Page 31 of Scary & Bright
“You wanna tell me where we’re going?” I asked, quickly trying to get us talking again so neither of us could linger on the fact that we were now touching, consensually, while both of us were awake.
And it felt… nice.
“It’s just a short walk around the side here, in the garden,” Krampus said, keeping his gaze surgically forward as he led the way, his weight causing him to sink into the snow beside me while I stayed near the top.
Then, the garden came into view. Or a space as close to a garden as you could get in a desolate, icy flatland that didn’t see the sun for six months a year. All of it was covered in snow, but it didn’t take away from the majesty of the space.
Massive stone reindeer reared up opposite each other, creating an arch with their legs that led into a space full of other stone statues, the largest being a near-perfect stone replica of the two little boys featured in all the family pictures inside the castle—a pair I now knew were Krampus and Santa as children.
“Here we are.” Krampus sighed as we crossed under the stone legs of the reindeer. “This is one of those spaces that I wish I could, for once in my life, enjoy without the snow on snow on snow, but alas… I’ve done what I could.”
“It’s actually very cool,” I admitted, gawking at the statue of the boys, which loomed over me with such presence they could have been real. “So…” I gestured to the statue. “Which one is you, and which one is Santa?”
“Is it not obvious?” Krampus chuckled. “Nik is the one who looks like he’ll grow up to be Santa Claus.”
I took another look at the statues, trying to imagine what each of their personalities might look like. The boy on the left held a hand in the air as if he were waving to a friend in the distance. His lederhosen were well pressed and buttoned properly, and he looked like he could pass for a mascot on a cereal box with how cheerful he appeared. The boy on the right, however, looked disheveled. His own outfit was crooked, and one of the straps was broken. He held a stick in one hand like a sword, and while he didn’t look unhappy, necessarily, his body language read more reserved and hesitant.
“That one is you,” I said confidently, pointing to the one on the right. “You can tell because he’s not a people person. The other kid looks like he’s putting on a show.”
“That’s your impression of me so far? That I’m not a people person?” Krampus asked.
“I’d say so,” I said, unsure if I legitimately offended the creature. “I mean, it took me nearly dying in the snow for you to explain what was going on here.”
“Touché.” Krampus laughed.
I turned to him curiously. I got the feeling that the view of the garden, no matter how interesting, wasn’t the primary reason for him escorting me out here.
“Was this what you wanted to show me?” I asked, prodding him.
“No.” He sighed, beginning to make his way around to the other side of the statue. My arm still hung on his, so I trailed just beside him. It felt like we were walking in slow motion as we circled around the pair of brothers.
On the other side of the garden, opposite the reindeer arch, was a slab of obsidian stone. It was perfectly polished to a black sheen and carved with hundreds of tally marks. The little carved lines covered the entire front of the slab and had begun to appear on the sides of the stone, and while I couldn’t see the opposite side, I had a feeling there were tallies on the back as well.
Krampus brought me before it, and I could feel the tension in his arm loosen under my grip. I glanced to the side and saw his shoulders slump. In the harsh white light with the sunlight filtering through the gray clouds and bouncing off the bleach white of the snow, his pupils dilated, nearly blackening every sliver of his yellow eyes. His chest deflated in a heavy sigh.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” he said, choking down a sad crack in his voice.
I almost felt guilty asking for details, his discomfort obviously painted over every inch of him, but if he was trying to make a point—if this was truly the finale of the story he’d told me in his bedroom—I needed more information.
“What… is it?” I asked, trying to channel as much sympathy and respect as I could into such an open-ended question.
“I put this here after my first year,” he started. “Taking that first name off the list—taking that first life filled me with immeasurable guilt. Not just for what I’d done, but that there was nothing I could do to let their family know. I couldn’t stop thinking about how everyone deserves respect, even if they found themselves on the Naughty List.”
Krampus sniffed hard, and I wondered if perhaps the bright and the cold were disguising a film of tears.
“So, I made this,” he continued, taking a deep breath. “I made this to remember every name I took, and every life I ended. Every tally mark is someone who had to die so that the rest of the world could enjoy the magic of Christmas.”
My heart ached. My stomach sank. My pulse raged in my ears.
I had never seen such a monument, and I’d never seen such grief, even in my own life. This was heavy, and it hurt, and my mind went blank as I imagined Krampus here by himself year after year, still trying to offer a sliver of respect for the lives he was forced to take.
However, another question burned my tongue and begged to be asked. A question that I knew needed to be answered, even if it pained me to say it out loud.
“Did you show me this as a sort of apology?” I asked. “Are you going to kill me too?”
Krampus turned to me, his massive height dwarfing me even as he sank into the snow and I stood atop it. He wrenched his arm from mine and moved his hands to my shoulders. I could feel heat radiating off his palms, even through his mittens.
“I don’t want to, Holly,” he admitted. “I really, really don’t.”