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By Kay Hanifen
It was Christmas 1973, and I remember humming along to Carol of the Bells and dancing on aching feet as I combined flour, sugar, and softened butter into what would hopefully become Mom’s famous shortbread cookies. The rest of the family was out for the annual Christmas parade, but today was a bad sensory day. I stayed at home, because I didn’t want to have a meltdown with the crowd and the noise. Mom and Dad didn’t really understand why the world was sometimes too bright and loud, they were patient with me and my idiosyncrasies. Today, you might call me autistic, but back then, I was just strange.
While the sound of the hand mixer was unpleasant, I much preferred it to the throngs of boisterous people. Besides, Mandy Grisham was the Snow Queen of the parade this year, and she made my life a living hell in high school. Why would I want to see her moment of glory?
Slowly, the dough began to form. Watching it felt like a special kind of magic, and once it was mixed enough, I transferred it to the cutting board. The next part was my favorite (aside from eating the cookies). I methodically floured the board and rolling pin before rolling out the dough and cutting shapes. The repetitive process was soothing to my slightly frayed nerves.
My meditative state was interrupted by a loud knocking on the door, followed by screaming. I ran to the front and when I opened it, a woman about my age came tumbling through. “Shut the door! Shut the door!” she screamed, and I did as she said, locking it behind her.
The girl collapsed on her knees, sobbing into her blood covered hands. She wore a ripped and bloodied sexy Santa costume like one that the showgirls wore at the local strip club. Her hair was in disarray and her makeup was a mess, mascara running down her tear-stained cheeks.
I stared, unsure of how to react. Would she want a hug? To tell me what happened? To call the police? I fidgeted with my bracelet, the textured bead against my thumb helping to soothe me. “I was baking cookies,” I blurted out and winced, amending with, “It’s okay that you interrupted me, though, because you need help, and I would like to help you.”
She wiped her eyes, mascara smudging her face. “There are these...things outside. They killed my coworkers.” A flat, droning sound of “Ga, ga, ga, ga” filled the air. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh god, they found me.”
I peered out the window to see four creatures ambling down the road. At first glance, they were dressed like old women with knit cardigans and long skirts, but then one turned towards me. In place of a face, it had a long white beak coming to a point about a foot from the bandana they wore around what might have been their ears. They all carried giant scissors that gleamed in the winter sunlight. Something about them was familiar, but I needed to check my encyclopedia of folklore to be sure.
A hand grabbed my wrist, and I jumped, jerking it away. “Sorry. But we should get away from the windows,” the girl said.
I nodded, leading her into the kitchen and sitting her down in front of my freshly baked snowball cookies. “You can have some if you aren’t allergic to nuts. I’ll get you some new clothes.”
I was a little taller and rounder than her, but my old high school gym shirt and sweatpants would fit. My well read encyclopedia of folklore sat on my bookshelf. I grabbed the clothes and the book and headed back downstairs where she waited, staring at the cookies as if they were a trap.
“I brought you clothes,” I said, handing them to her. “The bathroom is down the hall and to the right.”
“Thanks,” she said softly, giving me a tremulous smile that even I could tell meant that she was on the verge of tears.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, turning off the oven and opening the book. Mom’s famous shortbread would have to wait. “I’m going to research the things we saw.”
“Let me know what you find.” She disappeared down the hall, and I couldn’t help the thrill of excitement I felt as I opened the section on Christmas folklore. All my life, I’d been fascinated by monsters. It’s a special interest of mine, and I’d read just about every book on it in the library before my parents bought me my own encyclopedia of folklore to read and reread. Obviously, it was bad that monsters were real and apparently killed people, but it was also strangely vindicating that I was right to draw protective sigils on my bed when I was eight and insist on keeping cold iron or silver on me at all times. I conducted my hand, wiggling my fingers to beat of the Christmas music still playing on the radio as I skimmed over the passages, searching for something that fit the description of what I saw. For a moment, I thought maybe it was Grylla, the child eating witch from Iceland, but those definitely weren’t Yule Lads with her. It couldn’t be La Befana of Spain because she behaved more like St. Nicholas and gave out gifts instead of attacking people. Frau Perchta held some familiarity in the back of my mind, so I read more carefully. She had an entourage called perchten, but the description of the beautiful and ugly perchten didn’t quite fit.
