Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead as I struggled to wrap the lights around the eight foot tall Christmas tree occupying the majority of available space in my living room. Once I felt satisfied with the coverage and spacing of the multi-colored lights, I dragged a large heavy box full of ornaments across my living room floor, huffing and puffing like the out-of-breath wolf in a children’s bedtime story. Lifting the lid off the overstuffed box, I began to wonder how my grandmother had ever made this look so easy.
My cousins and I were always filled with an overwhelming sense of wonder upon entering Grandmas house after she had, quite literally, covered every available inch of space in glittering holiday adornments. I pulled a snowman ornament out of the box and held it gingerly in my hands, as though it were the last remaining thread connecting me to the grandmother who so loved this season. This would be our first holiday without her and our first Christmas without one of her spectacular Christmas parties. It seemed as though the lights on the tree shone a little less bright and the sugar cookies in the oven smelled a little less sweet in her absence.
I placed the ceramic snowman ornament on a middle-height branch of my partially decorated tree. As I bent down to pluck another ornament from the box, I was interrupted by the abrupt cry of my doorbell. I can’t remember the last time anyone rang the doorbell instead of just calling to say they’d stopped by. Opening the door, I expected to see the face of a friend dropping off a container of Christmas cookies, but was instead greeted by a police officer that I had never seen before. He quickly flashed a badge in my direction before returning it to the pocket of his slacks.
“Good evening, ma’am. My name is Agent Clark, and this—“ he paused momentarily as he extended his arm towards a similarly dressed man leaning against a shiny black car at the end of my driveway— “is Agent Howell.”
I poked my head around the stern looking middle-aged police officer on my porch and waved cautiously at Agent Howell. He nodded in response. Agent Clark cleared his throat, regaining my attention, and pulled a photograph out of a folder I hadn’t noticed he was holding.
“Anyway, I’m sorry to bother you, Ma’am, but we are canvassing the neighborhood to determine if any of the residents in this area have seen this man?”
At this he raised the photograph to my eye level. The photograph was clearly many years old as it had the grainy texture and slightly yellow tint of the disposable film cameras my mother often used when I was a child. It depicted an older gentleman with a robust beard that was more gray than white and matching hair atop his head. It was zoomed in close enough that only half of his torso was visible but I could see enough to tell that he was wearing the instantly recognizable red suit of Santa Clause. He was staring intensely at something out of frame with a solemn expression on his otherwise rather jolly looking face.
“You’re looking for… Santa Clause?” I asked, expecting the officer to laugh and explain that this entire visit was simply a holiday joke or a fundraising opportunity. Agent Clark did not respond immediately, but kept the photo raised as though he expected me to look more closely. I glanced again at the man in the picture, scrutinizing his shaggy hair, red jacket, and black suspenders. All he was missing was a bag full of toys draped over his broad shoulders.
“Uhm… I mean, yeah I recognize Santa but not, like, that specific Santa, you know?” I offered, thinking he might break his awkward silence if I responded more directly.
“His name is Nick,” Agent Clark replied in a monotone voice, placing the photo back inside the folder in his hand. I stared at him for a moment, once again expecting him to crack a smile and ask me for $20 to help buy new uniforms for the department.
“Nick… You’re serious? Nick like Jolly Old St. Nicholas?”
“Yes,” he confirmed with his trademark deadpan delivery, as though he would rather fall on his sword than acknowledge the irony of the situation. I was beginning to feel as though I were being interrogated. Agent Clark struck me as the type of man who would feel right at home in a small, dark room with a single overhead light pointed at the presumably guilty man across the table. I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as another wave of silence passed between us.
“Is there a reason you’re asking me this?”
“Yes,” he replied once again. “Nick recently escaped from a high security prison a few states over. We believe he has ties to this community.”
His explanation, if one could call it that, struck me like a snowball to the face. Before I had the chance to process a single word beyond “escaped,” Agent Clark thrust a business card into my hand and instructed me to call him at any time, day or night, if I noticed anything out of the ordinary. As he began to walk away, I looked at the card in my hand and realized, for the first time, that he was not a police officer at all.
“Wait!” I yelled after him. “You’re with the FBI? Is this, like, a big deal or something? I mean, is this guy dangerous?”
He turned back toward me and hesitated. His resolve seemed to falter momentarily before he offered a response.
“Just be careful, Allie.”
