Krampusnacht

The snow is carving a dull pain into my old bones, and I wish the stretching would hurry. Around me, crisp air and ice-encrusted pines. I breath through winter-numbed nostrils and try to ignore the biting chill, focusing on the distant smell of chimneys and herb-thickened soups bubbling over hearths. A silver sliver of moon hangs overhead. As my hair bristles and thickens, I focus on the far-off scent of sweet young sweat and milk, skin and pulsing blood. Deep in my chest, I feel a low rumbling, like glaciers shifting, an ancient beast stirring beneath the frozen sea. The heavy cowbells around my waist clank, a sound lonely as the pinpricked stars, as I creep through the forest, merging with the night. Leise rieselt der Schnee.

* * *

The stretching continues. Sinews like tree roots reaching for deep arteries of moisture beneath frozen soil. The lonely hoot of an owl. Each step lighter and heavier at once as my legs thicken into yule logs, toes clawing into frozen earth. This rush of power. The night encircles me, caressing my beastly form, propelling me onward.

* * *

Still und starr ruht der See. The lake’s glazed surface, fish trapped beneath, their blank eyes like the glazed-over gazes of children caught in a last horrible moment as the moonlight hits my teeth. One unholy night: the fifth of December. So very long, each year in between.

* * *

This year, I will evade him. I don’t understand why it’s been so hard. He should be easy to spot, strutting around with his cane. The ridiculous extended hat, cross pointing to a God who doesn’t exist or isn’t showing his face as I pick off his children and carry them into darkness, their chubby hands reaching through the cords of my basket. But the last capture was so long ago. Tonight, I keep watch, scanning between black trunks in a landscape of white, seeking out his red cloak, his beard glistening with fresh snow. My eyes search the ground for his bootprints, the imprint of the cane. He has ruined this rare night too many times. The only one who can stop me. He who, whenever he captures me, keeps me chained as I clank and growl and stretch desperate, dirty claws toward children who have misbehaved.

* * *

Firelight and glowing windows. The treeline, branches slumped with snow. Weihnachtlich schmückt sich der Wald. No sign of him yet, the old, impotent geezer, Saint Nikolaus. No clinking bells on his boots, no clanking chains which he’s managed, so often, to toss heavily over my shoulders, snaring my muscles beneath icy iron. Fifteen years since my last victory. That year, the townspeople had grown complacent, careless. They’d lit a bonfire as the sun was swallowed by the snowy horizon. At least they were still setting logs aflame. How long would that continue? I’d seen their daily activities transformed by technology. They blazed streetlamps and headlights, blades of electricity and convenience cutting into the heart of the immortal black night which was my domain.

That night, their young men wore grotesque wooden masks. I admit, the costumes were elaborate -- these celebrations of me, these warnings. Adolescent boys, wild with mead, chased children who ran screaming into the forest, then circled back to their parents. Rosy-faced adults passed bottles in the firelight, singing revelrously, not noticing the little ones except to say, Achtung – der Krampus wird dich fangen! It was unfair, really, to the little boy who was fastest, who ran farthest. He should have been the victor. He chose the best hiding spot from these humans masquerading as monsters, scaring children while reinforcing their safety. It’s just a mask. It’s just Peter, Felix, Klaus, Johannes. No real danger lurking behind the trees. No blood waiting to be splattered onto the deep snowdrifts.

But this boy hid a little bit too well, a little too far from the bonfire’s safety. He ducked into a tiny rock crevice and crouched, knees to chest, breathing heavily. His wide eyes scanned the forest for fur and masks, ears alert for bells and chains. Waiting until it was safe to run to Mama.

Before he could run, I stepped heavily from the darkness and stamped each hoof against the frozen ground. The boy’s wide eyes reflected what the costumed adolescents could only poorly mimic: my own eyes yellow as snow-hazed moonlight, stalactite fangs and the swipe of my paw as I pierced his tiny limbs, his screams muffled by the darkness of the basket on my back.

* * *

This will be the year. I feel it in my elongated muscles, in the fire blazing behind my eyes. During the warmer seasons, my body shrivels. Hair retreats into follicles, toes fit into scuffed leather boots, muscles contract. I appear human but possess an underlying wildness that raises gooseflesh on the skin of those who encounter me. The townsfolk avoid me, the oafish eccentric grazing sheep on the mountainside, venturing down occasionally for batteries, motor oil, salt.

They never notice when, under a full moon or when the wind carries the scent of a far-off storm, the wildness rises too strong within me. The dormant, bristling creature bursts forth, and I awaken later under a crisp, violet dawn to the taste of sticky blood on my lips. Perhaps they’ve heard the sheep’s screams, but they never come with rifles. They know it in their bones: if it weren’t my livestock, it would be their offspring. Each year when days shorten and nights grow colder, they dive into merriment, fervently ignoring awareness of the bloodthirsty beast lurking in the forest. They are enlightened in this modern era, after all. They have electric lights, televisions, washing machines. Legends of me have become bedtime stories, my face printed on pomegranate-red greeting cards. I once captured an artist who drew them, a thin, black-haired man of twenty-two, unlucky to be out on a night so cold that the streets were otherwise deserted. I intended to let him study me, recreate my true likeness -- but when I began to explain, the scent of his fear was like roasted stag, and from between my cracked, black lips erupted a low, thunderous growl. I was too ravenous, and he smelled of meat glazed with licorice and honey. Afterwards, lapping wine-red blood from my forearms, I scolded myself. I should have let him paint me before consuming him.

