Tracy Tam: Santa Command (3 page)

When the sleigh was still once more, and Santa's clomping boots were out of hearing range, Tracy finally heard another voice.

“Show time!” chirped the squeaky elf from before. The sound was followed by a bunch of chitter chatter which she couldn't understand. The voices soon disappeared as the elves presumably slipped down the chimney.

Tracy counted to ten before popping out of the sleigh. She ditched her plan of examining the reindeer at this stop. She couldn't pass up the opportunity to video tape the elves at work. Oddly, the reindeer were gone again.

She figured it had something to do with the projector and searched for a way down to the ground.

The house was two stories, making it too dangerous to drop onto the driveway. And how would she get back up? No trellis to climb, and even if there was one, she doubted it would hold her weight. Only palm trees in the front yard. But in the back yard…Yes! There was an oak tree with several low branches.

She grabbed hold of the first one and swung down to the ground. There was a large set of windows lining the back of the house. The curtains were open, providing the perfect view of Santa stuffing stockings. Tracy squealed with joy, then clamped a hand over her mouth. She could ruin everything if Santa heard her now. Not to mention the fact that she was trespassing in a stranger's yard. She really needed to be more careful.

Tracy crept up to the window, kneeling in the sand below it in order to blend into the shadows. The Christmas tree inside was brightly lit, providing more than enough light to get her pictures. She snapped a few of Santa, but then realized the real action was happening on the couch. She switched her phone to video and smiled. It was like a live action replay of what happened to her the year she turned eight.

She had slept on the couch with one end of a fishing line wrapped around Santa's milk glass and the other end tied to her pinkie finger. As soon as her finger jerked and she opened her eyes, a shimmery dust blew across her face, producing a vision of cartoon sugar plums dancing in front of her. Now she could watch it happening to another child.

Eight tiny elves moved into her camera's view screen. They looked like cute, wooden puppets, but the way they moved made her shiver. At first she thought it was simply an effect of the camera. They seemed to glide more than walk. But when several of their bodies fuzzed and changed shape briefly to fit between a chair and a wall, she rubbed her eyes, wondering if the Red Bull was wearing off. She shook her head. That was one thing she hadn't anticipated, getting tired so early. Maybe she could find some candy in the sleigh to get another sugar rush.

She blinked a few more times, as she watched the creatures arrange themselves around the couch. A small boy, maybe five or six years old, stretched into a yawn and opened his eyes. Before he saw anything, one of the elves reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny fist full of something, and blew a cloud of sparkly yellow dust into the boy's face. The boy blinked and rubbed his eyes. Tracy knew exactly what he was seeing—dancing cartoon sugarplums!

This was science fair gold. She wondered if she could spot the street name from the roof so she could find the boy in a day or two and interview him about his experience. Plus, if she brought her mom's Dustbuster, she could vacuum up some of the powder and view it under her microscope.

Tracy squealed again, too excited to cover her mouth this time. She realized her mistake and held her breath for one second. Two seconds. Three. When Santa didn't look her way, she relaxed and vowed to be more careful from now on. Scientists observed with their eyes, not their voices.

Santa Command—Control Room 8

December 24
^th

2342 hours

Phil yelled at the screen. “Who is that? What's she doing?”

A girl down below tapped a couple of keys. All of the stats from Santa's current location appeared on the screen. “Well, she's not Bradley Adams, and he doesn't have a sister.” She tapped a few more keys. “Or a cousin. Or any girl neighbors.”

“Hang on.” Phil scrolled through the archived footage of the night and came up with a still image of a child from a house Santa had visited earlier. He enlarged the image on the view screen and keyed in a command. The child's name appeared across the bottom in white block letters.

Tracy Tam

Walt burst in through the door. His beeper squealed like an Inkling caught in a rat trap. “You took care of this. You said you were positive.”

“I...I was!” Phil ordered up the camera outside her bedroom window. It showed a curled up lump lying in her bed, and long black hair trailing out from under the comforter and across her pillow. “See?”