His words sounded more like a warning than a suggestion, though I didn’t get the chance to discuss the matter further before he had rejoined his colleague at the far side of my driveway. Agent Howell waved goodbye as both men loaded into their car. I raised my clammy hand in response and slowly waved as they drove beyond the curve at the front of my neighborhood, leaving me standing alone in the frame of my doorway as the sun went down and the street lamps turned on around me.
It wasn’t until I had closed and locked the door behind me that I realized Agent Clark had referred to me by name. Just be careful, Allie. The echo of his warning rang in my ears alongside the hollow pounding of my heart. I forced a few deep breaths— in through the nose, out through the mouth— to slow my pulse and motivate my brain to conjure a rational explanation. So what if he knew my name? He is an FBI agent after all. Isn’t it his job to know peoples names?
That night I triple-checked the lock on every door and window in my house before I crawled into bed, exhausted from the unsettling encounter with Agent Clark. I pulled the comforter up to my chin and listened intently to the eerie quiet of my empty house, half expecting to hear the pitter patter of reindeer hooves on my roof as Nick climbed down my chimney. A chill ran down my spine at the thought. Living alone was usually rather peaceful but it seemed much less so when there was an escaped prisoner on the loose. The shadows dancing on my wall that night took the holly, jolly, and uncharacteristically ominous shape of Santa Clause.
I awoke the next morning, an hour later than I’d intended, still exhausted after a restless night of sleep. Honestly, I wouldn’t have gotten up at all if I hadn’t promised my mother I’d help her sort through boxes of Grandmas old knick-knacks. After throwing on a raggedy pair of old jeans and an oversized knit sweater, I sped towards my mothers house and arrived just in time to find her standing on the front porch, rearranging the potted poinsettias beside the front door, likely for the second or third time.
After a bit of back and forth, I managed to convince her that the poinsettias were perfectly placed and we headed into the living room where she’d stacked all the boxes that need sorting. We spent two or three hours excavating delicate glassware, fragile statuettes, and figurines all wrapped in decades-old newspaper before my mother disappeared into the kitchen to make us both a drink. While she was gone, I continued digging through the artifacts like a seasoned archaeologist until I came upon a heavy leather bound photo album.
The album clearly hadn’t been handled in many years. A thick layer of dust coated the outside and the spine crunched as I pried open the front cover. Inside were plastic pages adorned with several clear pockets, each containing a single bittersweet memory. Cousins fishing with my grandfather. Easter egg hunting on Grandmas back porch. Helping Grandma in the garden. A single cold tear slid down my cheek as I looked through the photos, trying and failing to remember how I’d felt in each perfectly captured moment. As I flipped to a new page, my eyes settled upon a photo of a Christmas party my Grandma hosted in what I assume was the late 90’s based on the abundance of shoulder pads and permed hair amongst the attendees.
My eyes bounced from person to person, most of whom I recognized, until they landed squarely on the stern face of a man dressed as Santa Clause. I involuntarily and audibly gasped at the sight of the very same Santa that the FBI had questioned me about not 24 hours earlier. The harder I looked at the photo, squinting my eyes at the page like an elderly librarian, the more obvious it became that this was not only the same Santa, but the exact same photo that Agent Clark had produced on my doorstep.
The only difference was that this version had not been cropped to focus solely on Nick. In the original, he was seated comfortably on a couch in the center of the room, surrounded by my cousins and the neighborhood children we often played with, but it didn’t appear that he was interacting with them or really paying them much attention at all. Instead, he was staring intensely across the room at something else as though the children vying for his affection simply didn’t exist. A jolt of electricity ran up my spine as I identified the target of his scrutiny. He was staring at me.
“Who wants hot chocolate?” Chimed my mom, startling me from my spiraling thoughts and causing my heart to flip in my chest as she turned the corner from the kitchen holding two steaming mugs. “I made it your favorite way, with the peppermint marshmallows.”
She sat the mugs on the coffee table in front of me and peeked at the open photo album on my lap. Her brows slid inward and her lips pursed into an expression I recognized as a sorry attempt to keep from crying. I was making a similar face at the same moment, but for a very different reason.
“Mom threw the best parties,” she sniffled, wiping her eyes with a napkin.
I nodded and patted her knee, unsure of what to say. The loss of her mother had been very hard on her. I didn’t want to add to her stress by telling her anything about Nick or the FBI but I felt compelled to ask her about him and his presence at the party. My mind was still reeling from the discovery of the photo and I couldn’t decide how best to bring it up without seeming suspicious. We sat in a hollow silence for another long minute before I cleared my throat abruptly, startling us both.
