Duncan Marks barely had the tacks out of the skeleton before the hideous thing fell down on top of him. The bones rattled like a pair of maracas and the skull bonked squarely into his own on the way down. He didn’t think it hit hard enough to leave a lump, but then again, he didn’t think the Whiffle Bat Gordie hit him with that September would have either, but after an unfortunate attempt to save him from a rogue wasp, Duncan wound up with more lumps than a coffeehouse at teatime.

“Why do we have to put this damn thing up every year?” he grumbled.

“Because it was Halloween, Duncan,” his wife reminded him. “You know – pumpkins and candy and trick-or-treating?”

Duncan kicked at the skeleton at his feet. “Halloween. Fine excuse to extort candy from a hard-working man every 31st of October.”

He hoisted the skeleton into its cardboard box, hoping he’d find the space in the increasingly-cluttered garage that he’d pulled it from two weeks ago. “And speaking of the pumpkin, can’t you throw that thing away?”

“Duncan! Gordie was so proud of that Jack-o-Lantern! How can you want to throw it away already?”

“It’s November first, Maureen. Halloween is over. Time for sanity to return.”

“Let it stay up a few more days, it’s not going to hurt anybody.” Easy for her to say, as she stood behind him, twirling a lock of red hair around her finger. She was very good at directing him when it was time to assemble the decorations for any given holiday, but somehow, when the time came to take them down, he was pretty much on his own.

He grunted as he hoisted the box of Halloween decorations into his arms. “Fine, dammit, fine, but if that thing starts to rot, you’re hosing off the porch, not me. Comprende?”

“Yes, Duncan, yes.” She rolled her eyes and, taking full advantage of the fact that his arms were holding a forty-pound cardboard box, fished into his coat pocket.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“Getting your car keys.”

“What for?”

“I thought I’d start my Christmas shopping today.”

“Christmas?” he howled. “It’s the day after Halloween!”

“Exactly. I’m already behind.”

She pulled the keys to their ’01 Mazda from his pocket and, upon another moment of thought, reached into his back pocket and took his wallet as well.

“Hey!”

“Credit cards, sweetie.”

“Why are you using the credit cards?”

“Because I’ve got a lot of shopping to do today and I don’t know if I’ll have the cash to cover it all.”

“But we’re going to have the cash come January, is that what you’re anticipating?”

“Oh relax. You throw a hissy fit every year and we always come through fine.”

“Of course we come through fine! That’s because I work my ass off until March paying off your Christmas bills! Then I start saving for our summer vacation, which puts us back into debt because somehow I never manage to save enough, then as soon as we finish paying that off I’ve got to buy candy and a pumpkin and a costume for Gordie, and the next thing I know you’re shopping for Christmas again!”

“See how well that works out? Some people can be together for forty or fifty years and never settle into such a comfortable routine.”

She kissed his cheek, an act that felt just as opportunistic as fishing through his pocket while his arms were full, and trotted off to the car. He was a lucky man, he would admit that – both he and Maureen were pushing 40, but she still had curves in all the right places, full, red hair and a beautiful smile that charged him up any time he wasn’t irritating her too much to get it out of her. He was getting a little rounder around the middle himself, and his sandy hair was starting to retreat, but all in all, he thought he still looked too young to have to put up with the Santa Claus jokes that Maureen would start in with any day now.

He cursed all the way to the garage (where, of course, he could no longer jam the box into the assigned space). “This is all your fault!” he shouted after her, as if she could hear him halfway to the mall, then started kicking things aside trying to make room for the box. Look at all this crap – a box of Easter decorations, a box of Thanksgiving decorations, a box of Independence Day decorations… a box of Arbor Day decorations? When the hell had they decorated for Arbor Day?

And most of all, box after box after box labeled “Christmas.” Or occasionally “X-Mas,” if the box was too small to label it with the full name. Maureen always got pissed if he wrote “X-Mas” because, in her words, people used that to try to “take the Christ out of Christmas.” One year he got so irritated with her that he looked it up on the Internet and discovered that “X” was actually the Greek character “Chi,” which meant “Christ,” and that mean he was there all along.

“Oh, you’re just making that up,” she grumbled.

“I am not!” He stabbed his finger frantically at the Wikipedia page he’d found the information on. “It’s right here. ”

She huffed at him. “Just write it out in smaller letters.”

If it was up to him, of course, he’d mark every one of these damn boxes “trash” and leave them out by the curb. Decorating for any holiday felt like putting together a sixth grade science project for him, and taking down the decorations felt like cleaning up the debris after an earthquake. Albeit with less mental anguish.

He contemplated taking out the box of Thanksgiving decorations right now just to get Maureen off his back, but if he did that she’d take it as an endorsement of her over-the-top decorating and be even more insufferable when it came to putting up the Christmas stuff (the day after Thanksgiving – she never gave him so much as a day or two off from decorations from weeks before Halloween until the day after New Year’s). And no matter how careful he was putting away her billion-and-one Christmas lights every January, when he took them out again the next year they were all knotted and tangled and a pain in his ass. If he was the sort to believe in elves, he would swear up and down that they broke into his garage during the downtime from making toys and twisted around his Christmas lights just to get back at him for the times he’d gotten irritated at a mall in December and barked at kids that the Santa Claus they were in line to pee on and get their pictures taken with was just some bum in a suit.

He brushed off his hands and went back into the house, closing the garage door behind him. For just a moment, he allowed himself to fantasize that he was sealing all the holiday crap in a massive vault, never to see the light of day again. It was quite a lovely feeling. He made a note to tell his co-worker, Eddie, to picture that when the time came to close off his own stuff.

He got a Coke from the fridge and sat down in his easy chair, sifting through the newspaper for the sports section. He was halfway through a story about Tom Benson denying for the umpteenth time that he had plans to move the Saints out of New Orleans even as he was measuring for drapes in San Antonio when he saw the mess in front of the couch. It was Maureen’s, of course – all of the messes in this house could be dumped squarely in her lap – but it was far worse than he ever imagined it would be. There was construction paper in all shades of red, green and blue, scissors, glue and yarn, assembled in such a way as to suggest that while he had been outside disassembling the graveyard she’d made him erect on their front lawn just two weeks ago, she and Gordie had been inside making Christmas ornaments. And cheesy ones nonetheless.

Next to the construction paper mess were patterns clearly downloaded from the Internet (they could make parental controls to block all manner of porno, but he’d rather have a way to block out craft and shopping websites), and next to those was a stack of CDs. Harry Connick Jr.’s Harry For the Holidays. Now That’s What I Call Christmas 3. The Ultimate Holiday Collection Vol. 4. There was a green light humming on the CD player. His hand trembling, Duncan reached out and pressed “Play.” New age crap, full of chimes and synthesizers and what sounded like a harpsichord, filled the room.

Mannheim Steamroller. Mannheim Freaking Steamroller.

You know, it was bad enough that she started in on this Christmas crap earlier every year, but did she have to indoctrinate their son, too? Gordie was already eight years old and he still believed in Santa Claus. Hell, Duncan hadn’t believed in him since he was… well… in truth, he couldn’t remember a time he ever did. He must have believed at some point, he supposed – all brain-dead kids did when they were little – but at a very young age a quick glance at the physics section of the encyclopedia proved there was no way a fat guy in a sled could deliver that many presents all in one night. It was actually something of a relief when he pieced that together – it never made much sense to him anyway.

He picked up all the CDs, looking around for somewhere to stash them, then sat down on the couch and let them fall through his fingers, clattering to the floor. Years of experience with Maureen had taught him it didn’t matter how well he hid anything, once she put her mind to it, she’d find it. The woman was like a bloodhound. He did love her, he honestly did, but once the last three months of the year hit, sometimes it was hard as hell to remind himself why. How someone like her – a Holiday psycho year-round – ever meshed with him – someone who’d prefer restricting celebrations to occasions where there had actually been an accomplishment other than making it to another December 25 without dying – was one of the great mysteries of the universe.

“Duncan?”

He looked up, looking for the voice that had said his name. Maureen would be shopping for hours, and Gordie was out with his friends, trading Halloween candy from last night – not that his son would be calling him by his first name anyway. But there was no one else in the room, no one who could have chirped at him, and he certainly wasn’t expecting anyone. Great. He was cracking up. Maureen could get him a straight jacket for Christmas.

“Duuuuuuuuuncan?”

Okay, he was sure he heard it that time. “Who said that?” he said. “Who’s there?” There was still nobody in the room, so he got up and walked to the front door. He hadn’t heard it open, but it was possible that if there was someone yelling at him from outside, he could have heard them shout. He went through his mental rolodex, trying to determine who, among his personal acquaintances, would be too stupid to use the doorbell – or at least knock. The list, he saw with dismay, was much longer than he was comfortable with.

“Who is it?” He shouted, opening the front door. “Who’s there?”

But looking out into the yard (with patches of yellow grass where Maureen’s fake tombstones had perched, thank you very much), there was nobody there. Nobody at the door, nobody at the sides of the door, nobody running away after having left a flaming bag of dog crap on his porch. (Thank God – he had needed to buy new shoes after one of the neighborhood kids pulled that little stunt last year.)