* * *

The artist was a fortunate catch amid a long hungry era. Tonight, the thought of the plump limbs of children makes my ravenous jaw quiver. The humans’ bonfire blazes again. A man plays accordion, his jovial tune drifting up the mountainside. It lulls me as I crouch on my haunches behind the tree line, watching. No sign of old Nikolaus. My ears perk as I listen to their laughter. I hear everything: a tree creaking under heavy snow, wind howling through a hollowed stump. The merrymakers’ conversations, their drunken tongues loosed by the illusion of safety, not knowing what waits beyond the firelight for the perfect moment to thin their herd.

There’s no sign of St. Nick. Has his ancient body finally succumbed to time and the merciless winter? I feel a tinge of disappointment – I’d wanted to eliminate him myself. But regret is swallowed by intoxicating anticipation rising like the black smoke billowing into the treetops. Perfectly poised and still, I sit, a massive gargoyle observing the motion below.

Finally, my moment arrives. Three teenaged girls run giggling toward the forest, having planned a secret rendezvous with boys dressed as Krampuses. The Krampuses, however, are absent. I saw them earlier, sneaking into the barn with a bottle of Baucherlwärmer, unnoticed by adults too busy with their own imbibement. I’ll save the boys for later -- they’ve been naughty enough to merit capture. Right now, the girls’ scent is maddening as they approach, skirts sweeping the snow, braids bouncing against their shoulders. I stifle the bell around my waist with a paw and prowl, silent as funeral pyre ashes, closing the distance between us with infernal precision. Each muscle alert and perfectly synchronized, my gaze never wavers from their bundled forms. Fürchtet euch, Krampus kommt bald.

* * *

They stop in a clearing and sit on a fallen tree, cloaks wrapped tightly around them. They huddle, giggling, not perturbed by the boys’ tardiness. One girl retrieves a wine bottle from her cloak, glass glinting in the moonlight. My lips stretch into a smirk over thick incisors. So, they aren’t innocent either. I’d assumed the boys had persuaded them to accept this secret rendezvous, but clearly, the girls have their own schemes. She takes three gulps from the bottle, her hood slipping from her bonfire-orange hair, then grins and passes it to her friend.

I’ll take her first. I want to drink deeply of the wine and mischief coursing through her blood.

* * *

“Which Krampus is cutest?” a blonde girl asks in her musical, Alpine dialectical German.

“Your brother, Anneliese,” answers a lanky, brown-cloaked girl, laughing.

“Cutest?” exclaims the girl with the wine. She lowers her voice. “I want the deadliest. I’d grip his fur” -- she pantomimes grabbing fistfuls -- “and kiss him on those long, sharp teeth.” Her friends clutch each other with laughter, stamping boots in the snow.

I emerge from the darkness so silently and swiftly that they don’t look up. I release the cowbell from my paw as I close the remaining distance between us. Its clanking mingles with the low rumble of my words as I growl, “And the deadliest you shall have, beautiful Fräulein.”

* * *

"Nikki!” screams Anneliese as my talons extend and I raise my claw, preparing to slice through her throat like a shovel through fresh snow. I pause to savor the moment. Finally -- my return! Fifteen Decembers, I’ve hungered, subsisting on dormice and foxes plucked from snowy burrows, their flesh bland and gamey. I am a creature born of blood-black mountains, evolved from soil and snow to eat a specific kind of prey. My nostrils flare as I suck in frigid air laced with distant bonfire smoke and the overpowering aroma of the girl’s blood pounding in her delicate throat.

With perfect precision, I strike, claws whistling through icy air. Then two things happen that are not supposed to happen. My eyes lock on the girl’s, and there’s something wrong – something missing. It’s fear, I realize. Unlike every other child I’ve mauled or hauled away, this tangerine-haired girl’s eyebrows furrow in a strange, cold determination, her stare solid and unflinching as the mountain. And my claw strikes rigid wood instead of flesh, for she’s raised a long pole to block my strike. The force of her parry, incredibly, makes my palm thrum with pain.

As the other girls scatter, I stumble, confused and panicked. My hooves sink unevenly into the snow, and I am falling. As my back crashes against a tree stump, I see the curved handle of her birchwood staff: a cane. From where she’s procured it, I cannot guess. The girl raises her face in the moonlight, and for an instant, I catch the translucent shimmer of a long beard cascading down her cloak, dreamlike and faint. For only a moment, her fiery hair pales to wintry white. A chuckle bubbles beneath her long, silken mustache. The beard flashes out of existence again and her hair returns to orange. Nikki, they’d called her. Strength and grace blaze within her with equal force. It isn’t possible, but I catch her eyes again and see that familiar glint.

