The Doom That Came to Christmas, Part 7
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be serializing my Christmas horror story, The Doom That Came to Christmas. I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share!
The sky, red, like the raging sanguine sea.
The horizon line, a scar of bubbled and blistered flesh.
Terrible undulating shapes, ever-changing, swimming in the blood-sea, undulating in the sky, erupting from the rubble-strewn ground.
From everywhere, screaming.
Not the screams of the living.
The screams of ghosts.
***
Spinning through the air from above, an axe struck Marcy in the face.
Not her face.
In the mask that was only just beginning to adhere to her skin.
Marcy fell backward, sprawling on her ass on the bloody street. Her nose throbbed, probably broken, and blood gushed down over her mouth and chin. She blinked again, this time as if waking from a dream.
But surely she was still dreaming.
Because she saw a sleigh, pulled by flying reindeer, streak across the sky.
Three tiny figures in green—Thistlebud, Rosemary, and Deerspigot—jumped out of the sleigh, plummeting toward the street. They landed, each of them, on different masked figures, pummeling them with their feet, knocking them flat.
Thistlebud bounced to his axe, snatching it up as masked creatures closed in around him, spinning in place, swinging the axe with one hand, chopping masked minion after masked minion to the ground.
Nyarlathotep looked to the sky and shrieked in rage. Reaching out blindly with its tentacles, it grabbed up masked minion after masked minion and hurled them like flailing missiles toward the sleigh.
Marcy scrabbled to her feet. Her head spun. Her vision blurred. A cry of horror and confusion escaped her lips.
The three elves hopped and scooted and slid around the hapless masked figures. So quick were the elves that the minions could not catch hold of them. Thistlebud tossed his bloodied axe to Rosemary, who cut down a foe. Then, Rosemary threw the axe to Deerspigot, who caught it clumsily and used the butt of the weapon to smash another enemy down. The axe spun through the air, from one elf to the next as they bounded back and forth among the masked minions of the Crawling Chaos.
From either end of the alley, more masked figures rushed in to attack. It looked like almost every living soul in town had been corrupted by the Crawling Chaos. The elves staggered away, their backs pressed against one another, as the the wave of enemies pressed in around them.
The sleigh banked around, a trail of glittering dust flowing behind it. The reindeer galloped through the air at full speed, bearing down on Nyarlathotep’s constantly-mutating form. As the sleigh swooped down, Santa laughed with a warrior’s delight.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!”
And Krampus joined the battle cry.
“Eat moose shit, asshole!”
The reindeer slammed into the Crawling Chaos, impaling the creature on their antlers, driving him to the street below. As the Tattered God slammed into the pavement, the reindeer trampled them with their hooves. The runners sliced across bloated and blasphemous flesh.
A tentacle grabbed at the sleigh’s railing. Nyarlathotep roared. With a mighty pull, he swung the sleigh across the alley, smashing it into the wall, sending reindeer sprawling this way and that.
Santa dove from his seat, shepherd’s crook in hand, landed in a roll, and sprang up on his soot-caked boots.
Krampus leapt from the sleigh, roaring.
Masked figures converged on both Santa and Krampus.
Santa swung his shepherd’s crook, smashing the hapless masked figures away like rag dolls tumbling through the air.
Krampus grabbed the hind leg of one of the battered, broken reindeer, and he swung the screaming beast like a club, swatting the masked figures away, crushing some under flailing hooves, piercing or slicing others on antlers.
Santa realized he hadn’t even bothered to name the reindeer Krampus now wielded as a weapon. He hadn’t named any of them in decades. He felt a pang of guilt over that.
More tentacles lashed out from Nyarlathotep’s body, tipped with bony and serrated blades, lancing forward with lethal speed. One sliced across Santa’s bicep, drawing blood. Another stabbed through the deer Krampus was holding, yanking it from his grasp. Another lashed around Deerspigot’s ankle, pulling the elf off his feet, lifting him into the air.
“No!” Thistlebud cried.