“Well fine!” he shouted to no one. “Be that way!”

“Duncan?”

That time the voice was behind him. He spun around to look for its owner, but again, saw nobody. This was mildly disturbing. He may not have been a fan of Halloween, but he’d spent the last week sitting through episodes of The Scariest Places on Earth with Maureen and Gordie and some of those ghost stories had started to get to him. Not that he believed in ghosts, of course, he was a rational man, but somewhere in his gut he suspected that a pissed-off poltergeist didn’t particularly care if someone believed in it or not.

Oh, knock it off, he thought to himself. You’re acting like a child. Except Gordie wouldn’t have been scared.

He went back inside, closing the door behind him (and locking it), then returned to his easy chair. His Coke was still waiting for him, and he took a long sip to soothe his nerves. He picked up the newspaper again and flipped through to the comics, where half of them were “day after Halloween” gags, but at least he could sympathize with Drabble’s pain at getting caught in the decorations.

“Duncan?”

It was close this time – he dropped the newspaper and finally saw the person who’d been calling to him. Waiting patiently behind the page was a hideous apparition – a creature with a taut, skeletal face with chunks of skin and flesh rotting away from it. The spectre was clad in dark, dingy bandages that hung off its form like the tattered wrappings of a mummy, the trails of fabric dangling behind it, fluttering through the air as if it were in a strong breeze even though there was no wind in Duncan’s living room. Its eyes glowed a deep green in their sockets, boring straight into him, and its breath, painful and hideous, invaded his nostrils with the smell of rot and mildew, churning his stomach. The topper, though, was that this beast was hovering in the air in front of him, drifting through the air at least three feet from the ground, and it was pointing one bony finger out towards him in an accusatory fashion.

When his senses returned to him, he would have to call Maureen and ask her to pick him up some new underwear while she was out.

Duncan screamed. It seemed the logical thing to do while staring into the face of death. But what happened next surprised him just as much as seeing the apparition in the first place. The hovering creature blanched away, as startled by the scream as Duncan was by its very presence. It darted through the air, its flight not unlike a kite, and wound up behind the sofa. Duncan could see its skeletal hands clutching the top of the couch, and then the creature poked its head up, staring at him with one green, glowing eye. If it didn’t look like it was ready to eat his soul, it would almost suggest a frightened kitten. To Duncan’s credit, this was the first time in his life he’d ever wanted to hit anything that looked like a frightened kitten with the nearest croquet mallet.

“What… what the hell are you?” Duncan shouted.

“What do I look like?” the apparition shouted back. Somehow, its voice wasn’t quite what Duncan expected. He expected something horrific and frightening, like gravel being run through a wheat thresher with several live cats. He didn’t expect its voice to be so… so…

…squeaky.

“You look like a – a…” Oh, just say the word, Duncan. “You look like a ghost! ”

“Huh? ” The phantasm seemed startled by the pronouncement, and it hovered back above the couch, now looking down at itself. It looked back up at Duncan, then, and its bony jaw somehow had taken on a grin that could only be described as “sheepish.” It slapped itself in the forehead as if it had just done something particularly stupid. “Oh, geez, I can’t believe I did something this stupid.”

“What, you’re haunting the wrong house?” Duncan yelped. Please, let it be haunting the wrong house.

“No, not that, I… lord, this is embarrassing.”

“What?”

“I forgot to change.” The creature slipped down below the back of the couch and out of Duncan’s line of sight, then there was a flash of light as though it had set off a firecracker. “Sorry!” the squeaky voice shouted. “I’ll be ready in a minute!” There was a grunting sound, like Maureen made whenever she tried to wriggle into her old jeans from college. “This never used to happen in the old days.”

“The… old… days?”

“Yeah. Before we all had to double up.”

“Double… up?”

“Or triple up. Or maybe quadruple up. We’re awfully busy these days.”

“Busy?” This was, to say the least, a surreal experience. Five minutes ago, Duncan had been reading his newspaper and grousing about his wife’s overindulgence in the holidays. Now he was standing in the middle of his living room wishing he had a change of pants while a ghost hid behind his sofa. Possibly changing its pants.

Once the thing had been rattling around for a few more minutes, a green hat bobbed over the back of the couch. A pointy. Green. Hat. With a red spiral climbing to the summit. Beneath the hat appeared a tuft of blond hair, a pair of pointy ears, and a tiny face with rosy cheeks and immaculate teeth, which were smiling at him. Duncan was less frightened of the bloodthirsty apparition from the bowels of hell.

“What are you supposed to be?” he asked, feeling like he was talking to the trick-or-treaters again.

“I’m Lou.”

“Lou?”

“I’m the Spirit of Christmas.”

“The Spirit of Christmas is named Lou?”

“Well… I’m a Spirit of Christmas. And also of Halloween. And I’m probably going to pick up some overtime for Valentine’s Day next year.”

“Yeeeeeeeeah,” Duncan said. “Okay, I think one of us has lost his mind, and I’m honestly not sure which it is.”

“You’re not insane, Duncan.”

“Oh good, it’s you.”

“You’re going to be difficult aren’t you?”

Before Duncan could reply to that, the front door swung open and Gordie came in, waving his trick-or-treat bag with wild joy. When Lou heard it rattle open he gasped and, with a loud “pop,” vanished. Duncan stood agape, staring through the space where the elfin creature had hovered just a moment ago and seeing nothing but Gordie’s baby picture, hanging on the wall.

“Hey, Daddy, look at this!” Gordie called, running up to his father. “Randy traded me all his Three Musketeers for all of my Almond Joys!”

“Yeah, yeah… that’s great, kid,” Duncan said, not really paying attention. Gordie could have announced a trade of his mother’s engagement ring for a bag of pre-owned Big League Chew and Duncan wouldn’t have had more of a response than “That’s great.”

“Want a Butterfinger, Dad?”

“No thanks.”

“What are you looking at, Dad?”

It wasn’t until Gordie stepped into Duncan’s field of vision that he snapped out of his amazement. “Oh – um… nothing. I just thought I heard something.”

Gordie grinned. “Mom says that people who hear things are loco en la cabesa. ”

It sounded like something Maureen would say, all right. “No, I’m fine. Not hearing anything. Nothing at all.”

Once Gordie was home and his attention was back on making sure his son wasn’t setting the drapes on fire or something, Duncan found it easier to convince himself the apparition he’d seen was just a stress-induced hallucination. He’d expended so much energy on the decorations – putting them up, taking them down and, ultimately, brooding about them – it was inevitable that his imagination would start to get the best of him.

Except he didn’t just “see” Lou, did he? He’d spoken with him. Interacted with him. And let’s face it, he didn’t have much of an imagination. Of course, if he WERE going to start hallucinating, “Lou” is about as creative a name as he was likely to come up with

No, no, it was just his imagination, that was all. Just his imagination running away from him. It was bound to happen sooner or later. He just needed to get away from all this crap, he decided, forget about Halloween and Christmas and everything in-between. He just needed to relax.

He sat down in his easy chair and picked up the remote control, turning the television on. The screen showed him a cheerful stop-motion animation Santa Claus riding an electric razor down a snow-covered mountain.

He turned the television off.

Maureen got home about three hours later, laden with packages that she needed Duncan to fetch from her car like the pack mule he was. Amazing, how much shopping the woman was capable of in such a relatively short period of time. And more amazing, still, that she managed to get him to carry even the packages with the gifts she’d bought for him without ever allowing him a glimpse inside. Not that he would have snooped too much – he didn’t particularly care what he was getting for Christmas, and only gave presents to his wife and relatives out of a sense of obligation – he knew who would be getting something for him, and he knew he’d better reciprocate if, for no other reason, than to avoid being the subject of one of those “Guess who’s playing Ebenezer Scrooge this year?” conversations that always seemed to happen at the New Year’s party. He did notice that she managed to get her hands on one of those outrageously expensive video game systems Gordie had been going on about since the summer. Oh well, at least the kid would be happy.

Duncan helped her to secrete the packages in their bedroom closet – Maureen was so aware of his distaste for the procedure that she didn’t even bother to tuck his presents away elsewhere – then, catching a glimpse of the clock on the nightstand, realized it was time to start getting dinner ready. He resolved not to cook too much, since Gordie would no doubt have gorged himself on Halloween candy already, and began a mental inventory of the kitchen cabinet to decide what he and Maureen would be in the mood for.

He decided on spaghetti – easy, relatively quick and he knew the leftovers wouldn’t go to waste. As expected, Gordie didn’t eat much, and a good half-pot of sauce went into the refrigerator uneaten. There weren’t any leftover noodles, thank goodness, or else Gordie was liable to wake up at 3 a.m. craving one of those disgusting spaghetti sandwiches Duncan caught him making last time. He and Maureen retreated to the living room after dinner, where he found himself apprehensive for the first time since Lou vanished. They had a regular routine of falling asleep watching TV after dinner, and Duncan was nothing if not a creature of routine. The problem was, what if he saw that ugly little pixie again when he closed his eyes? If these hallucinations became a regular thing, he would start to come unhinged pretty quickly.

