THE children will always recall Christmas Eve of 1951, the day Jeff Pratner rushed out of his house bearing an axe.
Sammy, Stew and I walked back from Stew's residence. Two big snowballs were mushed together and stacked by Benny's place, or I should say Benny Underwood's grandpa's home. The snowballs were either Benny's work, or someone else had built a snowman and didn't complete it. "The poor snowman got decapitated," Stew Phences said.
He was the oldest of us. That afternoon, the snow melted off the limber trees, but sunshine does that.
Our street looked lost without lights. We lingered till dark to see the houses decorated with lights; our street was the best, and the lights made everything come alive.
Stopping over at Ms Yay's house wasn't a good idea. She was a nice old lady, then a widow living off her dead husband who'd fought in the war.
We tested her meatloaf out. Outside, carolers sang 'Deck The Halls,' and it was turning into quite the holiday. However, after eating, we got sick. We agreed to wander towards the Faunkles' house, where an old man lived at the end of the road.
It was the only house that was not gleaming with Christmas lights. In the earlier years, a very prosperous man lived there, but he died of a heart attack. He wasn't recognized until his body had begun to decompose.
There was a man standing in front of the house — not the owner, just someone adorned in a funny-looking Santa Claus outfit. We thought it was Pat Mitchell at first. That fat bastard always liked getting tipsy and dressing up during the holidays. "I'm going to scare you boys," Pat used to say. I don't know why we approached that Santa Claus.
Sammy Willcocks was devouring some of Ms Yay's meatloaf, which by then he'd formed into a sandwich. "Gosh, you poop shorts," Stew said. "You going to eat that whole thing?" He got that name because one year in P.E. class, he had to go real bad, so he just burst in his shorts. Stew ran up behind Sammy and gave him a massive wedgie, smacking his sandwich out of his hands. Sammy let out an ululating cry. I knew Sammy's feelings were hurt, and I felt bad for laughing along with Stew, but I knew he was joking.
We began to fixate more on the Santa Claus shape now standing there. "Lookie-lookie, guys, Santa is lost," Stew said. Having seen the blackness of his face, I looked at Stew, and his hands were quivering. There was nothing above the fake white beard, just darkness. The man came towards us. "Have you boys been good or naughty this year? If you have been naughty, Santa will not make you happy," he said. When it morphed into a green and hideous creature, it lost any human form. Its arms turned into large creature-like tentacles that were grabbing for us.
Then we all ran as fast as we could. "Come on, Sammy!" Stew said. By the time we got safely away, our oxygen debt was through the roof. We looked back and saw the empty condemned house for the last time before it got bulldozed that year.
I remember how we ran all the way to Jeff Pranter's house. We all thought he looked cool with his blond buzz cut. Same color as Stew's, but Jeff had muscles, not skin tissue made of jelly. After we told him what we'd seen, Jeff went to his father's garage and grabbed an axe off the wall. It was funny, he let out a "Ho Ho Ho" like Santa would, followed by "Here I come, Santa!" He had all that adrenaline running through his veins. Sammy sure thought he was on something that night. He acted crazy, running all the way down to the end of the block looking for the alien Santa Claus in his bare feet.
