KRAMPUS
the
YULE LORD
Dedication
This one is for my wife and favorite Yuletide pixie, Laurielee
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Part I — Jesse
Chapter One — Santa Man
Chapter Two — The Santa Sack
Chapter Three — The General
Chapter Four — Devil Men
Chapter Five — Monsters
Part II — Krampus
Chapter Six — Hel
Chapter Seven — Naughty List
Chapter Eight — Ambush
Chapter Nine — Blood Bath
Chapter Ten — In the Bones
Chapter Eleven — Dark Arts
Part III — Yuletide
Chapter Twelve — Yule Cheer
Chapter Thirteen — Tweekers
Chapter Fourteen — Dark Spirits
Chapter Fifteen — Christmas Demon
Chapter Sixteen — Horton’s
Chapter Seventeen — God’s Wrath
Chapter Eighteen — God’s Will
Chapter Nineteen — Yuletide
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
About the Author
Also by Brom
Credit
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Santa Claus . . .
How vile your name upon my tongue. Like acid, hard to utter without spitting. Yet I find myself capable of speaking little else. It has become my malediction, my profane mantra.
Santa Claus . . . Santa Claus . . . Santa Claus.
That name, like you, like your Christmas and all its perversions, is a lie. But then you have always lived in a house of lies, and now that house has become a castle, a fortress. So many lies that you have forgotten the truth, forgotten who you are . . . forgotten your true name.
I have not forgotten.
I will always be here to remind you that it is not Santa Claus, nor is it Kris Kringle, or Father Christmas, or Sinterklaas, and it certainly is not Saint Nicholas. Santa Claus is but one more of your masquerades, one more brick in your fortress.
I will not speak your true name. No, not here. Not so long as I sit rotting in this black pit. To hear your name echo off the dead walls of this prison, why that . . . that would be a sound to drive one into true madness. That name must wait until I again see the wolves chase Sol and Mani across the heavens. A day that draws near; a fortnight perhaps, and your sorcery will at long last be broken, your chains will fall away and the winds of freedom will lead me to you.
I did not eat my own flesh as you had so merrily suggested. Madness did not take me, not even after sitting in this tomb for half a millennium. I did not perish, did not become food for the worms as you foretold. You should have known me better than that. You should have known I would never let that happen, not so long as I could remember your name, not so long as I had vengeance for company.
Santa Claus, my dear old friend, you are a thief, a traitor, a slanderer, a murderer, a liar, but worst of all you are a mockery of everything for which I stood.
You have sung your last ho, ho, ho, for I am coming for your head. For Odin, Loki, and all the fallen gods, for your treachery, for chaining me in this pit for five hundred years. But most of all I am coming to take back what is mine, to take back Yuletide. And with my foot upon your throat, I shall speak your name, your true name, and with death staring back at you, you will no longer be able to hide from your dark deeds, from the faces of all those you betrayed.
I, Krampus, Lord of Yule, son of Hel, bloodline of the great Loki, swear to cut your lying tongue from your mouth, your thieving hands from your wrists, and your jolly head from your neck.
PART I
JESSE
Chapter One
Santa Man
BOONE COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
CHRISTMAS MORNING, 2 A.M.
Jesse Burwell Walker prayed that his goddamn truck would make it through at least one more winter before rusting completely in two. The truck, a ’78 primer gray Ford F150, had been left to him by his father after the old man lost his long battle with the black lung. A guitar now hung in the gun rack and the new bumper sticker pasted across the rear window of the camper shell read WHAT WOULD HANK DO.
Snow-covered gravel crunched beneath Jesse’s tires as he pulled off Route 3 into the King’s Kastle mobile-home court. Jesse had turned twenty-six about a month ago, a little tall and a little lean, with dark hair and sideburns badly in need of a trim. He drummed his long fingers—good guitar-picking fingers—on the bottle of Wild Turkey cinched between his legs as he rolled by the mobile homes. He drove past a few faded blow-mold Santas and snowmen, then past Ned Burnett’s Styrofoam deer, the one Ned used for target practice. It hung upside down from his kid’s swing set, as though about to be gutted and dressed. Ned had attached a glowing red bulb to its nose. Jesse found that funny the first few times he’d seen it, but since Rudolf had been hanging there since Thanksgiving, the joke was wearing a mite thin. Jesse caught sight of a few sad tinsel trees illuminating a few sad living rooms, but mostly the trailers around King’s Kastle were dark—folks either off to cheerier locations, or simply not bothering. Jesse knew as well as anyone that times were tough all around Boone County, that not everyone had something to celebrate.
Old Millie Boggs’s double-wide, with its white picket fence and plastic potted plants, came into view as he crested the hill. Millie owned the King’s Kastle and once again she’d set up her plastic nativity scene between her drive and the garbage bin. Joseph had fallen over and Mary’s bulb was out, but the little baby Jesus glowed from within with what Jesse guessed to be a two-hundred-watt bulb, making the infant seem radioactive. Jesse drove by the little manger, down the hill, and pulled up next to a small trailer situated within a clump of pines.
Upon leasing the trailer to Jesse, Millie had described it as “the temporary rental,” because, she’d stressed, no one should be living in a cramped-up thing like that for too long. He’d assured her it would only be for a couple of weeks while he sorted things out with his wife, Linda.
That was nearly two years ago.
He switched off the engine and stared at the trailer. “Merry Christmas.” He unscrewed the whiskey’s cap and took a long swig. He wiped his mouth on the back of his jacket sleeve and raised the bottle toward the trailer. “On my way to not giving a shit.”
A single strand of Christmas lights ran along the roof line. Since he’d never bothered to take them down from the previous year, he’d only had to plug them in to join the season’s festivities. Only all the bulbs were burned out, with the exception of a lone red one just above the door. It blinked on, then off, on, and then off—beckoning him in. Jesse didn’t want to go in. Didn’t want to sit on his lumpy, blue-tick mattress and stare at the cheap wood paneling. He had a way of finding faces in the knots and grain of the veneer—sad faces, tortured ones. Inside, he couldn’t pretend, couldn’t hide from the fact that he was spending another Christmas by himself, and a man who spends Christmas by himself was indeed a man alone in the world.
Your wife sure as shit ain’t alone though. Is she?
“Stop it.”
Where’s she at, Jess? Where’s Linda?