He sat glued to the stupid sitcom that Maureen put on the television, and tolerated the Christmas decorations on the shopping channel she kept in the picture-in-picture box determined not to nod off even for a second. Maureen had a much easier time of it. She wrote down the item numbers of three necklaces and a ring she would broadly hint that Duncan should buy her for Christmas and then closed her eyes, falling asleep right there on the couch. Duncan thought about trying to change the channel, but she had the remote control clutched in her hand and any attempt to extricate it would just wake her up, at which point she would yell at him for trying to change the channel while she was watching something.

As he watched his sleeping wife, though, he felt his eyelids getting heavy, heard the dumb jokes and laugh track on the TV fade into background buzz, and his eyes finally closed. The instant they did, the buzz was replaced by a jingle and that squeaky voice whispered to him, “Hey, Duncan? You awake?”

His eyes opened again to see, instead of Maureen’s sleeping face, the grinning head that had bobbed over his couch that afternoon. This time he could see his body, too – the head was oversized in relation to the rest of the creature, about two-thirds the size of his own head, while its body was no longer than 36 inches total. It was clad in a green jumper and red-and-white striped socks with pointy green shoes. There were no bells, mercifully, but the sight was enough to make Duncan yelp out loud.

The shout made Maureen stir on the couch. “Whu?” she muttered.

“Cripes,” Lou said, and with a pop, he disappeared again. Duncan was now looking at Maureen as her eyes began to creak open. She looked half-sleepy, half-confused. This was normal for his wife.

“Duncan, what are you yelling at?” she mumbled.

He shivered, trying to think of something he could say that wouldn’t make him sound like a lunatic. “It was… the TV,” he said, hoping that in her exhausted state it wouldn’t sound as lame to her as it did to him. “There was something on the shopping network I just had to buy.”

She craned her head just enough to look at the screen. “It’s the Tuesday Jewelry Showcase.”

“Don’t you think I’d look good with a pinky ring?”

“No.”

“Well that’s rather small-minded of you, isn’t it?”

The snappy retort was more for her benefit than his own – it was what she expected of him. The way he was feeling right now, he wasn’t particularly snappy. He was, frankly, getting scared.

Maureen didn’t fall asleep again, and about ten minutes into the evening news Duncan announced that he was going to bed. Maybe he was just tired, maybe all he really needed was a good night’s sleep. Although he was certain that his dreams would be plagued by that obnoxious little fairy, bobbing around, handing out candy canes the same pattern as his socks.

He stripped down to his boxer shorts and a t-shirt then, groggy, stumbled into the bathroom. He turned his back to the toilet, dropped the boxers to the floor and sat down. His eyes were still swimming, and hallucinations or not, he was ready for bed.

He wasn’t too surprised when the shower curtain in front of him began to rustle. In fact, instead of yelping or running, he sank his face down into his hands. “Not you again,” he moaned.

“Heh – sorry about the disappearing act,” Lou’s voice squeaked as he peeked around from the curtain.

“You know this is a bathroom!” Duncan said. “Does the concept of privacy mean anything to you?”

“Of course, that’s why the bathroom is perfect.”

“Why do you keep popping in and out like that? It’s driving me insane.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he apologized again, and from the look on his face Duncan could believe he was sincere. “It’s part of the rules, y’know. Nobody in this realm is allowed to see me alive except you.”

“How is anybody else supposed to see my hallucination?”

Lou looked offended at that. “You still think I’m a hallucination? Usually by the second time I appear it’s enough to convince the miser.”

“Miser?”

“Or curmudgeon. Or cranky-pants. It varies from client to client.”

“At the risk of talking to myself, would you mind explaining to me what in the hell you’re talking about?”

“I told you, I’m the Spirit of Christmas. A. A Spirit of Christmas. And as such, I’ve been assigned to redeem you, a seemingly irredeemable miser.”

“Don’t you have to be rich to be a miser?”

“Or curmudgeon, whatever.”

“It’s the day after Halloween. Why are you here now? Aren’t you guys supposed to work your miracles on Christmas Eve or something?”

“Traditionally, yeah, but it seems like there are more misers, curmudgeons and cranky-pants every year, but there’s only so many spirits of the holidays to go around. We’ve had to start earlier and earlier.” He blushed then, his rosy cheeks growing even rosier. “One year it got so bad we had to start in July. Department store manager.”

A light went off in Duncan’s head. “So it’s your fault that the decorations go up…”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Duncan pulled his pants up, trying to shield himself from the Spirit. “Look, I’m sure you’re very good at whatever it is you do, but I’m really not in the mood.”

“Well of course you’re not – I wouldn’t be here if you were. You don’t quite grasp the point of all this, do you?”

“I don’t grasp the point of anything that happens between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.”

“Aha!” Lou executed a perfect spiral in mid-air and Duncan noticed, for the first time, the thin trail of sparkles that followed him in his flight. “Exactly! That’s why I’m here, Duncan, to teach you all about it.”

“Is this a joke? Seriously, did someone put you up to this or did I just drop that skeleton on my head this morning and I’m imagining all this from a hospital bed?”

“You’re not imagining any of this, Duncan.”

“Says you.”

Lou sighed. “I was afraid that you’d be this way when I saw the assignment. You’re a long-term.”

“A what?”

“You’re not someone I’m going to convince overnight. Not many people are. Heck, even the big Scrooge case took four ghosts and a time warp to get it done. You’re different, though – I’m going to have to spend time on you.”

That alone was scarier than anything else Duncan had heard. “Spend… time?”

“Yep. You’re gonna be a tough nut, but I’m just the Spirit to crack you.”

“What? No, no cracking, no cracking--”

“Duncan?” Maureen’s voice came through the bathroom door. “Are you okay in there?”

“Uh, I’m fine Maureen!”

“Who are you talking to?”

“The… plumbing. The toilet was about to overflow – I got it though!”

“You eat too much cheese.”

“Listen you,” he hissed, hoping his voice was low enough that Maureen couldn’t hear him through the door. “I don’t need you and I sure as hell don’t want any help appreciating the ‘holiday spirit’ or whatever crap you want to lay on me. Why don’t you just--”

Lou cut him off with a smile so disarming Duncan had no idea how to reply. “Of course,” he said. “They all say that at first.” He swooped through the air, stopping right in front of Duncan’s face, and silently kissed him on the forehead.

“You’re marked now, Dunkie,” he said. “Catch you later!”

Then he popped again, and he was gone.

Duncan flung back the shower curtain, looking for his imagination waiting in the wings. He looked in the toilet, in the linen closet – he even took the top off the tank and looked there. No Lou.

“Duncan, come on, you’ve been in there forever.”

Duncan flushed the toilet and stepped out, nearly getting run over by an eager Maureen. As she slammed the door behind him, he shuffled over to the bed, stopping only when he passed the mirror on the dresser. There, in the center of his forehead where Lou had kissed him, was the image of a glimmering silver snowflake.

Duncan knew before he walked into his office the next day that something was wrong. He hadn’t got much sleep the night before, especially after he realized that Maureen couldn’t see the snowflake on his forehead. The fact that she didn’t have the foggiest notion what he was talking about as he pointed frantically to the mirror only seemed to confirm his theory that he was losing his mind.

As he coasted into the parking lot of his company, SpectraSoft Programming, he saw two of the women from the front office exiting the building. One of them, an older woman named Sally, covered her mouth as though she were stifling a giggle, then waved at him.

He parked his car and stepped into the building, where the rest of the front office staff repeated Sally’s gestures of amusement. Lisa, the office comptroller, actually let out an audible guffaw when she saw him enter.

“Morning, Duncan,” she said, giggling.

“Good morning,” he said, apprehensively.

“Hey, Dunc.”

“Good to see you, Duncan.”

“Mr. Marks – great day, huh?”

Something was really wrong. He knew these people. He worked with them every day of his life. They were never this friendly.

When he rounded the corner that led to his office, he was immediately struck by what had his co-workers so tickled. The reflection had actually been visible from down the hall, but it didn’t register that the red and green was emanating from his own door. The first hint of ribbon made him want to run back to his car, crank it up and drive off into the nearest bridge abutment. Eventually he decided going up to the door was slightly less painful.

The door was covered with bright green wrapping paper. It had the same metallic glint as the snowflake on his own forehead, swirling all the way from the ceiling to the floor with a holly leaf pattern. Wrapped over the green paper was a huge swath of red ribbon, maybe eight inches wide, tied in a gigantic bow in the center of the door. Duncan supposed he should probably just be grateful that whoever had done it remembered to cut out a hole for the doorknob.

“Oh, ha-ha!” he announced in as loud and sarcastic a voice as he could muster. “Oh very funny, you guys!” He grabbed the doorknob and flung the door open, storming into his office and slamming it behind him.

That’s when he chose to wig out.

Duncan launched into a full-body shiver, falling back into his chair, twitching like he was experiencing a seizure. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d pushed himself back against the wall and pointing at the door, gasping. For the next few minutes, he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing, although he did have a slight recollection of grabbing the rubber stress doll from his desk and waving it around like he was casting an incantation on the door. The whimpering and convulsing kept up until there was a knock on the door, at which point he quickly put the doll down, straightened his hair and, in a calm voice, chirped, “Come in.”