Walt snatched the mouse out of Phil's hand and zoomed in on the picture. His eyes grew wider, accenting the purple vein that was throbbing on his right temple. “I see a bed stuffed with pillows and a wig. Come on, Phil. You were trained to know the difference!”

That's when Phil saw the corner of a pillow sticking out from under the comforter and a kitten curled up where Tracy's head should have been. The wig was a nice touch, he thought. Better than most.

Phil groaned as he dragged his hands down his cheeks. He
had
been trained in this. He'd been top of his class, spotting every trick his teachers had thrown at him. Pillows, dolls, and even one cleverly built life size mannequin. He'd identified them all when no one else could come close. That's why Phil had been given a command job after he'd proven himself in other areas. He was one of the best.

“How much has she seen?” Walt asked.

Phil pressed his hand against his forehead. His head throbbed. “Too much.”

“We're gonna have to wipe her.” Walt said this matter of factly, as if the suggestion didn't have far-reaching consequences.

“No. No, we can't.” The last time Phil had ordered a wipe on a child, the results had been devastating. He could still remember holding the child's unconscious body in his arms. Walt knew about it, but he kept it quiet. It was something Walt's boss could never know about. “A wipe is too unpredictable.”

“Then give me another option.”

Phil racked his brain, determined to think of something else.
Anything
else. Vision dust only lasted for a minute or two, and that didn't clear memories; it only obscured the now. Tracy
had
to forget. The Santa legend was sacred.

Walt was right. Even though Tracy hadn't done anything wrong, a mind wipe was the only option. Phil cursed under his breath. Curiosity shouldn't have to be punished.

“Phil, are you going to give the order or should I?”

Tracy, unaware of the camera, was climbing up the tree on her way back to the roof.

Giving Sasha the instructions would be simple. Phil wouldn't have to watch. He could close his eyes until it was done. The Inklings would transport Tracy back to her bedroom, and he could assume everything was fine.

“Phil?”

“I'll handle it,” Phil said wearily. This was his screw up. No one else should have this on his conscience. He spoke the order into his head set.

Sasha communicated the instructions to the rest of her crew, and they made their way up the chimney.

Tracy

Just as Tracy swung from the tree limb to the roof, a plume of yellow smoke puffed up the chimney. Knowing she only had a few seconds, she scrambled to reach the sleigh, paying no attention to the smoke slithering down to the roof and the eight tiny creatures materializing from it.

She didn't see them grab hold of her shoelaces and yank, sending her sprawling onto her back. She looked up, and there, two inches from her nose, was one of Santa's elves with a sprout-like ponytail on the top of her head.

“This isn't gonna hurt,” the elf said as she reached into one of several pouches dangling from her belt. She pulled out a fist full of something which she then held over Tracy's face. A shimmery yellow sparkle dropped from it. Elf dust.

Tracy knew the sugar plum vision would come next, a distraction just long enough for Santa and his crew to get away. But she had come too far to give up this early, and she was ready for it. She jumped to her feet and ran for the sleigh. When Santa reappeared, she would explain her situation. He would see how important this was to her and invite her to join them.

She was only two feet from the sleigh when a six foot tall, green muscular creature jumped in front of her. Based on her multiple readings of Harry Potter, she assumed it was a troll, although she had no idea where he'd come from.

His body was draped in an assortment of leather scraps and covered with warts of various sizes. His head was a small bump on his massive shoulders. His expression looked exactly like that kid in the back of her math class who shrugged and picked his nose every time the teacher asked him a question.

He took a step forward, but she held her ground. She wasn't afraid of the neighbor's pit bull, and she wasn't afraid of this thing. He was a temporary glitch in her plan, one she could probably distract with the sparkles on her cell phone case until Santa arrived. But when she looked in his eyes, she realized he wasn't the dumb creature she had read about in books. His narrow, blue glare made her skin crawl. This guy was smart, and with a slow wink, he let her know it.

Her hands trembled as she repeated in her mind that she wasn't scared. She scurried to the other side of the sleigh, putting it between the two of them. Surely, he wasn't strong enough to crush Santa's sleigh, was he?

