Claws

“Mom! I’m going outside to play with my new toy!”
A disgruntled mother opens her eyes for just a moment to yell, “Don’t you lose that damn thing like you others alright.”
“I won’t!” 

“Your father will be very cross with you when he comes back later! We just bought you that thing.” 

“I’m not going to lose it!” he said, slamming the door.

“You better come back with it by the evening. Your father said he was coming home—  Hello? Hello!?” 

The child had already run outside, frolicking into the wilderness that sat just by his house. It was an earful he had heard dozens of times and he wasn’t planning on hearing again. 

He just wanted to play with his toy. 

He tossed his toy high in the air and watched it spin and glide before returning to his hand. It danced so prettily in the space above his head. He threw it higher and higher, each time it hung in the air a little longer, dancing wildly with the wind, hanging on as though it were clinging on the light which shone through ethereal clouds.
He tossed it again with all his might. 

But this time, it disappeared. He had lost it somewhere in the sky and the light. He squinted his eyes, catching a glint of light reflecting off of something hurtling very fast and very far away from where he was. 

He chased after it, although, quick as he was, it just slipped through his fingers. 

He looked down, tears in his eyes, at his new favorite toy, embedded in a mound of dirt, stinky stinky dirt. 

He would have picked it up, however, as soon as he touched it, hundreds of ants came spilling out. One or two ants is fine. Five or so, he could deal with. But there was a certain revulsion when it came to those millions of arms and legs all clambering about in a frenzy. 

He watched helplessly as they dragged his new toy into the dark pit.

While his mother yelled a lot, the scary part was that she actually meant her threats. Staying, he decided, wouldn’t be so bad. He could wait for a while. It would give his mother time to prepare for Christmas. And, it would give his father time to come home. 

In the far north of the arctic, there was a father that wasn’t coming home for Christmas. While it wasn’t that Felix didn’t want to see his family. He loved them emphatically as he would always say, oftentimes to himself, while nobody was listening. It was that he was doing something far more important for their sake. 

Felix was searching for Santa Claus. 

“Well, he isn’t called Santa Claus per se.” said Dr. Mallard, although what he was a doctor of, he could never get a clear answer for.  He was a shadow creature after all. An inky being of living night. Such pursuits bring one strange company, He had met him in a bar after all. He was competent nonetheless, which meant he wasn’t going to balk at important endeavors, nor was he worried about the ethics of the situation. 

They were walking to the bottom of a long staircase, located two hundred meters below the ice. Right where that little corpse told them it would be.
They had dug it out of what the locals in the north had called the oldest grave. It was a small and dried out little thing. They called him Alv. 

“Bring offerings,” he had said, after Dr. Mallard resurrected him. “Tell them you’ve been good. Be honest.” 

Felix had to plunge a knife into his heart then. Life is such a messy thing.  

“I suppose you call him Santa Claus colloquially,” mused Mallard as Felix’s steps echoed downwards, ”Or Saint Nicolas. Saint is a bit rich for my taste.”
The air here was thick with dust, finally disturbed after untold millennia. White limestone made up the staircase, made to look like a cascade of snow. It was made for someone much smaller than he was. Though he was stooped, his shoulders just barely grazed the ceiling. Each and every echo, so very near and loud.
“The Scandinavians were a little closer. He is wise, that is for sure. Privy to some secret knowledge and gossip, only made possible by some strange eye Although Odin is a step back regarding the name.”
“What made him closer?” 

“He was a god.”
At the bottom of the steps, standing over them was the visage of a bearded titan, carved into the wall.
“I was right!” exclaimed Felix, “This is his temple. His holy place.”
He traced his hand along the crevices that made up his face, still solid after all these 

years. This grim giant was so far apart from the jolly red man he had known. There was no light in these eyes. His smile felt more like a leer, like that of a wolf towards a hare. 

“A god, indeed,” said Felix. 

 “A small god.” remarked Dr. Mallard. “Is this all there is?”
The space around them had opened up considerably, however as far as temples went, it was quite small. No more that ten feet around them. 

“Perhaps it was for the elves,” joked Felix.
“But it’s not just small. It’s so...bare.” 

The shadow grew and stretched around the room, feeling for any sort of hidden compartments or crevices. But there was not even a whisper of incense, nor an echo of a prayer.

