Free Story: "Santa Drives a Chevrolet," Part 2

Art: Steve Daniels

Click here for Part 1.  

            “Damon, wake up,” his mother said softly. “It’s Christmas.”

            His eyes shot open.  The morning glare hit him like a brass band. 

            “Take it easy,” his mother said.  “Let’s see if you’re up to finding out what Santa brought you.  Oh, I’m sorry.  I forgot.”

            Damon didn’t realize at first why she was apologizing.  He looked around the room, trying to remember . . . what?

            “Mom?  Did someone come into our house last night?”

            “Don’t tell me you’re going back to believing in Santa Claus, dear,” she said as he felt his forehead.  “Good news: Your fever broke.  Why don’t you go see what you got for Christmas?”

            Damon sat up.  He felt . . . strange, as if part of his brain were still asleep.  He remembered exhaling and summoning the darkspace, but he couldn’t remember making it go away – and Damon always remembered that!  He also remembered . . .

            The door handle!

            He ran to the front door. It looked undisturbed.  He reached for the handle to see if it was locked.

            “Why are you going outside?” his mother called to him.  “Go to the Christmas tree and see what presents you have.”

            The tree was surrounded by red and green packages with pictures of Santa, bells or angels.  There were a few gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Neumeyer, who always used the same white and blue-striped wrapping year after year. 

            Eldon was already unwrapping a toy bulldozer.  He looked up when he saw Damon.  “Did you see him?  Did you see Santa?”

            Damon hesitated.  “I don’t know.”

            Eldon frowned.  “I knew you couldn’t stay awake all night.”

            “But I did!  At least I think I did.”  Damon felt disappointed.  He must have fallen asleep, after all, and dreamed the whole thing.

            Eldon smiled mysteriously. “Well, you musta’ seen somebody.”     

            “What do you mean?”

            “You got an extra present.”

            Damon looked at the gifts under the tree, and there it was: a present in sky-blue paper, no bigger than a shoebox.  His name was written across the paper in a handwriting he didn’t recognize.  He picked up the gift, tore off the paper, and gasped.

            It was a Captain Meteor action figure.

            Damon opened the attached card.  In the same handwriting, it read:

         

Dear Damon,

            You won’t remember what happened last night because I used fairy dust to make you forget.  But you did something extraordinary – so Santa’s going to let you in on his little secret.

            When I opened your front door, it was black as a pit in your house!  Now, I’m used to coming to the district and all the powers some of you kids have, but my new elf assistant, Seymour, wasn’t.  He panicked, ran outside, and slipped on the ice.  He hurt his leg   badly.  Luckily, adults don’t believe in Santa or elves anymore, so your parents weren't awakened by his howling.

            Well, you felt so bad about what happened that you came outside, sick as you were, and tried to help.  You told Seymour stories about Capt. Meteor to get his mind off the pain while Santa used another batch of fairy dust to make him better.

            I’m so touched by what you did (but not Seymour – who says he’s never coming back to the district again!) that I want you to have your own Capt. Meteor.  Your mother’s right – he’s very expensive, so take good care of him.  More imporantly, you’ve got an amazing power.  Use it wisely, like Capt. Meteor would.   

                                                                                                                        Santa

            Damon searched his memory to see if any of it was true, but he couldn’t remember a thing!  He ran to the window to see if there were footprints in the snow, but his dad was shoveling snow off the sidewalk.

            “No!” Damon shouted.

            “What’s the matter?” Eldon asked.

            Damon thrust the card to his brother, but Eldon missed it.  The card fluttered to the floor.  When Eldon picked it up, he looked puzzled and showed it to Damon.  The card was blank.

            Eldon laughed when Damon told him what the card had said.  “It didn’t say that!  You made it up!”

            “It’s true!  Didn’t Seymour’s howling wake you up last night?”

            Eldon looked down at the bulldozer.  “I was already awake.  I was watching for Santa through the upstairs window when I saw a Hummer park across the street and two people got out.”

            Damon nodded, remembering that he’d seen the Hummer, too.  “It was just the district police, making their rounds.”

            Eldon shook his head.  “It wasn’t the police.  It was just people who work for the district. They went to one house after another, carrying presents.”

            Damon studied the Captain Meteor action figure.  “But why would people from the district bring us presents?”

            “Don’t they teach you anything in that special school you go to?” Eldon said, rolling his eyes.  “The district wants us to have a normal life, so they give us stuff ‘cause there aren’t many places inside the district to buy toys.”  

