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benito-cereno · 7 years ago

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The Further Adventures of Santa Claus, Chapter 1: The Saint Comes to Wallachia (part three)

(Part one here. Part two here.)

(drawing by @fetorpse )

“Stay outside for now,” the saint had said, as he tied his horse’s reins to a post outside of Vlad’s princely court before likewise doing the same with the beast’s chains. “For the time being, this is a polite house call.” He laid his finger knowingly along the side of his nose and winked. “But stay alert, as I may have need of you later.”

The beast snorted his assent in a puff of steam that hung in the chill air as the saint made his way to the entry of the main hall of the court. But their travel had been long, and without activity to keep him alert, the beast grew tired and soon the lids around his wide and bulbous eyes became intractably heavy.

Before long, the snow was softly falling on the shaggy creature’s tawny, leonine fur, which covered him from his curved horns down to his mismatched feet--one of which, if disconnected from the rest of this faun-like figure, might be mistaken as human, and the other unmistakably a cloven hoof--as he began to snore loudly, disrupting the still night. He slept curled on his side due to the sizeable basket-like hamper strapped onto his back. His long arms clutched tightly at the tools of his trade, a bundle of switches--known in nearby areas as a virgács, which in later years would be painted gold and used as a festive decoration, but which for now was still a warning sign of some power--and the tip of his not insubstantial tongue flicked about the edges of his toothy maw as he dreamed deep of years past.

And here is the dream he dreamed:

It is winter and it is snowy and there are mountains but they are not these mountains, not these that surround and protect this old princely court, but those mighty and ancient mountains that stand proud and lofty above all pretenders and whose very existence had been enough to topple prideful armies who thought they could cross without an offering of respect and obeisance to these immortal hills that would and had outlived people and nations and empires and races and species. These mountains stood thick with trees which despite the cold still showed green in defiance of the dark and frost and deep within a grove of such prickly needled trees stood their unquestioned master, the Wild Man of these woods, the Great Clawed One, the Krampus.

And there he stood bedecked with chains but not the iron chains that held him now and burned his flesh whenever he thought of violence against the innocent but bright bronze chains festooned with bells that clanged and clonged with each step or sweep of his arms. Around him danced a small army of nubile young women who poured out to him libations of potent fruit brandies to appease him. Though he was terrible indeed the long winter dark would bring far more terrible things and it was only through the propitiation of this fierce and proud lord of the wood that the surrounding village could hope to be protected from those things. It was a situation that suited the Krampus just fine and a contented rumbling issued from his throat like some infernal cat purring.

But soon an unfamiliar sound would interrupt this sylvan revelry: a THWAK THWAK THWAK sound resounds through the high powder of the snowy grove. The Krampus snorts and tilts his head to find the source of the sound and soon he is racing through the woods toward the source of this unwelcome sound and leaving his terrible mismatched footprints through the banks and drifts. There are men and they are standing next to his shrine and they are holding hammers and hammers and hammers and they are knocking down his shrine with no regard or respect or obeisance to the Wild Man of the Woods whatsoever. And it is red red red as the shaggy beast roars with pain and shock and anger and chases away the men with the hammers from his crumbling and crumbled shrine through the woods and onto the road and into the village.

And what he finds is worse and his anger turns to fear as he runs into the shadow of the cross that stands haughty and fearsome upon the top of the newly constructed church of people who will no longer offer brandy to a horned daemon to protect them from the dark but instead will look to the heavens for succor and no no no no and all is black and red and there is blood on his claws and on his lips and his mouth is full and a shoe so small so small is in his hand and there is a house and another house and more shoes and more blood and more very small bones and bones and hair and branches and claws and a hamper weighing down his back as the red and the black weighed down his mind and he hears shrieks and screams and cries and sobs and then he hears his name his name

KRAMPUS he hears and he turns and there stands a man the first man he has seen since before the red and black times that has not been afraid of him and the man holds in one hand a staff and in the other hand a bag so much like the beast’s own switches and hamper but this man is covered all over with that wretched cross that burned like fire and the man says

You forgot a child Krampus you forgot the fattest child the fattest child to fill your belly is in the bag

And in the red and the black he runs and he reaches into the bag as if the bag contained life itself and it burns and burns like the cross burns but it burns from inside and the red begins to cool and the black begins to calm and he can hear the man again and the man says

Those shackles once bound St Paul of Tarsus when he was imprisoned. Now they shall bind you. You have been terrorizing this village for too many years, Krampus. You have many sins to atone for.