“Find anything?” the girl asked. Her face was still red and splotchy from tears, but she’d cleaned off the worst of the ruined makeup. She looked much warmer in this than what she wore before. “And I’m sorry. I don’t think I know your name.”
“Carrie,” I said, “Carrie Lane, and I should be the one saying sorry. It was rude of me not to ask yours.”
“I’m Ramona.” She sat on one of the counter stools, giving me a crooked smile.
“What happened?” I asked, and then, wincing at my bluntness, added, “If you don’t mind telling. It might help me figure out what they are.”
Ramona took a deep, stuttering breath, letting it out slowly before beginning. “So, I work as a stripper. Don’t judge. It makes good money, pole dancing is great exercise, and I’m saving up for college tuition. It’s not because I have daddy issues or—”
“I don’t judge,” I interrupted, “I’ve read articles by Margot St. James and Jennifer James about it, and I honestly don’t understand what the big deal is. I mean, you aren’t—” Realizing I’d just interrupted her, I shut my mouth. “Sorry. I-I’m not good at people, but I’m working on it.”
She snorted, relaxing slightly. Ramona had a nice smile, even if it was troubled by what she had seen. “You’re fine. I’m just glad you’re open minded about my job. Anyway, I was doing a daytime show at the club. It was mostly our regulars, and you’d be surprised by the number of well-respected men of the community that counted among them. Like yesterday, the rich guy who just announced that he was running for mayor again—”
“Mr. Grisham?”
“That’s the one. I’m one of his favorites, and he paid for a lap dance. Mid song, his wife bursts in and pulls him out by the ear. The funniest shit I’ve ever seen.”
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” I said, taking a perverse pleasure in the compromising situation my least favorite family found themselves in, “I just wish there were reporters. His ‘Clean Up the Town’ platform would be sunk.”
She let out a sudden laugh, the kind people make when the emotion sneaks up on them as much as it did their companion. “God, I wish. Not only is he trying to force me out of a job, but he always smells like cheap cologne and likes to get handsy. I could live with that, but he’s also a terrible tipper.”
“He’s as much of a monster as I thought,” I replied, deadpan. Her laughter was high and musical. Like a melody, I wanted to hear it again and again.
But then her smile slowly fell. “Anyway, I was doing a day show for our regulars when they burst in. They attacked the customers first, slitting their bellies open and stuffing their bodies with the detritus on the tables and the ground. Confetti and napkins—stuff like that. We tried to run, but another blocked the exit, so we turned off the lights and hid in the dark. One by one, they found us. I could hear my friends’ screams turn into gurgles as they dragged them out of their hiding spots and killed them.”
She let out a shuddering breath, wiping her eyes. I grabbed a tissue from the box by the couch and handed it to her. Dabbing her eyes, she said, “Thanks. I hid under the stage and had a clear view of the exit. The moment the one at the door moved to join the search for victims, I made a break for it, running barefoot out the door while they all cried out like some alien hivemind. Yours was the first neighborhood I ran into, but when I knocked, no one opened the door. At least, no one until you. You saved my life. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Of course,” I said, “I couldn’t leave you to die.” With my mind mulling over her description of the monster’s behavior, it suddenly hit me. At the very bottom of the entry about Frau Perchta, there was a note about how her feast days were celebrated in different regions. In the Rauris region of Austria, they had the Schnabelperchten, or the “beaked perchten,” who would walk around honking like a goose and use their giant scissors to slice open anyone unclean and stuff them full of dirt. There was a black and white photograph of people in their unsettling costumes pretending to gut their victims. I leapt to my feet, flapping my hands in excitement, before remembering that someone else was here with me. I put them down, my face heating up. “Sorry.”
“What for?” She looked genuinely confused.
“People sometimes think my hand shaking is weird, but I’m just excited. I think I figured out what those things are.”
She shrugged, flashing me a soft, almost admiring smile. “Hey, you don’t judge me for my stuff, so I’m sure as hell not gonna judge you for your quirks. Us outcasts have to stick together.” She looked over my shoulder at the photograph. “So, what are they?”
I explained to her the legend of the Schnabelperchten and why I thought those were the monsters she’d escaped. As I did, my excitement was replaced by horror when the reality of the situation set in. “Their whole thing is judging who is clean and who is dirty, either morally or literally, so they’ll probably head to where the most people are.”
