Free Santa's Twin by Dean Koontz Page B

Christmas the merry jingle
    of sleigh bells will alarm and terrorize.
    Every little kid will watch the skies
    and scream aloud when the sleigh appears.
    Oh, for one hundred or two hundred years,

“Santa Claus will be feared, distrusted,
because everyone will still be disgusted
by all the tricks that I play this night.
They’ll never forgive the harm and fright.
The toad snot and snail spit! The slime!
This scheme of mine is superb, sublime!

“The gift-wrapped broccoli and the spinach!
Oh, my goody-goody brother is finished.
Brussel-sprouts candy and unsweetened yams,
Chicken-gizzard jelly! Lima-bean jams!
Boxes full of spiders, worms, and bugs!
Old Santa won’t be getting any more hugs.

    I nstead, kids will scream, run, and hide,
    and not one child on the earth will abide
    the sight of his jolly, merry old face.
    The cops will be hunting him everyplace.

“Searching alleys, cellars, and attics
from tropical jungles up to the Arctic.
If they jail him-won’t that be funny?
Then I’ll go after the Easter bunny!”

    F rom the doorway, the girls have heard
    every shocking, horrid, despicable word.
Christmas is now theirs alone to save.
They must be bold. They must be brave.
The troll left his ray gun out of reach.
Emmy sneaks to it. Isn’t she a peach?

Lottie makes fists of her small hands.
Oh, the time has come to make a stand.
    Holding the ray gun, Emmy says, “Freeze!”
The troll insists: “Better say ‘please.’”

    H e rises-a giant. He turns and growls.
    He hisses, grumbles, and softly howls.
    His eyes spin. His nose spouts steam.
    He’s a Santa monster from a had dream,
    capering, threatening: “Booga-ooga-boo!”
    Lottie says, “We aren’t scared of you.”

The elf declares, “I eat kids for lunch.
I eat ‘em for breakfast-by the bunch.
Sometimes I eat children for supper too,
baked in a crust or cooked in a stew.”

L ottie says, “Listen, mister, you framed
your brother, and you oughta be ashamed.”
Waving the ray gun, young Emmy commands,
“Up with your hands, up with your hands!

“This alien weapon will turn you to dust.
Or maybe to cinders. Or maybe to rust.
Or maybe to cornflakes or maybe to mice.
Whatever it does, I’m sure it’s not nice.”

The troll is not merely evil but quick.
Up his big sleeve he has one more trick.
From his hip holster he suddenly draws
a chocolate-cream pie. He knows no laws.

He’s a gangster, a thug, a bad boy indeed,
and he flings the pie with fearful speed.
Lottie studies ballet and has some grace.
She spins-but still gets pie in the face.

    E mmy fires the ray gun. Oh, no! Oh, no!
    The living room magically fills with snow.
    It’s a weather gun, some strange device.
    The fireplace mantel is all hung with ice.
    From out of the ceiling a blizzard falls,
    drifting over furniture and up the walls.

    The malevolent elf can’t repress a giggle.
    “From this one, child, you cannot wriggle.
    For this big mess, you won’t be thanked.
    In fact, I bet you’re gonna get spanked.
    Spanked so hard that your ears will slip
    all the way down, down, down to your lips.”

Then instead of cooking them in a stew
or brewing some tasty little-girl brew,
the giggling troll flees into the night.
The girls give chase, ‘cause it isn't right
that he should be allowed to skip and run
    after ruining Christmas, spoiling the fun.

    Like many bullies, he’s bluster and bluff.
    He’s not really made of very stem stuff.
    The two girls chase him out the front door.
    He slip-slides across the icy porch floor,
    falls down the steps, flat on the ground,
    and lands with a rubbery, blubbery sound.

T he sisters run barefoot into the snow
to make sure he doesn’t jump up and go.
“Knocked himself silly. What’ll we do?”
asks Charlotte as her pink feet turn blue.

    Suddenly eight reindeer descend from above,
    each deer flying with the grace of a dove
to the snowy lawn in front of the house,
making less sound than one wary mouse.

    A deer says, “Christmas mustn’t be