Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (25 page)

"That's more like it," said the Tooth Fairy, pausing in the air above Frank McGinnis's grave. "Now I want you to read the words on this tombstone." She fingered the wet cold stone along the engraved X in XAVIER. "My spies tell me you like to read. Be a good girl and tell me what it says."

"Read it yourthelf!" said Wendy defiantly.

But the Tooth Fairy's fingers clenched like steel calipers around her cheeks and bore down. "Do I have to tear the words out of your mouth, young lady, or will you do as I say?" Wendy nearly fainted, but she managed to hang on until the hurtful fingers withdrew at last. "Now read!"

She lisped painfully through her father's name and the numerals engraved beneath. Born 1933. Died 1990. Knuckles of rain beat upon her skull. She wished Daddy were alive to rescue her. Or that she could die now, escape this cold and rain and torment, and be held by his strong arms forever.

"Now this part, the phrase below."

Wendy didn't need to look but she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Beloved huthband and father," she muttered, choking on the last word.

"Good girl," said the Tooth Fairy, who flew Wendy to the grave opposite her daddy's and sat her atop a fat blocky marker. "You understand what 'beloved father' means, I suppose? Well now, I'm going to show you why your mother called him 'beloved husband.'"

As Wendy watched, the Tooth Fairy beckoned toward the carefully tended mound with outstretched arms. The moist earth rumbled. Wendy heard slow scraping sounds that grew stronger and faster. Then a sharp wrenching. The earth sifted like dark wet flour beneath the incantatory hands of the Tooth Fairy, who cackled in triumph as she lifted free one gnarled grasping remnant of a hand, then another.

By the time her father's head emerged from the mound and his muddy eyes blinked open, Wendy had retreated far far inside.

*****

"And this," he said, "is where I sleep. Do you like the pretty straw?"

Snowball meowed.

"Yes, of course you could share all this—if you treat me right. Oh and just beyond my nice soft bed is the opening to the sleeping quarters of a very special friend of mine. Let's knock, shall we? Oh Petunia, we have guests. Are you decent? She says she is."

He stroked the pure white cat from head to raised rump. Petunia's room, as always, was dim and dank. But he sensed something new in the air. A whiff of jealousy, perhaps? He hoped not.

"Petunia, I'd like you to meet Snowball. Snowball, Petunia. That's right. Give her a good sniffing. She likes that. Now Snowball, I have a question to ask you."

The cat looked up quizzically.

"Do you think you could get into that same position for me?" He licked his lips. "Right now?"

*****

One moment Frank's mind was one with the Eternal Hum. The next, a strong pull from somewhere grabbed him off the line and stuffed him back into bones.

Like an angry surge of bees, a superhuman strength rushed through him. The pine lid splintered in his hands. Rising through churning clods of earth, he shut his eyes against the yielding mud and clawed upward until he felt . . . a hand. Two hands. They helped him rise. At last his head crowned out of the soil, and his shoulders followed. Cold sweet air. He tried to breathe it. In vain. Then he opened his eyes and saw his benefactress: naked but for a necklace of large white teeth; white of skin but muddied where she had touched him; pure-breasted and pure-thighed, pure everywhere.

A face that bewitched.

She had been talking to him for some time, but until she swam into focus all he heard was a soup of sound. As he regained language, he understood and obeyed. "That's right, lover boy. Lie back and let momma attend to your needs. My, my, you were a chubby one, weren't you?"

He managed a loud prolonged vowel, which he paid for in vicious hurt inside.

"Still plenty of you left, though. And I'm delighted to see you're mostly intact down here. Let me help you stiffen this right up. Will you do that for your lover? Will you go all hard, Frank darling?"

She smiled sardonically at him, kneading him where he couldn't see. But the ghost of old thickenings arose. He had forgotten what it was called, that piece of flesh her fingers sculpted. But its name didn't matter. Only the feeling of life resurgent mattered.

"Yes, that's the way momma likes it, Frank. Thick and juicy."

She mounted him. She closed around his muddy member and rode him, looming full-breasted and red-haired above. It pleased Frank immensely, despite the voracious hunger in her eyes.

But in an instant, all of that changed.

That was the moment when a high-pitched filament of sound, faint at first, grew louder and resolved itself into the insistent jingle of bells.

