Defy the Dark (23 page)

“Um . . . why?” Derision saturates my voice. “I've seen his picture in the freaking travel brochures. A cute comic of a red, furry monster with horns, shaming the naughty kids. Like Elmo on speed.”

“The Krampus isn't for kids.” Kit sounds more like a nanny than a bartender.

“Grown-ups only, huh?” Henry's grin goes wicked, and his fingertips go lower over Elke's sweater.

“If he comes looking for you, you might end up stuffed in his sack,” Button Nose says. “So he can take you home and have you for dinner.”

“Unless you grab his sack,” I say.

Henry grins. “That's what she said.”

Henry is three shades of buzzed, and these people are either total nutters or they've breathed the mountain air too long.

Or they're messing with us.

I try to meet Henry's eyes for affirmation, but he's busy staring into the bottom of his empty beer glass. He's drinking like a dehydrated fish.

Elke takes Henry's glass and refills it. “The tourist industry plays it off as fun in those brochures on purpose. They want to encourage people to show up and participate.”

“It's better for the locals if tourists are available. Better chance for survival.” Kit's voice is exaggerated and dramatic, and the tense moment passes as we all laugh.

Definitely messing with us.

A murmur starts at the front of the bar.

It's minimal at first, just voices, but it grows louder and louder, morphing into screaming laughter and drunken shouting. Kit stands and grabs my hand.

“What are you doing?” I clamber off the stool.

“Krampus is walking. Come on!”

 

H
enry and the girls follow us out of the bar. Henry's unsteady—he's not a drinker at all—and he puts his arms around the necks of both girls to stand up straight.

The cold air stings as Kit pulls me into the crowd. I follow him, crunching through the snow, laughing at the prospect of adventure. We make our way to the front. Monsters are everywhere.

Kind of like
Sesame Street Gone Wild.

There are red fluffy ones, blue scraggly ones. There are some who remind me of the beasts from
Where the Wild Things Are
, and others that look like something my cat might throw up.

None of them are scary, and none of them are carrying sacks.

They mostly just dance around and play hide-and-seek and chase with the children on the street.

“Perfectly harmless, right?” Kit asks, pulling me against his chest. He leans down, and I'm certain he's going to kiss me.

Henry shouts my name from across the street. I smile regretfully and pull away from Kit. He looks disappointed.

I make my way through the crowd to Henry and the girls. Kit is behind me, his hands on my waist, like we're doing the bunny hop. He's been touching me since he came from behind the bar. I thought the British were supposed to be standoffish.

Henry's mouth is set in a thin line of determination, and he has beads of sweat over his upper lip.

“What's wrong?” I ask. “Sick?”

“Drunk. And real sad about it.” I look in the direction he's pointing.

It's Ms. Belcher, our toughest chaperone, and she's fifteen feet away. “We need to get back to the hotel,” I say.

Kit overhears. “You can't leave. We barely got to talk at all.”

The way he's staring at my lips suggests that wasn't all we didn't get to do.

“We're here for a week.” Henry is green. Lost opportunity or not, if Henry blows groceries in front of Belcher, we'll be on the first plane back home.

“Promise you'll come back tomorrow night.” Kit won't let my hand go. The touching thing feels weird all of a sudden. “You'll have to get masks so you can run with us.”

“We'll be back. We'll find masks.” Desperation makes me blurt out the promise. Belcher is getting closer and closer, and now Coach Smith is with her. I pull away from Kit and push past Elke and Button Nose. “We have to go.”

We dodge in and out of the crowd, me pulling Henry along, and he groans. The smell of alcohol on everyone's breath is enough to make me nauseated. I almost feel sorry for him.

I barely get Henry behind the back wall of the pub before he loses it.

“Wow,” I say. “This is almost as gross as the Sixth Grade Plague of Puke. Remember? I had to go to the hospital to get intravenous fluids.”

“I gave you a stuffed bear.” Henry leans against the building and swipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

I push his sweaty hair into his stupid hat so it's out of his face. “Come to think of it, its fur looked a lot like one of the Krampus impersonators.”

