Candy Canes and Buckets of Blood Read online

  It was an elf.

  Guin watched the eyes swivel round to regard her bed. She tried to shrink back with the least possible movement, avoiding its attention. She began to wonder if she was dreaming – this was a familiar nightmare: the invading presence, the need to keep perfectly, perfectly still.

  The elf crept into the room and Guin realised it was carrying something at its side. The lamplight gleamed off a shiny, wickedly pointed blade, as misshapen as an icicle, the grey of winter sky.

  Guin felt her heart banging in her chest. She wanted time to figure this out. She wanted to consider why her mind would conjure such a terrifying dream. Was this simply a result of falling asleep while reading the book of fairy folklore?

  The book was in her hands. She glanced at it, fearful that even eye movement would draw the creature to her. She looked at the page, at the words.

  Elf-bolts or elf-shot, (which modern scholars have rationalised as the cutting implements and arrowheads of early Britons) were thought to be the weapons with which elves hurt livestock.

  She could read. She could read and the words stayed the same. She could never normally read in a dream. Which meant—

  “Oh, hell,” she whispered.

  The elf looked up at her contemptuously before moving purposefully towards Newton in the bottom bunk. Guin realised doing nothing was not an option. She reached out for the nearest thing, which turned out to be a coat hanger on the end of the guard rail, and vaulted to the floor with a loud thump.

  The elf hissed and turned its knife towards her. It smelled of old things in boxes, of cinnamon and sugar. Guin thrust the coat hanger forward. It was one of those rubbishy wire ones which would bounce off if she tried to hit it over the head. She jabbed instead, which was equally useless. She dodged a knife thrust, and then she made her move. Over its head went the coat hanger and she twisted, using a corkscrew to tighten the coat hanger around its throat. It swung its knife at her but, coat hanger in hand, she kept it at more than arm’s length.

  “Some help here!” she shouted.

  The elf wasn’t giving up. It stabbed and jabbed at her and she pulled away. It never thought to stab at the hands holding the coat hanger, going for her belly every time. The elf’s face turned red as it choked, but Guin’s arms were tiring. A wild swing of the blade snagged the edge of her bathrobe. It tried to haul her closer. Guin twisted, letting the robe slip from her arms.

  The elf was like a wild animal, she thought. Its attention was centred on the robe it had speared, like a bull in one of those horrible bullfights taking all of its anger out on the cape, not the horrible matador. It dragged the robe closer, gathering it up, entangling itself. Guin swung the coat hanger, the elf still firmly clamped by its neck, up and over, slamming it down against the floor with all of her might. The elf made a tiny Oof! Sound, and went slack beneath the bathrobe.

  Guin prodded it with her foot. It didn’t move.

  She looked round. “Did no one wake up?” she demanded.

  “Wah?” said Newton, groggily.

  She thumped her dad. “How are you all still asleep?” She turned on the main light. There were grumbles from three sleepy individuals.

  “What’s the time?” said her dad, turning over.

  “No idea,” said Guin, wondering why the hideous clutter of this building included no useful features like clocks. “That’s not important.”

  “What’s the time?” mumbled Esther as though needing confirmation.

  “I just killed an attacker.”

  Her own words hit Guin hard. She had just taken a life. It was a murderous elf, but it was still slightly overwhelming. It was either horrific and deeply traumatic, or ever so slightly cool. She would decide later.

  Everyone was sitting up now, bleary and incredulous.

  “What?” asked her dad. “Did you…?”

  “Did she say killed an attacker?” said Esther.

  “Yes. With a coat hanger,” said Guin. “It was an elf.”

  “It was an elf and you killed it with a coat hanger,” said her dad slowly. He scanned the floor. “Nightmare, honey?”

  Guin sighed and pointed at the bundled bathrobe.

  “It’s a dressing gown,” he said.

  “Inside the dressing gown.”

  It was his turn to sigh. He swung his legs out of bed, scratched himself in a way Guin wished he wouldn’t in front of his daughter and began to unroll the bathrobe.

