Krampus

This year my parents decided to do something a little bit different. Instead of the usual Elf on a Shelf they put out every year to remind my 10-year-old brother, Derek, to be good, they bought Krampus on a Mantle to remind him what happens when you're bad.

At first, I thought it was hilarious when Krampus showed up one morning, sitting on our fireplace mantle with his cartoon like evil little face. My brother wasn't as amused. He complained to me the whole day about my parents buying the doll and kept saying how there was something off about it.

"Of course there is! It's not supposed to be some cheerful little reminder. It's supposed to scare you into being good." I told him as he stood beside me, lightly kicking my chair with an annoyed expression on his face. I told him that if he was so upset about the doll then to just tell mom and dad and maybe they would put it away.

But he, instead, wanted to prove to them that their scare tactic wasn't going to work on him. He had decided to not bring up the doll to either of our parents and purposely act out to show them he wasn't scared.

I chuckled at his defiance and watched as he sauntered away to try to find something to get into.

About an hour had passed since having the conversation with Derek when I heard my mother yelling from downstairs. I ran towards the sound and found my brother standing in the living room, a trail of muddy shoe prints leading from the front door to where he stood. I should probably mention my mother's white and gold Christmas area rug was where the track marks were.

She stood there, red faced, arms crossed, demanding to know why he hadn't wiped his shoes before coming back in the house. To which my brother shrugged and replied, "I forgot."

The next day Aunt May stopped by with her tin of homemade frosted sugar cookies, as she usually does around this time of year. Aunt May was our favorite aunt, always baking us stuff and remembering our birthdays and calling to check on how we were. Derek absolutely adored her, and her sugar cookies were his favorite treat around Christmas… so it was a complete surprise to us when he bit into a cookie and immediately spit it out, declaring how awful they were this year.

Watching Aunt May's happy, smiling face crumple into shock and hurt immediately made me want to slap my brother. I glared at the guilty look he tried to hide and confronted him as our mother sat apologizing to our tearful Aunt May.

"You don't need to be a jerk to people!" I hissed after dragging him away from everyone. He explained that he didn't want to hurt Aunt May but he was proving a point that he wasn't afraid of the Krampus on the Mantle. I told him he was going too far and dragged him back to apologize to Aunt May. He hugged her and immediately apologized, making some lame excuse that he had been joking the whole time.

I guess it saved me from having to throw him in the trash that day.

Soon after, my brother continued his quest to provoke Krampus by "accidentally" dropping the roast my mother had just made for dinner right in front of our dog. He threw his baseball at our attic window and jammed a twig into the driver's side keyhole of my dad's truck.

Satisfied with the destruction my brother caused for the day, he turned in for the night giggling about how he did everything to provoke Krampus and there he was just sitting on the mantle, unmoving.

About 3 AM my brother woke me up, his face pale and his eyes wide as half dollars.

"Where's Krampus?" He whispered to me in the darkness of my room. I sleepily mumbled something incoherent and tried to roll over to go back to sleep. My brother shoved my shoulder over and over to get me to wake up and finally I had had enough and shot up in my bed, "Come on, brat, let's go find Krampus."

We walked downstairs and looked around. Everything was silent and the only lights on were the soft glow of the Christmas tree lights. Everything looked normal except for the missing Krampus on the mantle. I rolled my eyes at my brother and told him I was not in the mood for his stupid games but decided to look around for the missing doll anyway.

I was just about to give up when I noticed a pair of red glowing eyes beside the bottom step of the stairs. "Derek, you're going to have to do better than that to scare me." I told him as I sighed and picked up the doll to put back on the mantle. He profusely denied moving Krampus so I suggested maybe it was our parents doing it to scare him into behaving more.

The night before Christmas we all did our usual opening of a present, while sipping on hot chocolate. My brother made a face at the new game he had received for Christmas and made a big stink over it not being the game he wanted. He stomped all the way upstairs and slammed the door, leaving my parents shocked and angry.

His whole attitude to try to provoke something that was pure myth was really getting on my nerves. I went upstairs to confront him yet again and saw him sitting on his bed with a smirk on his face. "Like you said, they're moving Krampus to scare me. The day after Christmas I'll show them, Krampus is not real!" He told me. In my anger at the way he was acting I yelled at him that maybe Krampus really should take him.

That night, the temperature seemed to drop significantly. The air was bitingly cold even with the heater on. I sat in bed, scrolling through my phone when I heard the sound of chains being dragged across the roof.

After a minute, I heard a soft knock on my door. My little brother asked me if I heard the noise on the roof and told me that Krampus was gone from the mantle again. I yelled at him to go away, sick and tired of his games already, and put my headphones on to block him out.

My parents had gone out for a little bit and I was told to watch Derek, but I didn't want to deal with the whole Krampus crap anymore.

I dozed off for a little bit and woke up to the sounds of the chains again. I saw my headphones lying on the ground by my bed and figured they must have fallen off my head while I slept. I thought I was just imagining things and was about to go back to sleep when I heard it again. The chains seemed like they were being dragged towards the part of the roof where the chimney was.

I got up and quietly tiptoed to open my bedroom door. I peered out into the darkness and called out for my brother. No response. I called his name again and finally he responded. His voice sounded faint and distant. He kept calling my name and I tried asking him where he was but he'd always respond with "I don't know." Wherever he was, he sounded terrified.

I silently made my way to his room, my heart racing as the door slowly creaked open. He wasn't in there. But I could still hear him calling for me. I started to panic as I went from room to room with still no sign of him.

My parents weren't back, and I didn't know what to do. I could hear him but I couldn't see him. I ran down the stairs, giving up being quiet and yelling my brothers name as I checked everywhere downstairs. He was gone.

For whatever reason, my eyes were drawn to the mantle and it took my brain a moment to register that the Krampus was gone again. I called my mom, not really knowing what else to do, but when she picked up I didn't want to get in trouble about my brother (in case he was just pulling a prank) and decided to ask her if they had moved the Krampus on the mantle.

"What Krampus?" My mom asked. My heart sunk into my stomach as I pressed her about the Krampus doll they had put on the mantle. "We didn't buy a Krampus doll." My mother responded, asking why I was acting like that and what was going on. Everything she said was a haze as I hung up on her.

I yanked the front door open, sending a flurry of fresh snow on my hair as my head whipped around trying to find any trace of my brother. The blanket of soft snow was pristine, the night air chilling me to the bone as I tried to make sense of what was happening. I heard a loud, low growl from somewhere in the darkness, somewhere behind the trees surrounding my house. The source of the angry demonic noise was just out of view, hidden behind the darkness of tree trunks and foliage.

After a few minutes of my eyes adjusting more to my surroundings I noticed it, the marks of hooves impressed upon the fresh fallen snow. My breath caught in my throat as I followed the trail with my eyes, and saw it led into the darkness of the trees.

I turned to run back inside when my foot hit something beside me. I picked up the little Krampus doll that was tucked beside the door, a tiny scroll tied to its foot that hadn't been there in the days leading up to Christmas Eve

I unrolled the scroll with shaky hands and read the writing scrawled on it.

It was a list of who was naughty. My brother's name was written underneath with a little checkmark neatly marked beside it. And another name that had yet to be checked.

It was mine.