Special Features: A Deacon Chalk Short Story Collection (Deacon Chalk Occult Bounty Hunter) by Tuck James R

Author:Tuck, James R [Tuck, James R]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Blammo!
Published: 2014-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

A Christmas tale for you. Some Yuletide slaughter of a weird, seldom used monster that I then took some wide liberties with. Originally posted at the Vampire Book Club blog this is still a story I enjoy having written. It's like cool man. I enjoy the way I portrayed the main man himself, and the monster was pretty spiffy too.

T'WAS THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

THERE WERE STILL TWO OATMEAL COOKIES LEFT but my glass was out of milk.

Dammit.

I'd just swallowed the last gulp when what looked like a jolly fat man wearing a red suit slithered out of the fireplace. He tumbled out feet first, knocking into the tree. Tinsel swayed around ornaments, tossing multi-colored reflections from the twinkling lights into the darkened room. Snow fell off the treads of what looked like black boots, slushing onto brightly wrapped presents scattered beneath evergreen boughs.

I watched from the couch in the dark as the unjolly fat man-looking thing scrambled to its feet cursing in a low, smooth voice its accent tinged with missing consonants. It looked just like it had earlier today when I watched it from the food court at the mall. Short and round, almost as wide as it was tall, with a long white beard and hair that fell in waves from under the rim of what looked like a red stocking cap with a jingle bell on the tip of it. But the bell never jingled and the hat didn't move. It was stiff. The red and white that was supposed to be a suit hung attached to its body like the skin of a lizard.

Santa Claus?

Yeah right. More like Satan Claws.

I flicked the lamp on beside me, cutting the twinkling darkness with a pool of incandescence.

The thing in front of me froze, sulfur-yellow eyes slitting.

"Merry Christmas, asshole." I stood up off the couch, brushing away the bamboo slivers and cookie crumbs that covered my shirt. My left hand dropped the closed pocketknife into my pocket while my right held the whittled bamboo stake loosely by my side.

The thing by the fireplace gulped, distended Adams Apple bobbing through white beard. It pasted on a grin, trying to be reassuring. It might have worked but its teeth were too long, lips too widely stretched to be human. "Ho, ho, ho. I . . ."

"Cut the crap, jackass. I'm onto your game." I held the sharpened bamboo stake up in front of me.

The thing just blinked, sodium eyes shuttering up and down.

It was an Aswang, a shapeshifting monster from the Philippines. I'd tracked it to a mall on the east side of Atlanta. Two kids had gone missing in the last week. The only things they had in common was they were both Filipino and on the day of their disappearance they had gone to the same mall to have their picture taken with Santa. It hadn't been hard for me to spot this thing posing as Old St. Nick. It had set up at the mall, putting kids on

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