Day #4 – He Is Coming, Part 2 – by Elizabeth Averay
Waking to a dim earthen room with no windows or visible doors, I sit up groggily and realise I am not alone. There are eleven others here. I am, by the looks of it, the oldest.
Trying to remember how I came to be here, I bow my head and think hard. It comes to me, I was on the phone to my best friend demanding to know why she left a lump of coal in my room with a note saying naughty. Then I thought my little brother Andy had left it, when a voice from far away spoke – but the words are lost to my mind and I awoke here…wherever here is.
Lifting my head I find myself surrounded by children aged from five to what I think must be about fourteen. Every one of them looks spooked. ‘Does anyone know where we are and how we got here?’
The fourteen-year-old boy speaks up: ‘We are in his basement. He brought us here.’
‘And who is he that you speak of?’ I ask with a sense of trepidation. The same boy replies, ‘The evil Santa who collects the naughty boys and girls. That’s who.’ Then he rolls his eyes and gathers the others and moves away from me.
Speaking in a loud, clear voice I say, ‘There’s no such thing as Santa – evil or otherwise,’ and begin to search with my hands and eyes along the wall nearest me. All I feel is hard packed earth with the occasional crumbling rock for the first two walls, then I trip after a few steps along the third wall and sprawl on the ground. There are hard long lumps under me, and smaller ones that are a little rough to the touch and a strange off-white. Raising my head I look further ahead and see large oval-ish shapes that have two black holes in them.
‘Oh, shit.’ I scrabble away, sweat pouring off me, drenching my hair and clothes.
The fourteen-year-old speaks again in a resigned tone. ‘You just came across our predecessors. I knew the last one. She was still here when I was brought here. She explained to me that we are now his fresh meat for the next year. He collects us all on Christmas Eve – the only day he is free from his incarceration. He collects twelve kids, all under eighteen, then once a month – always on the twenty-fourth – he comes down here and picks one of us and takes them away. We never see them in one piece again.’
Gulping back bile I try to make small talk with the boy. ‘Well, that’s cheery. I’m Kristie, by the way. Who are all of you?’
The little five year old boy looks at me and with a scared sneer on his face says, ‘Weren’t you listening? We are all going to be eaten one by one. Who cares what our names are? Now we’re here we are no one.’
Time drags on, then a strange light from the fourth wall that I never inspected spikes into this vile room and a shadow appears in the doorway: a large man all in dark red with a long straggly beard and hair, hideously brown chipped and broken teeth, boots that are worn – once black, but now caked with I don’t want to think what – and claw-like hands that are covered in filth.
He steps into the room, looks around and his gaze lands on me. He smiles an evil smile, grabs my arm and my will is sapped away; he takes me to his kitchen where he lifts me into a large pot that is already boiling…
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