“What sort of god would want to live here?’
“No temple is ever made for a god,” said Felix, looking deeply into the bearded man’s eyes. “They have no need for houses that we could ever make. It would be like moving into my daughter’s old miniature castle. Sure I'd be a king, but I'd be too cramped. Too constrained.”
“What would they be for then if not god.?”
Felix smiled as he remembered his daughter's little hands calling to him to be picked up.
“They’re for us…to reach him.”
He reached out his hand to the saint, but the age old stone would not reach back. The silence was filled by the blood rushing in his ears, pulsing with his ever quickening heartbeat. There was nothing. This was it. This was the end.
But then he felt a cold hand grab onto his.
“Keep going,” whispered Dr. Mallard.

He pressed his hand against Santa’s face, and felt its weight shift. There was a deep rumbling as stone scraped stone, and the wall swung outward into a cavernous room, illuminated by a single pillar of light, surrounded by nine stone boxes. 

Coffins, realized Felix. More than a temple, it was also a tomb. 

“Ready your pack,” said Dr. Mallard. 

Felix hoisted the burdensome thing from off his back, feeling the snap of his joints as he did so. He opened the cavernous sack, revealing a bundle of wheat and what appeared to be some sort of bloodied organ in a jar. A white substance leaked out of its orifice looking almost like-
“Milk,” said Dr. Mallard. “It’s an udder.” 

“Is that why it’s so heavy?” asked Felix, rubbing his back.
“No, no, the rest is a surprise.” There was a concerning squelch as Mallard rummaged through the bag. “Oh dear, it’s wet.”  

Felix ignored him then, observing a structure, in the far corner, seemingly both enshrined and obscured. It looked almost like some sort of alien craft, where upon its side was carved strange whirling patterns of unpleasant geometry. It was not meant to be looked at for too long.
“It’s his name. His true name.” said Dr. Mallard. “I will handle this. You will handle the offering.”
Felix stood at the center of the spotlight, and took in the room around him. The light was surprisingly cold, even through his heavy coat. As he looked upward, it didn’t seem to end, with the glow cascading down in shimmering waves. They trickled like water onto the coffins, laminating the etchings with a silvery glow.. They took the form of beasts, horned and grinning, like satyrs.
But as he placed the wheat and jar of udder in the center of the light, the stillness ceased, as a rumbling began again, this time from deep in the earth. Far deeper than this abyss they had already descended. 

“Hell,” thought Felix.
“The End,” thought Dr. Mallard. 

The pillar above him seemed to widen like a pupil dilating. There was the sound of gas escaping as each coffin opened to him, exposing old bodies to the air once again. 

And there they lay, a wicked nine. They were mummies, well preserved and shriveled for fear of decay. Upon their heads were jewels and bone, grafted on like crowns and horns. Their bodies were naked and castrated, skin left splayed behind them with a glow not unlike the candescence of butterfly wings. It looked like the handiwork of a cruel child, pasting insects into a book for memories.

Worst of all, they were small. Not just shrunken or shriveled, but small like little children, no older than five.  

“Place the wheat into a mouth.” called out Dr. Mallard. 

Felix chose the one with a ruby affixed to its forehead. Placing the wheat on his gaping jaw, its eyes flickered open. 

“We are the eternal children. His servants. His hands.” the mummy outstretched his little desiccated hand.
“We shall provide.” 

His little eyes met Felix’s. 

“What do you want, little man?” 

“Have you been a good child this eve?” 

Felix grinned, as he stabbed the boy 

“Not once in my entire life.” he turned to Dr. Mallard. “Is this right?”
The little mummy opened its mouth wide.
“Punishment! Punishment!” the mummy shrieked. 

“If that’s what you want.”
The other mummies opened their mouths as well, all wailing like sirens. Filling the room with a sickening cacophony of screaming children. 

“I’ll see you shortly,” said Felix, before his body blinked out into the moonlight.  

Felix found himself at the top of the pillar of light, standing on an impossibly high mountain. Here he could overlook the world beneath him, so small, so dirty and wet.  But his eyes were trained somewhere higher. An infinity his mind could barely hold—the countless shapes beyond what he could have ever seen or known. And suddenly it was moving towards him. 

Its silhouette was vaguely humanoid, shifting in and out as what he could perceive as red light. It reached out an appendage to him, hesitating slightly, as though repulsed by his existence. But then he lifted the bloody jar to the apparition. The figure plucked it from his fingers and it disappeared into the sky. 

The entity took him next. Placing him near, his face which shone white like stars and spread out in gaseous tendrils.
The very air around him trembled with sound as it spoke.
Though, he did not speak the entity’s language, he understood its meaning. 

