“What about good old Vernon here, or them Injuns?”
Isabel smiled at that. “I’d like to see one of them Shawnee trying to drive. So long as I wasn’t riding with ’em that is. And I’m guessing the last thing Vernon drove was hitched up to a horse.”
Vernon sighed. “There weren’t very many automobiles about when I was still human.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well,” Vernon said. “We’re a bit older than we might seem. I was forty-nine when I started surveying this part of the country. Was working for the Fairmont Coal Company at that time. That was about 1910. And Isabel, we found her around—”
“It was the winter of seventy-one. That’ll put me somewhere in my fifties, I guess.” Jesse caught a note of sadness in her voice. He glanced over. She was staring out the window into the darkness. She certainly didn’t look in her fifties.
“That don’t add up,” Jesse said.
“I know it don’t,” Isabel said. “Not one bit. But that’s the truth of it. It’s Krampus . . . his magic that does it. And them Indians, hell, they been with Krampus nearly as long as he’s been stuck in the cave. Going on near five hundred years I’d say.”
Jesse noticed his fuel light was still on, wondered if he might be able to use that to his advantage. He thumped the fuel light. “ ’Bout out of fuel. Might should get some gas before we try and head up in the mountains.”
“We’ll make it,” Isabel said.
“You sound rather sure.”
“Just in my nature to be optimistic, I guess.”
“Yes,” Vernon said. “It’s very annoying. Me, I say too much optimism will get you killed.”
Makwa shoved his long arm into the cab. “There.”
Jesse slowed down, caught sight of a reflector, then found the mouth of a small dirt road. The turnoff was overgrown with brambles and looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. Jesse sat in the middle of the highway with the engine idling. “You got to be kidding?”
“Just turn.”
Jesse contemplated opening the door and running for it, then remembered how quick these creatures were. “Dammit,” Jesse said and pulled off the highway. The truck bottomed out in the ditch, the tail end making a terrible racket as it ground against the rocky grade. Branches scraped alongside the truck, the sound making Jesse’s teeth hurt. The road followed a steep ledge upward—hard, tense going with just the one headlight. The truck bounded along the icy, washed-out ruts, and Jesse took a certain pleasure in hearing the devil men’s heads hitting the roof of the camper. The trail—Jesse wouldn’t call it a road at this point—zigzagged up the incline, fording the same creek at least a dozen times. After about half an hour the road abruptly ended in a wall of fallen rocks.
“Pull over there,” Isabel said. “Beneath the trees.”
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
Jesse did, and the Belsnickels all scrambled out of the camper, Makwa carrying the Santa sack over his shoulder. Nipi, the one shot in the face, had tied a strip of cloth around his face, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
“Shut it off,” Isabel said to Jesse.
“What?”
“You’re coming with us.”
“Like hell I am!”
She reached over, shut the truck off, and took the keys.
“Hey!”
She put the keys in her jacket pocket along with his pistol, got out, and came round to his door. “You don’t want to be staying out here by yourself. Trust me.”
“No, that ain’t fair. We had a deal.”
“You’re right, it ain’t fair. Not any of it. No one knows that better than we do. But we need that truck. And if we leave you here you’ll get eaten. Then who’s gonna drive us back down this mountain?”
Jesse wasn’t big on the being eaten part at all.
She opened his door. “Don’t make me drag you.”
A distant caw came from somewhere far away. They all looked up.
“We need to hurry,” Vernon urged.
“Fuck!” Jesse said, but shut off the light and got out of the truck.
The Belsnickels headed up the heavily wooded slope at a fast jog. Isabel pushed Jesse along after them. “You know what’s after us, Jesse. Do your best to keep up. You hear?”
Jesse heard the cawing from somewhere far above them, heard the drumming in his chest, and wondered if he’d ever see Abigail again.
JESSE STUMBLED ALONG, clutching his side. The cold air seared his throat, his thighs burned, yet his fingers were numb from the cold. The hole in his hand throbbed. They’d been marching, climbing, and running up the mountainside for what Jesse guessed to be over half an hour. Isabel waited for him at the top of the trail. The rest of the Belsnickels were no longer in sight, had darted off as though unbothered by the cold and icy ground, three of them not even wearing shoes.
Jesse caught up with Isabel and stopped. He leaned heavily against a tree, gasping for air.
“Jesse,” Isabel said. “We gotta keep moving.”
Jesse shook his head, spat repeatedly, trying to clear the burn out of his throat. “I can’t.”
“Just a bit farther.”
“Tell you what,” he gasped. “Just leave me here for the wolves. I’d actually prefer to be eaten at this point.”
She shook her head and managed a half smile. “Don’t make me carry you.” She grabbed his arm and tugged him along. She might be small but he could feel her strength, felt she really could carry him if she had to.
A lone caw echoed through the trees. It sounded far away, farther down the hill perhaps. Jesse glanced up, but couldn’t see anything through the dense spruce limbs.
“I think maybe we’ve lost ’em,” Isabel said.
“You already told me you were an optimist. I don’t trust optimists.”
They slid down a slight incline into a ravine. She pointed ahead. “There.”
Jesse could just make out a cluster of boulders at the base of a cliff.
“Just where are you taking me?”
“You should be fine.”
“Should be? What does that mean?”
“Just be careful what you say. Don’t upset him.”
“You mean the Grumpus guy?”
“It’s Krampus.”
“Just who’s this—”
Isabel put a finger up. “Enough.” She gave him a tug, led him into a recess between the boulders. They stooped down and entered a narrow cave. She guided him toward a faint flicker of light near the rear of the cavern. They stopped before a shaft. Jesse peered down, wrinkled his nose—it smelled of something dead, of decay, of a caged beast living in its own filth. A howl echoed up the shaft. It didn’t sound like man or beast. Jesse took a step back, shaking his head. “No way.”
Isabel grabbed his arm. “Jesse, there’s no choice here.” All the lightness had left her voice, what remained was cold and stern. Her eyes glowed, she looked wicked—like a devil—and Jesse knew now that she was leading him into a den of devils.
Jesse shook his arm loose, gave her a damning look, and started down. The flickering light below illuminated the shaft just enough that he could pick his way down the stones without falling to his death. A moment later, his foot hit the black sooty dirt. He turned and froze.
It was a cavern, not much larger than a standard living room, the floor littered with liquor bottles, bones, animal hides, and charred wood. Wads of blankets and hay nestled in the back recesses. Piles of newspapers and books were stacked nearly to the ceiling. Candles and oil lamps perched on every ledge and nook. There hung a large, yellowing map of the earth with what looked to Jesse like astrological symbols, charts, and lines plotted out in charcoal across the continents. Pictures of Santa Claus covered the soot-stained walls: newspaper clippings, magazine ads, children’s books . . . and every single one had Santa’s eyes poked out.