That was also the moment when Frank saw the wounded figure of a little girl seated upon a tombstone and knew at once that it was his Wendy, that she had been watching him, and that she was in terrible pain.

*****

The Easter Bunny held Snowball's front paws together and wrapped them tight round with baling wire. She tugged hard against it and
mrrrrrowl
'd up at him.

"Now, now, little one," he muttered. "You'll only hurt yourself that way. And that's my job, wouldn't you say? Just a little joke, precious. I want you to enjoy yourself too, stick around awhile, make this a habit for both of us." He found a gnarled branch he liked at times to whet his teeth on and wired her back legs far apart at its opposite ends.

Snowball's claws curved full out. But as she had no room to maneuver, he felt quite safe. Her yowls were loud and incessant now, the way his lazy Wyandotte might sound laying an abrupt succession of angular eggs.

Stooping, he placed her upon his bed of straw. Her hindquarters waggled violently back and forth. Her saucy target made "pay-me, pay-me" movements beneath her puffed-up tail. "Take it easy, sweetie pie. I'll try to make this as pleasant as I can for both of us."

His paws floated down his belly and found plenty to grab onto, lots of stuff to stiffen there.

*****

As they flew in over I-80, Santa brought them out of magic time. The stuck traffic below resumed its dark hurtle east and west. He assumed that Lucifer would alight at Rachel's home. To his surprise, they passed it by and headed south. From his mount's angle of descent, Santa sensed their journey was nearly over. He prayed to God they weren't too late.

(He-he-he, you can pray to God all you want, big brother, but you're the one who's responsible for this mess, and you're the who has to clean it up.)

So. You're back.

(Never left, really. Just laid low.)

Rachel told me I should fight you if you returned, fight you and triumph.

(That's crazy, bubba. I'm part of you. Hell, I am you. What you used to be before the big man in the sky turned you into Santa Claus. You know who I am, don't you? Why not just out and say it?)

Santa, staring down at the shiny roofs below, heard wet tires peel back pavement.
Pan
, he thought simply, letting it out for the first time.

(Ooh yes, that's right, that felt good. Let me hear it again.)

Pan. I used to be Pan. His head felt strangely airy all of a sudden.

(Feel that rush? That's yours truly, the old goat-god himself, feeling his oats. Trust me, bro, all right? Don't deny your deepest self.)

You got me into this mess, you and your lust!

(Hey, mea culpa, okay? What can I say? I like to fuck. We both do. Couple of old rutters from way back. But listen, I got the goods. You can feel the power knocking against your ribcage, right? Pounding in your pecker? Beating at your skull? I can give you the strength to best the bitch.)

I'll do that on my own, no help from you.

(Shit, man, you're trembling like a leaf. You want to fight fire you use fire, not milk and cookies.)

Santa was on a cusp. He knew it. He ought to refuse the intruder, to deny his Pan side. But doubt clouded his judgment, and:
So be it, then. Do your worst.
And the thing slipped into his heart, hardening it like a cock and turning his thoughts dark.

As they banked over tall trees, Wendy came first into view, pale and thin and white, a ghost perched upon a tombstone. Then, her father's gaping grave and Frank McGinnis's muddied corpse writhing under the Tooth Fairy, who glared defiance at Santa as he descended.

When Lucifer set hoof to ground not ten yards away, Santa bounded off and made for Wendy.

"Not so fast!" The Tooth Fairy pointed a finger at Wendy, who cried out in pain. Recalling how she had split open his skin in just this way, Santa halted. The dead man, a fat rotting caricature of Santa himself, pleaded for his daughter from the muddy depths of his throat.

"If you know what's good for you," boomed Santa, "you'll give me the girl." His tone struck him as odd indeed. Stentorian, commanding, ruthless, threatening mayhem. He didn't like it one bit.

(Good one! That got her goat!)

The Tooth Fairy looked momentarily stunned. Then she laughed, her buttocks thick with mud where she straddled the dead man's lower body. "Idle threats? That doesn't suit you, lover."

"Why are you doing this?" said Santa.

(Oh, come on, man. Let me through. Tell her you don't make idle threats, tell her you're going to whup her ass.)

"That's not at all like Santa Claus. He's so kind and generous. Everybody knows that."