  “You see,” he said patiently, “sometimes, particularly when we’re sleeping in a strange new place, we see things and we think that they’re – Oh, my God! It’s a dead elf!”

  Newton scrambled from his bed to look.

  “What is it?” said Esther.

  Guin rolled her eyes silently. How many times did she have to explain?

  Newton got out of bed. At least he was wearing proper pyjamas, unlike the boxers and T-shirt combo her dad was in.

  “Bloody hell,” said Newton. “You’ve murdered the elf on the shelf.”

  “It’s not a doll,” she said.

  “It’s so small,” he said, in the voice of someone who was thinking about picking it up and cuddling it.

  “It was heading for you with a knife in its hand,” said Guin.

  Her dad prodded the elf and shook his head.

  “It’s a tiny man,” he said faintly, like he didn’t believe it. “You killed a tiny man in an elf suit.”

  “Otherwise known as an elf,” said Guin.

  “But there’s no such things,” said Newton.

  Her dad picked up the elf’s knife and tested the blade with his thumb. He winced. “Maybe … maybe it’s a midget burglar who like dressing as an elf.”

  “That’s totally un-PC, Dave,” said Esther. “You can’t use the ‘m’ word to describe little people.”

  “It’s an elf!” said Guin.

  “No such things,” Newton repeated numbly.

  Esther stepped into her jeans. She knelt by the elf and touched the edge of its stripy trousers. They were probably meant to be red and white but time and dirt had turned them to mucky purple and urine yellow. “Right,” she said. “This is either an elf, or it’s not.”

  “What?” said Guin’s dad.

  “We either re-evaluate everything we thought we knew, or we rationalise it away. But there’s no denying this … individual is here.”

  “No.”

  “And so we must act accordingly.”

  “Right.”

  She looked up at the open door and the dark landing beyond. Guin shivered.

  “I’m sure it was alone,” said her dad.

  “Are you?” said Esther.

  “The ones that killed Elsa Frinton weren’t,” said Guin.

  “The what? Who?” said Newton.

  “There aren’t any more of these,” said her dad, trying to sound confident, rather than actually sounding confident. “It’s just one man.”

  “Elf,” said Guin.

  Her dad went to the door but to Guin’s dismay, he didn’t close it. He opened it wider and looked out.

  “The ones in the market weren’t either,” said Esther.

  “Weren’t what?” he said. “Wait.” He scrunched up his eyes and along the landing. “I think I—”

  There was the sound of a pattering feet. Esther was already up, pushing the dumbstruck Dave out of the way of the door and slamming it shut.

  “What is it, mum?” said Newton, a quaver of fear in his voice.

  Esther turned the key in the lock and stepped back. She held up a finger for quiet. “I saw some of these things,” she whispered. “In a workshop. I thought they were children.”

  “When?” said Dave, confused.

  “At the market. There were several of them. They—”

  There was a thump at the door then a series of knocks. Guin wasn’t the only one who noticed that the knocks were coming from near the bottom of the door.

  “They want to hurt us,” said Newton.

  “No,” said Da
ve.

  “They hurt me,” said Esther and held up her bandaged hand.

  The door handle rattled violently.

  “They chased me and stabbed me with a chisel,” said Esther, no longer even trying to whisper. “I think one of them had a knife as well. It might even have been the one Guin killed.”

  Guin ran to her bunk and grabbed Wiry Harrison from the guard rail – not because she was scared but because he might be. She reached up and grabbed the Little Folk in European Folklore too.

  “Elves are real?” said Newton, still trying to take it in.

  “Elsa Frinton thought so.”

  “Who’s Elsa Frinton?” asked Esther.

  Guin waved the book. “I can’t be sure, but I think she was trying to track down these things,. I think they got her first. I saw her hat and it had blood on it.”

  “All right, all right,” said her dad. “I think we’re all getting a little bit spooked.”