The door swung open (giving him a new chill as he saw the wrapping paper and ribbon swing into his office), and he saw Aaron Jenkins standing there. Aaron, a heavyset man with a bushy mustache the same color as his suit, was his boss and manager of this SpectraSoft branch office and world-famous for inventing some program that had become obsolete 15 years ago. The wonders of the computer business. Oh – and Aaron did not look happy.

“Duncan.”

“Aaron!” he replied, trying to sound cheerful. “Come on in. Have a seat.”

“Oh, I will,” he said, closing the door and concealing the decorations behind him. “Duncan, listen, I can appreciate a gag as much as anybody, and while I certainly support your sudden burst of holiday spirit, don’t you think it’s just a little early for such an ostentatious display?”

“Huh?”

“Well this is a place of business, in case you had forgotten. What if a client came through here? They’d think you were off your gourd.”

“But--”

“And yes, I’m well aware that the Christmas commercials started airing two weeks ago. Hell, I’m aware that three of our own clients are running Christmas commercials already. But this isn’t a shopping center, Duncan, it’s an office.”

“Wait, wait,” Duncan said, wrapping his mind around the concept. “You think I put those decorations up?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No! Absolutely not!”

Aaron raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You know, Duncan, our cleaning crew comes here after we close for the day. They left at 8 o’clock last night. Your door was clean then – I called and checked.”

“So obviously someone came in early and did it.”

“Obviously someone did, except that I was the first one in the building this morning and it was already there.”

“So someone came in late last night.”

“Duncan, we use computerized keycards. We know anyone who comes in or out of this building after hours. Our records show that you came in at 11 o’clock last night.”

Duncan’s jaw fell open. “But… that’s impossible.” He reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet, expecting to find an empty slot where his keycard usually rested. It was still there.

“You were saying?”

“Someone must have made a duplicate,” he protested. “You’ve got computer geniuses working for you, Aaron, that has to be it.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “Really, Duncan, I don’t care. Just make sure the paper is gone by lunchtime, am I understood?”

Duncan nodded weakly and Aaron swept out of the office, leaving him alone again. He slumped forward, banging his forehead on the desk right on the snowflake. As soon as he made contact, he heard a soft jingle sound, as though he’d hit the clapper on a bell.

“Hiya!” Duncan jolted back upright to see Lou sitting on the corner of his desk, legs dangling over the edge, beaming with what could only be utterly misplaced pride.

“Where did you come from?”

“You summoned me, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You rang the bell. What did you think the snowflake was for?”

“You put a bell in my forehead? So that I could summon you?”

“Yep.”

“So any time I want to talk to you, I’ve just got to bash my face in?”

Lou’s smile dropped. “Um… well…”

“Forget the damn bell, did you put all that crap on my door?”

“Isn’t it great?” Lou’s smile came right back when Duncan brought up the decorations. “The corners were the hardest part. I’ve done some wrapping before, but I’ve never quite had the knack--”

“What were you thinking?”

“Well, I was thinking, ‘What could I do for my buddy Duncan to get him in the Christmas spirit’? And the answer came to me--”

“Try to get him fired?”

“Um… no…”

“And you took my keycard!”

“And put it back,” Lou said, tapping his forehead. “I didn’t know if you’d need it to get in this morning or not.”

“You’re a Spirit, aren’t you? Why do you even need a key?”

“Well, Duncan, I’m linked to you. I can’t just go around walking through walls and stuff.”

Duncan slumped back down in his chair. “Good grief, look at me. I’m sitting here arguing with a figment of my imagination.”

“You still don’t believe in me?” Lou said. “Do you think that wrapping paper put itself up?”

“Hey, I know how this stuff works! I’ve seen Fight Club!”

Lou shot Duncan that smile again, that disturbing, disarming smile that made Duncan want to punch him in the jaw. “I’m gonna change your ways, Duncan Marks. You’re not hopeless. The Boss wouldn’t have sent me to you if you were.”

“Listen, you--”

“I’ll catch you later.” Lou winked at him, and disappeared with that pop.

“Hey, come back here! I was talking to you!” Duncan smacked his forehead, setting off the soft jingle, but Lou didn’t materialize.

“I said come back here!” He smacked his forehead again, again summoning the jingle, but he was still alone. He fell forward and started to bang his head against the desk. Jingle! Jingle! Jingle! Jingle! “Come back! Come back! Come back! Come back!”

“Duncan?”

He looked up to see his door open again, with a face staring down at him with a look on it that could only be described as an utter lack of amusement. “Oh. Hey, Aaron.”

“Maybe I should come back later.”

“Okay, Aaron.”

The door closed again and Duncan banged his forehead on the desk one more time.

Jingle!

Getting through the day was about as much fun as one could expect: none. After he popped several Asprin to get rid of the headache from bashing his face against his desk, Duncan peeled the wrapping from his office door and tossed it in the trash. It wasn’t easy, Lou had apparently used at least six rolls of Scotch tape to attach everything (he found the empty dispensers in the trash can when he was dumping the paper). By the time he got back, though, someone else had produced a self-adhesive ribbon from somewhere and stuck it on his doorknob. He got rid of it immediately and retreated to his desk. By the time he left for lunch, there were three more ribbons on his door. When he left to go home, someone had acquired a package of mini-ribbons and used it to spell out “Ho Ho Ho.” He tried to point out the shenanigans to Aaron as proof that he hadn’t done anything in the first place, but Aaron just mumbled something about the example he had set for his co-workers and then went back to the flask of Bourbon he kept hidden in his own desk.

Duncan went home and, although the temperatures were still fairly moderate, he felt a distinct chill. His head was cold – it was like there was a fan blowing directly onto his forehead. In the rearview mirror, he could still catch glimpse of that damn snowflake. Nobody else was yet acknowledging its existence. Its effects, however, were starting to register.

“Good grief, is it cold out there?” Maureen asked when Duncan stepped into the house.

“Sort of.”

“Duncan, your lips are blue!”

“They are?”

“Sit down, let me get you some hot chocolate.”

Duncan would have preferred coffee, but at this point, he’d take anything. It felt like he’d had his head in a freezer chest for an hour, and his eyes were starting to cloud over. He sat down in his easy chair and turned on the TV (running right into a commercial explaining why using an American Express card was the best way to handle your holiday shopping). Maureen shuffled in a moment later and handed him a mug, which he brought straight to his lips and tipped in, not even caring how hot it was. Even if he wound up with a mouthful of scalded flesh for his troubles, it would be worth it to be warm again.

As he drank, his eyes started to focus on the cup itself. It was white, with a blue pattern and a picture of a smiling snowman standing in front of a brightly-lit Christmas tree. Duncan took the mug from his lips and muttered, “Et tu, Maureen?”

“Feeling better?”

Lou’s head, in miniature, popped out of the hot chocolate just as he was going in for another sip. Duncan jumped, but managed to keep from spilling the scorching beverage all over himself. Instead, he reached down to the mug with his thumb and forefinger, trying to use them like pincers to snag the spirit by the neck, but Lou dove back beneath the chocolate and he wound up just burning his fingertips. Lou popped back in, full-sized, in front of him.

“What was that? ” Duncan said. “Why was my head freezing?”

“You must have banged it open,” Lou said. “It’s like you opened a window to a Winter Wonderland. Normally, that’s a good thing, but when you were driving it was kind of like keeping a window open in subzero temperatures.” Lou hovered a little closer and flicked Duncan in the forehead. Instantly, he could feel the chill start to subside.

“Ugh. Thanks.”

“No problem.” Lou grinned, his teeth glistening.

“Where the hell were you? I thought you said if I rang your little bell you’d come to me.”

“Well I’m not a computer, I do have a little free will there. That particular conversation had sort of run its course. Anyway, I had some work to do.”

“Work? What kind of work?”

“Just arranging a few meet-and-greets.”

“Meet-and-greets?”

“Yep. It’ll be fun.”

“You know, every time I talk to you I get more scared than I was the entire month leading up to Halloween.”

Lou floated over to the couch and drifted down to the cushion. It was the first time Duncan saw him actually sit on something like a mortal. He was still grinning from ear-to-ear. Duncan slumped forward. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m not doing it to you, Duncan, I’m doing it with you. It’s a journey we get to go on together.”

“What kind of crap do they feed you at the North Pole to make you so damn chipper?”

Lou’s grin got wider. “Why Duncan, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you actually were starting to believe in me.”

“Let’s say for the same of argument I’m too tired to be a skeptic right now. What do I have to do to get you to go away and leave me alone?”

“It’s simple. You must simply open your heart and let the magic of Christmas flow over you.”

“Is that all?” Duncan grabbed his deep brown hair, trying to restrain himself from actually ripping the clumps out. “Ugh. I wish I was dead.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You’re right. I wish you were dead.”

“Technically, I’m not really alive. You’ve got to be mortal for that.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Lord knows the last thing I want is to be politically incorrect while you drive me crazy.”

“See? You’re already becoming more polite. I think you’re making real progress, Duncan.”

“My mother would be beaming.”

