A Twilit Christmas, N. Barry Carver [books that read to you .TXT] 📗

Most people still thought of Eddie Jacoby as just another ankle biter...

but, with the new year coming, just what sort of biter he would grow up to be was very much on his mind.

Even though Eddie had just turned eleven he, with his well-ribbed abdomen and unkempt hair, was a bit of a puzzle. He was a misanthrope – sure – who wasn’t? But he was also the leader of an after-school group of mutts and had a cute little mesmerizing stare – that sometimes worked. Would he follow in the upside-down footprints of great granddad Vlad? Or would he give up the ghost and run with the pack?

And what about his new girlfriend Bell? Her name was Mary, but he called her Bell. It was a nickname that stuck after she’d told her very first riddle back in Kindergarten – to the whole class. It was wildly inappropriate and left a few kids scratching their heads to decode it, but Eddie had found it endearing and so he called her Bell. The riddle? It went something like... ‘What is brown and sounds like dung?’ Having muffed the punchline, her nickname was born.

Night School had let out for the holidays – and that meant nearly a month of free time, some of it during daylight hours! Eddie, having a natural allergy to the bright winter sunshine (which others saw as gloomy, overcast skies) liked the hours around dawn. He’d later prefer dusk too – but those half-lit days are another bunch of slap-dash paragraphs someone else will need to write.

Bundled against the light, Eddie would wander through the streets and malls looking for other children, “normals”, which he could trip or taunt or somehow mistreat for fun. Sometimes Bell came along, some times she’d just pout and stay home. That was what she was really good at.

He, in a playful mood, knocked over an older woman and nipped her wrist – so that it would pour blood and keep her distracted. While she was busy seeking aid and searching for the animal that had done this hit-and-run, Eddie had time to rifle her purse and packages. Snatching the cash, of course, he also made off with a hand-held video game and some meaty crackers with a cute puppy on the cover.

“Where did all this come from?” came the shrill voice of his fur-coated mother. Knowing the uselessness of lying, at this junction, he gave her a quick play-by-play of his crime.

With a swift sweep of her hand – which landed velvety on his hairy neck – Ludacrezia followed this expected reaction with the usual, “Good boy! Good boy! Daddy’s gonna be so proud when he gets up.”

But Daddy was not.

“It’s not the dignified way for a son of nobility to act!” he said, as he poured his wife a wide, flat glass of wine. Count Ahnmé never drank – wine. But it looked like he and his mixed-marriage wife were about to go at it once again, tooth and nail, over their only son’s upbringing.

“He’s not one of those bunch that follow him – his bark is nothing compared to his bite!” The Count laid in.

“He’s eleven!” she barked. “He needs to run and play and howl at the moon. He’s got years, maybe centuries, before he has to deal with the realities of life. His girl friend is seventy-six and still pretending to be a teenager!”

“Alright, alright... but I don’t want to see this become a habit. And I don’t want to argue. I just flew in from Chicago and... boy, are my arms tired!” – and that’s all that was said.

Not two minutes later, Eddie walked in to find the aging couple in a lip-lock. Eddie quietly stole back out – he could never stand to see his parents... biting.

But the unusual relationship of his parents got him thinking. It was the dark of the moon, so he wandered out into the night.

All the holiday decorations were flashing merrily away. Recorded music jangled and electronic skeletons of reindeer slowly bent to mime eating the snow-covered grass in the tint speck of green space on the corner. And there were no people anywhere. It was just the way Eddie liked it.

As he passed the skating rink he checked his reflection in the store windows and, having found none, mused on what his life would be like as part of his father’s bloodline. A large abode, a title and any number of sycophants all sounded good but it came at a cost. It seemed his father was forever trying to unearth himself from his work – and he was always fluttering off here or there in search of new blood. Not to mention his peculiar drinking problem. It was not a perfect life by any means but there was a place for him – one he could really sink his teeth into.