He sliced the tentacle apart with his magic axe. Deerspigot sprawled to the street.
Another tentacle raced forward, punching right through Thistlebud’s stomach. The older elf gasped and hunched over, but he didn’t let go of his axe. Dripping blood, the murderous tentacle lifted Thistlebud from the ground, drawing him closer to the gaping, tooth-filled maw of the Crawling Chaos.
Thistlebud drove the axe down into the mutating flesh. Purplish blood jumped from the wounds and spattered the walls.
“I hope you choke on me!” the elf screamed.
And Nyarlathotep swallowed him whole.
“Thistlebud!” Rosemary cried.
For a second or two, the sound of the axe, chopping away at the daemonic god’s gullet, could still be heard.
But the Crawling Chaos did not choke.
Several more masks floated down around Nyarlathotep, orbiting the hideous, writhing bulk.
“Take them!” the deific horror commanded.
The masks darted through the air, moving toward Santa, toward Krampus, toward Rosemary and Deerspigot, and toward Marcy. Krampus almost casually swatted one of them out of the air. Santa struck one with his shepherd’s crook, shattering it. Marcy dove for cover, avoiding the approaching mask. Rosemary slipped beneath the oncoming mask, ducking beneath it, coming back on her feet, grabbing it, and ripping it in half with her elven strength.
Deerspigot was struck right in the face.
The mask adhered to his flesh, showing him terrible secrets.
Vistas of cancerous reality.
Gulfs of timeless, hungry horror.
Cosmic landscapes of squirming madness.
Deerspigot understood none of it.
Nor did he want to.
The elf screamed.
“No! No! No!”
The elf, dumb as a holly stump though he may be, refused to attack his friends. He grabbed at the seam of the mask. He pulled it from his face, ripping it away. His flesh came away with the mask, and he screamed again. He tossed the mask to the street. What remained of his face was a horror of blood and pulsing tissue. His eyes goggled around horribly. His lipless mouth clacked open and close. He took three steps, then fell dead to the street.
Rosemary, seeing her friends die in such short order, collapsed to her knees and began to weep.
Showing no sentiment other than loathing, the Crawling Chaos sprouted a half-dozen more tentacles, each one barbed and studded with bone. The limbs whipped at Rosemary, thrashing against her, battering her like a pinball from one wall to another.
Santa charged toward Nyarlathotep, swinging his shepherd’s crook, sending masked figure after masked figure flying. It had been 600 years since the jolly old elf had been in a proper fight, but his skill and his strength had not faded over the centuries. He thrashed his enemies, dodged their attacks, stomped them as they sprawled before him.
And still more of the masked minions surged through the alley, singing their unearthly Christmas carols, staring with eyes that opened to the cosmos, reaching out with twitching and bloodied fingers.
Krampus tore his wicker basket from his back, and he removed the lid, like a chef uncovering a prized meal. Strange vapors rose from the basket. Krampus raised it above his head and flung it at the masked figures. The basket knocked several of the minions to the side, then rolled to a stop in the street.
Children crawled from the basket.
They were pale and withered, eyes like pinpoints of flame, mouths opening and closing in hideous shrieks. They crawled hurriedly from the basket, thankful to be free of its confines. More ghastly children than could have possibly fit within the basket scurried out, dozens of them, hundreds of them, every soul of every naughty child Krampus had snatched up over the centuries.
“Here’s your penance!” Krampus yelled. “Tear them down and you’ll be free of me!”
Tittering with delight, the children attacked the masked figures, tearing them down, ripping the masks from bloody faces.
Nyarlathotep howled with anger.
More barbed tentacles lashed out, slapping Santa once, twice, three times, cutting his face, spinning him on his heels, and knocking his enchanted shepherd’s crook to the ground.
Santa fell to his belly—and it did not shake like a bowl full of jelly. A tangle of eel-like tentacles snaked around his ankle and yanked him back. He reached for the crook, but he was pulled back too quickly. His gloved fingers scraped at the street.
