Krampus: The Yule Lord (11 page)

A man dashed into the beams of Jesse’s headlights. The Santa man, eyes wild, teeth clenched in a fearsome grimace, carrying a sword and running directly for them.
“Hey!”
Jesse cried, and swerved, trying desperately not to hit the man. The Santa man swung the sword, striking the front of the truck, taking out the driver’s-side headlight. The blade raked down the side of the truck as they barreled past, sending up a shower of sparks. The Santa man spun away and ended up directly in the path of Dillard’s speeding cruiser. There came a tremendous wallop as the cruiser collided with the man, sending the vehicle veering away into the ditch and knocking the Santa man tumbling across the parking lot.

Jesse spun out onto the road, hit the brakes, looked back over his shoulder, hoping, praying, that he’d see Dillard’s brains splattered onto the windshield of his cruiser. It just seemed fair that if everything else had to go so completely wrong, maybe this at least could go his way. Jesse had seen what a deer could do to the front end of a car, but the front of Dillard’s cruiser was a step beyond that, more like what hitting a cow might do. He noticed the deployed airbag and his heart sank. “Dammit.”

“Is he dead?” the devil woman asked. “Is he?”

Jesse realized she was talking about the Santa man, not Dillard.

“No,” answered one of the devil men. “Don’t think so.”

Jesse scanned the parking lot, searching for a mangled body, was surprised to see the Santa man climb right back to his feet looking no worse for wear. The ravens squawked and swooped overhead. The Santa man turned, looking at something far up the road.

“They come,” the tall devil man said. “See . . . see them!”

Jesse saw two dark shapes galloping toward them. He had no idea what they could be. They looked like shaggy dogs, wolves maybe, only huge, nearly the size of bulls, less than a hundred yards out and closing in fast.

“Go!”
the woman shouted, they all did,
“Go! Go! Go!”

Jesse got the message; whatever those things were, he had no desire to meet them up close. He pressed the accelerator firmly to the floorboard and the truck took off. The V8 roared and pinged, as the speedometer crept up: twenty . . . thirty . . . forty.
“C’mon!”
he shouted at the old F150.
“C’mon, baby! You can do it!”

Chapter Five
Monsters

T
hey’d lost sight of the wolves at least ten miles back, yet all the devil men kept their eyes fixed on the road behind them, no one speaking as they headed south on Route 3, following the Coal River through the isolated hill country.

No one had killed him yet, so Jesse felt he just might have a chance of getting out of this scrape alive. “So,” Jesse said. “Where can I drop you and your friends off at?”

The she-devil studied him. The fire in her eyes had diminished, still holding their unnerving orange tint but not glowing as before. She pushed back the hood of her jacket, gave him a wry grin, and shook her head. Her hair was dark, matted, and greasy, cropped short, as if hacked away with a knife. Her gray skin with blotchy black patches made it difficult to gauge her age, but if Jesse had to guess he would’ve said somewhere in her late teens.

The window between the cab and the camper shell slid open and one of the devil men poked his head into the cab. He appeared to be older, his face heavily lined, late fifties perhaps, long, greasy hair and bristly, black beard. “We’ve lost them!”

“No,” corrected the devil man seated next to him. It was the tall one, one of the ones with horns and draped in bear hides. His skin, like that of the two horned monsters next to him, appeared to be covered in black paint or tar perhaps, as though he’d purposely tried to darken it. The tall devil man crouched over, trying not to bump his horns on the camper roof. “You will never lose them. Not so long as the ravens follow.” His speech was paced, a bit stilted; he sounded to Jesse like a Native American.

The woman rolled down her window; the cold wind buffeted the cab as she leaned her head out and scanned the night sky. She withdrew back in. “No sign of ’em. None that I could see no ways.”

“They are there,” the tall one said. “I feel them.”

“I don’t feel anything,” the bearded man said. “How can you be so sure?”

The tall man gave him a pitying look.