Part of Duncan – the smarter part, he surmised – wished that Maureen or Gordon would burst in right now and shoo away this glittering little annoyance, but on the other hand, he was starting to suspect he had to take some definite action to get rid of… whatever it was… once and for all.

“Please, can you just tell me what this is all about?” Duncan moaned.

“I told you--”

“Yeah, yeah, the ‘Christmas Spirit’ thing, but can you translate that into Skeptic-ese for me?”

“It’s simple. Have you actually paid attention to what’s been happening to you the last few years? You get more and more disgusted with Christmas every year. Heck, it’s even spread out to the other holidays. You’re rude at Thanksgiving, you’re rude at Halloween… you didn’t even notice poor Maureen’s Arbor Day decorations.”

“So what? It’s a free country, isn’t it? I’ve got a constitutional right to hate Christmas.”

“But you weren’t always like this. The fact that you can hate it more every year proves that at some point you cared a little. My job is to remind you what you used to like about Christmas and bring it back.”

“Are you serious? Is that it?”

“That’s it. Although you should know, I’m willing to go to pretty impressive lengths to get that done.”

“Hey, you know what?” Duncan said, taking another sip of his hot chocolate. “I think you’re right. Yeah – yeah, I can feel it now! Christmas is great! I think I’m gonna run right out and go shopping!”

Lou frowned. “Come on, give me a little more credit than that, Duncan.”

“It was a longshot,” Duncan admitted.

“You rest up. Sorry about the head-freezing thing. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Lou, wait a sec--”

But Lou popped away again just as Maureen walked into the room holding a bowl of steaming chicken noodle soup. “Really, Duncan, how could this have happened in this weather? It’s 65 degrees out there! You’d think you got caught in an ice storm or something.”

Duncan slurped up the rest of the chocolate. “Just getting into the winter spirit, I guess.”

Duncan woke up at 6 a.m. the next day listening to his alarm clock chirp, but he was afraid to open his eyes. He was certain he’d see a tree in the corner of the bedroom, garlands draped from the ceiling fan or a stack brightly-wrapped presents at the foot of the bed, and he didn’t want to have to explain any of that stuff to Maureen. Or even worse, he was afraid she wouldn’t require an explanation and just decide he’d bought in to her Happy Holidays crap.

When Maureen started to shake his shoulder, he was certain he was right about what that damn imp had been up to while he was asleep. “Duncan! Duncan, wake up! You’ve got to see this!”

He groaned. “Don’t tell me Santa Claus came early this year.”

“What are you talking about? Oh, Duncan, just open your eyes and look!”

He pried his eyes open against his will and looked around the room. It looked like it did every morning – no decorations, no presents, no unnecessary lighting. Although now that he looked around, the sunlight coming in through the window was more blue than he expected at this time of morning.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Out the window, Duncan! Look out the window!”

He turned his neck, feeling like he was breaking through layers of rust to get it done, and peered out the window. For a second, he didn’t see anything. A second after that, he came to the conclusion that it was raining. A second after that, he realized he was wrong.

Rain didn’t come down in little white flakes, did it? Nor did it create a thin layer of frost around the edges of the windows. And it certainly didn’t accumulate on the branches of the trees outside.

“Are you kidding me?” he said.

The door to their room burst open and Gordie came shuffling in, his dark hair ruffled, his blue cartoon pajamas askew, his face bright and gleaming. “Mom! Daddy! It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

Gordie grabbed Duncan’s hand and, displaying a strength one would not normally associate with an eight-year-old, pulled him out of bed and across the room to the window. “Look! It’s snowing!”

“It is snowing,” Duncan said. “It’s freaking snowing.”

It was snowing quite a lot, actually. From their vantage point at the second-story bedroom window, they could see out in the back yard where the snow had piled up. It was only about a foot below the swings on Gordie’s playset, and the slide was covered with white. In the next street over, he could see the road was completely covered.

Maureen turned off Duncan’s alarm clock and switched on the radio, where the morning DJ seemed as perplexed by the weather phenomenon as the Marks family. “Meteorologists have no explanation for this freak early season snowstorm. Nobody predicted any appreciable change in temperature for at least another two weeks, but this snowfall has already caused traffic snarls all over the city. The following schools are closed for the day: Midtown Elementary, James P. Keats Middle School, Stella Roberts Elementary--”

“YAHOO!” Gordie screamed. With the news that his school was closed for the day, he leapt straight into the air, landing on his parents’ bed and bouncing another two feet up.

“You should probably call the office,” Maureen said. “There aren’t any snowplows running yet, nobody is going to be able to make it to work.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Where’s my snowsuit, Mom?”

“In storage in the attic, sweetie. I didn’t think you’d need it this early. Oh, I hope you haven’t outgrown it… Duncan, can you--”

“I’m already on it,” Duncan said. He put on his slippers and went out to the hall towards the attic. He got the boxes of winter clothes easily, and while he was up there he pulled down the boxes for Maureen and himself as well. He was definitely going to need his own snowsuit, and the snow shovel out of the garage as well.

“Geez, Lou,” he muttered as he zipped himself up, “What did you do?”

Once he finally got himself suited up and found the snow shovel, he headed out into the yard. The snow had tapered off by now, although the occasional flake still fluttered down, and he got to work trying to dig out the driveway so he could get the car out. He paused for a moment to marvel at the fact that the same lawn he was hurling snow onto was a pseudo-graveyard just three days earlier.

“Well? How do you like it?”

Lou popped out of the snowbank that Duncan was piling up, his grin as big as ever. He was wearing a blue coat now, on top of his green jumpsuit, but those ridiculous candy cane socks were still proudly on display.

“How do I like it?” Duncan said. “I got woken up at 6 a.m. to shovel snow. How do you think I like it?”

“Okay, sure, there’s bound to be a little work involved, but nothing worth doing is easy. Come on, can you honestly tell me that seeing a beautiful blanket of white like this doesn’t make you feel all warm and Christmasy?”

Duncan replied by dumping a shovelful of snow onto Lou’s head. The snow shuffled around for a few moments before the disproportionately large head popped out.

“A bit much?” Lou asked.

“Ya think?” Duncan snapped. “You’ve crippled an entire city with a snowfall it wasn’t ready for just to try to get me in your ‘Christmas Spirit!’ That doesn’t spell overkill to you?”

Lou shook the snow from his back like a dog and then flittered around. He lifted up into the air higher than the roof of the house and began to rotate, trying to get a look around at his handiwork. When he lowered himself back to Duncan’s eye level, he had a soft smile on his face. “Okay, maybe I went just a little overboard. But c’mon, you have to admit, this is going to lift some people’s spirits.”

“Like who?”

“WOO-HOO!”

Gordie came racing out of the house, cutting a deep swath through the snow as he ran. He headed straight for the open garage where, unlike his father, he found what he was looking for right off the bat.

“Gordie, where are you going with that sled?”

“The top of Cooper Hill!” he said. “You can see the whole town from up there!”

“Well just be careful, okay? And be back in time for lunch.”

“Okay, Dad. Hey, cool!”

“Cool? What’s cool?”

“That elf statue! Are you putting up the Christmas decorations already?”

Duncan realized with a start that Gordie was staring right at Lou, who was sitting on the snow now. He had the same stupid grin that was starting to grate on Duncan’s nerves so much, but it was frozen in place now, unmoving, and the glint in his eye looked like molded plastic.

“Is this new?” Gordie asked.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s new. But no, I’m not putting up any Christmas decorations. Now go play. And don’t get into trouble.”

Gordie agreed and shuffled off through the snow. As soon as he was gone, Duncan went down on one knee and stared at Lou.

“Good grief, look at this thing. I’ve been hallucinating about this stupid Christmas decoration all along.”

“Oh, not that again.”

When Lou suddenly started moving again, it startled Duncan so much he fell back into the snow. He found himself staring straight up into the blue-gray sky, empty until Lou fluttered into his field of vision.

“Ah, Duncan. You make me smile sometimes.”

“Is it January yet?”

Lou drifted back down, sitting on Duncan’s chest and staring into his eyes. “You, my friend, are one tough chestnut to crack. I may have to take drastic measures.”

“Drastic measures? What do you mean, ‘drastic measures’?”

“You’ll see. Don’t worry, you’ll enjoy it! They always do!”

“Duncan?”

Lou went all plastic and fell over again just as Maureen appeared above Duncan. “Aw, look at you. You act like such a sourpuss all the time, and here I catch you making snow angels.”

“What can I do for you, Maureen?”

“I just talked to Aaron, he said they’re closing the office today. You’ve got a whole day to yourself.”

“Oh yay.”

“And I love the new Elf. Make sure you put that right by the front door.”

“Right.”

“And get my handpainted Nativity Scene out of storage while you’re at it – you didn’t put it up at all last year.”

“Yes, dear.”

Duncan didn’t think that would count too much with Lou, as he was agreeing out of capitulation rather than any actual appreciation for Christmas, but at that point he was too exhausted to care.

It took Duncan until lunchtime to get the driveway and sidewalk clear of the “miracle” snowfall, and he was unaware that Lou was sitting on the roof watching him the entire time. Every so often he’d catch a glimpse of him up there and see the Elf wave at him, and once in a while a neighbor would come by in the snow and he’d be embarrassed at the fact that he was the only one with what appeared to be Christmas decorations on the house already, but other than that they more or less left each other alone.