            “You saw them come into our house?” Damon said, bewildered.

Art: Joe Hall

            “’course not!” Eldon replied, reminding Damon that, from their room, they couldn’t see the front porch.  “But who else could ita’ been?”  He walked back to his new bulldozer.  “Last year, they drove a Chevrolet.  I guessed the district was too dangerous for Santa to drive a sleigh, but, when I saw that Hummer, I stopped believing in Santa Claus.”         

            Damon felt like a balloon that had lost its helium.  It all made sense.  Workers from the district would have keys to all the houses.  And maybe one of the workers had a power to make Damon forget.  They could have used a disappearing ink on the card.

            He held the action figure away from himself, as if it were an unwanted thing.  Through the packaging, Captain Meteor’s painted-on eyes stared at him with confidence and power as if to echo what the card had said.

            You’ve got an amazing power.  Use it wisely.

            Damon decided it didn’t matter if Santa Claus was real or not. He carefully opened the package and took out his new toy.

Free Story: "Santa Drives a Chevrolet," Part 1

Art: Steve Daniels

Note: This story takes place between the Prologue and Chapter One of THE POWER CLUB™.

          “Santa Claus isn’t real, and I can prove it!”

            As soon as the words escaped Damon’s mouth, he wished he could take them back.  While they had been out Christmas shopping last week, Mom had told nine-year-old Damon the truth, but under one condition: he was not to tell his seven-year-old brother, Eldon, who still very much believed in Santa Claus.

            But the words Damon could not take back went straight to Eldon’s ears.  It was bad enough that Eldon was standing at the edge of the couch, playing with that stupid toy – a race car with a Santa Claus figure he’d stolen from the Christmas tree – but he had just told Damon to be nice to his toy or the real Santa wouldn’t bring him anything.

            “How do you know?”  Eldon said.

            Damon, lying on the couch, felt bad enough as it was.  Having the flu was a lousy way to spend Christmas Eve.

            “How do I know what?” he said, stalling for time.

            “That Santa isn’t real?”

            Damon thought for a moment.  It was bad enough that he had disobeyed Mom, but now his pride was on the line.  It would be all right, he decided, as long as Eldon promised not to tell Mom that Damon had leaked the truth.  “You know how Santa always comes down through a chimney?”

            “Yeah?”  Eldon perked up, as if he were about to be let in on a big secret.

            “We don’t have a chimney.”

            “So?  Maybe Santa comes down a magic chimney.”

            Damon shook his head in frustration, which made him cough even harder.  When Eldon got an idea like that in his head, there was no convincing him otherwise.

            Still, Damon would not give up. “Okay,” he whispered, making sure his mother, who was in the kitchen, could not hear.  “We’ll stay awake all night.  After Mom and Dad go to bed, I’ll use my darkspace on both of us.  Then we can sneak downstairs and watch for Santa.”

            Eldon beamed at the idea, though Damon knew he was excited at the prospect of staying awake all night and watching for Santa, not at the idea of Damon creating darkness – the reason Damon and his family had to live in the district in the first place.  The darkspace would blot out any light and sound from outside, but it also meant his parents couldn’t hear the two boys sneak down the creaky stairs.  Damon would just have to be very careful and guide Eldon down the stairs, since only Damon could see and hear inside the darkspace.

            “El, stay away from your brother,” Mom called.

            Eldon scurried to the other side of the room as Mom approached Damon, carrying something in her hand.  “Open wide,” she said.

            Damon opened his mouth.  He was greeted by the thermometer, which he always liked – it was like sucking on hard candy – but this time he could barely taste it.  He watched cross-eyed as the mercury rose up and up and up.

            “I’m so sorry you’re sick on Christmas Eve,” Mom said, brushing his hair off his hot forehead.  “You’ll have to sleep downstairs again so your brother doesn’t catch it.”

            Damon’s eyes darted to Eldon, who was crouched by the furnace, playing with the Santa Claus and race car.  It annoyed him to see his brother still playing with such a stupid toy while Damon himself couldn’t get the toy he wanted for Christmas: a Captain Meteor action figure.  Now that he knew Santa wasn’t real, there was only one way he could get Captain Meteor.

            “Mom, I know what will make me feel better,” he said, straining to sit up.  “If you get me a Captain Meteor—”

            She shook her head.  “Honey, I told you.  Captain Meteor is too expensive.  Besides, a doll isn’t going to make you well.”

