Free Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus by Mark Mills, Kate Wolford, Guy Burtenshaw, Jill Corddry, Elise Forier Edie, Patrick Evans, Scott Farrell, Caren Gussoff, Lissa Sloan, Elizabeth Twist

Main Street shopkeeps greeted all by name. Friday night socials at Eagles Lodge, where grandparents and teenagers, parents and toddlers all danced together, and then were home by nine.
    I moved into the perfect little craftsman intended for Drew. I found fresh-cut flowers in vases set around and a freezer full of casseroles. The utensil drawer even squeaked me a little welcome.
    And then he knocked on the door, and let himself in. I was on the hardwood floor, unpacking a box. He came to me and extended his hand. I took it. He helped me up.
    His eyes were the pine green of a forest. His features were carved facets in a stone arrowhead. I stood up and, tall, rangy, he towered over me.
    I knew who he was, but he introduced himself anyway. “I’m Reiner Lidon,” he said. He didn’t look like a sheriff. Then he smiled at me, a perfect, pointed smile and wrapped an arm around me, like I was already his. “Welcome home.”
    There’s a line sociologists walk interacting with field work subjects: hovering alongside, a peepshow voyeur. But Reiner, and then the whole of Euell, took that line and tied it into a bow around me, like a wrapped present. In Reiner’s arms, that very first moment, he became the man I love.
    * * *
    The man I love is close now. He is going to find me. He sings slowly, drawing out the syllables.
    Hell erglühn die Kerzen…
    His feet clop like a horse’s on the linoleum floor. He opens a cabinet, then closes it again. Clop, clop.
    Öffnet mir die Herzen…
    He plays with me. He opens the utensil drawer, as if I could fit. It squeaks open, then closed. Clop, clop.
    Will drin wohnen fröhlich, Frommes Kind, wie selig!
    As he clops around the kitchen island, he picks up the tempo. Since I know he knows where I am, I let myself mouth the words of the song: Candles glow in splendor / Hearts are warm and tender / Blessings pure and holy / From the child so lowly.
    Kling, Glöckchen…
    I can feel him outside the door. Like when you sense someone’s heat, I can sense his cold. The doorknob turns. Ring, little bell.
    klingelingeling!
    Ring.
    * * *
    I spent days observing Christmas Village, dressed as an elf to blend in. Weekends, I greeted the biking children and shopkeeps by name. Friday nights, I danced with Reiner at the lodge. Within a few weeks, he was in my bed by nine.
    Aspens turned yellow; the red maples looked like flames. The department wasn’t impressed with my notes, my narratives.
    “They’re stilted. On guard,” they said. “Have you built enough trust?”
    The department got the grant extended, my leave renewed. “Stay through the new year,” they advised. “And return with something.”
    Reiner wouldn’t completely move in. He left a toothbrush, but was careful to leave no other trace, to hurry back to his own house in the purple dawn to shower, shave, and dress for work.
    We never fought. But if we had, it would have been about this.
    “Everyone knows,” I told him. “If you’re worried what people would think.”
    “That’s not it, Star,” he answered.
    “I’d marry you, if you asked. If that’s the problem,” I said. “If you were wondering.”
    “I love you, but it isn’t right for us to be together,” he said. “I have too many secrets.” I imagined pain in his eyes as he said this.
    “Everyone has secrets.” I’d reach for him, to soothe the hurts I saw.
    But I couldn’t hold him. He had to hold me. I liked that. If I sat very still, his arms would seem to grow around me like the roots of a strange tree.
    And as I sat, I was sure that whatever it was, it’d be OK. It’d come to light and it would heal.
    He is a good man, I told myself. “You are a good man,” I said.
    The snows came. Euell was a portrait of winter. Bare trees formed a black net against the sky, cut by creamy pipes of smoke from chimneys. There was so much depth to the shades of frost: milk, opal, maggot, silver, vanilla, faintly blue ice.
    In Christmas Village, it was Christmas always. But