Holiday of the Dead (65 page)

In a dash, I was on my feet and down the stairs. I ran to the window and peered through the curtains, just in time to see Santa boarding his sleigh. With a crack of the reigns and a shout, the horses took off. Santa and his sled pulled away. I watched until he was completely out of sight.

When I turned around, grinning from ear to ear, I was amazed to see all the colorfully wrapped gifts he had placed under the tree. Then my eyes fell upon the table where we had set out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. The plate held not a crumb, and the glass had been drained bone dry; not a trace that either had held anything.

More excited than ever, I dashed back up to bed, but I was way too anxious to sleep. I waited until I heard the others awake, then I went downstairs, as well. When I told everyone my story, no
one believed me, except for my wide-eyed younger sister, and of course, my mother and father. My older brothers, twins they are, kept saying that I had been dreaming, because Santa was make believe, and only small children believed in him.

In response to their mean words, I stuck out my tongue and called them liars, then said that they were jealous because I had seen Santa, and not them. It had gone on like that all day, until my father finally got tired of it and told us all to shut up, or we would all get a switching taken to us in the barn.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know,
Mom
was
standing in my door and whispering, "Wake up, Carol! You can come downstairs, now!"

"Did Santa finally come? I was up all night, but for this last hour, and I never saw him," I
explained
to my mother, but she never answered and went to wake the others.

I quickly
donned
my robe and slippers, then went out into the hall. I almost ran into my little sister, Carmen, who was stumbling her way sleepily toward the staircase; one hand rubbing her weary eyes, the other clutching her favorite rag doll. When she saw me, she took my hand, and together, we began descending the stairs.

As the sky had just begun to lighten on the horizon, it was still pretty dark inside the house, so I had grabbed the kerosene lamp from next to my bed, before entering the hall.

Once we were halfway down the stairs, however, I no longer needed it to see. When
Sis
and I were on the last few steps, we could see that
Mom
had lit all the candles on the tree. It was so pretty with all the wrapped presents spread out beneath.

It looked just like one of those picture postcards from long ago that
Mother
had stowed away in a dusty old shoebox under her bed.

With excitement in our hearts, we ran the last few yards over to the shimmering tree, where my mother and the twins were already beginning to huddle upon the floor, and we knelt down beside them. The boys were craning their necks with squinty eyes, each attempting to get a peek at the names on the tags to see which of the packages belonged to them, of course.

When they began arguing over who had the most, you can bet that Caden
ce Piper put an end to it. My mother
slapped them each upside the head. "Now, behave! Or, I'm gonna send the both of you to your room! No presents! And no dinner! You got it?" my mother scolded them. And when
Mother
scolded you, you got the evil eye; the one that informed you
that she meant some serious business
.

Now the twins, my brothers Billy and Willy, were four years older than me, and they were fidgety boys. They found it hard to resist the urge each had to push and shove the other, spewing graphic verbal insults meant to get a rise out of one another. They were big boys who liked to rough-house and wrestle to see which one could get the other on the ground.

When they were younger, the boys
were much smaller than the other
kids their age. Billy handled it well, but Willy had been teased much more, and was branded with the nickname, 'Wee Willy Wanker'. My brother never forgot that, so when he got a little older and got much bigger from working out with Billy, they both got their revenge on all those others who had taunted them in the past.

Well, even
though they were some big boys
now, with
a lot of meat on their bones – very little fat –
Mother
did not let them intimidate her. It was she who now took the boys out to the barn for a god switching, when they needed it. Father refused, as he said they were now men. I think he was just a little afraid one of them might hit him back one day.

Once again,
Mother raised
her voice to the twins to get them settled down. My eyes
wandered
to the table; the one we always put the milk and cookies out on. The glass remained two-thirds full, and the plate of cookies still held the two large ones that had be
en placed there, with a single bite
taken from just one.

Something was wrong. I could feel it. Santa never left anything behind, other than the gifts. The plate had always been clear of even the tiniest of crumb, and the glass always drained to clarity, as if milk had never touched the inside of it.

Mom
told
us that we
would
have to w
ai
t until after dinner to open the gifts. My brothers sighed and guffawed in unison, whining aloud, "Why not? Huh, Mom? Can we …
pleeeaassssse
?"

