Chapter 8: Trouble

"You weren't supposed to see that." Chester's head was still in his hands. He took a deep breath and sighed a weary sigh.

"What the hell is it?" Alex asked.

"Is that what's going to happen?" Em repeated, her voice rising. "Because of me?"

"No, of course not," Chester replied. "I mean ... we don't know what form it'll take. But we're better prepared for this than ever; I'm sure they've already mobilized, and once they identify it ... there's a response plan for every scenario in that book."

"Better prepared? Like you were prepared for elves slaughtering Em's whole family? Like you were prepared to protect her?"
"Hey," Chester warned. "I told you, there's gotta be a glitch somewhere in the calculations. They'll figure it out."
"A glitch?" Alex wrested the book from Em's hands. "Was this a glitch?" He threw it in Chester's lap, his Mag-Lite beam glaring off the white pages. Chester looked away.

"It's my fault," Em said, her eyes downcast. "I should have told my boss I wasn't going to the party. I should have taken it more seriously. I mean, it's the only thing Granddad ever asked me to do, and I should have known it was important. But instead I ... I almost wanted to screw it up." She looked at Alex. "I did screw it up."

Chester tried to comfort her. "You didn't screw up. The elves ... none of us expected that. If your grampa had any idea, he never would have asked you. And anyway, it's not over. It's just ... it's going to be harder now. But that's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Of course I did," Em said. "I abandoned my family. If I'd known--"

"You didn't abandon them. It was your grampa's burden. He felt like he'd drafted his first son, never gave him a chance to do anything else. It's why he wouldn't let your dad work for him right away -- and when he joined up later your grampa still felt guilty. And when your gramma pointed out what he was doing to you with those stories, he stopped -- or at least he tried. He never wanted to recruit you. He wanted you to live your own life. He figured if you were curious, you'd ask, and if you didn't..." Chester sighed. "He never wanted you to see this book."

Alex was confused. "I don't understand."

Em said a word Alex didn't recognize. "Ku'Lahs."
"What?"

"Ku'Lahs," she said again. "It's a game I played when I was little -- I pretended to be a monster, hiding in the closet or around the corner, then jumping out and grabbing things and pretending to rip their souls out. I didn't even know what a soul was. I'd do it to Mom and she'd get mad, until finally she whipped me for it." Em looked off in the distance, seeking out the memory. "I must have been four; we were at Grams and Granddad's house for Christmas and he told me he'd just come back from Australia..."
Chester piped in. "Austria, actually."
Alex gave him a questioning look.
"I have detailed files," Chester said in a thick Austrian accent.
Alex scowled. This was hardly the time for Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes.

Em continued. "He said he had to go there to keep the Ku'Lahs from getting out. He told me about a monster that used to hunt children and pull out their souls, but I didn't have to worry as long as I was a good girl."
Alex shook his head. "That must have given you nightmares."
"Not really. It was a game; he'd catch me trying to sneak a piece of chocolate from his office and he'd say something like, 'you better ask before you take that, or else the Ku'Lahs will sneak up behind you and rip out your soul!' and then he'd run up behind me and put his hand on my head and then pull it off real fast, and then he'd grab me and tickle me all over until I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe. It was fun."

The happy memory only seemed to bring Em lower when she finished. Alex could understand why -- connecting the story to the last image he'd seen in the book made him shiver.

"So if the Smiths don't get their magic axe and have their secret ceremony, this Ku'Lahs thing ... that book, that's Ku'Lahs? He's come before?"

"It's Claws, actually," Chester said. The lights suddenly came on; the building had power again. "Satan's Claws. It's one of the old names. We don't use it, but they say the old man'll use it sometimes when he really gets going."
"What do you call it?" Alex asked.
Chester seemed surprised. "I don't know. Never really thought about it. The records refer to Satan's Claws, Saint Nicholas' Beast, sometimes just the Beast ... but we don't really call it anything, as far as I know. It's just... it. It doesn't really come up much. They refer to the Crossing more -- that's the time and place where the ceremony..." Chester must have noticed Alex's lost look. "Why don't I start at the beginning."

Jovie popped up behind Em. "Hey, the lights came on!"