“No,” he said. “I have not been good. But, my little girl…she deserves a good Christmas. Could you send me to her?”

 The entity just shrugged.

“But I’m already here, dad,” 

Felix whipped around to see his little girl clinging onto the back of his chair. He was in the living room. He must have fallen asleep near the fire.

“You were sleep talking again.” 

He grinned.
“Oh yeah, what about?”
“Loads of things, dear.” said his wife, poking her head into the room, holding a glass of cold milk, “Like how you can’t remember what our names are.”
“Yeah, what are our names, dad?” 

Felix laughed. “Of course, I remember your names.”
He picked up his little girl in his arms and squeezed her tight, feeling something trickle down his arm.
“Say it then,” she whispered into his ear.
His wife joined in on the embrace, feeling her warmth for the first time in decades. She smelled like cheap perfume and decay. 

“Say it.” his wife repeated. “You love us, don’t you?” 

He felt a sharp pain in his back as something hard and cold and brittle. He looked into his wife’s beautiful eyes as the worms came bursting out. Behind him, he could hear sparks being thrown from the fireplace, catching on the rug, catching on the tree. It wouldn’t get very far. The report said it had only blocked the way out. That they had died from the smoke before the fire. It was painless. 

He, however, felt everything. He had been awake this whole time. And he relished every single moment. 

There was a scraping sound coming from the chimney. Someone or something large was trying to get in. 

“Quick now, dad,” begged his daughter, as her skin began sweating blood, teething dribbling out as her mouth filled with putrid pus and rot. 

He kissed her on the lips, coloring his lips a yellowish red. 

“Please, say our names now.” cried his wife. “Before he comes in.”
“But…he’s already here. 

Dr. Mallard reached the top of the mountain, only to see remnants of his friend, scattered into the world as ash and stardust. He nodded with respect for his friend: He had gotten what he came for. 

The massive entity now regarded Mallard, who was no more than an ant before its swirling tempestuous mass. The dark being spoke once more, voice echoing in the dreams of every person who dared sleep while it made its presence known.
“What would you like?” it asked Dr. Mallard, in a tongue incomprehensible to all but the truly mad.
The children appeared then, the pale stretched out mummies surrounding the shadow.
“Halt!,” said the one with the ruby. “You have not been good! You have “
There was a motion in the air as all of a sudden their tongues were ripped out of their head.
The being repeated itself. 

Dr. Mallard smiled, but rather than answer with words, he snapped his fingers instead. 

There was a loud explosion coming from within the mountain, as the pit that formed the pillar of light crumbled and cracked the impossible mountain. A heavy plume of smoke billowed from the newly formed crevasse.
“Surprise!’ he yelled. 

The being recoiled, startled by the sudden noise, but was quickly quelled by what came next. From the crevasse, through the smoke, rose the strange craft. 

It seemed far too small for the vast entity, and yet it took it with gusto and joy. The entire heavens shook with its glee. 

It began to show Dr. Mallard worlds of promise, mountains of gold, secret and hidden things across the universe. 

But Mallard could only shake his head.
“I’d prefer to find those on my own.” he said, waving the dark entity away.
Mallard smiled and the creature nodded, disappearing now from the sky, leaving it bare and empty with only promises of ice and snow. 

One of the little mummies had managed to put its tongue back into its head. He called out to Mallard. 

“You!” 

“Oh you’re still here.” said Mallard. “I thought the animation process would have been halted.” 

“Why didn’t you ask him for anything? Why did you just let him leave?” 

Mallard shrugged. “It seemed like something he wanted to do.”

“And who are you to know what that is?”
“Well…I’m a doctor. And it’s also Christmas!” he said cheerily now.
“So what will you do?” asked the other mummies, rising from the floor.
“Probably the same thing your little god went to do.” he said. He raised a hand before they got to ask another stupid question.
“It would be easier to just show you.”

 The little boy with his little toy went galavanting towards his mother, who he’d proven 

wrong. His toy, while muddy and certainly dripping all over her nice bright floor, was definitely still clutched in his hand, neither broken nor lost.
“All right all right, I get it.” she said, as she lifted him up into her arms. “Stop making such a mess. Wash up now, all we have to wait for is–”
“I’m home!” yelled a voice from outside, deep and full as the universe itself. 

It was a quiet evening then for all. And a warm one, for all those who found themselves with a nice fire, and good company.