Instead of scolding the twins,
Mom said
, "I will let you have your stockings! But, only if you promise to be good all through dinner, and then we can open the gifts."

With that, she got up and went over to the fireplace, pulling down each of our stockings, handing them out to the each of us. Greedily, we all shoved our hands inside, hastily pulling out their contents. There were a variety of candies, shiny little trinkets found on father's excursions, and best of all, fresh-made beef jerky.

I could tell by its thick smoky aroma that it had been cured quite recently. I took a bite, immediately tasting the freshness. Now this was a real treat. It had been months since there had been any meat to be had, and our stores had nearly run dry of the potatoes and apples picked from our fields, before winter had set in.

As we all sat their chewing on the beef treats, I thought about how it used to be, back before the plague had come. We led a simple farm life, and had simple family values, but we were aware of what was going on in the big cities. I mean, we did have cable, at least before all the electricity went dead everywhere.

The epidemic had begun two-and-a-half years previous, and had spread across the country like a brush fire. People were dying left and right as the result from the bites. Creatures that had once been human, like us, attacked anyone living with frenzied rage. The crazy thing
was
, those that had fallen dead, then began to get back up and walk around. But they were
not
living. They had become monsters, just like the ones that had bitten them.

Father said that we were safe in the country, so we had stayed, and never really had much trouble. The only time they came around at all, was in the warmer months, but there were never many. Father and the twins would use them for target practice
, killing them dead with
hunting rifle blasts to the head. In the winter months, when it was harshly cold, they never appeared at all. Father had started saying, 'If the monsters don't get us, we'll all die of starvation!' It
scared
me to think that he might be right.

Then it hit me. Father had not yet returned from one of his many foraging hikes. Sometimes they lasted for weeks, but he had always made it home for Christmas Eve, even when the world had been normal.

I asked my mother, "When will
Father
return?"

"You will see your father, soon, Carol! Now finish up, everyone! Dinner is almost ready!" Mother then disappeared into the kitchen to finish preparing for dinner. For the first time since I had turned nine, my mother did not ask for my help.

Not giving much more thought to it, I went back to snapping off another bite of jerky, while giving closer inspection to each of the little trinkets from my stocking. The twins and Carmen were also doing the same, while we all waited for mother to return.

When next she came into the dining room, carrying a large silver platter,
Mother
made the announcement. Each of us dashed over to the table and took our places,
Mother
setting the platter in the centre. By its sheer size and the strain that
Mother
had looked under while carrying it, there had to be something bountiful hidden under the shiny lid.

Mother
finished
placing a bowl of sliced apples, then another with steaming boiled potatoes, upon the table,
and
then
she spoke
. "We have been blessed this year, my children! Eat it up while you can, for who knows when next we will meet such good fortune! At least with what's been smoked, we're sure to see the coming of spring alive and well!"

Mother
smiled
, then
leaned
over,
clutched
the handle, and
pulled
the lid off of the platter. What
lay
before us
was
startling. With a loud gasp, my siblings and I
were
shocked to see our father; or what was left of him, anyway. His arms and legs
were
missing, but the rest of him
was
there. The skin was blackened and charred, cracked in places, the pinkish juicy meat bubbling within. Where
Father's
eyes were supposed to be, there were empty sockets, but for some residue of gooey looking gelatin.

The room was silent as we all looked at each other. Then finally, Carmen said, "Can we eat now?"

As hard as we tried, none of us could hold back a smirk,
which
soon turned to laughter. Pretty soon, we were acting just as normal as any other day. When my mother began carving off pieces of meat from
Father's
torso, and placing them on our plates, we took them willing
l
y,
and
then began to eat as if it were normal to be feasting on your father for the holidays. It had turned out to be a good Christmas, after all, and we still had gifts to unwrap.

I later found out that Father ha
d been stricken down with a heart attack, and died several days earlier while on his way home from delivering gifts to some of the neighbors in the outlying area around us. Mother had found him in the woods on the edge of
the property, dead in the snow
and all dressed up in his red suit and shiny black boots. I was unsure whether to be
more
sad about
Father's
heart attack, or the
fact that Santa really was make
-believe.