Sins? What sins have I done? Thinks the Krampus when the clarity given to him by the burning, cleansing fire of the chains leads him to turn and see the children clambering out of his hamper in terror and limping their way home to their terrified mothers and fathers and he knows he knows he knows and he is devastated. The man holds out a hand to him a friendly hand and not a hand of judgment and the man says

I will help you, Krampus. But you must help me.

And he does and he does and the red is gone and the black is gone and he wears the chains he forged in life and the Krampus loves the man and the man loves the Krampus and he hears a whistle and a crash and he wakes and he wakes and he wakes

*****

Prince Vlad gloated over his foe, the great bishop of the Turks who traveled the night and gave rather than taking like some sentimental old fool, as he lay pinned by the smoking and charred host of the sick and poor of Wallachia, who grasped at him with blackened fingers. He was so confused by the saint’s high, shrill whistle that he did not see the shadow hurtling toward his hall window like a man-sized cannonball.

As the glass exploded into a shower of slivers that twinkled like hailstones as they fell upon Vlad’s table and the hideous feast he had until so recently been feeding upon, one sound roared above even the shattering of the window, above the mad prince’s gasp of surprise, above the moans of the crackling undead, and above the silent smile of Nicholas of Myra; one sound, three words:

“GRUß VOM KRAMPUS!”

Vlad, the unholy voivode of Wallachia, who had seen the deaths of hordes of men and women and children, who strung up his halls with the dead as others might do with garland, who stared death in the face until death blinked, who saw Lord Beelzebub as a lesser prince to himself, had never seen its like. This figure who was to the eyes of the Alpine people of a millennium before the welcome sight of a tutelary spirit was to the ungodly eyes of the Son of the Dragon nothing more than a fiend dragged up from Hell itself to take him to his just reward and that fiend was now barreling down the length of his banquet table, spilling plates of flesh and wine with his terrible mismatched step with no regard for the sanctity of a prince, moving forward with all the determination of a Fury who would not and could not be stopped. And for the first time since he had made certain arrangements with certain personages of power, Prince Vlad III, Son of the Dragon, known as the Impaler, was afraid.

“Du schreckliches Graflein!” the prince heard as he turned to flee, to no avail, as the horned monstrosity grabbed the sable fringe of his great cloak. “Du solltest nur brav sein!” The jolt as the beast yanked Vlad from his feet caused him to drop the saint’s three oranges, which pealed like golden bells as they struck the cobblestone floor.

What followed was a battle beyond imagining and beyond description. With the Krampus there to distract Vlad, the army of the undead was less focused on their prisoner, and Nicholas was able to regain his feet and crozier, the better to defend himself. The cowardly Vlad hid behind his host of revenants, but the Krampus made short work of them with claw and switch and chain. Vlad was, of course, a formidable warrior who had slain many a foe on the field of battle, so when forced, he re-entered the fray and the battle between prince, saint, and beast raged on far into the night.

So far, indeed, that the battle exceeded the night itself, as evidenced by the reliable sound of all the roosters of Târgovişte signaled the coming of the sun. The earliest rays of rosy-fingered dawn began to stab through the splintered remains of the windows of the hall.

“Dawn…” said Saint Nicholas, gazing eastward in hope.

“Dawn…” said Prince Vlad, smirking slyly.

As the light of the sun struck the floor of the banquet hall, the flesh of Vlad’s undead army dissolved into nothing more than a small cloud of ash and dust. Nicholas, worn out from the night’s battle, leaned heavily upon his crozier but smiled nonetheless.

“The rising of the sun on a saint’s feast day. A holy sunrise, indeed. You have lost, Vlad. You must make your retreat.”