“Don’t give me that look. I hate that look.” The bearded man was silent a minute. “Well . . . what’re we going to do about them?”

“Do?” the woman said. “We got the sack. There’s only one thing we can do.”

“What?” the bearded man cried. “We’re just going to go back to the cave? But that’ll lead the monsters right to him. Not to mention right to us. Why, we’ll be
trapped!
”

“We got no choice,” she insisted. “That was his command.”

“Well, then we better hope Old Tall and Ugly can get unhooked before they catch up with us, or we’re all going to die horribly.”

The creatures all fell quiet, the lone wiper beating out a squeaky rhythm as they watched the slushy road slipping away behind them in the glow of the taillights. Jesse noted the one that had been shot holding his face, blood spilling out between his fingers. He didn’t think that one would be around for much longer. After seeing those wolves, he didn’t think any of them would. “So,” Jesse put in. “Given any thought as to where I should let you guys off?”

They ignored him.

“Are we even going the right way?” the woman asked.

“How the heck should I know,” the bearded devil replied.

“Well, how about you ask Makwa.”

The man’s face wrinkled up in distaste, but he did just that and a heated discussion broke out accompanied by an arsenal of animated hand-gestures. He leaned back through the window. “Yes, we seem to be going the right way.”

“You sure?” the woman asked.

“No, I’m not sure. But Big Chief Know-It-All sure seems to think so. And when was the last time he was wrong?”

The woman shrugged.

Makwa jabbed a finger into the cab, pointed ahead to a ridgeline barely visible in the night sky.

“Yeah, we got it,” the bearded man said.

“Hey, I know where we’re at,” the woman said. “We should be coming up on the road in about a mile then.” She looked at Jesse. “You got that? Turn up the next dirt road.”

“Okay, that’ll work. I’ll just drop you off there.”

“No, you’ll do no such a thing.” She looked at him sadly, her tone softening. “I’m mighty sorry, but you’re tied up in this now. We’re gonna need you to take us up the mountain as far as you can.”

“Well, sweetheart,” Jesse said. “I’m not really in the mood to go and get myself stuck up in them woods . . . not tonight. I’m gonna drop you guys off right here.”

She poked the pistol against his ribs. “I’m not really in the mood to shoot you either, but I will.”

Jesse gave her a quick, spiteful look.

“And my name’s not Sweetheart. It’s Isabel.” After a long moment, she asked, “And you, you got a name?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. It’s Jesse.”

“Well, Jesse, this here’s Vernon.”

The bearded devil smiled and stuck out his hand. “Good to make your acquaintance.” From the way he spoke, Jesse knew he wasn’t from around here, from somewhere up north maybe. Jesse looked at Vernon’s extended hand as though it were covered in spit.

Vernon’s smile withered and he withdrew his hand. “Yes, well . . . and this remarkably unrefined specimen here,” he gestured to the tall devil in the bear hide, “is Makwa. Beside him is Wipi, and the unfortunate gentleman with the bullet hole in his face is his brother, Nipi.”

Despite their appearance Jesse got the feeling that these creatures, or people, or whatever they might be, were more scared and desperate than menacing. On any account, they didn’t seem to harbor him any ill will. Still he knew what they were capable of, couldn’t get the image of Lynyrd’s slit throat out of his mind, but decided maybe they weren’t the murdering monsters he’d first thought. Either way, desperate people did dangerous things, and Jesse figured the sooner he got away, the better his chances of seeing another day.

“Just what are you guys supposed to be anyhow?”

“What’d you mean?” the girl asked.

“What’d you mean, what’d I mean? Are you werewolves, boogeymen, or just been out trick-or-treating?”

“Well,” she replied, irritated. “I ain’t any of those, thank you. I’m a person just like you.”

Jesse laughed and not very kindly. “No. No, you most certainly are not.”

“Krampus calls us Belsnickels,” Vernon put in. “You’ll have to ask him exactly what that means.” His tone turned bitter. “But any way you want to put it, it means we’re his servants . . . his slaves.”