“I’ll be damned!” Marcy muttered. “I’ll be damned!”
Slipping on the bloody street, she dove for Santa’s shepherd’s crook. She grabbed it, rolled to her back, and hurled it like a spear toward Santa. The staff smacked into his outstretched hand.
Krampus stomped on the tentacles that were dragging Santa along, ground the flesh into the street with the sharp edge of his hoof. Purplish blood spurted as the fleshy tendril was severed.
Santa sprang to his feet.
“Look out!” he shouted.
But it was too late. Tentacles whipped in around Marcy, ensnaring her, lifting her into the air, dragging her toward her doom. Marcy squirmed as The tentacles passed her into the multiple extended, multi-jointed arms of the Crawling Chaos. The creature pulled her into an embrace. With two arms, the monster held her by the shoulders, its claws digging into her flesh, more fingers sprouting up to burrow into skin and muscle and meat. With another two arms, it touched her face, tenderly, almost lovingly. Its massive, blood-dripping mouth trembled almost sadly.
“Why would you do this do me?” the monster asked in its childlike, singsong voice. ”Why deny the blessings I bring unto this world?”
“Merry fucking Christmas, Motherfucker!”
Nyarlarhotep sneered evilly. “Isn’t it nice to hear that?”
And he wrenched her head off at the neck.
A tentacle swept through the alley, the children of Krampus and the masked minions of Nyarlathotep alike. It smashed into Krampus, slamming him against the wall and tossing him, rolling, across the pavement.
A spear-like tendril lanced toward Santa’s face. A split second before the skull-shattering, brain-splattering collision, the runes upon Santa’s shepherd crook flared brightly, and Father Christmas vanished in a blinding flash. Snowflakes spun in the air where he once stood.
“Run, coward!” Nyarlathotep screamed. “You cannot stop the return of my kin! Not this time! The Old Ones were! The Old Ones are! The Old Ones will be!”
A whirlwind of snow spun wildly as a portal appeared behind the Crawling Chaos. Reality simply ruptured open in a cascade of light. Through the portal, another word waited, a world of endless snow and barren ice. Santa stood at the opening, arms outspread, shepherd’s crook in one hand. Before Nyarlathotep realized what was happening, Santa grabbed him in a bear hug, lifted his bulk off the ground, and pulled him back into the frozen dimension he had conjured.
Screaming, Nyarlathotep changed forms, trying to find an escape. With every twist of flesh, every flowering of an organ, every mutation of bone and muscle, Santa adjusted his grip and held the monster tight. Bladed tendrils slashed at Santa’s hands, his arms, and his face, but he refused to release his quarry.
Air rushed into the vortex. The masked minions, the ghastly children, the reindeer, the dead bodies were all dragged across the street and sucked into the portal. Rosemary tumbled toward the gate, but Krampus grabbed her by the arm. He planted his hooves so firmly that the pavement cracked beneath him. His robes and long, tattered hair flapped in the maelstrom.
The shepherd’s crook shimmered again, flickering like a dying Christmas tree light, and the portal began to close. Reality began to flow back into the opening, like mud seeping into a hole, filling it in. Santa stood there, wrestling with the Crawling Chaos in some far away, frozen realm, a world of endless icecaps, a world of strange and bright stars, a world of multiple moons, a world where Nyarlathotep could not call down his brethren.
“The Old Ones will be!” the Crawling Chaos shrieked. “We will be!”
Santa threw the shepherd’s crook to the street. It landed with a clatter. The runes no longer shimmered with mystic light.
“In case it still has any magic left!” he cried. “We don’t want it on this side!”
Just as the gateway suctioned closed forever, Krampus snatched the pouch of cookies from his belt. He could still feel the warmth of the cookies coming from within. He hurled the pouch to Santa, who snapped it from the air. Santa still held the squirming form of Nyarlathotep with one arm around what passed as the monster’s throat, the cookies his wife had made clutched in his hand. With his free hand, he touched the side of his nose with a finger. He winked.
And then he was gone.