Vlad smiled, revealing the bloody row of shark’s teeth that lined his unholy grin. He crossed his arms across his chest and began to glide backwards across the banquet hall, moving though not taking a single step. An ornate sarcophagus standing upright in the back of the hall that had somehow gone unnoticed until this moment, swung open its great hinged lid to welcome in its usual tenant.

“You are right about one thing, Nicholas,” the prince said, settling back into the sarcophagus. “I must make my retreat.” As the lid of the sarcophagus creaked slowly closed, its shadow could not hide the light of triumph in Vlad’s eyes. “But soon you shall realize that with the dawn came not my defeat, but my victory.”

The look of hope flew from Nicholas’s eyes and his shoulders slumped. He realized that Vlad was right, and this realization haunted him as he and Krampus exited the old princely court and untied his horse from the post outside and as they resumed their ride in the chilly air of morning.

He had allowed himself to be distracted all night long, and Saint Nicholas Eve was gone. As a result of getting caught in a heated moment, Nicholas had allowed the good to go unrewarded, the bad to go unpunished--

--and he had let Dracula win.

END CHAPTER ONE

(Chapter two soon.)

#christmas #halloween #santa #santa claus #dracula #santa vs dracula #saint nicholas #vlad tepes #krampus #my writing #not comics

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benito-cereno · 7 years ago

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The Further Adventures of Santa Claus, chapter 1: The Saint Comes to Wallachia (part two)

(Part one here.)

Inside the cold stone walls of the great hall of the old princely court stood as imposing a man as you could ever imagine, tall and handsome, with a tall, conical hat complete with plume only adding to his already seemingly impossible height. Over his shoulders was draped a long, heavy mantle trimmed with sable, pristinely kept and ideally designed for keeping out the chill of these eastern December nights. The handsome finery he wore beneath his cloak was likewise built for both warmth and prestige, similarly impeccably kept, matching his shoulder length but neatly trimmed hair, whose deep rich brown was echoed by his somewhat drooping but impeccably manicured mustache. The only detail that belied his courtly and cleanly appearance was the thick layer of black grime crusted red embedded deeply under his fingernails, which no amount of scrubbing could get clean. And in a certainly light, despite the boisterous joviality of his demeanor at this moment, his hardily scrubbed skin and the whites of his eyes reflected a sickly, jaundiced look like one succumbing to a great, yet unnamed plague.

Before him spilled forth a bountiful feast laid sumptuously across a table of truly improbable length, piled high with game birds and suckling pigs and crusty breads that steamed when you cracked them open as well as boiled potatoes and lark’s tongues and suets and barley stews and cheeses coated in honey and all manner of such lavish treats that if I were to name them all, you would scarcely believe me. Almost less believable than these were the company the great man was keeping at this time. The great hall, which you might expect to be filled with significant emissaries or envoys or diplomats of mighty kings or sultans, was instead crowded to its very walls with the sick and poor of Wallachia, huddled in their rags and coughing into the hems of their sleeves. Their faces, limned with the kind of dirt that comes only from a mix of hard labor and desperation, were for once lit up, both with the joy of the occasion and the light of the enormous fires crackling cheerfully in the hall’s many hearths. They cheered and clapped when their prince stood before them and raised his glass.

For prince he was. The great and terrible voivode of Wallachia: Vlad, third of his name, known as Țepeș, the Impaler, for the way he was normally wont to greet guests. But now he was pleased to welcome his people into his courts and he welcomed their esteem as he lifted his goblet, but soon calmed them with humility.

“It brings my heart great joy,” he said, waving down the people’s applause, “that so many of you could join me here this evening in Târgovişte. For it is my considered opinion that no one in Wallachia should go hungry, least of all on such a saint’s feast day!” A second roar of approbation rose from the crowd, which again the prince waved away. “But what else can I do for you? What else would you desire on this, the holiest of nights?”

The prince pointed a long, knotty finger encrusted with rings at a humble peasant, who wore a tunic so threadbare that there was likely more actual cloth in the kerchief he kept tied around his head to cover the eye he had lost to a pitchfork some years before. “You, good sir. What would you like?”