Her eyes widened. “The parade.”
“My parents are there, and they’re in danger.” Panic making my fingers clumsy, I fumbled as I shut off the radio, cutting off Judy Garland mid “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” It was too much. Too much noise. I couldn’t think with the buzzing in my head.
“Damn it,” I cried, slamming my fist on the counter repeatedly as tears burned in my eyes.
Ramona touched my shoulder, and I cried out, flinching away and curling in on myself on the ground. “Hey,” she said, sitting just out of reach on the floor. “I’m sorry for touching you. It’ll be okay. We’ll call the police and then go there ourselves to try to warn people. Tell the police that murderers came with weapons and they’re gonna use them. Maybe we’ll even convince them that they’re the anti-Christmas communists that televangelists are always screaming about here to take direct action. But we have to act now.”
Right. The family was in danger. I could melt down later. Slowly getting to my feet, I mentally ran through the things we might need. “Thanks,” I said, wiping my eyes, “now, let’s save Christmas.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were wading through a cheering crowd. She held my hand, a grounding point of contact in the throng of people. I wore my earplugs and muffs to block out some of the sensory hell brought on by the crowds, the music, the parade floats, and the smell of greasy concessions. The town Christmas Parade was one of the biggest events of the year. People got together to build floats, and elves handed out candies to children while the mayor donned the Santa suit and waved at the crowd beside his Mrs. Claus. And, on the final float, the newly crowned Snow Queen waved at her adoring subjects. She was selected by a beauty pageant held on the feast of Saint Nicholas—the sixth of December—and was treated like actual royalty for the whole year. Every girl in the town wanted it. I used to dream of being on top of that float before realizing that it was almost always the daughters of the same few rich families that received the coveted crown. This year, it was the Grisham’s daughter, Mandy.
Ramona froze, sending me staggering into her. She pointed a shaky finger towards the marchers in the parade. “Look.”
I removed my earmuffs and above the din, heard the droning “ga, ga, ga” from the Schnabelperchten as they surrounded the Snow Queen and her parents, marching in rhythm to the Nutcracker Suite. Mandy looked different from the way I remembered her. She’d dyed her hair a silvery gray, and piled it into a long, complicated braid. Her skin was pale as a corpse, and even at a distance, her eyes burned into the crowd. Mother and father waved beside her with a practiced grace. Mrs. Grisham was a tall, thin woman. Everything about her from her clothes to her ponytail and even her skin seemed pulled taut, like a rubber band about to snap. Mr. Grisham looked the part of the consummate businessman, his hair slicked back and gold watch glinting in the sunlight. His grin was wide, revealing perfect, unnaturally white teeth.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” I asked as the float slowed to a stop.
Mandy stopped waving, keeping her hand frozen in the air before bringing it down sharply. That must have been their cue, because the Schnabelperchten dispersed, wading into the crowd and the rest of the marchers ahead of them. “You had to say something,” Ramona muttered.
I put my headphones back on in preparation for the screams to start while Ramona pulled me closer. Normally, I don’t like physical contact—hugs are iffy on even good sensory days—but this time, I was glad for the touch as my heart hammered in my chest.
The screaming started when one stabbed its massive scissors into Steve Hofstetter. He was a known thief and petty criminal, but he wasn’t malicious. When he worked as a janitor at my school, he was always kind, stopping and sitting quietly with me whenever I got sent out to the hallway because I’d had one of my episodes. And I watched one of those Big Bird wannabes plunge its scissors into him, splitting him in half from chest to groin. He fell to the ground with a look of surprise on his face, red pooling around him and staining the white beaks of the monsters. It pulled out his intestines slowly, starting with the colon, gutting him while another stuffed litter in the empty cavity where his chest used to be.
The crowd watched in silence for a moment after it gutted him, but then one screamed, and it set off a stampede. We held onto each other, too frozen to fight the crowd or run with it. The Schnabelperchten picked them off one by one, gutting and stuffing them before moving on to the next victim. I recognized one as the woman in my neighborhood who got caught having an affair with the mailman because after she broke it off, he glued the word cheater onto her door using the letters he’d cut from her magazines. Another was a teenager known for selling pot to his friends. And there the pattern emerged. Every victim that the Schnabelperchten sliced open was a town ‘undesirable’ that the Grisham’s wanted gone. I suspected that the woman on the float wasn’t Mandy—at least, not anymore.