What Duncan couldn’t see, or hear, was that Lou was having a conversation up there on the roof, with someone even Duncan couldn’t see carrying on the other end of the chat.

“It’s going well, I think,” Lou said.

No it isn’t, Lou. You’ve been with him for two days now and you haven’t made a dent.

“I’ve got him convinced that I’m real. I think. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

Pfft. Old Marley could get a miser to that point by midnight.

“Marley had three other Spirits as back up. This is a solo mission for me.”

Be that as it may, this snowstorm was far too far to go just to drive that point home.

“It worked, didn’t it? And it didn’t give us away, the mortals just think it’s a screwy weather pattern.”

And you’ve set back the cause of weather forecasters another decade. No matter how accurate they get, all it takes is one stunt like this and another generation learns never to trust them.

“I’ll apologize to them if it helps.”

I’ll make sure to assign you to one next year. Now, what about Duncan?

Lou scratched his chin. “Well, I’ve been thinking.”

You know I advise you against that, Lou.

“Ha ha. I’m thinking, Duncan may be a rougher case than we’d expected.”

So what are you saying? Are you requesting back-up? Because you know if you can’t do it alone, you don’t get credit for the job.

“I know.”

And you know you NEED the credit.

“I know.”

Okay. So long as we’re on the same page. Well then, what DO you suggest we do with Mr. Marks down there?

“Well, the ‘sudden infusion of holiday spirit’ route isn’t working.”

Obviously.

“And I don’t think he’s got any ‘Ghosts of the Past’ to summon up… at least, there weren’t any mentioned during the briefing.”

Are you just looking for ways to limit yourself, or are you going somewhere with all this?

“I think we need to go with the ‘Heartwarming Experience That Teaches Him the Meaning of the Season’ routine.”

If a disembodied voice could scoff, that’s what Lou’s companion did just then. Lou, I really don’t think—

“Hey, this is my operation, isn’t it?”

Well, yes, but—

“But nothing. I think we can do that. I think we can make it work.”

Sigh. If you say so, Lou. It’s your funeral.

“You know we don’t die.”

It’s a figure of speech. Okay, what do you need?

“Write this down: I need one ragamuffin, one puddle of water, one convertible…”

Hey, Lou?

“Yes.”

What if this DOESN’T work?

Lou shrugged. “Well then, we’ll just have to do something drastic, won’t we?”

After lunch, Maureen started to beg Duncan to break out the snow chains and take the family on a ride into town. “Come on, it’ll be fun, ” she urged. “You know how pretty this town is once it’s got a nice layer of snow on it.”

“Yeah, two hours of driving around watching other irritated people shovel snow out of their driveway. Sounds like a good time to me,” he retorted. He scooped up the lunch dishes and brought them to the kitchen, where Lou was sitting on the edge of the sink waiting for him.

“Sounds like a good time to me too, Duncan,” he said.

“You stay out of this,” Duncan grunted.

“Come on, what’s the harm?”

“When’s the last time you had to put snow chains on a car?”

Lou bobbed up into the air, his contrail of sparkles glittering behind him. “Not really much call for automobiles where I come from.”

“Well, go back to the North Pole and round up a few more of your little Elf buddies to put the chains on my tires. Then we’ll talk.”

“I told you, Duncan, I’m not an Elf, I’m--”

“A Spirit, yeah, I know.” Duncan nudged Lou out of the way and dunked his plates in the sink, turning on the water. He wondered for a second if dousing Lou would melt him like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz, but decided against it. He was already getting grief for mixing up his supernatural entities, no sense in giving the runt more ammunition.

“C’mon – do it for me.”

“I don’t like you.”

“Then do it for Gordie and Maureen.”

“I don’t want to encourage them. ”

“You know, I bet I’d get along a lot better with the rest of your family than I do with you.”

“And that’s enough of a reason for me to make sure you never, ever meet.” He squirted some dishwashing soap in the sink and began rinsing.

“I’m gonna get you yet,” Lou said.

“Yes, I’m sure you will. Now would you get lost? This grease isn’t going to fight itself.”

Lou stuck his tongue out – exposing a holly leaf stamp on the pink flesh – and blipped away. That tongue stuck with Duncan as he washed the dishes. He wondered, if he grabbed that tongue and stuffed it into the garbage disposal, would the entire pixie get sucked into the machine like a cartoon character? He decided to pretend that, in fact, that’s exactly what would happen.

The dishes clean, Duncan finally relented and fetched the snow chains for the car. Once everyone was suited up in their winter coats, they piled into the car and headed for the town shopping district. The snow had begun again, and although it didn’t threaten to repeat that morning’s record, there was enough of a dusting on the cleared roads that Duncan was grateful he had the chains out. As they drove through town, as expected, he saw his neighbors in their lawns shoveling snow, most of them red-faced and not a few sneezing. With the window rolled up and the radio on Duncan couldn’t hear anything they were saying, but he felt safe in assuming it was language he didn’t want Gordie emulating.

Those were the adults, thought. Although he was making a concerted effort not to notice them, Duncan found he couldn’t ignore the children. He drove past at least three snowball fights, a dozen kids dragging sleds behind them and more snowmen than he could count. While he was turning out of his subdivision onto the highway, he saw a man building a snowman with his two kids – somewhere they had actually dug up an actual top hat and corncob pipe, which their snowman was proudly sporting. It looked just like a snowman Duncan had built with his own father once, he recalled. And despite himself, he remembered how much fun that day had been.

Well… fun right up until his older brother, Dominic, had shoved him into the snowman, destroying the whole thing and leaving Duncan face-down in the snow. Dominic had even taken a snapshot with their mother’s camera, ensuring that the image of his younger brother’s boot-clad feet sticking out of a snow bank with a top hat perched on his ass would be preserved for all time. Gordie frequently asked why Uncle Dominic didn’t visit more often.

Once they hit the highway, the scenic nature of the journey dropped off quickly, but it returned once they made it to the town. Duncan brought them down to a parking garage not far from the mall, and the minute they were on the sidewalk, Maureen went gaga.

“Look, Duncan!” she said. “Doesn’t it look like Christmas already?”

It did. Half the stores had their decorations up even before the snowfall hit, but with the power covering the entire city, it was like walking through a Christmas card. Maureen and Gordie were eating it up, but as far as Duncan was concerned, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“Hey, Gordie!”

The entire family turned towards the voice and Duncan saw a kid he recognized as being in Gordie’s class, although he couldn’t remember his name. The kid was running around without gloves on, and Duncan wondered where the hell his mother was.

“Hey, Steve!”

“Heads up!” Steve shouted, cocking his arm back. For the first time, Duncan noticed he was holding a snowball. A second later, that snowball went flying and Duncan recognized the fact that, frankly, eight-year-olds had really crappy aim.

“Ouch! Geez, I’m sorry, Mr. Marks!”

Duncan wiped the snow from his face, making note of the fact that the kid had nailed him right in the snowflake – he heard a jingle when it made contact. He decided that was something else he would blame on Lou. He didn’t have to wait long – the Spirit materialized a second later sitting atop a street lamp. Duncan was the only one who saw him appear – everybody else was watching him wiping snow from his reddening face – and if they saw him now, they would simply assume he was another one of the damnable Christmas decorations.

“Maureen?” Duncan said once he was fairly certain he’d wiped away all of the snow.

“Yes?”

“Could we go inside, please? Like now.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

Walking into the mall turned out to be both good and bad, in Duncan’s estimation. The good was that they were out of the cold and away from any eager young sprouts that might feel the need to bombard him with projectiles made of frozen participation. The bad was that once they were inside, Duncan got pummeled with even more Christmas decorations – garlands, trees, wreaths, mistletoe and so on – than could possibly have fit in all outdoors. Maureen pulled him straight towards J.C. Penny’s, which of course required him to walk past Santa’s Christmas Village in the center of the mall. Santa wasn’t there yet – wasn’t due to arrive for several days, in fact, but the village was already there, up to and including a little kiosk where kids could write their letters to Santa. Gordie went hyper for the idea the moment he laid eyes on the kiosk, and Maureen had to bring him over to write up his own letter.

“Maureen, are you sure this is a good idea?”

She shot him her frustrated look, which at this time of year was clearly translated as her “Don’t start with that ‘There is no Santa Claus’ stuff” Glare. He frowned, but nudged the mother and son towards Santa’s Village while he turned around to look at the stuff he couldn’t afford at the Sharper Image store.

“Now what was all that about, Duncan?”

Lou was waiting for him in the store, sitting comfortably in a chair that was entirely too big for him. Duncan couldn’t even imagine that the chair’s massage mechanisms were properly placed to knead Lou’s tiny butt, but the Spirit was stretching out and relaxing as though he were getting the massage of his life.

“What was what about?”

“That scene with Maureen. Why didn’t you want Gordie to write out his letter?”

“The kid is eight years old. How much longer am I supposed to let him keep up this damn fiction about Santa Claus?”

Lou’s jaw dropped, and seeing as how much bigger his head was than his body, it almost fell literally into his lap. “Duncan!” he said. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t believe in Santa Claus?”

