Rebecca Besser Read online

  Kally jumped into the sleigh and yelled, “Hi!” to the elf on her way bye.

  “You’ll have to forgive her,” Mandy said with a smile. “She’s a bit excited.”

  Solstice laughed. “It’s fine, really. We love the joy and excitement of children, it’s what makes the Magic of Christmas work, you know.”

  “Oh, yes,” Lyle said, wrapping his arm around his wife and walking toward the sleigh, “I remember the Magic of Christmas, don’t you, Kally?”

  “Yup!” she yelled and bounced in her seat; she’d again decided to ride in the front, this time with Solstice.

  They all laughed.

  Solstice climbed aboard after Lyle and Mandy. She picked up the reins and gave them a quick, but gently, snap over the young reindeer’s back, who was pulling the sleigh. They took off with a slight jerk and then were sliding over the packed-down snow with ease.

  Their guide was polite, cheerful, and very informative about the small village and how things were run. They asked many questions and got answers to every single one.

  Soon, the tour came to an end. The North Pole wasn’t a large place and it hadn’t taken them long to see all of it.

  “I have an idea,” Solstice said with an impish smile, leaning over toward Kally. “Why don’t we go find the perfect Christmas tree for your room!”

  “Could we?” Kally asked with a broad grin. She turned around, got up on her knees on the seat, and looked at her parents. “We’re gonna get a Christmas tree for our room!”

  Lyle and Mandy laughed.

  “We know,” Lyle said. “That’s going to be awesome, isn’t it?”

  Kally nodded energetically and turned back around, flopping back into her seat. “Where are we going to get the tree, Solstice?” she asked, looking around. “I don’t see any stores. . .”

  The elf laughed. “We’re going to go into the woods, pick one, and have one of the other elves cut it down and take it to your room. It will be there after you get back from having supper with Santa!” She brought the sleigh to a halt with the drawing back of the reins. “This looks like a good spot. What do you think?”

  “Yes!” Kally yelled and hopped off the sleigh.

  “Wait for us,” Mandy said. “We want to help too.” She slid from the sleigh and grabbed Kally’s hand and together they ran off through the woods laughing.

  “I think they’re having a good time,” Lyle said to Solstice as he too climbed out of the sled; she followed.

  “I think so too,” the elf said.

  Just then the frightened screams of Lyle’s wife and daughter rent the air. Fear stabbed from his ears to his heart. Without another word, he dashed off into the forest, following the tracks his family had made in the snow. He hadn’t quite made it all the way to their location when his wife’s screaming came to an abrupt halt and Kally’s intensified; he ran faster, slipping in his hast and almost falling face first into the snow. His hand shot out and grabbed a pine branch to help keep him on his feet; the rough nettles and bark cut into his palm, drawing blood, but he stayed on his feet.

  Rounding a clearing, he paused in shock at what he saw. Kally, crying out sharply as a zombie-elf bit into her neck nudged him back into action. In a glance, he noticed his wife lay prone in the snow – face down and bleeding. But it was Kally he was focused on, and the monster that was hurting her. Without thought to his own safety, he charged forward and kicked and punched the zombie-elf until it let go of his little girl.

  Frozen chunks of rotted flesh flew from the creature as Lyle continued to pummel it with gloved fists. Snap after, slushy, bloody, snap echoed through the clearing as he beat through the undead beings icy flesh to break bones, which were brittle from the cold. The zombie-elf was so decayed that Lyle couldn’t tell if it was male or female, and he didn’t care.

  The creature stopped moving after Lyle’s fists caved in its skull with his angry blows, but still he beat on it. The sounds of this family’s screams still echoed in his head, and the sight of their blood and limp bodies fuel his rage with hurt. Tears streamed down his face and he swore as his arms continued to pump and slam into the corpse beneath him.

  Solstice’s screams for him to stop went unheard until Lyle’s body stopped his actions with weariness and fatigue. He rolled off the pulverized zombie elf to lie in the snow and stare up into the bright blue sky, where fluffy white clouds drifted across his tear blurred line of vision.

  An elf’s face shimmered before his eyes and the world began to fade as darkness welcomed him with open arms of oblivion. . .

  ~

  Lyle regained consciousness slowly and found himself inside a brightly lit room. He blinked rapidly, trying to figure out where he was and why. It didn’t take long for the events in the forest to come back in a rush. With a moan, he closed his eyes again and tried to breathe around the ache in his chest. His wife and daughter were dead.

  Voices beyond the door, out in the corridor, slowly filtered through his misery.

  “What do you mean, ‘they woke up’?” a male voice hissed. “That’s not possible! They were dead!”

  “I know, I know,” a timid female voice replied, “but they did. The woman and the girl are both awake. They’re violent, and we’ve had to lock them in the morgue, but they’re both very much awake. . .and alive.”

  “I have to see this for myself,” the male voice said gruffly before both of the unseen entities moved farther away.

  Alive? Lyle thought. How can that be? He forced himself to sit up, and felt the weakness in his arms from the beating he’d given the zombie-elf. Wait, yes! That’s it! he continued to himself in his head. It was a zombie-elf! Does that mean. . .?