“She did throw amazing parties,” I said, forcing a thin smile across my face. “She always had so many guest. I mean, she practically invited the whole neighborhood. I recognize almost everyone in this photo but I don’t think I know him.” I gently tapped my finger on the photo next to the couch where Nick was seated.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “well that’s, uhm, let’s see… well I suppose I don’t remember his name. He worked a season as a Santa Clause at the mall. Your grandma took you to get your photo taken with him and she said you two talked for so long that a little elf had to ask you to leave so the other kids could take a turn.” She seemed slightly less sad now as she remembered the magical years when I still wholeheartedly believed in Santa Clause.
“I think you asked for a, oh what was it… a Barbie Dream House! That’s the one. A Barbie Dream House. Anyway, you liked him so much that she hired him to play Santa Clause at the Christmas party.”
Despite the absurdity of this situation, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the memory of how desperately I once yearned for a Barbie Dream House. The commercials played constantly on TV that winter and I must have written Santa a hundred letters begging him to stuff one into my stocking. In that moment, I’d almost forgotten why I was asking her about the party in the first place. It was nice to reminisce and see her smile again after the misery of the last few weeks.
If I wasn’t still so anxious about my visit from Agent Clark, I might have elected to forget about this entire affair. There’s nothing inherently sinister about a little girl befriending a mall Santa, is there? For a fleeting second, I even let myself believe that this was all an innocent coincidence but, soon enough, the sick feeling of uncertainty crept back into my stomach as I remembered the look on Agent Clark’s face as he warned me to be careful.
“Do you remember what happened to Santa after that?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m not sure, honey. We used to run into him around town quite often for awhile. At the super market, the movie theatre, that sort of thing, but I don’t think he stayed around here very long. I haven’t seen him in ages.”
She must not have thought the man was anything especially interesting because, without waiting for a response, she turned the page and starting talking about a photo of my uncle smoking a turkey on the back porch. I wanted desperately to ask more questions about Nick but, instead, I forced myself to swallow mouthfuls of room temperature hot chocolate and nod my head as she laughed her way through the part of the story where my cousins dog snatched the turkey off the counter moments before Thanksgiving dinner.
After I’d finished my drink, I helped her unpack and organize another box or two of ancient relics. Knick-knacks, tchotchkes, and trinkets now sat in three distinct piles which identified them as either keepsakes, donations, or trash. Somewhere in the midst of the dishevelment, I managed to snag the picture of the holiday party and shove it into my purse without her noticing. The address listed on the business card Agent Clark had given me wasn’t too far from here so I decided to stop by on my way home and demand a solid explanation.
It seemed like a good idea at the time but, as I pulled into the parking lot of the FBI field office a few hours later, I began to question the sanity of this plan. I’d barely even spoken to an FBI agent, much less barged into their office and demanded that they give me details regarding an open investigation into a runway felon. As badly as I wanted to drive straight home and dive into a warm bath, I felt compelled to understand more about Nick and, unfortunately, Agent Clark was the only one who could help me do that.
As I entered the sterile looking office building, I was greeted by the stern face of Agent Howell, sitting at the intake counter by the door. He was clearly surprised to see me as his eyes widened slightly before quickly settling back to their usual size. Up close, I could see that he was quite a bit younger than Agent Clark but just as serious. A few other agents roamed around the office, holding notepads and cups of coffee. Their ever-furrowed brows made me feel agitated and out of place, like I’d accidentally wandered into a funeral.
“Hello,” I started, “we’ve met before, kind of… is there any way I could see—“
“Agent Clark’s office is just down that hall. Second door on the left,” he interrupted, pointing his callused hand towards a hallway lined with far-too-bright fluorescent lights.
“Thanks,” I replied in what I hoped was a cheery tone. My feet felt like cinder blocks as I wrenched myself, one step at a time, down the hallway towards Agent Clark. By the time I arrived in front of his office door, I’d almost convinced myself to turn around and leave but, instead, I pushed open the door and threw myself inside before I could change my mind. The office was warm in both temperature and décor. The walls were lined with crooked frames and dusty accoutrements. He clearly spent a lot of time here.
Agent Clark was seated at the head of a large, dark wood desk. He looked up at me patiently, as though he anticipated I would begin the conversation. Instead, I tossed the photo wordlessly onto his desk and crossed my arms, trying my best to look intimidating even though I was visibly shaking. He took one quick look at the photo before returning his gaze to mine. “Would you like a glass of water?” he asked, as though I’d simply popped in for a social visit.