"We noticed," Chester drolled. "Hey, how'd you find this?" He hoisted the book.
"I looked in the back of the file cabinet. Under your Penthouse collection," she said matter-of-factly. Chester turned red. She rolled her eyes. "Like I care. I just figured, if you were gonna hide something important, that's where you'd put it."

Alex frowned. He was going to have to move those "archive" CD-Rs...

"Anyway," Chester said, "I guess you got all those records boxed."
"All 'cept that one. I told her we didn't have time for browsing..."
"It's okay, Jovie. Why don't you ... why don't you come over here and have a seat."
"We're not going?"
"Not yet."
"Okay." Jovie minced over and hiked herself sideways onto Chester's lap.
"There are enough chairs for everybody," Chester said, rolling his eyes.
"Oh." Jovie seemed a little miffed, but she took the chair in the corner. Alex took Chester's comment as a cue; he gestured to the chair propping open the door for Em, and took the one on the other side of the doorway for himself.

Chester spun around and shoved back toward a window, peeking through the blinds. Satisfied, he shoved himself back to the middle of the room. "If anybody thinks they smell soda pop, don't be afraid to interrupt me."
Jovie cocked her head in confusion, but both Em and Alex nodded.

"Okay ... Every Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, the barrier is at its weakest between this world and the ... the beyond."
"The beyond?" Em asked.
"Heaven, Hell, Hyperspace, Hoboken, I don't know. Doesn't matter. --So, in the whole world there's this one spot, this one night, at a specific time, where it's weak enough that something can cross over."
"Something? You mean Satan's Claws."
"Satan's Claws," Jovie whispered. "Cool name."
"What exactly is it?"
"Death, basically. At least that's what it wants. Or maybe it wants life and death is what it leaves behind. I guess it depends on your point of view."
"But what's it look like?"
"That's the thing -- it changes. Once it's crossed over and running loose, it basically looks human -- until the next new moon. Then it's free to wreak havoc. Still human form most of the time, but also more."
"More?" Alex asked.
"Whatever it's chosen to be, I guess. Sometimes a disease, or a poison mist, or locusts, or fire, or just the touch of death."
"Basically all the worst parts of the Bible," Alex blurted.
Em gave him a raised eyebrow. "Sorry," he apologized, "reflex."
She smiled.

"What's a new moon?" Jovie asked.
"Opposite of a full moon. No moon."
"Oh, like tonight," she bubbled. The others shared grim looks. "What?"

Chester continued. "Anyway, the Smiths' task now is to hunt it down and kill it, and contain whatever damage it does. Which sounds bad, but keep in mind we've got a lot more help these days -- the CDC, the military ... really we just have to give them leads if it's a disease or disaster or something, and we focus on ... it ... itself." Chester seemed to acknowledge that the lack of a name could be awkward, but moved on. "So whatever it is, we'll get through it." He looked at Em. "In the meantime, we need to keep you safe, because the same thing's gonna happen next year."

It still sounded like Chester was underselling it. And he looked anxious.

Em's forehead wrinkled. "So the ceremony ... keeps him from crossing over? How?"
"I don't know," Chester answered, shrugging. "The ceremony itself isn't documented anywhere, and it's not something a guy asks about more than once. You Winters, like the other bloodlines before, when you carry the blade, your ... immunity, I guess, it rubs off, and somehow they use that to close the hole."
"Maybe they chop Santa's head off!" Jovie gushed.

Chester glared. "It's not Santa. And anyway, it's supposedly more ... ceremonial than that. There's this saying I keep running into--"

"By Winter's hand the blade is brought; it is our blood that binds," Em intoned.

"Yeah. See, 'binds' is the thing. They never talk about killing it -- well, they never really talk about it at all, but you know, still, you put stuff together, and when they talk around it they use words like containing, sealing, repelling, restraining... binding. It's like if something with their essense is present, it can't break through. I guess."

"Sounds weird," Jovie said, scrunching up her face.
"Yeah, well, the Crucifixion and Resurrection seems weird when you just lay it out in under two minutes."

Em seemed lost in thought. So Alex asked a question. "How long has this been going on?"