  He groaned, buried his head in his hands, and covered his face. “No, this can’t be happening. It would be better if they were dead.” Dragging his hands through his hair, he looked up at the ceiling, unaware of the tears flowing freely down his cheeks.

  Suddenly the door to the small room flew open. Lyle jumped and looked at the door, noticing a young female elf in a white and red uniform, who looked like a nurse. Glancing away from her smiling face, he looked at the room he was in for the first time, noticing he was in a hospital.

  “How are you feeling?” the nurse asked, coming forward. “Solstice is quite worried about you and wanted to stay, but she had to take a search party out to the forest and make sure there were no more monsters lurking about.”

  Lyle didn’t answer, he just looked at her and blinked, thinking, Did she really just ask me how I am? How the hell does she think I am?! My family was just killed!

  She frowned at him, and then her face lit with realization. “I’m so sorry. . .” she said. “I didn’t think. You must be feeling horrible about your family and everything. I should tell you though, that I don’t think they’re dead; I heard someone say they woke up! Isn’t that marvelous?”

  Again, he didn’t answer, just raised an eyebrow and looked at her with a crooked, sardonic grin.

  The door opened again, to admit a male elf with a clipboard in one hand and a stern expression on his face. He was wearing a white and green lab coat and the words DOCTOR GLINT were emboldened on his candy cane name tag.

  “Ah,” he said, “I see you’re awake. How are your arms?”

  Lyle looked down and shrugged. “Sore.”

  “It’s to be expected,” Dr. Glint said, glancing down at his clipboard and then around the room. “I really don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it. Your wife and daughter were dead, but have reanimated on their own. We are attributing it to the virus that ran ramped through the elf population last year around this time. We believe the elf who attacked them was a carrier and spread the disease to them when it bit them.”

  “Zombies,” Lyle said, with a harsh laugh.

  “Excuse me?” Dr. Glint said, squinting up at him. “What do you mean by ‘zombies’?”

  “My wife and daughter are now zombies,” Lyle snapped, looking straight at the doctor defian
tly. “Isn’t that what you’re telling me? I mean, they’re the walking dead and crave flesh, and anyone they bite will become one of them. They’re zombies!” He ended, standing and yelling.

  “Now, Lyle,” Dr. Glint said, raising his hands to try to calm and placate his patient, “you need to calm down. Getting all excited won’t help the situation.”

  Lyle barked out a harsh laugh. “You got that right, doc!”

  The three of them stood in silence for long, tense moments, before Lyle spoke again.

  “I want to see them.”

  Dr. Glint stared at him for a moment and then nodded. He turned to the nurse.

  “Take Lyle to see his wife and daughter.”

  “What?” she squeaked. “I can’t. . .”

  The doctor huffed. “You don’t have to go in or anything, just take the man down and let him look through the window, so he can see his family for himself.”

  The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but quickly shut it and nodded. She glanced at Lyle, sighed, and turned, heading out the door. He followed without even a glance back at the doctor, who stood in the middle of the hospital exam room, staring down at his chart with a frown.

  He struggled to keep up with the little nurse as they hurriedly twisted and turned around many passageways, finally coming to a flight of stairs, leading down into the dimly lit basement.

  “Almost there,” she said over her shoulder, fidgeting with her uniform nervously.

  Lyle and the nurse came to a stop outside a room at the end of the final corridor. The door was locked and barricaded with a heavy desk. The plaque on the door read: MORGUE.

  Stepping cautiously forward, Lyle forced himself to look through the small circular glass window; it had been swirled to make it look like a piece of candy, but he could still see through it clearly. Beyond the transparent boundary, he beheld his family. They were huddled together over a small body. He accidentally bumped the desk and it, in turn, bumped the door; the noise got Mandy and Kally’s attention. Their heads spun in the direction of the door and he saw what they’d been doing. They were eating the body of a dead elf, who’d been with them in the morgue when they’d turned.

  He gagged, seeing bits of muscle and other bloody tissue dangling from their chewing mouths. It was a horrific scene to behold. He stepped back quickly and they went back to eating.

  “I think you should go back to your room at Santa’s house and try to rest,” the nurse said, coming forward and laying her hand on his arm gently. “He wants to talk to you, but was called away for another emergency.”

  Lyle, shell shocked and unable to process everything that was going on, let the nurse guide him to the entrance of the hospital, where another elf met them and guided him through the busy lanes of the North Pole, back to Santa’s house, and even inside to his room.

  Once the door closed behind him with a dull thunk, Lyle fell to his knees and leaned back against the door. He stayed that way for a long time, staring off into nothing, trying to process what had happened to his life, in what seemed like mere seconds.

  ~

  Someone knocking on the door, right above his head, some time later brought Lyle back to reality.

  Slowly turning and using the door to support himself, he stood on stiff legs to open the door. He wasn’t really in the mood for company, but he didn’t know if someone might be bringing news about his wife and daughter.

  He was shocked to see Santa standing outside the door, frowning with concern.

