby, please get to the
phone and call 911. Your father and I are hurt. Hurry,
baby!”

But Ryan’s frown just deepened; that
look of confusion on his face, intensified.

“
Why are you and Daddy
down here? You’re not supposed to be down here!” His little voice
rose in anger. “The booby traps were meant for Santa!” His shrill
voice grew higher as it filled with more rage. “I spent all year
planning the traps, placing the thumbtacks, the cars, the
ornaments. I even gathered small crumbs of peanuts from the store
and hid them in the cookies because you told me peanuts make Santa
unhappy!” Ryan stomped his little foot right in a small puddle of
his father’s blood. His face flushed and little fists balled
tight.

Julie was frozen, her mind assaulted
by her little boy’s words—and actions. She temporarily froze,
unable to process the horrors that were being piled into her mind
and soul.

“
You and Dad always mess
things up. You always cheat me...” Ryan’s rant trailed off as the
gleam of presents caught his eye. The gleaming colors from the tree
reflected off a massive pile of gold and green wrapped gifts: his
gifts. Without another word or a thought of his parents, Ryan ran
down the steps. His father was in the way, so Ryan stepped on him,
his little blood-covered foot leaving a bright red mark upon Mark’s
white T-shirt. Julie reached up, her mind and senses still numb
from the horror of the night. She tried to feebly grab him, one
hand reaching up shakily as he passed by her. Ryan smacked it away
as one would an annoying bug.

He stared at the gifts, and the way
the wrapping paper reflected the light. Then he saw the note.
Reaching down, he saw the simple admission of defeat from Santa. A
maniacal laugh of triumph erupted from him as he danced wildly
around the tree—like a pagan of old. Christmas had become a joyous
time for him once again. Ryan began to tear into the gifts, the
sound of his mother’s weeping eventually brought her a slight
glance from Ryan. She always had to ruin things. He had finally
beaten Santa, and all she could do was cry. It was times like this
he wished he had a better family, one who truly cared about
him.

As his gaze turned back to his pile of
gifts, some still unopened, he spied the small pile of his father’s
gifts. Crawling over, he grabbed them, and dragged them over to his
pile, whispering cheerfully to himself as he did so, “Merry
Christmas to me, and to me a wonderful night.”

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
TERROR

CHAPTER 12

“
That was just
wrong
. I’m glad
Grandpa’s up next.” Nick said and stood up, wavering a
little.

“
Little shaky there,
Nicky?” Jack laughed.

“
Okay,” Dan said. “We had
an agreement. Go help your mother with dinner. That turkey is kind
of making me hungry too.”

“
What about you, Dad? Jack
asked, half-joking.

“
What about me?” Dad
looked up at him. His eyes were a bit glassy.

Jack shook his head and followed the
others to the kitchen.

Judy assigned each of them tasks and
turned to Grandpa, who was seated on a barstool at the counter.
“Everyone has their duties, Grandpa. Start the next
story.”