  “There’s a dead elf at our feet, Dave,” said Esther. “That came into our room with murder on its mind.”

  “Yes, now we’re making small mundane encounters seem downright sinister. I’m sure these things aren’t really after us. I mean we’d have noticed if there were loads of tiny—” He stopped and stared at his feet.

  “You’ve seen them too, haven’t you, dad?” said Guin.

  He shook his head. “Earlier, when I saw someone messing with the car, it was the strange way that they looked when they ran away. I thought I saw one tall person breaking apart into—” He laughed. “It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.”

  “You think it was elves all standing on top of each other to look like a person?” said Guin and placed the fallen elf cross on the door handle.

  The thumping at the door subsided. From outside came a fiercely dark chittering sound, words in a language that Guin didn’t recognise.

  “I have no idea what to think,” said her dad. “This is utterly beyond me.”

  “The elf crosses seem to help,” said Guin. “Our room was protected until they knocked one of them down.”

  “Can we make more?” said Newton.

  “I made these out of cotton buds and string. They’re five-sided stars and I copied the design out of the book.” She held it up.

  “Have you got any more cotton buds and string?” asked Newton.

  Guin shook her head.

  ***

  31

  Esther crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

  Outside, on the narrow ledge, stood two elves, their sly faces pressed against the window, their palms flat. Snow was mounting on their shoulders and on the tops of their pointy shoes. Their faces were small and round, too small to be human faces, too sharp to be children. They looked cold and they looked hungry.

  The pair of them glanced at Esther and then pointedly looked at the window catch and the elf cross hanging from it, imploring her to remove it.

  “Nah,” she said and closed the curtain. “We’re sitting ducks. We need to get out of here.”

  “They can’t come in with the elf crosses there,” said Guin.

  “Do we sit here until daylight?” asked Dave. “Will they go when it gets light?”

  “That’s vampires,” Guin pointed out.

  “They’re afraid of crosses,” said Newton.

  “Elf crosses.”

  “Could we make elf crosses out of this stuff?” asked Newton. He was pointing at the seat of a chair. “If we unravelled it, maybe?”

  “Looks a bit stiff,” said Guin, flicking it with her fingers.

  “It’s cane,” said Esther, stabbing it with a finger. “It will become perfectly pliable if we soak it in hot water. Run the tap, Dave.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “I’m really glad in this time of crisis we’re going to do some crafting.”

  Esther stood on the bed and launched herself, feet-first onto the chair seat. She expected it to pop out with her weight on it, releasing the cane for them to use. What she didn’t expect was for the chair to explode around it. She picked herself up off the floor and released the seat from the shattered wood. She picked at the edges to expose the strands of cane.

  “I could have just used my pen knife to cut it out,” said Dave.

  There was a penetrating screeching noise from the window, and the sound of more tapping from the door.

  “They’re just trying to scare us,” said Newton.

  Esther beamed at her son, in an effort to convey a lack of fear. Her shaking hands were fooling nobody.

  Guin took charge of elf crosses and supervised the construction of another five. Her practised fingers made two while everyone else struggled to make one.

  “Two nuns were walking along one day,” said Newton, his fingers fumbling. “Dracula leapt out at them from behind a bush. One nun says to the other, ‘Quick, Sister Mary! Show him your cross!’ and the other nun frowns and shouts, ‘Sod off, Dracula!’.”

  Guin just looked at him.

  “I don’t get it,” said Esther.

  “Show him your cross. It’s a joke. It’s—” He looked down. “I think I might have seen the elves too,” he said. “I definitely heard something in the trees near the church. And, at the nativity, I saw the baby Jesus in the nativity open and close its eyes.”

  “I’ve seen dolls that can do that,” said Guin.

  “I think they’ve been following us all over town.”

  “So, if elves are real, what does that mean for all the other stuff?” asked Dave. “The reindeer with red noses, the flying snowman and goodness only knows what else?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting the man in the big red suit?” asked Esther.