“You should go,” I shouted above the din, “Run before they get you.” The nauseating smell of blood, excrement, and vomit filled the air from the brutalized bodies, and I did my best not to add more vomit to the overwhelming odor.
“No way,” Ramona said. “What about you? Where are you going?”
“I think Frau Perchta might be possessing Mandy Grisham. Maybe I can reason with her and convince her to leave with her entourage.”
“I’m going with you,” she replied, her grip around me tightening.
“They’re only killing the people that the Grisham’s think are bringing down this town. If they haven’t attacked me, that means I’m not one of them, and I can get close enough to stop this.”
She stared incredulously at me, oblivious to the monster coming right up behind her with gleaming scissors covered in blood and viscera. Panicked, I did the first thing I could think of: I pushed her out of the way. The world seemed to move in slow motion as it stabbed the empty space where our bodies had just been. “Ramona, run,” I shouted.
She stared at me with her jaw clenched but sprinted away from the monster. Once I was sure she had actually run, I began my own journey swimming up the stream of panicked people. They jostled and pushed me. Every time they touched, it felt like a brand against my skin and my shoes squished as I accidentally stepped in blood and organs. What was I thinking? That I would just walk up to Frau Perchta and ask politely for her to stop with all the murder? Why would the Grisham’s summon a murderous Christmas witch in the first place?
The Schnabelperchtan ignored me as I pushed through the throngs, instead going after anyone whose dirty laundry had ever been aired. As the high school’s resident “weird girl,” a part of me was surprised that I didn’t fall into the category of undesirable, but I guess I didn’t do anything wrong outside of my episodes and occasionally flouting the unspoken social conventions everyone else seemed to know.
When I reached the float, I began to climb the ladder to the top. “Frau Perchta,” I shouted above the din as I pulled myself to the platform. Above, I had a full view of the carnage. Blood stained the snow red underneath the gutted bodies and trampled organs strewn about the street. I gagged, bile burning in my throat.
“Who the hell are you?” Mrs. Grisham said, and I remembered I was surrounded by people watching the massacre like Nero playing the violin as Rome burned.
“Someone here to plead for the mercy of Frau Perchta, and beg that she hear me out,” I replied.
Mr. Grisham grabbed me by the arm, his hands burning through the coat and irritating my skin. “I don’t think so. Get off before I throw you off.”
“Wait,” said a voice coming out of Mandy. It held within itself an ageless quality—not feeble like an elderly woman, but also not high and girlish like Mandy’s usual squawk.
Grisham froze, and I jerked my arm from his grip, directly addressing the witch. “Frau Perchta, you are a wise judge when separating the wheat from the chaff, but I ask that you turn that discernment onto the people aboard this float. This man is unfaithful to his wife. The girl whose body you inhabit is cruel to those who she perceives as weak or different. And I’m not sure what the woman has done, but she is complicit in her daughter’s possession and the massacre below us, and that’s pretty awful. None of us are completely clean, but I humbly ask that you grant us your mercy and call off this slaughter.”
Frau Perchta smiled. “A bold young thing, are you? Pray tell, why should I stop my entourage when I could simply punish them along with the rest of the sinners in this town.”
Both Grisham’s let out a cry of dismay. “Now hold on just a moment here,” Mr. Grisham began, but was silenced by the look she gave him. He shrank back behind his wife.
“I summoned you,” Mrs. Grisham said, “and I could just as easily banish you back to that purgatory of dying gods.” The droning cries of the Schnabelperchten grew closer but she continued her haughty monologue, oblivious to their approach. “This town has the seeds of greatness. It could be the best place to live in America if there weren’t so many...delinquents defying community spirit and bringing down property values. You should be grateful. No one knew the name Frau Perchta until this day. You were just a lesser version of Krampus or Grylla. You couldn’t—” Her words were abruptly cut off by a pair of bloody scissors sticking through her chest. They jerked out and she fell over, dead.
With their droning cries, the Schnabelpertchten flooded the float, gutting Mrs. Grisham and pecking out her organs with their bloodstained beaks. Mr. Grisham screamed, staggering backwards against the rail where they swarmed below, reminding me of the Driver Ants that can strip an organism to a husk piece by bitten-off piece. With the desperation of a cornered rat, he lunged towards me, grabbing me in a chokehold in front of him to use as a human shield. “Stay back,” he said, “If you want me, you have to go through her.”