“No,” I responded, adopting his firm demeanor.
He nodded his head and pointed to the brown leather chair beside me. “I suggest you take a seat.” Once I was settled, he began rummaging through a drawer full of manilla folders in a metal filing cabinet behind his desk. It took only a moment or two for him to find the folder he was looking for but that was more than enough time for my last shred of courage to abandon me completely.
I could tell by the somber look on his face that the papers tucked away inside that seemingly innocuous yellow folder would, at the very least, ruin the rest of my night. For the second time since my arrival, I was struck by the thought that I’d made a mistake coming here. My self-preservation instincts were blaring in my head like an air-raid siren, begging me to stand up and run away before Agent Clark told me something I didn’t really want to know. Just as I was about to grab my purse and sprint towards the nearest exit, he wordlessly placed a glossy photo on the wooden desk beside the photo I’d placed there moments earlier.
The photo was very small, maybe three inches long at the most. I picked it up and held it in my trembling hand, expecting to see another image of Nick. Instead, I was greeted by the smiling face of a little girl, no older than ten, wearing a blue school uniform. This was a yearbook photo. The kind a mother or grandmother might carry around in their wallet well after the child had grown up and graduated from college. She had bright blue eyes and dark brown hair that was pushed back with a sparkling pink headband, the same kind I often wore when I was her age. Actually, she looked remarkably similar to me, right down to the smattering of freckles across her cheek bones. I turned the photo over in my hands and read the handwritten caption on the back: Suzie Evans, 1996
There were so many questions floating through my mind that I couldn’t focus on any particular one for long enough to ask it. Instead, I placed the photo back onto the desk and frowned at Agent Clark, hoping he would take the hint and explain what Suzie Evans had to do with the fact that Nick had apparently attended a Christmas party at my grandmothers house. After an extremely long thirty seconds he finally began to speak, drowning out the air-raid sirens that had begun shrieking in my mind once again.
“Nick moved around a lot,” he began. “He would disappear, sometimes for eight, nine months at a time, popping up again around Thanksgiving when he would get a job working as a mall Santa in some small town or another, but never the same town twice. There were other little girls missing in towns he’d lived in, but this—” he pointed to the photo of Suzie— “is the only we could pin on him for certain.”
I nodded my head so he knew I was listening though I think he could tell I wasn’t fully digesting the information he was providing.
“Pin on him?” I parroted back at him, hoping for a more direct explanation. He ignored my question and continued.
“He was on deaths row for twenty-three years for what he did to Suzie Evans, right up until two weeks ago when he escaped during a prison transfer. The warden searched his cell for anything that might give us a clue as to where he might go and she found a journal. It didn’t have much in it. Just some drawings and inconsequential notes about the more mundane aspects of prison life. But there were a few names.”
He paused and took a deep breath which made me realize that I’d been holding my own breath throughout this entire conversation. My heart was pounding in my chest with such force that I was sure he could see it pushing against my sternum despite the thick sweater I was wearing. He audibly cleared his throat.
“Most of the names correspond to decades old missing persons cases— Emily Grant from Mason City, Caitlyn Green down in Butler County. Of course, Suzie Evans… and yours.”
My heart suddenly stopped beating altogether and the hot chocolate I’d forced down earlier began to rise up in my throat. I swallowed hard to avoid spewing partially digested peppermint marshmallows onto my lap. Questions bounced around my skull like ping pong balls but I was too shaken to form anything resembling a sentence. With great effort I managed to whisper, almost imperceptibly, a single word: “Mine?”
He continued his story as though he hadn’t heard me, probably because he hadn’t.
“Like I said, Nick had a habit of disappearing. We had all the evidence we needed to arrest him for what he did to Suzie Evans but we just couldn’t find him. It wasn’t until two years later that he popped up again working as a Santa at the mall off 5th avenue. I suppose that would be where he met you and your grandmother. Anyway, a few of our agents were sloppy. Overly confident. Following too closely. He knew we were closing in on him so he packed up and skipped town in the middle of the night, just a few nights before Christmas. We interviewed half the town, including your grandma, to see if he’d told anyone where he was heading. She was kind enough to give us that photo from the Christmas party. You sure you don’t want some water?”