“I got another idea,” Jesse said. “How about you let me out then? I’ll just hitch a ride out of here. Take my chances.”

Isabel shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jesse. But we can’t do that.”

“Why the hell not? I’m giving you my damn truck! What else do you need me for?”

No one answered.

“Well?”

“Can’t none of us drive very well.”

“What?” Jesse stared at her, then burst out laughing. “You gotta be shitting me.”

Isabel frowned. “I wasn’t but sixteen when I left home. And Mama didn’t own a car no how.”

“What about good old Vernon here, or them Injuns?”

Isabel smiled at that. “I’d like to see one of them Shawnee trying to drive. So long as I wasn’t riding with ’em that is. And I’m guessing the last thing Vernon drove was hitched up to a horse.”

Vernon sighed. “There weren’t very many automobiles about when I was still human.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well,” Vernon said. “We’re a bit older than we might seem. I was forty-nine when I started surveying this part of the country. Was working for the Fairmont Coal Company at that time. That was about 1910. And Isabel, we found her around—”

“It was the winter of seventy-one. That’ll put me somewhere in my fifties, I guess.” Jesse caught a note of sadness in her voice. He glanced over. She was staring out the window into the darkness. She certainly didn’t look in her fifties.

“That don’t add up,” Jesse said.

“I know it don’t,” Isabel said. “Not one bit. But that’s the truth of it. It’s Krampus . . . his magic that does it. And them Indians, hell, they been with Krampus nearly as long as he’s been stuck in the cave. Going on near five hundred years I’d say.”

Jesse noticed his fuel light was still on, wondered if he might be able to use that to his advantage. He thumped the fuel light. “ ’Bout out of fuel. Might should get some gas before we try and head up in the mountains.”

“We’ll make it,” Isabel said.

“You sound rather sure.”

“Just in my nature to be optimistic, I guess.”

“Yes,” Vernon said. “It’s very annoying. Me, I say too much optimism will get you killed.”

Makwa shoved his long arm into the cab. “There.”

Jesse slowed down, caught sight of a reflector, then found the mouth of a small dirt road. The turnoff was overgrown with brambles and looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. Jesse sat in the middle of the highway with the engine idling. “You got to be kidding?”

“Just turn.”

Jesse contemplated opening the door and running for it, then remembered how quick these creatures were. “Dammit,” Jesse said and pulled off the highway. The truck bottomed out in the ditch, the tail end making a terrible racket as it ground against the rocky grade. Branches scraped alongside the truck, the sound making Jesse’s teeth hurt. The road followed a steep ledge upward—hard, tense going with just the one headlight. The truck bounded along the icy, washed-out ruts, and Jesse took a certain pleasure in hearing the devil men’s heads hitting the roof of the camper. The trail—Jesse wouldn’t call it a road at this point—zigzagged up the incline, fording the same creek at least a dozen times. After about half an hour the road abruptly ended in a wall of fallen rocks.

“Pull over there,” Isabel said. “Beneath the trees.”

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

Jesse did, and the Belsnickels all scrambled out of the camper, Makwa carrying the Santa sack over his shoulder. Nipi, the one shot in the face, had tied a strip of cloth around his face, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

“Shut it off,” Isabel said to Jesse.

“What?”

“You’re coming with us.”

“Like hell I am!”

She reached over, shut the truck off, and took the keys.

“Hey!”

She put the keys in her jacket pocket along with his pistol, got out, and came round to his door. “You don’t want to be staying out here by yourself. Trust me.”

“No, that ain’t fair. We had a deal.”

“You’re right, it ain’t fair. Not any of it. No one knows that better than we do. But we need that truck. And if we leave you here you’ll get eaten. Then who’s gonna drive us back down this mountain?”

Jesse wasn’t big on the being eaten part at all.

She opened his door. “Don’t make me drag you.”

A distant caw came from somewhere far away. They all looked up.