Chester let out a low whistle. "A long fuckin' time. I mean I've haven't seen anything before the 18th century in these records, except what's in this one about the Black Death and the Plagues. Other Smiths have other records, but if they have anything older they're not sharing. So everything before that's just tall tales. Em's grampa probably told her more than what anybody else knows. I think he's got older records, maybe everything the Smiths have ... but anyway ... the oldest stories are about a beast that appeared in the wintertime, roaming the countryside at night, stealing the souls of children and sick people while they slept. And this guy Nicholas, and later Sons of Nicholas, who were unaffected by the beast's touch and would hunt it down and kill it. That's where the name Saint Nicholas's Beast comes from, I guess. I think this goes way back, hundreds of years before the Black Death."

"Like what, the 3rd century?" Jovie piped in.
Chester stroked his chin. "Yeah, I guess."
"So maybe it was the Saint Nicholas." she said.
"Huh?"
"You know, Santa Claus. He was an actual historical figure, ya know," Jovie chided. "He was a bishop, and he gave away lots of stuff to charity, only anonymously." Alex was surprised to hear the word roll right off her tongue. "That's where the presents thing comes from. He was made a saint, and later his bones were stolen and taken to Italy."

Chester's eyes looked like they'd pop out of his head. Clearly this was a side of Jovie he'd not seen before.

"What? So I kinda dated my History teacher in high school."
"Most girls do that so they don't have to learn anything," Em sneered.
"Hey, I liked History," Jovie pouted. "You know I'm not as dumb as I look. These are a business investment," she said, thrusting out her massive chest.
Alex cringed, afraid one of her vest buttons might take out someone's eye...

"Ladies!" Chester admonished. "Please ... so anyway, it's been a long time. I've been told all the old records were lost, because the first record-keepers were wiped out, along with the Nicholas clan, or we'd know more."
"The Black Death," Alex guessed.

"Well, there's a theory that maybe that's what happened because they were wiped out. But either way it sucks. After that there's supposedly a few wanderers who chase outbreaks of plague and stuff, but it's not until after Copernicus that things start to gel. There's this group -- started by a guy named Ruprecht, what eventually becomes the Smiths -- that starts backtracking where 'it' came from each time, and looking at the movement of the planets and tides and census figures and all kinds of shit, and they start getting pretty good at predicting where this thing's gonna pop up next. Problem is they don't have a Nicholas, so all they can do is follow it and throw enough at it to eventually overwhelm it. Well, and in the case of disease, they're quick enough they can usually set up quarrantines and contain it, which is a good thing I guess."

"So what do you have records of?"
"Picking up in the early 1700s, the Smiths stumbled on a Nicholas among their ranks -- I mean, somebody immune to whatever 'it' threw at the world. A Russian Molokan -- Zima Alekseev."
"I like Zima," Jovie enthused.
Chester continued. "He was soon married and had children, and they'd send him off to wherever they predicted the Crossing would take place, and he'd lead a team of guys to attack 'it' as soon as it appeared. Sometimes it would escape and they'd haul off after it, and sometimes they'd kill it on the spot. But one year it got smart I guess and ... see, they'd use spears to try to fence it in and keep it from getting away as well as from getting close enough to kill them, and then Zima would cut off its head or something."

Em interjected. "I thought you said they didn't do that."

"They used to -- they used to wait for the beast to appear. Zima's wife wasn't too happy about her husband trekking all over the place only to have some thing try to kill him. And this one year it almost succeeded -- grabbed a spear and ran it right through him. The others managed to fight it off him and eventually killed it, and Zima survived -- the spear hit him in the shoulder, missed the important stuff -- but when he started packing the next year, Polina left him. Fortunately, that was the year Zima figured out the binding thing, and she came back, and things have been safer ever since."
"The 'binding thing.'"
"I told you I don't know, exactly. But every year, the Smiths look at their charts and stuff, and somebody hammers out whatever bladed weapon is deemed appropriate, and Zima and later his sons and grandsons would take it to wherever and the local Smith assigned to the ceremony would meet them and seal the hole."

"So what happened to the Zimas?"
"Alekseev. In 1850 the whole family was lost coming to America." Chester held up his hand to stay their concern. "Fortunately, by that time, the Smiths had some test that could identify someone with the immunity or whatever, and they'd already found two people with the trait." He looked at Emmeline. "The first one didn't work out, but the other one was your great ... great-grampa," he said, hesitant about whether he'd gotten enough 'greats.'