I nodded my head slowly in no particular direction. He must have found some meaning in this because he stood and walked out of the room, leaving me alone in the still air of his office with nothing to do but stare at the photo of Suzie Evans on the desk in front of me. She had chubby pink cheeks and a sweet smile. Tears welled in the corners of my eyes as I thought about how terrified she must have been during whatever horrible encounter she’d had with Nick. I was grateful that Agent Clark had been relatively vague on that point.
My thoughts were, thankfully, quickly interrupted as Agent Clark reappeared holding a small bottle of cold water and placed it in my outstretched hand. I wiped the hot tears off my face with the sleeve of my sweater and forced a comically small sip of water down my throat, barely enough to wash away the taste of bile. Agent Clark must have noticed my puffy red eyes because he patted me gently on the back in an unspoken gesture of reassurance, which I appreciated though it didn’t really make me feel any better.
“Thanks,” I managed, forcing an unconvincing smile as he reclaimed his seat on the opposite side of the desk. “So my grandmother, she knew about all this? About Suzie?”
“No,” he answered. “We told everyone we talked to that he had witnessed a robbery and we needed to ask him some questions. We didn’t want people to panic so close to Christmas. Anyway, one man in town told us that Nick had mentioned owning a small house in rural Montana. Sure enough, that’s where we found him shortly after. But now we’re back at the beginning of the story. Trying to track him down all over again.”
“But why here?” I asked. “I mean, would he really ever come back here? You said it yourself. Never the same town twice.”
“We have reason to believe that you may have been his next intended target.“
He let the weight of those words hang in the air for a moment. Somehow, I really hadn’t expected him to say that, although it seems obvious now that he has.
“And the fact that your name was written in his journal over two decades later shows that he hasn’t forgotten about you. We don’t know if he would be bold enough to come back here. At this point, you’re too old to fit his usual profile but people like him tend to be… sentimental. You know, the one that got away and all that.”
My mind faded to black as I stared blankly at Agent Clark. I was too overwhelmed to think of a response and my nerves were too fried to react to anything I’d just heard. I desperately wished I was at home in my bed, having never heard of Nick or Agent Clark or even Santa Clause.
“Well thank you… for the explanation,” I mumbled. “I’m going to head home now. Thank you again, really.” I grabbed my purse and ambled toward the door when I felt a hand on my shoulder, holding me in place.
“I’ll send a car by in the morning to check on you. I know this is a lot. Be careful, Allie.”
God, I wish he would stop saying that.
He released his grip on my shoulder and allowed me to leave. The bright fluorescent lights in the hallway felt like an assault on my already overstimulated senses. The walk back to my car took anywhere between five minutes and an hour and the drive home felt even less precise. My thoughts were scattered and I kept missing turns i’d taken thousands of times before. By the time I finally recognized the entrance to my neighborhood, it was well past sundown and I was desperate for sleep.
I was so excited to be home that the pathetic flickering lightbulb on my front porch may well have been a row of neon lights on the Las Vegas strip. As I approached, my excitement melted to apprehension when I noticed a small envelope tucked beside the large, red bow on the wreath hung in the center of my front door. There was no writing on the outside. I pulled a white sheet of paper from inside and read a short message, written in scrawling red ink: HO HO HO.
The hair on my arms stood at attention and my breath caught on the lump in my throat as I suddenly felt eyes burning a hole through my back. Letting the note fall from my hand, I whipped around, frantically scanning the perimeter for anyone or anything that might be watching me.
It was a dreary night. The moon was obscured by clouds, leaving only the dim light of dying street lamps to aid my search. It was silent except the uneven sound of my ragged breathing as my eyes landed upon the silhouette of a large man standing still in my front yard. My heart leapt forward, startling my body to action as the man slowly began to advance towards me. I turned back toward my front door, willing myself to not look behind me, and desperately pawed through my purse in search of my keys.
“Please, please, please” I begged as tears streamed down my face. Finally my fingers felt the cold metal of my keychain. I ripped it out of my purse and slammed my house key into the lock as I wrenched the door open and flew inside, slamming the door behind me. As I stood in the entryway, back pressed against the door, unable to move, I heard the deliberate plodding of large feet on the concrete of my front porch.
My blood ran cold in my veins as I stood frozen with only a few inches of an old wooden door and a thin window pane separating me from a walking nightmare. I could feel his face in the window beside me but I couldn’t bring myself to look, though he clearly wanted my attention. He tap, tap, tapped on the window and began to sing in a slow, low voice, drawing out the lyrics like a tape recorder that had run out of battery.