My nemesis. Ruiner of every fresh-blood feast, who turns winter -- the season during which I should prowl the forest in ancient, unstoppable power -- into torturous craving and weakness. The one who lets these miserable creatures romp with brazen audacity like they own the forest. What’s one less human? They are expanding too fast, villages climbing insidiously up my mountain. He won’t let me pick off a few to remind them of the powerful jaw of the natural world, with its beasts and abominations, so they don’t get cocky and ravage these forests with their lust for profit. He won’t let me sate the hunger that roars in my throat, timeless and relentless.

Nikki -- this girl pale as birch bark, hair like the autumn forest. His new disguise or current incarnation – the cleverness that has let him evade my vigilant eyes and ears. He – she -- has been right in front of me as I prowled. She stands over me now, watching me struggle to rise. My temple explodes with pain as her cane cracks against bone. Cold iron shackles clamp around my ankles and wrists, chains clinking as she drags me through the snow with incredible strength. I glimpse the round, mocking moon, bright as the humans’ blasphemous bonfires.

My fangs cut my lower lip, the taste of my blood a reminder of how close I’d been to guzzling thick, warm nectar from the girls’ throats. Now I will be a slave to this beautiful maiden, kept in the cold, iron cage behind her cabin until the snow melts, then released to slink away, my power waned, my form reduced to that of a wretched human.

But first, when the villagers return to their warm homes tonight, she will drag me from house to house while she fills children’s tiny boots, polished and placed meticulously on windowsills, with chocolates, hazelnuts, and oranges. I’ll be paraded like a dancing bear, the chain around my neck preventing me from grasping the plump children dangled before me, splayed across their beds in innocent slumber.

* * *

Flames dance toward an icy, star-filled sky as we descend the mountain. I cannot suppress the growl that rumbles in my throat like distant thunder as I trudge behind her, each hoofstep eliciting a rhythmic clanking from the chains. Next year, I swear. If Nikolaus takes the shape of a tender young woman – next year, I’ll devour her. There’ll be no naughty-versus-nice, no twigs for disobedient youth and sweets for the well-behaved. I will rampage down the mountain, avalanche of teeth and fur. The bonfire will shrink in the face of my rage. The strongest men will cower before my hellish fury unleashed upon their settlement.

Nikki whistles a soothing melody as she swings my chains behind her. I recognize the song; I’ve heard it from countless lips of mothers tucking little ones into bed as the early night descended. I hear the words in my head as her whistles blend with the howling wind. Leise rieselt der Schnee . . . Still und starr ruht der See . . . Weihnachtlich glänzelt der Wald . . . Freuet euch, Christkind kommt bald.

Silent, sprinkling snow. A peaceful pond. A glistening forest, and the hope of a visit from an angel.

The white flakes do fall silently. We pass the lake, its smooth glass surface. Around us, the forest sparkles with new snow, trees reflecting the silvery moonlight.

For now, they can be joyful, awaiting Christkind’s arrival.

But next year, I’ll be ready.

The village will be mine.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Note:

As Austrian American kids growing up in California, my siblings and I placed our shoes on the windowsill on the evening of December 5^th, excited for Nikolaus to fill them with chocolates, nuts, and oranges while we slept. We always received a Rute (bundle of twigs meant to be a whip) as well. We understood this as a friendly, mischievous gift from Krampus, as we seldom misbehaved and were never whipped.

The song referenced in this story, Leise Rieselt der Schnee, was written by Eduard Ebel in 1895. This story contains a lyrical variation based on the way my mother sang it when I was a child.

At age ten, I spent the winter in Austria. My town held a festival on Nikolaus and Krampus Night. I was terrified of the Krampuses, young men in fur costumes and grotesque, detailed masks who ran around ringing bells, rattling chains, and swiping at villagers with switches. A few, friends of my aunt, swarmed her teasingly. But she didn’t recognize them in costume, so she stayed close to my young sister and me to reassure us. We suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a horde of horned beasts, their whips' lashes stinging our legs through our jeans. Horrified, we begged my mother to walk with us to our grandmother’s house. My mother, remembering Krampusnacht getting dangerously out of hand in the past, said, “Do you really want to walk through small streets where Krampuses could be hiding behind cars, waiting to jump out at you in the dark?”

Despite my fear, Krampus and other dark mythological figures appealed to me. Recently, the alpine horned beast has become increasingly popular in the U.S., inspiring events like pub crawls and parades. I think U.S. Americans have historically tried to eradicate darkness from our winter celebrations. My ancestors cast runes shaped like bare tree branches, drank warm mead, played music, and danced as nights grew longer. Christmas once allowed youths to engage in mischief, but upstanding citizens grew tired of the ensuing damage and fought to tame the holiday festival. Simultaneously, commercialism ran rampant, so that many of my childhood friends always pictured Santa with a Coke in his hand. In the face of this forced sanitization and obligatory consumption, we miss the dark chill of winter, once a time for gathering around fires to ward off the gloom.

We need the Krampus. We need the shiver that creeps up our arms when we think we hear the stamping of ancient, heavy hooves in the forest on wintry late nights. We need the warning note of the cowbell around his waist, the clink of heavy iron chains reminding us to watch our step, to follow the rules. And not to stray too far into the forest.