            A coughing fit prevented him from shouting, “It’s not a doll!  It’s an action figure."

            “Now hold still,” his mother said, gently pushing him back down.  “I’m going to get you an extra blanket and pillow.”

            As soon as she left the room, Eldon darted back over to Damon’s side.  “I heard what Mom said.  You have to sleep downstairs.  Too bad.”

            “We can still watch for Santa,” Damon replied between coughs.  “You’ll just have to be extra careful when you sneak downstairs.”

            Eldon shook his head so quickly Damon thought it would fall off.  “I’m not gonna sneak downstairs.  Last time we did that, Dad heard and we got in trouble, remember?”

            Damon remembered, but it was a long time ago.  “We were just sneaking downstairs to get cookies from the fridge.  This time, we’re going to prove Santa doesn’t exist!”

            “He DOES exist,” Eldon argued, clutching the toy.  “But you can stay awake and see for yourself.”

            “Oh, what’s the use if you’re not there to see whether he’s real or not, too.”

            “If you tell me you saw him or didn’t, I’ll believe you.”

            “You will?”

            “If you swear on a stack of Bibles.”

            They didn’t have a stack of Bibles, except imaginary ones, but that was good enough.  Damon raised his right hand.  “Okay, I swear.”

Art: Darryl Woods

            “Great!” Eldon said and started to wander off, but then he turned back.  “By the way, Santa doesn’t really come down through a magic chimney.  He comes through the front door.  And he doesn’t drive a sleigh, at least not in the district.”

            “What’s he drive, then?” said Damon, humoring his brother.

            “He drives a Chevrolet.”

* * *

            Staying awake wasn’t going to be as hard as Damon thought.  His nose was so stopped up it felt like a diesel truck had parked inside it.  His throat was still raw, and he gagged if he lay on his back for very long.  The chills and fever kept him cold and hot at the same time.

            But there was more than the flu keeping him awake.  It was Christmas Eve.  He wasn’t going to let being sick ruin the special day.  Damon tried to decide whether or not he should pretend to be asleep when Dad removed the presents from the locked closet by the front door and placed them under the tree in the next room. If he did, he would have to try really hard not to cough. 

            As the hours dragged on, Damon wondered what time it was.  He didn’t feel like sitting up, reaching across the table, and turning on the lamp to see the clock on the wall, but there was a better way.  Damon closed his eyes, concentrated, and exhaled.  When he opened his eyes again, the room was much darker, but Damon could see perfectly.  Everything appeared in black and white, like an old horror movie. He glanced at the clock.  It read 12:01.

            Damon couldn’t recall having ever been up past midnight before.  It made him feel both excited and scared.

            The curtain behind him glowed – headlights.  A car driving past the house.  At this hour? Damon recalled what his brother had said.  It was a silly idea – Santa driving a Chevy – but Damon had to be sure.  He thrust the covers aside, climbed up on his knees, and pushed the heavy curtain apart.

            Nothing.

            He couldn’t see the yard or the trees or the street.  It was as if the world outside his window had disappeared!

            Damon felt embarrassed.  I forgot to send the darkspace away.  He shut his eyes, concentrated, and inhaled.  When he opened them again, the darkspace was gone, and the yard, the trees, and the street reappeared where they were supposed to be.

            But the car was gone.  Damon caught a glimpse of something moving past the tree in the back yard, but it was much bigger than a Chevrolet.  It looked like a Hummer.  He could still hear the vroom of the motor as it faded.  It’s just the district police, making their rounds.         

            Suddenly, the vroom stopped, as if the car had parked nearby.  Why would the police park so close?  He waited to see if they would come back into view, but they did not.  Bored and shivering, he lay back down and buried himself in the blankets.

            The sound of something moving through the snow startled him.  Footsteps.  And more than one person.  Maybe it was just somebody walking by the house – after midnight? On Christmas Eve?  He lay perfectly still and listened.  The footsteps are getting closer!     

            Damon no longer felt safe, lying on the couch in the living room all by himself.  He got up and started to run upstairs.  But there was another sound.  A creaking sound.  They’re on the front porch!

            He exhaled.  The darkspace came, and everything appeared again in black and white.  He looked at the front door and waited.  Maybe I imagined it.  Mom and Dad would be upset if I woke them up for nothing. 

            Then the door handle turned.