“And I suppose you do?” Duncan said. “What, is he another ‘Spirit’ like you? Does he do double-duty as the Easter Bunny?”

“Of course not. The Easter Bunny has an entirely different operation. Although they do use the same shipping lines.”

“I really don’t know why I bother talking to you.”

“Because I won’t leave you alone. Hey, have you tried out this chair? These things are great!”

“You know, my life was fine until you showed up with your Great Gazoo routine.”

“It can be better, Duncan. That’s what Christmas is all about.”

Not ready to get into that conversation again, Duncan spun on his heel and marched away. Gordie was finishing up his letter and Maureen was waving him over, as if to say the coast was clear. That was relative, Duncan thought, but he rejoined his family anyway and the three of them began to walk through the mall.

When they got to J.C. Penny’s, Maureen took them to the women’s clothing – the only place Duncan would have been less comfortable was in women’s lingerie – and began hunting for presents for her mother and sister-in-law. Gordie looked about as interested in this process as Duncan himself did, but at least he could allow himself to be distracted by the decoration and the tune of Jingle Bell Rock getting pumped through the store’s intercom. To Duncan, it was just an annoyance.

“Hey, Daddy, look at those!” Gordie pointed and took off towards a display of tabletop knick-knacks, including an office golf course. As he rushed through, he bumped into a rack of sweaters and knocked one to the floor.

“Gordie, be more careful!” Duncan chastised him. He bent down to pick up the sweater, a tightly-woven purple-and-black button-down number, and as he replaced it on the rack he noticed that it was precisely Maureen’s size.

Huh, he thought. I wonder if she’d like something like this for Christmas.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he began to mentally flagellate himself for thinking it. What was THAT? It’s November THIRD! You are NOT going to be one of those lunatics who buys presents months in advance and annoys everyone at Thanksgiving dinner by outlining how you’ve already finished getting ready for Christmas! Good grief, you shouldn’t even be THINKING of shopping for another MONTH!

“Maureen, are you ready to go?”

She laughed. “Duncan, I’ve barely started!”

He let out a long, deep sigh. I was afraid of that.

Maureen didn’t wind up with as many packages as she had the day after Halloween, and Duncan could only assume that was because he and Gordie were with her. Or at least because of Gordie – Duncan’s level of apathy had allowed her to purchase gifts for him right under his nose before, a story she never got tired of telling at the seemingly innumerable Christmas parties she dragged him to each year. “And I’m telling you, Wanda, Duncan was right there when I picked out the pen and pencil set for his desk and he never saw a thing.”

The few packages she did buy, though, wound up in his arms by the time she was ready for the march back to the car. Throughout the afternoon he saw Lou all over the place – in store displays, mixed in with decorations… at one point Duncan was pretty sure he saw a price sticker affixed to his rump. Even Maureen started to notice, mentioning how the “new Elf” Duncan bought for their Christmas display must be very popular this year.

“Do you think we’ve got enough for your mother, Duncan?”

He shot her a look. It wasn’t the question itself that bothered him as much as the fact that she was asking it of him as he carried four bags and three boxes in his two arms while trying to nudge the door to the mall open with his one ass. This was something of a holiday tradition for their family. He’d suggested once that maybe she could open the door for him and he wound up with a 20-minute lecture on what it means to be a gentleman. Duncan’s opinion was that if he held the door for her 10 months out of the year it wasn’t too much to ask her to hold it while he was carrying her packages, but one of the secrets to a successful marriage was knowing how to pick your battles.

Halfway to the parking garage, Duncan noticed a little girl on the sidewalk next to the bus stop. She was about Gordie’s age, but didn’t look nearly as taken care of. Her face was smudged with dirt and her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in an age. She had no hat, or gloves, and her filthy, ragged coat was far too thin for a day like this one. Because she was staring straight at the ground, she didn’t see the fire-red convertible ripping down the street. What she did notice, because her gaze never left it, was the puddle of water and slush on the road that had pooled as the snow melted into the storm drain.

The convertible tore past the girl, sending up a sheet of ice water all over the girl. She squealed and tried to cover her face, but the filthy, freezing slime sprayed all over her arms and clothes. When she put her arms down, the water was dripping down from her hair into her eyes. She tried to wipe it away, but it was clear that the water she was wiping off was mixed up with her own tears.

“Aw geez,” Duncan said. “Gordie, here, hold this. And this. And these.”

Duncan transferred as many of the packages as he could into his son’s arms and tucked the last box into the one bag that had enough room for it, slipping his wrist through the plastic handle even as he reached into his pocket. “Hey, kid, are you okay?”

The girl kept crying even as he knelt next to her and produced a handkerchief. He wiped off as much of the mud and water as he could, noticing that he was getting a lot of mucus mixed in. Finally he just put the handkerchief over her nose and instructed her to blow like he’d done for Gordie when he was younger. The girl blew – got out a really good honk – and wiped her face clean, holding the handkerchief back out to Duncan.

“Uh… you keep it,” he said. “Hon, where are your parents?”

“At home,” she said. “They’re sick”

“Well what are you doing out here?”

“My aunt took me shopping, but she went away with a man from the sporting goods store.”

“What a wonderful family you must have. She just left you here?”

“She gave me money for the bus, but… but…” she started crying again.

“No, no, not with the crying.” He guided her hands (and the handkerchief) up to her face and wiped her cheeks clean again. “But what?”

“I dropped it,” she said, pointing to the muddy, freezing puddle.

“Good grief,” he muttered. “Listen, would you like me to give you a ride home?”

“NO!” she shouted, blanching away from him. “Daddy says never to get into a stranger’s car!”

“Well… yeah, your daddy is right, but…” He couldn’t think of any way to conclude that sentence that would help his situation. Finally, he reached back for his wallet. “Why don’t I give you some more money for the bus, then?”

“Daddy said not to take money from strangers, either.”

Great. I get the one disadvantaged waif on the planet with parents who teach her social responsibility.

Duncan took off his right glove and stuffed it into his pocket, then rolled up his sleeve. Biting his lip in frustrated anticipation, he drove his hand into the water. Feeling around for as long as he could stand it, he began to fish around.

“Duncan, what are you doing?” Maureen asked.

“The girl won’t take our money, so I’m trying to find hers,” he said.

“Well you’d better hurry, Dad,” Gordie said. “The bus is coming.”

He looked up and, sure enough, the city bus was headed straight for him. He pulled his hand from the water (having found nothing) and slipped his hand into his own pocket. With his free hand, he pointed to the bus. “Is that the right bus, sweetheart?” he asked.

As the girl looked out towards the oncoming bus, Duncan grabbed a two bills from his pocket. A quick glance confirmed they were two singles – exact change for the bus – and keeping them palmed, he shoved his hand back into the water.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said.

“Great,” he yelped, pulling his hand out. “Here you go, honey.”

“My money!” she shouted. She gleefully took the bills from him and waited at the curb for the bus to arrive. He wiped as much of the water as he could on the hem of his coat and rolled his sleeve back down. As he put the glove back on, he saw Maureen looking at him the way she usually only did after they went out to dinner and she ordered a dessert with 50 percent or more chocolate. They waited for the bus to arrive so Duncan could be sure she didn’t get the only bus driver on the planet hardassed enough to turn away a freezing girl in the snow just because her money was wet, and waved as she rolled away. Gordie handed the mountain of packages back to his father and, waving at the bus, shouted, “See you in school, Mandy!” Next to him, still smiling, Maureen gave Duncan a kiss on the cheek.

“Gross!” Gordie interjected.

“What was that for?” Duncan asked.

“That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen you do,” she said.

“What about when I proposed to you by baking you a cupcake with a ring in it?”

“This was sweeter,” she said. “And for future reference, if you make an entire batch of cupcakes when you do something like that, make sure you remember which one has the ring in it. By the time you made me eat the sixth cupcake I’d pretty much figured out what was going on.”

Lou, Duncan was not surprised to note, was waiting for them when they got home. He was sitting on the basketball hoop outside of the garage, grinning like a madman. Maureen raised an eyebrow at him.

“I like the Elf, Duncan, but on the basketball hoop?”

“I’m, uh… trying to find the right place. You’ll probably see it all over before I settle on something.”

Duncan carried the packages inside then popped back out, knowing Lou would be waiting for him.

“Well?” Lou said.

“Well what?”

“Well, don’t you feel the spirit? Isn’t it just pervading your entire being?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The girl! I saw how you leapt to her rescue! You mean to tell me that wasn’t the Spirit of the Season taking over and guiding you to do the right thing?”

“Not especially, no.”

Lou sputtered, falling through the basketball hoop into the snow collecting on the driveway. He flitted out, glitter making a trail from the snow to Lou, hanging just inches from Duncan’s face.

“Then… then why? Why did you do it if it wasn’t because you were feeling the Spirit of Christmas?”

“Because I’m not an asshole!” Duncan shouted. “I only did what any decent human being would have done. Hell, if I wouldn’t look like a stalker I would have followed the kid home so I could slap her idiot aunt across the face with a frozen halibut! Good grief, it’s too early for this ‘Christmas Spirit’ jazz even if I was into it! How on Earth do you expect to get your job done this early in NOVEMBER?”

