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.
The 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.
The 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.”