I hear a noise and look over my shoulder. What if Belcher followed us?

If so, she is about to get eyeful or a shoe full.

Henry heaves again, and I pat his back in the dark while saying a silent prayer of thanks for a quick escape and my cast-iron stomach. Because no matter how you feel about someone, puking is gross.

“Thanks, Bex.”

“Anytime, Henry.”

We stay behind the building until Henry is empty and the teachers are on their way back to the Edelweiss.

The whole time, my skin tingles with the sense that someone, somewhere, is watching us.

 

T
he next afternoon, Henry shovels in potatoes and sausage like last night was nothing but a nightmare. “We have to go buy masks.”

“Why?”

“For tonight.” He picks up his milk and chugs.

So gross.

We're the last people at the lunch buffet. Everyone else has already hit the slopes. Twice. “After last night, I'm perfectly happy to spend the afternoon in the lobby and drink hot chocolate.”

“Fine.” Henry leans back, rubbing his stomach. Frustratingly enough, after everything he's put away, it's still flat—even slightly rippled—under his shirt. “You drink hot chocolate; I'll hang out with the staff. I bet there's a storeroom around here that's empty for most of the day.”

I stare at him. “Elke?”

“Do you have another suggestion?” He stares back.

“What's going on here?” I feel the need to clear the air. “Seems like last night, you were touching her just to piss me off.”

“And
you
were doing the same thing with Kit.” Henry bats his eyelashes and picks up another doughnut.

I wait until he takes a bite to answer. “Maybe we should touch each other instead of strangers.”

He chokes. It's what I was aiming for, but I didn't expect him to turn blue. Once I'm sure his windpipe is clear, I sit back down.

“I tried touching you once, Bex. You remember how that turned out.”

“So? You know I laugh when I'm nervous.” I want to giggle now.

“I thought you were laughing at me.”

“Maybe you thought wrong.”

“Well”—Henry's tone reminds me of the one he used to use when I took the last red ice pop or piece of bubble gum—“you never asked me to try again.”

I deadpan: “Oh, please, Henry. Lean over here and lay one on me. Wait, let me grab a change of unders first.”

He blinks.

“Anyway, it's not like Cindy Evans wasn't ready to step in and play peekaboo with you once I was out of the romantic picture.”

“Ahhh. Good old Cindy Evans.”

I throw down my napkin, stand up, and push in my chair. Broaching the subject is obviously a bad idea or at least one we're not ready for yet. “Are you going with me?”

“Where?”

“To buy a mask.” I turn on my heel. “I'll ask the concierge where we can find them.”

Because whether I want to go back to the pub tonight or not, no way in hell am I leaving him alone with Elke.

 

T
he faint scent of gasoline and oil slips from between the door and the threshold of the woodworking shop. Through the window I see chain saws lined up carefully on a table, three rows of three across.

“That's a lot of chain saws.”

“That's a pretty impressive display of knives, too.” Henry nods to several on a table beside a half-carved mask.

“Don't worry,” a deep voice says from behind us. The man it belongs to has a scruffy red beard and splinters of wood caught in the waffle weave of his thermal shirt. “I only use them to carve masks. Not to disassemble innocent American tourists.”

“That's . . . reassuring.” Henry's statement is more like a question.

“Can I help you?” The man has the definite accent of someone who's used to speaking English to tourists. Formal and precise.

“We were looking for masks. For the Krampus walk.” Henry hitches his thumb in the direction of the main road. “The concierge at the Edelweiss told us to ask for Wilhelm.”

“That's me, and I have plenty.”

We step inside. Masks cover every wall.

Some have horns that extend three feet on each side. Others have teeth like industrial-sized needles, and long, curving tongues. Painted blood, so glossy it looks wet, drips from upturned lips.

Where did Elmo go?

There isn't one wall space in the entire room absent of a mask, and there isn't one mask that features anything resembling a smile.