The massive creature cocked one side of his mouth into a knowing grin. Three rotten teeth showed between his lips, and the smell of sewer water and Limburger cheese wafted in Tracy's direction. It burned her nose, which she pinched shut.

“I'm not afraid of you.” Though she took a step backward as she said it.

She glanced at the chimney. What was taking Santa so long? Wasn't he supposed to protect kids? No wait, that was Batman. But in a world with Santa, elves, and trolls, she took a chance and willed the bat signal to appear in the sky.

While she was looking up, the troll lunged over the sleigh.

Tracy ducked and jumped backwards, tripping over several more elves and landing hard on her back. The fall jarred something loose in her brain, and she couldn't tell if the stars overhead were real or the result of a head injury. She did know her head
hurt
. Her vision blurred for a second before snapping back into focus. Then she guessed what she should have known the moment that speck of dust fell in her eye. The troll wasn't real. He was a hallucination just like the sugar plums. She felt stupid for not realizing this before.

One of the elves jumped onto her stomach. She tried to brush him off so she could sit up, but his body multiplied in size until he was slightly bigger than her. At that size, he looked less like a cute puppet and more like a haunted tree come to life. She blinked, not trusting anything she saw. It wasn't real.
Magic needs a helping hand.

The giant elf grabbed her shoulders, pinning her to the roof. The troll lumbered around the sleigh and knelt down beside Tracy. His rock-like fist hovered over her face while another sparkle drifted toward her eye.

“Stop it!”

Tracy turned her head to avoid the dust. Her brain throbbed with the motion, and she didn't know if she could trust her eyes anymore. She trusted her instincts though, and they said to get away.

Before any more dust escaped the troll's fist, Tracy grabbed the elf's arms, twisted them and shifted her weight, propelling him off of her and into the troll. Both went tumbling across the roof in a tangle of rapidly shrinking arms and legs. She rolled in the opposite direction, barely stopping herself from plunging over the roof's edge.

She pushed herself to her feet and watched in awe as both the large elf and the troll assumed the shape of Santa's elves. And there were more of them, eight total. She rubbed her fists in her eyes trying the remove the dust. When she looked again, the semi circle of creatures was still there, advancing toward her as they shifted into a pack of wolves. Several of them snarled, revealing razor sharp teeth. Finally, she admitted to herself that she was afraid.

She peeked over her shoulder at the concrete driveway. It seemed so far away. Even worse, she had no idea where she was. She could be in Orlando, or Tampa, or Miami, with nowhere to run and no way to get home. Still, that was a better option than the growling pack of wolves that was one leap away from tearing her to shreds. Hallucination or not, all she could think about was getting home and away from these nightmare creatures.

She took a deep breath and jumped.

Santa Command—Control Room 8

December 24
^th

2352 hours

Phil watched with horror as Tracy plummeted to the concrete driveway. She landed with a crack, her arm twisted unnaturally beneath her. The wolves jumped off the roof, transforming back into Inklings in mid-air and sprouting wings in the process. They landed softly beside Tracy, each one of them looking to Sasha, who pulled a handful of dust from her pocket and stepped up to Tracy's body.

Tracy's still image filled the entire twenty foot screen. In addition to the broken arm, she had a line of blood running from her forehead, down her cheek, and into her hair.

Phil looked to his boss, who had turned away from the screen, occupying himself in some task that didn't really need to be done. He knew what Walt was thinking. This was Paige Murphy all over again.

Phil had been the one to see Paige's body go slack. Horrified at what he'd done, Phil had transported himself to her house and woken Paige's family in the middle of the night. He didn't tell them the truth though. He claimed to be driving home from a party when he saw her lying motionless on her driveway. Paige's bedroom window had been open, and her parents assumed she had fallen while trying to spot Santa. Paige, of course, wasn't talking, and it was likely she never would again.

The memory of Paige was enough to give Phil a lifetime of nightmares. No secret was worth adding another child to his list.