Krampus: The Yule Lord

by Brom

Santa Claus . . . How vile your name upon my tongue. Like acid, hard to utter without spitting.

You have sung your last ho, ho, ho, for I am coming for your head. For Odin, Loki, and all the fallen gods, for your treachery, for chaining me in this pit for five hundred years. But most of all I am coming to take back what is mine, to take back Yuletide.

Pictures of Santa Claus covered the soot-stained walls: newspaper clippings, magazine ads, children’s books . . . and every single one had Santa’s eyes poked out.

Krampus’s eyes gleamed. “It has been long since I was terrible. I miss it dearly. It will be a great treat to see the fear in their eyes, to hear them beg for their lives, to feast on their blood and death cries.”

Krampus’s voice grew stern. “That is not true. Your dreams are your spirit, your soul, and without them you are dead.” He made a fist. “You must guard your dreams. Always. Lest someone steal them from you. I know what it is to have your dreams stolen. I know what it is to be dead.”

“No, Christmas is an abomination. A perversion! Yule is the true spirit of Mother Earth. Yule is the rebirth of the seasons. Without Yuletide, Mother Earth cannot heal herself . . . will wither and die. That is why it is so important that I reawaken the spirit within mankind. Help them to believe again. Because it is their power of belief, their love and devotion, that heals the land.”

A song . . . far away . . . “Achy Breaky Heart.” Jesse decided he must’ve ended up in Hell, because there was no way they’d play that god-awful song in Heaven.

“Earth belongs to no god! Mother Earth is god. Have you forgotten everything? Do you pretend not to see that she is dying beneath your feet? Or do you not care? She needs rebirth, needs the spirit of Yule to heal her. You talk of enlightening men, but there will be no men without her!”

“He is bewitched.” Krampus strolled purposely across the room, right up to the screen, and smashed it in with his fist. The boy clutched the game controller to his chest and froze, his eyes threatening to burst from his head. Krampus leaned over to the boy. “You are free. The world is now yours. Go take it.”

“It seems there are other demons besides Santa’s ghost to contend with.”

“This is a . . . tweeker?” Krampus asked. “He has the sickness?”

So I must ask myself, what role can I play in a world where men worship the moving-picture box, where they make and consume potions that eat away their own brains, where they ravage and pillage entire mountains, kill the very earth itself?

“I am not a devil, fool. Do you ever wonder why you seek the Devil with such vigor? I shall tell you. Because you cannot face your own wickedness. The truth is there is no Devil making you torture, rape, murder, and sodomize one another, or making you destroy the very land that feeds you. There is only you. So look at yourself, for you are the only devil in this room.”

Jesse had never seen this side of the Yule Lord, and it occurred to him that he was seeing the real Krampus, the Krampus of ancient times, the great and wild Yule spirit that galvanized mankind to brave the darkest primeval nights, kindled their will to survive the trials of the harshest winters.