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Oldthings
by Will Shetterly
Jeffy got silver bullets, Jill got a matched pair of big golden crosses, and I got a lousy wooden stake. I sat crosslegged on the floor, looking at this three-foot-long pointed stick, and said, “What’s this? A carve-your-own-cane kit?”
Poppa Fred had his sense of humor removed when he was four, I think. He said, “You know what it is, C.T.”
Mother Dearest said, “There’s a mallet, too.”
“Oh, great,” I said. When I shifted some wrapping paper, I found a hammer made of polished oak, like the stake.
“Frederick made it himself,” Mother Dearest said. “For you.”
Poppa Fred looked away like he didn’t care.
Jeffy and Jill had collaborated on their presents for everybody: string necklaces with crude wooden crosses set between bulbs of garlic.
“See?” said Jeffy. “It’s, like, two-in-one.”
“It was my idea,” bragged Jill.
“That’s great,” I said. “You can pick your teeth with the wooden piece, and with that stinky garlic around your neck, you won’t have to take a bath ever again.”
Jeffy said, “No, C.T., the garlic’s s’posed to keep off—” He stopped then ’cause Jill had begun to cry. Mother Dearest hugged her, of course, and made a face at me like I’d said something wrong. Poppa Fred just kept looking away at the window like he could see right through the wooden shutters.
And Grams kept on staring at the fireplace like no one was in the room at all.
I’m not always so grouchy, especially at Krizmiz. It’s just that this was the first Krizmiz since Grams’s brain went south. I loved her more than anyone, ‘cause she’d known so much. Mother Dearest and Poppa Fred were trying to give us an old-fashioned Krizmiz, but they didn’t understand it the way Grams did.
Grams knew the old stories about Krizmiz back before Thingschanged. Then Krizmiz wasn’t a day of giving each other secondhand junk or stupid ugly homemade things. Before Thingschanged, Krizmiz was a season of its own. Stores put up decorations three months in advance, and the whole country worked together making wonderful stuff for everyone to buy. And on Krizmiz, everyone in the country got lots and lots of the wonderful stuff, and everyone was happy.
But after Thingschanged, none of the wonderful stuff worked, not the ‘lectrical stuff or the mot’rized stuff. People went back to the country, ‘cause in the cities, there were riots and fights and folks starving. And it was all made worse ‘cause after Thingschanged, the Oldthings returned.
It was a drakla that got Gramper. It would’ve got us all if Grams hadn’t known what to do. There were lots of draklas for a while, men in dark suits and women in soft, shiny dresses, but the worst was when Gramper came back. Grams did what had to be done. She taught us all what to do, before she had her stroke.
Besides draklas, there were witchers, wolf-folk, dusty bandaged people, ghosters, and stiff, slow shufflers with glassy eyes. The safest thing was to stay in at night, so that’s what we usually did. If an Oldthing did catch one of us out of doors, we took care of it — the same treatment worked on all of them.
Krizmizeve was a cold, windy night. Jeffy and Jill and I decided to sleep in the living room in front of the fireplace, near Grams. Jeffy and Jill were still mad at me, so they put their blankets on the far side of Grams’s cot. It’d been a long day for the twins. They fell asleep almost immediately.
I lay there, watching the fire dying and listening to Grams breathing and wondering if things would ever get better for any of us. I was almost asleep when I heard a clompety sound on the roof like fat eagles had landed. I remembered that draklas and witchers could fly. That woke me up completely. My Krizmiz stake was lying beside me, so I grabbed it and lay there, clutching it in both hands.
And then I felt stupid. We hadn’t seen a drakla in two years, or a witcher in near as long. I told myself whatever I heard couldn’t be an Oldthing. And even if it was, all the doors and windows were bolted. Nothing was going to get into our house. I looked at Jeffy and Jill and Grams, and I smiled, thinking I’d have to do something nice for the twins ‘cause their stupid garlic crucifixes must’ve taken a lot of work. And I started to go back to sleep.
The fire was very low, hardly more than cinders, and my eyes were almost closed, but something made me look around again. I prob’ly heard a change in Grams’s breathing, but I can’t swear to that. I can swear to what happened next, though.
Two heavy black boots oozed out of the fireplace.
I don’t know why I didn’t scream. Maybe I still didn’t believe it. Maybe the Oldthing in the chimney had some power to make people drowzy. I think that was it. I think if I’d been completely asleep, I wouldn’t be here to tell this story.
After the black boots came blood-red trousers, and then a matching crimson coat edged with bone-white fur, and finally a bloated, grinning Oldthing stood in front of our fire. It was too fat to have squeezed down our chimney — Jeffy or Jill couldn’t have squeezed down that chimney — yet there it was. Its eyes were black beads, and its bloated cheeks were bright red as if it’d fed on something’s blood, and in its ash-white beard, its soft mouth twisted into a triumphant leer.
Grams spoke. “Sa? Tah?”
It spun, maybe even more startled than me, and faced her. Grams hadn’t talked in months. She sat up in her cot and she smiled madly, and she twitched while she tried to say something to the Oldthing or to the rest of us.
The Oldthing brought a red-gloved finger to its thick lips and grinned. In its other hand, it clutched a sack that’d grown to be as large as the Oldthing itself, maybe larger. It stepped closer toward Grams, still making the gesture for silence. It pointed at Jeffy and Jill, sound asleep, as if Grams should understand.
But I understood then. It didn’t matter whether it had something in that sack to deal with us or whether it wanted to stuff us all into the sack to carry us off. Grams had done all she could by speaking. It was up to me now.
I leaped out of bed in my nightdress with my Krizmiz stake ready, and I yelled for all I was worth, “Satan!”
The Lord of Night whirled toward me. Its eyes and its maw gaped in surprise. I plunged the stake towards its heart as it staggered back toward the chimney. The point grazed its chest, but I was too slow. I knew that it’d escape, and return with its servants, and everything would be my fault.
Then it stumbled. Something had struck it in the head. I glanced at the twins’s bed, and Jill grinned back One crucifix lay on the floor at the feet of the wounded Oldthing. The other was in Jill’s cocked hand, ready to throw.
A shot rang out. The Oldthing stumbled, clutching its leg. I saw Jeffy fumbling to load another silver bullet into his .22, but it didn’t matter. He’d given me the time I needed. I hurled myself forward as Grams cried out again.
When Mother Dearest and Poppa Fred came into the room, they saw that they’d given me a fine present. Jill said, “C.T. killed it,” and I smiled, shy and proud all at once. Poppa Fred nodded at me. Before he could say anything, we heard a clattering on the roof.
We ran into the yard, all except Grams. A team of antlered deer were launching themselves into the sky, dragging a blood-dark sleigh behind them. Poppa Fred’s blast of silver buckshot took out the leader. With it hanging in the traces, the rest were easy targets.
We smoked and ate the stringy little deer, all except the mutated one with a glowing nose. In the Oldthing’s sack, we found toys and tools and clothes and all kinds of wonderful things, just perfect for each of us. Since we didn’t know who it’d stolen them from, we had to keep them for ourselves.
That would’ve been the most perfect Krizmiz ever if Grams had lived. We found her in the living room. I find it comforting to know that the last thing she saw was me killing the evilest of the Oldthings.
Before her stroke, Grams had often said that if we survived the bad Oldthings coming back, good Oldthings might follow. I think she was right. Early this spring, when the last of the little deer had been eaten and we were afraid we’d all starve, a giant rabbit with a basket of eggs showed up on our lawn. That gave us meat for a month.
It’s a fine new world. I only wish Grams was here to see it.