The frost bit my rosy cheeks lightly as I ran through the thick forest, giggling as I zigzagged between the thin, naked birch trees. The sun stood high and not a single cloud occupied the blue sky.
My foot caught on a rock and I fell down a long hill, branches and stones hitting my fragile skin as I tumbled down onto the thin ice of the lake. My body slid several meters until I finally came to a stop.
The ice began cracking around my frail body and I broke through the ice with a splash. All the air in my lungs disappeared as I became submerged in the cold water. I began sinking to the bottom and it felt like hours before I hit the bottom. All air had left my body and my lungs desperately craved it.
I felt something pull me up to the surface. Everything was blurry and fussy and I could not see the person who had saved me. They wrapped me in a thick blanket and stayed with me until I could hear my mother's voice.
I looked all around me but the one who had saved me was gone. In my hand there laid a large book with a dark, worn leather cover. I did not dare to open it.
She awoke with a jolt, panic written on her face. Her breath was shaky and her mind was etched with fear. Another nightmare.. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and sat on the edge of the bed. It had been 12 years since that day. She had still not opened the book, it scared her too much. She still hated the water. A hate for Christmas had also began growing inside her and she rarely went out the whole day. It was irrational to fear it, she understood that, still she could not shake the feeling that everything had gone bad for her under that holiday. She had lost her mother three years ago to lung cancer under the night, and after that she had been rejected from a university she swore she would have been accepted to.
She sluggishly made her way to the kitchen and rummaged the fridge for a quick midnight snack. She decided a half eaten chicken wing would do and devoured it in seconds. It dawned on her that it was Christmas morning and sighed with distress.
After wiping her hands on her pajama pants to get the grease off, she went up the stairs to the small attic. Opening a small box, Jen took out a dusty book. She did that every christmas, sitting with it in her lap - not even opening it. This time however, she opened it slowly and read the title. In a blackletter font it said, Children's tales of the Christmas Devil. It wasn't signed with an author's name.
Why would someone leave this with me? She shook her head, wondering who had given it to her. She flipped a page and began reading
...While Saint Nicholas rewarded the well-behaved children with gifts, Krampus punished the misbehaved by stuffing them into a sack and abducting them. On Christmas Eve (also known as the night of the Krampus or Krampus night) Krampus sets out to hunt the bad children. Should you come in his way, you will most likely not survive.
Jen furrowed her brows. The book was strange.. She did know of the christmas devil, of course, but not the details. She flipped another page and continued reading.
Krampus is a horned figure described as "half-goat, half-demon" and is often see carrying an iron chain with which he captures the children. No one knows where he takes the children and what he does to them but many believe he eats them.
The text was faded and the pages were yellowed by old age. She turned the page. A grotesque picture of a horned devil-looking creature was glued to the page. It had a head that resembled a man but with two large white horns and goat ears. He had hooves for feet and had large claws on his hands. He had a long pointy, black tongue.
What followed were a dozen drawings of Krampus with an incredibly demonic posture. What kind of sick person would give this to a child? Half of the book was blank which Jen found odd. On the last page there was a notation.
All things truly wicked start from innocence as that of a child.
She slammed the book shut. Who had given this to her when she almost drowned, and why? What kind of person would save someone just to leave them alone in the cold with a damn book? Everything was unclear and it made her anxious.
Her chest heaved up and down as she laid on her bed. Thoughts were running through her mind wildly as the day went by.
Her grandmother had looked awfully pale when Jen showed her the book. She hadn't understood why, but now she did. Something was terribly wrong about it, and this Krampus creature. It was a cruel joke someone would play on a child, but now at age 20, she wasn't so sure it was just a joke. Maybe it all meant something - something sinister.