He turned the corner and went past the old deli. The scent of garlic from the place pointed up his problem. The smell made both his mouth water and his stomach turn. Still he couldn’t quite bring himself to cross the street. He stared though the window at the varieties of hanging sausages, salamis and even a large boar’s head on a platter. They were all just plastic reminders of bygone days when people could actually guess what was in their lunchmeats. And yet the smell of turkey in the smoker and the curing of the blood sausages was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up... and grow about an inch.

There was Mom’s pedigree to think about too. She’d had a good life – even in her side of the family’s dog-eat-dog way of doing business. No rules – except the speed of your gait and strength of your bite. No pretentious costumes and parties with dry hors d’oeuvres and the guests “mysteriously” disappearing one my one. It was “all for one” and that was it.

He was less than three blocks from the grand hotel whose uppermost floors were his family’s castle – the last structure in town with real gargoyles to protect it – when something strange occurred. He was standing, watching the traffic light blink a bright red and green, listening to the slight rustle of a few dry leaves blowing down the otherwise emptied streets, lost in a fog of his own making.

He heard jingle bells. Not the song. Actual tiny, silver bells, tinkling and then, the slight scuff of sleigh rails touching gently down just behind him. And the smell of venison on the hoof. When he heard the rumble of a laughter being held back, he slowly turned around.

And what to his wondering eyes should appear? But a sprightly, even if morbidly obese, white-bearded old man just stepping down from an archaic wagon on skis seemingly pulled by a team of miniature reindeer.

“Ho, ho, ho!” The red-suited man blurted out during his approach, “You’re the little half-breed boy who doesn’t know he’s gay yet!”

“I... what?” said Eddie his soulful eyes wide in disbelief.

“Never mind,” the bowl-full-of-jelly-man continued, “That’ll be a lot more important when you’re twelve. For now, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Not yet understanding how any of the present scene meshed with the rest of his life, Eddie just nodded. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen supernatural people before or any number of strange magical things... it was just jarring to have one so alien to his life pop in unexpectedly and, apparently, with an agenda.

“I know you’ve been wondering whether you should become a fulltime vampire – like your dad, or follow in the werewolf pawprints of your mother... isn’t that right?” And, while he spoke he dug around in an oversized pillowcase for... a gift? “Can’t quite choose between being a vamp or a scamp, eh?”

“Uh, yes, Santa. I’ve been thinking about it.” Eddie admitted.

“Well, Mrs. Claus and I have decided these things are best nipped in the bud –” and with that he pulled a blunderbuss from the bag and blasted little Eddie right in the chest.

The eleven-year-old flew backward with blood and bits flying away from the explosive impact with his body. He fell like a rag doll and the old elf climbed back into his sleigh.

But a moment later, Eddie was back on his feet... and roaring as only the truly unstoppable monster hidden in his pre-pubescent frame could.

“Dammit Martha, I said SILVER bullets!”

It seems cost-cutting measures – the same ones that had successfully broken the elf-union’s hold on his “workshop” – were the very last thing that crossed the mind of Father Christmas. Eddie’s attack being swift and effective: in seconds he doubled in size, sprouted claws and a tail and leapt at his assailant’s jolly bearded jugular. Quickly dispatching the aging fat fairy, Eddie paused to refresh himself before his fleshy drinking fountain stopped pumping. That’s when he realized that; in his lycan form he did not have the gnarling underbite of his mother but the beautiful overbite – complete with razor-sharp bicuspids – of his dad.

Tossing the clawed-out Claus onto the pavement, Eddie donned his victim’s oversized red jacket and quickly mesmerized the reindeer. Then he hopped in the sleigh and, to his team, gave a whistle and away Master Jacoby went - as he chewed on some gristle.

He wouldn’t return home. He never knew what a girlfriend was good for - especially Bell. And he had a craving for elf-tartare that just wouldn’t wait. In that one fateful moment, he’d thrown off the shackles of “what will I become” and simply became. He was a Vamp-Wolf. Or Were-pire. Or a hematologically-parasitic lycanthrope. Or something.

“Call me whatever you want,” he said straight into our incredulous faces, “it’ll sure be a shocker when I come sliding down the chimney, won’t it?”

And I heard him howl
As he drove out of sight
“A cool yule to you
‘Til I stop for a bite!”