The man froze in place, his mouth half full of the meat from the leg of some fowl he had hungrily shoved into his mouth, though whose species he would not have been able to name. He was not expecting attention from the great man at the end of the table. “Er...me, my prince? What would I like?” He paused to think and swallow as the prince nodded warmly. “Well, sir, I suppose perhaps a few ducats? I could use them to repair my wagon, or perhaps a young jenny for work or milk?”

The prince first smiled broadly and then threw back his head and laughed, a loud, barking laugh that despite its volume seemed to be the only sound that did not echo in the spacious hall. “A few ducats?! Hahah, my good sir! A few ducats would last you a few days at best! Hardly to the new year!” He turned now to the entire crowd, sweeping his arm in a broad, magnanimous arc. “Would you not rather be forever without cares and never again want for anything? I can give you this! Would you have it?”

The people of Wallachia now cheered louder than they had at any moment before on this already cheerful evening. “Yes!” they shouted. “We would have it! You honor us, Prince Vlad!” they said, pounding the table and hoisting their glasses into the air.

Vlad’s once broad smile narrowed into a tight-lipped grin that for all its narrowness seemed far more sincere than his barking laugh. “Excellent,” he said, as he turned away from the table toward the great double doors at the end of the hall. As he reached those lofty, enormously heavy portals, he signaled to the two guards on either side of the doors by raising a nonchalant hand. “Men,” he said, “board up the doors and burn them all.”

The room erupted into chaos as the prince’s guests began to stand up from the table and rush for the door. But their arms, weakened from years of starvation, and their legs, wobbly from more wine than they had ever seen in their lives, were no match for the prince’s armed guards, who shoved them back into the hall and laid torches to the furniture and tapestry.

Arms grasped and flames licked through the crack of the door as the guards turned the heavy panels on their immense hinges. Soon they had laid boards across the opening and the sound of hammers mingled with the sounds of screams and the searing of flesh. In the hall, Prince Vlad was approached by his young page, who offered him a white handkerchief with which to wipe his hands, which nonetheless would never be clean.

Without turning toward the page, he addressed him. “Boy?”

The page, running with his small boyish legs to keep up with the prince’s inhumanly long strides, looked up with a look that was equal parts eagerness and terror. “Yes, my prince?”

The prince swept the handkerchief across his lips beneath the great tapestry of his mustache. He casually dropped the now wine-stained cloth behind him, and the child grabbed it midair, before it could meet the ground. The prince’s brow darkened. “Note that I have done this so that none shall have to suffer poverty under my rule.”

The prince strode silently through a large arched hallway until he reached another great hall, perhaps more splendid in size and ornamentation than the last, though by no means as cheerful and bright as the previous hall had been; no fires blazed here. It too, however, in its own way, was laid out with a feast. This was to be Vlad’s personal supper. It lacked the variety offered in the now burnt-out hall-cum-mass grave. Gone were the crusty breads and gleaming tree fruits; no suckling pigs nor pheasants; no grains, no cheeses, no honey, no walnuts. On Vlad’s table there was only platter after platter of strange gray meat whose origin would have been impossible to ascertain, and probably wiser not to ask about; and several pitchers filled to overflowing with a thick, rich red wine. All around the table, the air was thick with flies.

The page boy pulled out Vlad’s massive and ornate chair, which let out a resounding scraping sound throughout the mostly empty hall. “And now,” said Prince Vlad as he sat and the page began filling his goblet with wine, “to my own feast.”

At that moment, a second young boy in page’s garb entered the room. “Prince Vlad!”

“Yes, boy?” Vlad intoned with boredom, as he tore a few strands of stringy gray flesh from the very ripe pile in front of him. “Speak.”

“You have a guest at the door, sir. He says he is a bishop.”

Vlad cocked an eyebrow. Perhaps he would have some entertainment with his supper. “A bishop, eh? Did he say who and whence he was?”

The boy bowed his head humbly before the prince. “He says he is Nicholas of Myra, sir.”