"Please," he said. Lucifer gave a troubled whinny of protest. Santa took a step toward the awful copulation. "In the name of all that's decent, let me take Wendy away from this."

(Please and decent, right. Sure got her on the run now, don't ya? Must be time to break out those Pat Boone records, pound the last nail into her coffin.)

"And interrupt her lessons in lovemaking?" She cast a steely glance at Lucifer, then hurled it into Santa. "Would that be fair? To show our little lovely the joys a man and woman can share and not allow her to indulge in them herself?"

"You're insane."

She tossed her head back. "You betrayed me, you jolly bastard. I'm going back to my dear wife Anya, you said, be faithful, and fuck nobody else. Then you went upstairs and latched onto another tasty piece. Did you really believe I'd let you get away with that?"

"We fell in love," he pleaded. "What you and I had was never love. It was animal lust pure and simple. But that's over now. You've murdered my Rachel. Now you're killing her daughter, my daughter. Please. She's hurt. She's in shock. She's freezing to death. At least let me cover her with my coat." Santa tugged at his top button and took another step toward Wendy.

In a flash, the Tooth Fairy was upon him, twisting muddy fingers into the clean cloth of his suit, grinding her groin against his belly. "You want the girl, you can have her." With a wicked grin, she ground her cheekbones into Santa's face and tore at his beard. "You can have
her
—if I can have Lucifer."

"What?"

"You heard me. I want that large studly buck over there, the one with the big stiff furry handle poking up beneath his belly. Yes, that's what this bad little girl wants for Christmas, Santa. She wants Lucifer, the jolly old elf's favorite reindeer, ready to do her bidding for a year."

Santa pried her off and hurled her into the air. She floated like a wind-wraith before him. "That's out of the—" he began.

Enraged at his rebuff, the Tooth Fairy hauled back and blasted Santa's mouth with a thick gout of flame. It scoured the flesh off his upper palate and charbroiled his tongue.

At once, Santa gave Pan free rein. The goat-god pumped up Santa's body into a fighting machine, planting his boots like hoofs in the grave-ground, feeling the chthonic solidity root him deep in the earth.

He gave a blast of sound so bellicose that it ripped straight down the Tooth Fairy's front, whipped the skin off her like a winding sheet, and sent it flapping and fluttering into the night sky like an albino bat hellbent for heaven.

Undaunted, she oozed new covering out of her bloody flesh. Her necklace clacked as the skin re-wrapped her, clattering like mini-blinds. "So you want to play rough, eh?"

Her fingers danced about her head, pointing this way and that. Flowers lifted from grave after grave, flying straight into Santa's face. Into his lungs they flooded. They filled his belly, made it swell up. A button popped. Another.

Gathering his rage, Pan-Santa puked out the impacted petals and thorns, shaping the projectile with his mouth. It shot forth thin and hard and sharp as wire.

The weapon speared straight through her. It claimed several vertebrae, leaving her lower body dangling until self-healing regenerated what was missing or damaged. But she was too full of fight to wait for that. She flew to Frank's tombstone and grappled it from the earth, lifting the thick slab of granite and hurling it at Santa with all her might.

Frank's marker whumped into his body, driving him to the ground, snapping bones. Then healing erased the trauma, reshaped and knit his broken bones. Pan-Santa shoved the stone away and went for another, this one twice the size, twice the thickness, of Frank's.

By Zeus, he thought, he'd beat her at her own game.

Then Santa saw the inscription: TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED WIFE, ELLIE MARSH JEFFRIES. 1914-1987. MAY SHE REST IN PEACE.

Good God, what am I doing? This is sacred ground.

(Can it, Santa. We're doing what needs to be done.)

But this isn't right, I—

(Shut up and grab the fucking tombstone!)

But a loud whinny, close by, cut him short.

Lucifer nosed Santa's armpit from behind and threw him off-balance. Turning, he saw the eager eyes of his lead reindeer; the fiery filaments of his fur; his antlers swaying with the high winds of desire.

The Tooth Fairy laughed. "Out of the question, is it?" she said. "So do we strike a bargain, or do you feel like ripping the whole goddamn cemetery apart?"

Santa turned to his nemesis. There was no time to argue the point. Lucifer was willing. And Wendy might die if he didn't spirit her away quickly.