  “No, I’m ignoring the man in the big red suit,” said Dave. “Apart from the fact that my brain’s about to explode, I know very well where all of the presents in our house have come from over the years, and I’ve never received any threatening letters from the North Pole claiming copyright infringement or whatever.”

  Esther gave a small shrug of agreement. “No, of course not.” She swallowed the natural follow-up, which was to say that would be ridiculous, because it was all ridiculous. Utterly and completely ludicrous.

  “But,” Guin said slowly as she finished her third elf cross in as many minutes, “does this mean we’ve been bad?”

  “No,” said Dave automatically. “How so?”

  “You know, the naughty list and the nice list. That man at dinner was talking about the Krampus.”

  Esther thought for a moment about Duncan Catheter. There were elves in the house. Had they already got him? And Mrs Scruples?

  “We’ve not been bad,” she said firmly. “And no one gets to pass judgement over us except, you know, us. These little fascists got a problem with my family then they have to go through me first.”

  Newton huffed. “I think mine looks more like a really rubbish hat” He tried his elf cross on his head.

  “Nonsense,” said Esther, “it’s a great job.”

  “So what are we going to do with them now?” asked Dave.

  Guin fetched her new box and took out the little robot figure. She unclipped a safety pin from its side.

  “Dad, you’ve got more safety pins in your first aid kit, right?”

  ***

  32

  They quickly took the sheets off the bed and, pinning them together, turned them into a protective shield. Dave decided it looked like a cross between a bird hide and a family-sized body bag. Elf crosses were strategically placed around the outside, and each person held up a side. They had dressed, or at least thrown on trousers and shoes and such clothes as they thought necessary to do battle with Christmas elves. Dave had his smallest first aid kit stuffed in his back pocket. Guin had insisted on bringing the folklore book and pockets stuffed with her little toys. In this situation, Dave wasn’t going to deny his little girl anything.

  “Try to keep it level,” instructed Guin.

  They had decided there needed to be little port holes
to enable each person to see out, but that the protection needed to extend to the top of Dave’s head, as he was the tallest.

  “How are we going to get anywhere?” asked Esther. “If we’re all standing back to back in the middle. Only one person can walk forwards at a time. It could get very tricky. What if someone walks slower than all of the others? Who will decide where we go?”

  “Esther’s in charge of steering,” said Guin. “Dad, you’re lookout. You’re tallest.”

  “And me?” asked Newton.

  Esther thrust a weapon into her son’s hand. It looked very much like a toilet brush.

  “What’s that?” asked Dave.

  “Toilet brush. With added elf cross,” said Esther.

  “If it doesn’t work as a protective ward, you might be able to pass on some nasty germs,” said Guin, disgusted.

  Dave took a deep breath and tried to focus on their goals. “We’re going downstairs and straight outside so that we can get some help, yes?”

  “Absolutely,” said Esther. “It’s not that far, if we concentrate and don’t let them distract us.”

  “Stairs will be tricky.”

  “Which is why we need to concentrate,” said Esther firmly.

  Dave felt for the door handle through the sheet, peering through his porthole. “Everyone ready?” He unlocked the door, pulled it open and looked outside. At first glance, the landing was empty. Even so, he was pretty sure the elves were not far away.

  The lights flickered. Dave prayed that whatever antique wiring illuminated this place would hold up for a few more minutes. “All clear.”

  “To Dave, to Dave,” said Esther.

  “ONE two three four, TWO two three four,” said Guin as they shuffled forward in time.

  The group stepped out onto the landing. Dave looked all around. He saw an elf lounging against the wall, next to their door. It had a lazy, arrogant air about it. This one had a smear of white beard on its chin, unlike the other beardless elves they had seen. It looked like an evil Papa Smurf.

  “ONE two three four!” hissed the elf, in a mocking but recognisable parody of Guin’s time-keeping chant.

  Guin faltered. Esther didn’t miss a beat and picked up the tempo with a bout of, “We shall overcome! We shall overcome! We shall overcome some da-aa-aa-ay!”