  “Hello, Lyle,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t greet you earlier, and I’m even more sorry that I couldn’t be with you after your family was attacked. It disturbs me greatly. May I come in?”

  Lyle nodded and stepped back, opening the door wider to allow the big man admittance. He closed the door after him and rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the floor and around the room, not really knowing what to say.

  Santa took a seat on a chair sitting in the corner of the room and motioned to the second. Lyle walked briskly over and sat down, still not looking at his guest.

  “I know things are hard for you, Lyle,” Santa said. “But I’ve come to help you try and figure things out. There is hope. . . You did read the story with Kallalaya that I sent you, didn’t you?”

  Frowning, Lyle nodded.

  “So you know that I too was one of these undead. . .creatures, and there can be something done about it?”

  With the light of hope in his eyes for the first time since the attack, Lyle looked up and grinned. “You really think there’s something we can do for them?”

  “But, of course,” Santa said and laughed in his ‘ho, ho, ho’ manner. “You are, after all, at the North Pole where the Magic of Christmas is the strongest. We just have to figure out what the right recipe of that magic is for your family.”

  “So,” Lyle said slowly, “you think I can just go give them a hug and tell them Merry Christmas and they’ll be good as new?”

  Santa laughed again. “No, no! I don’t think you should do that. Their teeth look dangerous and they appear quite mean. I peeked in on them before coming to see you.” He winked at Lyle and smiled. “I think they’ll need your love to bring the Magic of Christmas to them. You see. . . I don’t think it was the young elf’s hug that broke the spell for me last year. I think it was the gift of caring. I was depressed, to be honest. Christmas seemed to be falling apart and I didn’t feel I was doing the job, so to speak, of keeping everything together. The girl brought me hope with her gift and that’s what enabled the Magic of Christmas to shine through the cursed disease and heal me.”

  “Oh,” Lyle said, frowning down at his hands, which he held clasped between his knees so tightly that his knuckles were white. “How will I ever be able to do that?”

  “I don’t know, Lyle,” Santa said, sitting forward with a solemn expression. “That’s something, I believe, you’ll have to discover for yourself, before it’s too late.”

  “Before it’s too late?” Lyle asked, lifting his eyes to meet Santa’s. “What do you mean, before it’s too late?”

  Sighing, Santa looked directly back at Lyle. “If you don’t do it before I leave on Christmas Eve to deliver gifts, I fear you’ll have to wait an entire year for the Magic of Christmas to be strong enough to heal them. It’s the strongest right before, and during the time when the children of the world open their presents, and that’s when you need to make your move. Do you understand?”

  Lyle nodded and rubbed his face with his hands. “How am I supposed to figure it out? Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so I have less than two days!”

  Santa smiled, patted Lyle’s knee, and stood. “I think you should rest tonight and let yourself think. Tomorrow, we’ll tackle this task together. I’ve let Hammond know that I would be occupied with this mess and that he would be in charge of preparing everything for the grand delivery.” He walked over to the door and opened it.

  Jumping to his feet, Lyle dashed over to the doorway in a panic. “I have to try now. I can’t waste any time!”

  Gently, Santa placed his hand on Lyle’s shoulder and looked at him. “You’re fatigued. Your brain needs the rest, or else you won’t be able to think straight, and you must, Lyle, be able to think straight – for their sakes, as well as your own. Sleep and see what the world brings tomorrow. It’ll be a magical day!”

  With that, Santa left the room, closing the door behind himself. Lyle stood where he was, thinking, for a long time. Finally, as long shadows crept across the floor of his room as the outside world grew darker with night, he climbed into bed, and surprisingly, he slept.

  ~

  Bright and early the next morning, Lyle was up and out of bed. He took a quick shower and dressed for an action-packed day. For some reason, a couple of things Santa had said kept rotating through his brain: ‘. . .the gift of caring. . .’; ‘. . .with her gift. . .’. He couldn’t stop thinking that maybe gifts were the key. Maybe he needed to find the right ones to give his wife and daughter and it them the
Magic of Christmas would do its job. But, as before, he was stuck with the dilemma of figuring out what the perfect gifts would be. Both of them had everything they could ever want; he hoped Santa might have some ideas.

  Rushing out of his room, Lyle paused in the hall, realizing he had no idea where to go. To his right, a little ways down the hall, he spotted the stairs and figured going down them would be his best bet. With his renewed energy, his appetite returned as well and his stomach growled loudly as the rich aroma of cooking food floated to him on the air as he descended the stairs. After that, he let his nose guide him to the kitchen.

  He was welcomed in by a plump, short elf in an apron. She was cooking up a huge breakfast and soon had a heaping, steaming plate of food in front of him. She also promised Santa would be down shortly, as he’d never missed one of her breakfasts yet.

  Lyle laughed and ate. He was glad to have some time to himself to think about what he wanted to say to Santa. The solution was going to be complicated and he hoped they would be able to share ideas and resolve the matter quickly.

  Santa arrived in the kitchen with a ‘ho, ho, ho’ that made the cook break into a giggle fit. She hurriedly started making him a plate of food and sat it on the table while he and Lyle greeted each other.