Without meaning to, Vlad rose to his feet and slammed his fist on the table. He turned his face toward the ample shadow of the hall, which cloaked the anger and surprise that spread across his face in equal measure as he choked out two words to himself:

“The Turk.”

A wide smile cracked Vlad’s face like the first cut into a glistening roast beef. The curtain of his mustache parted to reveal a mouth full of pointed, conical teeth, reaching from the front of his face far into the dark recesses of his mouth. “Show him in.”

By the time he had turned back toward his seat, his esteemed visitor had entered the room and seemed to bring the sun with him. He wore his long bishop’s robes, red and white, and on top of them, he wore his sign of office: the omophorion, a long woolen stole worn around his neck and shoulders emblazoned with four crosses and an eight-pointed star. On his head he wore both his tall bishop’s mitre and the long white beard that children across the world recognize. His nose and cheeks were a deep but endearing shade of pink from the bleakly cold night air. In his right hand he held his crozier, an ornate staff that was another sign of his office; in his left he held what appeared to be three perfectly round spheres of gold. The whole of him gave off a sort of warmth and light that Vlad found quite difficult to look at.

“Your holiness,” the prince choked out. “What an...unexpected visit.”

The saint smiled politely. “I visit everyone on Saint Nicholas Eve, Vlad. One way or another.”

Vlad stood by his seat at the table and motioned to the chair at the other end. “Please, join me for a repast. You must be very hungry from your journey.”

Nicholas took the seat offered to him, pulled out by one of Vlad’s pages, but found himself briefly at a loss as he saw the gray mass of flesh laid out before him. He found his composure long enough to say, “Yes, well, I do traditionally take a brief rest for a small meal at the homes I visit.”

The longer he sat and looked around, the more he saw that threatened to destroy that composure totally. A thick, almost clotted wine spilling over the brims of jeweled goblets. Flies buzzing around the inscrutably many platters of meat. And, what had been hidden in shadows until the saint’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the hall, a forest of spikes that ran the perimeter of the room and stretched from the floor nearly to the ceiling. They were empty now, but the crust of blood and gore upon them indicated the fate of Vlad’s previous dinner guests.

Nonetheless, the saint, in an attempt to be a polite guest, picked up a piece of meat by the end of the bone, only for the flesh to slide right off the bone with a sickening slurping noise. Nicholas cleared his throat quietly. “I see your meat is very fresh, prince.”

Vlad held up his cup and smiled. By this time, the wine from his cup had run out of his mouth and down his chin. His smile revealed that his numerous teeth were stained red. “The freshest.”

Nicholas slid the charger full of meat away from him and leaned back in his chair. “It reminds me of one of my journeys many years ago…”

And here is the story he told:

Three young scholars who had been traveling abroad needed a place to stay for the night.

“Dum sol aduc extendit radium,” said the first cleric, “perquiramus nobis hospicium.”

“Nec est nota nobis hec patria,” the second cleric replied. “Ergo queri debent hospicia.”

They sought shelter at the home of a certain old couple, who seemed nice enough.

“Hospes care, querendo studia,” said the third cleric through the door of the couple’s home, which also happened to be a butcher’s shop, “huc relicta venimus patria; nobis ergo prestes hospicium, dum durabit hoc noctis spacium.”

The old man was reluctant to let them in, but his wife persuaded him that they would suffer no loss by showing a little charity. But when the lads had fallen asleep, the old couple saw how they might benefit from this visit after all.

“Nonne vides quanta marsupia?” said the old man, eyeing the large money pouches that rested by the sleeping boys and drawing out one of his butcher’s knives. They would kill the young clerics in their sleep and steal their bags of gold.

Shortly after they had completed this deed, they received another visitor. One whose wealth was clearly much greater even than the youths'.

“Peregrine, accede propius,” said the butcher to me, greedily. “Vir videris nimis egregius.”

They offered me food to eat, but I refused it, saying I wanted fresh meat.

“Si vis, dabo tibi comedere,” the butcher offered. “Quidquam voles temptabo querere.”

“Nichil ex his possum comedere,” I refused. “Carnem vellem recentem edere.”

When he denied that they had fresh meat, I called him on his crime, as I knew his pickling barrels were full of three freshly slaughtered carcasses.

