“What is that?” Krampus asked, pointing below.
Jesse peered beneath them, but found only forest and great stretches of strip-mining.
Krampus drifted downward until they were flying along the rim of a vast land removal project. He stared at the devastated landscape, his face stricken, and Jesse realized that Krampus meant the miles of open earth and blasted mountaintops.
Krampus set the sleigh down upon a plateau overlooking the man-made crater. The faintest traces of dawn spread along the horizon, exposing the bald, angry scar upon the land. “Why, it goes on as far as one can see.” The Yule Lord’s brows tightened as though he was trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “Men did this?”
Jesse nodded. “Yeah, they did.”
“They did this on purpose?”
Jesse nodded.
Krampus fell silent. “Why would they destroy the forest, the mountains . . . the very land?”
“For the coal. They blast the tops off the mountains to get to the coal.”
Krampus shook his head, his face bewildered. “It is like cutting off one’s own arm to feed one’s self.”
Jesse had never really figured it that way, but yes, he thought that was as good a way of looking at it as any.
The Yule Lord’s shoulders slumped. “Soon there will be no place left for the spirits to dwell . . . the earth will become a soulless land . . . a place of ghosts, just like Asgard.” He touched his cheeks, his fingers sliding downward, contorting his face into a mask of despair. “Does mankind truly hate itself?” His voice dropped, barely a whisper. “How can one surmount such irreverence?”
Krampus looked away, stared into the salmon-colored glow growing on the horizon. “I believe it is enough for one night. Let us return.” He snapped the reins and up they went, heading down the valley, back toward Goodhope.
“LOOK!” ISABEL POINTED to a house coming up below them. “Is that a little girl?”
“Where?” Jesse asked.
“There. What’s she doing out all by herself this time of the morning?”
Jesse saw her standing in the snow in the middle of a large field. A house and a single-wide mobile home sat together farther up the hillside; the only homes Jesse could see for miles around.
Krampus dropped down to tree level, and the girl looked up at them as they flew over. Jesse thought she couldn’t be older than six or seven.
“Krampus,” Isabel said, and clutched his arm. “Please land.”
Vernon leaned forward. “If we’re putting this to a vote, count me against.”
Krampus didn’t appear to want to, either; he’d been silent since discovering the strip-mining. But he grunted and put the sleigh down between the girl and the house.
The girl watched them land, watched them climb out and walk down the slope toward her. She didn’t run, didn’t look scared at all, not even particularly surprised to see them. She wore a ragged flannel jacket much too large for her, with the hem of her nightgown poking out below. Her legs were bare to the cold from the knees down and Jesse realized she had only socks on her feet. She looked far too thin, shivering, dark circles under her eyes, her hair greasy and matted to her skull. She held a shovel, the tool looking huge in her small hands. Jesse could see a patch in the snow where she’d been trying to dig up the frozen earth.
Isabel bent down, took her hand. “Why, you’re freezing. When’s the last time you had something to eat?”
The little girl wiped her nose across the back of her arm and looked up at Krampus. “Are you Satan?”
“No, I am not. I am Krampus, the Yule Lord. And who might you be?”
“Have you come to take my daddy to Hell?”
Krampus shook his head. “No, child. Why do you speak so?”
She didn’t answer, just turned and headed up the hill, dragging that big shovel behind her. She left the shovel against the side of the house, climbed the steps onto the porch, and disappeared into the house.
“They’re cooking,” Chet said, pointing to a generator and several portable propane tanks sitting just outside of a basement window.
“Cooking?” Isabel said.
“Meth,” Jesse said.
She still didn’t appear to get it.
“Drugs,” Jesse added. “Bad drugs.” Jesse looked the place over, didn’t like what he saw. The field appeared not to have been tended in years, fall’s corn all dried up and still in the husks. Large sections of the vinyl siding had fallen off the house, lying in twisted heaps upon the ground, exposing the tar paper and weathered plywood beneath. Plastic sheets and tarps were duct-taped over the windows, and several had come loose and were flapping in the light wind. An overgrowth of dead weeds and blackberry vines from previous seasons pushed up against the house and tangled along the porch. The mobile home was set off from the house by about twenty yards. The blocks on one side had given way, and the trailer leaned to port like a listing ship, darkness peeking back at them through the broken windowpanes.
The place gave off a bad vibe, more than just neglect—something foul, and vile. Jesse couldn’t remember ever feeling anything quite like it. He wondered if it had anything to do with his heightened senses, with Krampus’s blood in his veins. Regardless, he didn’t particularly wish to go up there. He glanced over at Krampus and could see the Yule Lord felt it, too.
“Looks like it’s been a long spell since anyone gave much of a damn around here,” Jesse said.
“Tweekers,” Chet said, and spat. “Meth, crank, probably huffing, too. Y’know, whatever they can get their hands on. Bet my ass on it.”
“Now there’s a prize no one wants to win,” Jesse said.
Chet’s face soured. “Being a dickhead just comes naturally to you. Don’t it?”
“Someone needs to go see about that little girl,” Isabel said.
“We don’t need to be going up there,” Chet said. “Ain’t nothing good waiting up there. Folks that’s cooking is dangerous, folks that’s using is dangerous, folks doing both are about as much fun to be around as nitroglycerin.”
Isabel didn’t wait around to hear more; she headed up the slope on her own. They watched her climb the porch and enter the house.
“I’m telling you,” Chet said, “we got no business up there.”
Krampus let out a sigh. “It appears my little lion feels otherwise.” He started up after her. “Come.”
A dog crawled out from under the porch as they approached, shaking and skittish; Jesse could count every rib. Krampus rubbed its head and it wagged its tail. They skirted around a scorched recliner and a pile of burned blankets, and mounted the steps. The front door stood half-open, the house dark. Krampus entered and they all followed. Jesse noticed he wasn’t the only one on edge, both he and Vernon clutched the sleeping sand, and the Shawnee had slipped out their knives.
The dim morning glow filtered in through dingy shades, giving just enough light to see that the front room had caught fire at some point, leaving the paneling and most of the ceiling burned and blackened. The smell of damp, charred wood hung in the air. A man lay on a sofa against the far wall, half-covered in a blanket, his eyes heavy and bleary. With twitching hands, he scratched absently at the sores dotting his face, didn’t seem to even notice the pack of Yule demons staring at him.
Krampus stepped over, poked the man once in the ribs. The man looked up at the Yule Lord, seemed to focus on him for an instant. The man’s face twisted into a mask of terror; he moaned, rolled over, and pressed his face into the sofa.