“Wow, using an innocent woman as your meat shield,” I said flatly. “That’s not pathetic at all.”
“Shut up, bitch,” he hissed in my ear, “You killed my wife and got me into this mess. You’re getting me out of it one way or another.”
“I don’t think so,” came a voice from behind. He let out a choked cry and loosened his grip on me enough to elbow my way out. Ramona had pulled herself up the side of the float, holding on only by the grip of her legs. Her face was bloody and bruised, but she held one of the deadly scissors with a triumphant smile. “Grabbing a woman like that? Tsk. Tsk. That sounds like the beginnings of a sexual harassment scandal. Women’s Lib 101: don’t grab a girl without asking.”
“You!” he shouted, whipping around. A thin trickle of blood rolled out the gash in his back. “If it wasn’t for you, my wife wouldn’t have gone crazy and done all this. This is all your fault. If you weren’t such a whore, she wouldn’t have ever found out. I’ll kill you.”
“Women’s Lib 102 and 103,” I said, ramming into him, “Sex work is real work, and you don’t get to blame a woman for your own shortcomings, especially when she’s just doing her job.” With a final push, we both went tumbling down the side of the float. Strong arms grabbed me around the chest, holding me secure to the side of the float while he went tumbling down to the waiting scissors of the Schnabelperchten.
“You came back,” I said.
“Well, I couldn’t just leave you to die.” Her voice sounded strained. “That said...”
“Right, sorry.” Acutely aware of her precarious position, I quickly pulled myself back onto the platform before extending a hand.
She curled up and took it, pulling herself to the top of the float with the waiting Frau Perchta and her entourage, and gave me a crooked grin, pointedly ignoring the murderous Christmas witch. “What did I tell you? Pole dancing is a great workout.”
Frau Pertcha cleared her throat, and I stepped between her and Ramona. “Please, in the spirit of the season, have mercy on us. We’ve only acted in self-defense.”
The witch chuckled. “You two would do well in my Wild Hunt if you so desire. You’ve both acted with a boldness I haven’t seen in centuries. I can’t remember the last time I was so entertained by humanity. We could have such fun together.”
“Would you be insulted if I rejected your offer?” I asked carefully, “Or is this an obligation rather than an invite?”
Her icy smile grew, reminding me of a cat batting around a mouse for its own amusement. “You’re versed in the Old Manners too. The youth today are usually so impolite. No, I will not be insulted, but should either of you change your minds...” She handed us each one silver coin. “Simply whisper your desire into this coin and you’ll join the hunt.”
“Thank you,” we said. With the sound of flapping wings, Mandy’s complexion returned to normal and the color returned to her hair. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed onto the ground. All around us, the Schnabelperchten vanished as though they’d never been there at all.
“What should we do with her?” Ramona asked, nudging her with her foot.
A part of me was tempted to just leave her there and let her wake up in the middle of the mess her family made, but that was too cruel, even for her. I sighed. “I take the legs; you take the head, and we’ll drop her off by the police station?”
She shrugged. “No wonder those freaks didn’t go after you. You’re a saint.” It was a difficult process getting her down the ladder and to the police station—and Mandy definitely would be bruised when she came to—but better that than being surrounded by the corpses of her parents.
I paused halfway home, the drying blood uncomfortably sticky on my clothes and skin. “Hey, Ramona, do you have anyone you’re spending Christmas with?”
“My parents,” she replied, “but I’d like to hang out more. Get to know you outside of a crisis. Maybe we could grab a coffee?”
“I don’t like coffee,” I replied.
She laughed. “It doesn’t have to be coffee. I just want to hang out sometime and get to know you better.”
Right. Duh. It was a request to spend time together, not about the coffee. “That sounds nice. Would you like to come back to my house now? After we get cleaned up, I can finish making the shortbread cookies and I’m sure my parents would love to meet you.”
“That sounds nice.” She paused here, her cheeks turning red. Maybe it was the cold or maybe it was a blush. I’m still not entirely sure. “Do you mind if I take your hand?”
I nodded, offering my right. We walked home hand in hand, gazing at the Christmas lights and pretending it was the smell of snow in the air instead of blood and viscera.