“Nunc dixisti plane mendacium!” I shouted, coming to my feet and pounding the table. “Carnem habes recentem nimium! Et hanc habes magna nequicia, quam mactari fecit pecunia!”

They then confessed to their deed without delay and begged forgiveness.

“Miserere nostri, te petimus,” pleaded the butcher’s wife, “nam te sanctum Dei cognovimus.”

I told them to bring forth the bodies of the dead and that between their contrition and the forgiveness of God, the youths would rise again.

“Pie Deus, cuius sunt omnia,” I prayed, “celum, tellus, aer et maria, ut resurgant isti praecipias, et hos ad te clamantes audias.”

And, of course, rise again they did. The butcher and his wife have since repented and entered into my service. They will be aiding me on my journeys somewhat west of here. Te Deum laudamus.

When Nicholas had finished his story, Vlad reclined almost mockingly in his chair and smiled once more. “Yes, I have heard many tales of your wonders, Turk. Few things do not reach my ears.”

The saint, parched of throat from telling such a tale, raised a goblet of wine to his nose. The curdled stench of the viscous red liquid turned his stomach, so he returned the cup to the table distastefully. “I did these things not under my own power, but God's.”

Vlad sat up in his chair. “Yes, but I have performed wonders of my own, through only my own power.”

No longer caring to be polite, the saint shoved the plate and goblet in front of him away in a clear sign of disdain for his host. “It is not with light tread that one compares himself to God, prince. Be wary.”

Vlad threw his head back and laughed sinisterly. This laugh echoed no more than the previous one, though its sound seemed to linger nevertheless. “Your God, a simple carpenter impaled on a post, should somehow threaten me, the impaler of a hundred thousand men and Turks?”

Nicholas leaned forward across the table and pointed an accusing finger at Vlad. “You blaspheme, sir.”

Vlad rose from his seat and rested his hands heavily upon the table, hunching his shoulders imposingly. “You have told me how you and your God raised three young scholars from the dead. This is no small feat. But..have you met my other dinner guests?”

At this time, Nicholas realized he and Vlad were not alone in the hall. Nor was it the page boys he was sensing in the room. The first thing that struck him was the smell: smoke, charred flesh, singed hair, burnt rags. By the time he turned around to see the crowd of the very recently dead who now lurked behind him, still issuing smoke and covered in a cracking, crackling charred layer of ash, it was too late. The guests of one of Vlad’s dinner parties was now joining the other.

“No!” the saint cried in vain as the grasping hands of the reanimated dead dragged him from his chair. He reached for his crozier, but it was beyond his reach, leaning against the table next to his three gold spheres.

Vlad smiled a smile of victory as he approached the overpowered saint, smug in his show of power as the saint found his arms pinned by an army of the immolated dead. “I told you I was not without powers of my own. There is a reason I am worshiped here after all.” At that moment, his eyes turned to the spheres of gold that lay near Nicholas’s place at the table. “And while you entertain my other guests, I think I shall entertain myself with your spheres of gold.”

However, when Vlad lifted one of the globes up to inspect more closely, he found that it wasn’t gold at all; the outside of the ball had a pitted surface with a somewhat rubbery texture. Vlad was surprised and perplexed. “Eh?” he said. “Oranges?” He turned to Nicholas and smiled. “How very exotic of you.”

Nicholas struggled under the weight of the grasping undead. “Those oranges are for the good children of the world, Vlad Drăculea, and most certainly not for you!”

Amused, Vlad raised a wry eyebrow. “Oh? And what do you bring for the bad children such as myself?”

Nicholas smiled with cracked and bloodied lips. With all his might, he managed to get one arm free from the grip of Vlad’s recently conscripted army and place two fingers to his mouth. After the deepest breath he could muster, he blew through his fingers, letting out a shrill whistle.

And outside in the dark, in the snow, a gray horse nickered. And a dozing beast stirred.

(More soon. Guess who’s next.)

#christmas #santa claus #dracula #santa vs dracula #my writing #halloween #saint nicholas #vlad tepes #not comics

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