“I wouldn't want to come in here at night,” I say, breathing through the words. “This is enough to fuel a lifetime of bad dreams.”

“Krampus masks,” Wilhelm says, smiling, “are a specialty of our village.”

“I thought Krampus was cute.” I shiver, and try to avoid looking at the masks with the longest bloody tongues and biggest oversized horns. “These don't look anything like what we saw last night.”

“Krampus is whatever you make him.” Wilhelm picks up a finished mask. “This is carved from
windbuchen
beech from the Black Forest. Ram horns from one of the most fertile flocks our valley has known, and stained with his blood. Special order.”

He puts it down when I shudder.

“What were you told about the Krampus?” he asks.

We give him the rundown of our convo and personal experience last night.

“No one mentioned that Krampus predates Christianity?” Wilhelm picks up a knife and a sharpening stone. “That some believe he's a demon who feeds on human souls?”

“Nope,” Henry says, staring at the knife. I feel him tense beside me. “They left that part out.”

“Good then.” Wilhelm laughs. “It's not anything to worry about. Some people go too far. And it's bad for my business.”

“Right.” Henry nods. “Business.”

“It's almost dark.” Wilhelm looks through the open door in the direction of the market and begins running the edge of the knife against the stone. “The Krampus walk will begin soon. Last night's walk was mother's milk, for children. Tonight will be made of mead and meat.”

“We're supposed to meet some people,” Henry says, taking a step toward the door. “In the village. So. We should go.”

“If you're going to play, did you want a mask?” Wilhelm asks, gesturing toward his morbid collection with the point of his newly sharpened knife.

“Thanks for the offer, sir,” Henry says. “But I don't think so. Not one of these.”

 

“C
reepy mask seller is creepy.” Henry's walking too fast for me to keep up.

“Your legs are longer than mine. Slow down.” I catch him and tuck my hand in the crook of his arm.

“Did the concierge send us there as a joke? I feel like I'm in a horror movie.” He tightens his arm around mine and imitates a movie trailer voice-over. “Innocent tourists led to the slaughter in a snowbound paradise. The demon must be fed! Rated R for sexual situations and nudity.”

“You wish.”

“Yes, I do.”

I let go of his arm, and we crest the hill that leads to the pub just as the sun sinks behind the mountains.

We step into the warmth to find it more crowded than the night before. Several people have masks, but nothing like what we saw at the shop today. Less demon from hell, more Oscar the Grouch.

There's a girl behind the bar instead of Kit. I think he's bailed on me until he and Elke walk through the front door. Button Nose is missing.

“Hey! Where's your friend?” I ask.

“Hi.” Kit slides his arm around my waist and pulls me close to his side. “She didn't want to be a tagalong.”

I nod and put a half inch of space between us. Fifth wheel is always a bummer, but her absence has left us in the most awkward situation: an unintended double date.

We head toward the same table as the night before. Elke must be a regular, because even though the place is packed, the booth is empty. We're getting ready to sit when the murmur starts at the front of the pub.

The sounds are more menacing tonight. The crowd is a little slower to move toward the door, and some don't get up at all. Kit and Elke have an easy task as they lead us outside.

The masks we saw at Wilhelm's shop are baby toys compared to what we see now.

There are at least twenty Krampus trolling the crowd, wielding whips as well as switches. They have heavy chains, too, and they slam them repeatedly against the cobblestone streets.

A lone, piercing howl, full of malice, bounces off the sides of the dark stone exteriors of the buildings in the town center. I move closer to Kit. I really want to be close to Henry.

The crowd dances around the monsters in spite of the terrifying masks, laughing, flirting, even bending over to receive spankings from switches. I don't understand the lack of terror. The people in the street must be loaded.

“This looks nothing like the brochure,” I yell to Kit over the crowd. “Nothing like last night at all.”

“No,” Kit yells back, holding on to my arm tightly as we move toward the street. “And this isn't even the real thing. Krampus uses the walk as a distraction to pick off one or two victims for his dinner.”