“I’m making a list…”
tap tap tap
“I’m checking it twice…”
tap tap tap
“Gonna find out if you’re naughty or nice.…”
tap tap tap
That final tap snapped me back to reality and I scolded myself for not calling Agent Clark the moment I’d closed the door. Once again, I found myself frantically searching through my purse, and then, with increased urgency, patting the empty pockets on my coat as I remembered that I had left my phone plugged into the charger in my car. A loud, involuntary sob escaped my lips at the realization that I had no way to call for help. I sprinted away from the door toward the kitchen, desperate to put space between me and my pursuer. The sound of breaking glass rang out behind me as Nick smashed through the window to reach the lock on the front door.
I grabbed my largest kitchen knife and spun around just in time to see him step through the now open front door into the entryway where I had been standing only moments before. He was, of course, wearing a ragged, red Santa Clause suit, complete with shiny black shoes and matching suspenders. His hardened face was just barely illuminated by the multi-colored lights of the Christmas tree that I’d never actually finished decorating. He scowled at the knife I held desperately in front of me.
“Ah, naughty, I see. Too bad. I was so looking forward to bringing you a, what was it? Barbie Dream House?”
He slammed the door shut behind him, sending shards of glass from the broken window crashing to the floor by his feet. We stood for a moment staring silently at one another. Hot tears streamed down my face as I thought of all the tragic ways this encounter might play out. The most likely scenarios seemed to end with my blood splattered across the walls for Agent Clark to find in the morning. It didn’t look like Nick had a weapon. Did he even need one? Truthfully, it was probably best that I didn’t know.
Before I’d had a chance to make any sort of conscious decision, my feet propelled me toward him. I slashed the knife from side to side, hoping to make some sort of deadly, or at least debilitating, contact with his flesh. As I closed the gap between us, I noticed that he was quite a bit larger than I had originally thought. I hesitated momentarily and he took the opportunity to knock me off my feet. My body crumpled like discarded wrapping paper on the floor as he stood over me.
His large belly shook from the force of his laughter as he pulled me up by the front of my sweater and pinned me against the wall with one strong arm. With his other, he grabbed the wrist of my knife-wielding hand and slammed it repeatedly against the wall. I clutched the weapon— my only line of defense— as hard as I could, squeezing my fingers around the hilt until one final blow loosened my grip and sent the knife clattering to the floor. He slowly reached down and picked it up, turning it over meticulously in his large hand before pressing the cold blade to my throat.
He grinned and his eyes twinkled. If I didn’t truly think that his man was mere seconds away from bisecting my jugular artery, I would believe him to be none other than the authentic Santa Clause. Looking at his face this closely for the first time in over twenty years, I understood how easy it must have been for him to gain the trust of innocent children, including myself. His bushy beard, which was now entirely white, and rosy cheeks must have made it all too easy for him. All he had to do was wear a red suit, smile once or twice, and use their innocent naivety against them.
“You’re a fucking monster, Nick” I spat. The words felt like venom leaving my lips but I knew they would have no real impact. If anything, he was probably enjoying this all the more knowing that I had recognized how sinister his deception truly was.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the drag of the knife across my throat to be as quick and painless as it was inevitable. The pressure of metal against skin increased momentarily as Nick began to taunt me by softly singing what had once been one of my favorite Christmas songs.
“Here comes Santa Clause… here comes Santa Clause… right down—“
My heavy breathing echoed in my ears so loudly that I hadn’t heard the gunshots. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until Nick fell to the floor in front of me that I even noticed Agent Howell standing in the entryway, gun raised and finger on the trigger.
Red and blue lights danced like sugar plum fairies about the living room as Agent Howell and I each released the air we had held hostage in our lungs. Agent Clark entered the room behind him, crunching broken glass beneath his feet with each step, and draped his heavy arm around my shoulder. I was shivering and sweating at the same time. He steered me gently toward the couch on the other side of the room where I collapsed onto the uncomfortable cushions and sobbed into my plaid holiday pillows.
Agent Clark smiled at me and assured me that, from that moment on, I was safe and everything was going to be just fine. I think that might have been the first time he’d ever smiled in his entire life. Before us, the mangled visage of Santa Clause bled out on the carpet as paramedics swiftly descended upon him like children rushing towards their stockings on Christmas morning.
“Merry.. Ch-christmas to all” Nick choked, red blood oozing from the three quarter sized bullet wounds in his back, “and to all… a good night.”