Lou bobbed in the air, scrunching his face up.

“What’s that?”

“I’m just trying to figure out if assault with a frozen fish can be construed as being part of the grand holiday tradition.”

“I’m thinking no.”

“Me too.” Lou kicked at the air, sending a puff of vapor bouncing away like a pebble. He floated down and sat on the edge of the snow, propping his head on his knees. For a second, he looked even more pathetic than the girl on the corner dripping with ice water. For a longer second, Duncan started to feel bad for the little runt.

“Look, Lou, I get what you’re trying to do here…”

“Do you?” Lou asked, his eyes flashing.

“Well… no, not really. But for the sake of argument, let’s say I do. You want to imbue me with the Christmas Spirit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well what do you say constitutes the Spirit of Christmas?”

“Well… it’s about being kind and considerate… about having warmth and helping your fellow man.”

“And what do you say just happened with that girl on the streetcorner? Whose was pretty well covered by your fingerprints, by the way.”

“Well… you helped her out. You protected her, selflessly, with no thought of reward.”

“Exactly. Thank you. Now if I did that, even if I wasn’t doing it with Christmas specifically in mind, don’t you think that means I’ve got enough basic human decency in my heart that I don’t need your help, even if I don’t think I need to rely on a freaking fat guy in a red suit to bring that out in me?”

Lou smiled at Duncan, then, and thought for a long moment.

“Naw, that doesn’t count,” he finally decided. “Nice try, though.”

Duncan leaned back and slumped against the garage door. “Fine. What’s next then?”

“If the ragamuffin routine didn’t get to you…”

“Oh, I was touched, truly.”

“I’m gonna have to bring out the big guns.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I hate how it sounds.”

“Aw, you just hate it because you don’t know how much fun we’re about to have.”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Hey, Daddy!” Gordie popped out of the house just then, still in his snow clothes. “Mom wants to know if you’re coming inside or if you’re going to spend all day staring at a plastic Elf.”

“I’m thinking it over,” Duncan said.

Gordie walked up to Lou, then, examining the now-still Spirit from every angle. “This thing is great, Dad. It almost looks alive.”

“Yeah, imagine that.”

Duncan watched his son pick Lou up and begin turning it over in his hands as though he was looking at a toy. In his hands, the creature had no weight at all. Duncan wondered what that would mean should he decide to just punt Lou all the way into next week.

“What are you going to do with him, Dad?”

“I don’t know… pharmaceutical testing?”

“I think it’d look great on the roof. Oooh, you know what? We should get a lot of them, and a plastic Santa Claus, and we should make a whole Christmas village on the roof! I can help!”

Duncan’s shoulders fell. How did he make the kid understand how he felt without crushing him? He was so happy, so jovial, so damn jolly? Good grief, it drove Duncan nuts.

“Listen, son, I know you’re really enthusiastic about stuff like this, but… well… you know Christmas isn’t exactly my thing, don’t you?”

Gordie laughed. “Aw, Daddy – everyone loves Christmas.”

“Yeah, you see, that’s just not true.”

“Sure it is.” Gordie propped Lou up on a planter that usually got brought into the garage once the weather turned cold enough to snow. Something else to blame Lou for once this was all over: mass murder of all the outdoor plants in the city. “I know you’re not into it yet, Dad, but just wait a few weeks. You’re going to love this Christmas, I just know it. Especially once you see what I got for you.”

“Gord… wait, you’ve already got me something?”

“Got it in August,” Gordie said, beaming.

“That’s very nice of you son, but I really don’t need anything.”

“Of course not. Mom says if it’s something you need it’s charity, but if it’s something you want it’s a gift.” That also sounded like something Maureen would say.

“Gordie… Go inside, okay? I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Okay, Dad.”

Gordie shuffled off through the snow and, as he left, Lou’s plastic head turned to watch him as he went. Pretty soon, the corners of his mouth cracked, and his smile got even wider.

“That’s quite a kid you have there, Duncan.”

“Meh. It’s my wife’s influence. You struggle to teach them right, you try to make them understand how the world works… you know how the schools are these days.”

Lou’s wide-eyed grin fell into a frown. “Is that really necessary?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know you’re a cranky-pants curmudgeon – that’s why I’m here in the first place – but do you have to try so hard to turn your son into one too?”

“I just want him to understand the way the world really works. Everything you sell is really cute, Lou, but it’s a fantasy. Christmas isn’t ever going to get him a job or put food on his table or make him happy.”

“Christmas makes people happy every year.”

“You know what I mean!”

Lou sighed. “That’s the sad thing, Duncan. I do know.”

There was another loud “pop” then, and Lou was gone.

Didn’t work, did it Lou?

“Well the guy is hopeless!” Lou shouted. “Did you hear him? He not only doesn’t care about Christmas, he wants his kid to not care about it either!”

We know. That’s the problem.

Lou buzzed down crossed his arms and pouted. “Why are we even wasting our time on this guy? I thought we weren’t supposed to get assigned to people who are hopeless?”

You DON’T get assigned to people who are hopeless.

“Well how do I reach this guy?” Lou cried. “Nothing works! He’s completely stone-hearted!”

No he isn’t. And you KNOW he isn’t. He just doesn’t care about Christmas.

“So how do I convince him it’s worth caring about?”

You know the rules, Lou. You know you have to figure that out for yourself.

Lou pouted. “I know.”

And you know that this is your last chance too, don’t you, Lou?

“I know.”

You have until the end of the month. By the time December begins, we’ll get too backed up. And it may be too late.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Lou said. “I can’t figure out how to cram it in to Duncan’s head.”

You know what Duncan’s problem is, Lou?

“What?”

He doesn’t see the big picture. Do you know what YOUR problem is, Lou?

“What?”

Same thing.

The next week was pure hell on Duncan. A pine tree air freshener mysteriously appeared in his car. Every e-mail he sent out somehow had the signature “And have a happy and joyful Christmas season” tagged to the end. And every doorway in the house suddenly had a sprig of mistletoe dangling over his head, a fact which Maureen took liberal advantage of. And of course, once she had taken enough advantage of the fact that he needed to buy some Chap-Stick, the only ones he could find came in a festive holiday label. The pine tree air freshener started to multiply.

Every so often, Lou poked his head in to check on Duncan’s progress. It was disappointing, he had to admit, to see him throw out air freshener after air freshener or running around the house trying to rip off mistletoe in each room before Maureen walked in. Gordie was loving the spontaneous decorations, the Christmas music piping into every room in the house and the lights that appeared on the roof spelling out “Santa Claus Landing Strip.” Both Maureen and Gordie were certain, despite his protestations, that Duncan was not only behind all of the sudden outbursts of Christmas cheer, but that he was building up to something magnificent as the holiday actually approached. As they became more and more convinced, Lou made it a point to hover farther and farther out of his reach.

Even at school, Gordie was getting more and more into Christmas – with mixed results. After Lou’s freak snowfall melted, a natural cold front moved into the area, and while it wasn’t enough to stir up the white again, there was a distinct chill in the air. Inspired by Duncan’s flaunting of Christmas traditions at home, Gordie pulled out his favorite sweater – red and green with a portrait of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the front – and wore it to school one day. He came home with the sweater torn, muddy and stuffed down the front of his pants.

“What happened to you?” Maureen howled the minute he walked off the bus.

“A couple of guys in my class were making fun of my sweater,” he said. His eyes were red and his nose stuffy, but he wasn’t about to let his parents see him cry.

“Did they at least get punished?”

“The playground monitor gave them detention,” he said.

“Well good. Oh, here, let me look at that…” she took the ripped sweater from him and examined the tear. “This doesn’t look too bad, I think I can fix it.”

“Really?” Gordie’s face lifted for the first time since he came off the bus.

“Yeah. Duncan, why don’t you clean your son up?”

“Of course,” he said. As he took the boy into the house, getting a damp washcloth to work on him, Duncan could feel his blood boiling. Part of him wanted to go down to that school and smack the hell out of the kids that did this to his son, then follow them home and smack their parents around too. Another part of him wanted to strangle Lou for encouraging the sort of behavior that got Gordie into this mess in the first place.

“Are you going to be okay, son?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good.” Duncan wiped some of the dirt off his cheek and sighed. “You know, maybe you should cool it on the Christmas stuff for a while.”

“What?”

“Gordie, it’s only November Tenth. At least wait until after Thanksgiving, people won’t be picking on you like this then.”

“But Daddy, don’t you get it? The guys who do this kind of thing are the ones who really need it.”

“What did you say?”

“The kids who beat me up would have done it even if it was Christmas Eve. They don’t care about Christmas – or about anybody but themselves.”

“Well kids like that aren’t worth your time.”

“Yeah they are, Daddy. They need someone to teach them.”

“Gordie, where are you getting this stuff from?”

Gordie blushed and looked away. Since he turned his head to expose a really filthy ear, Duncan didn’t push him to look back and started to wipe him off. He continued with the interrogation, though. “Come on, Gordie. Is your mom telling you to help these kids?”

“No.”

“Is it something you got from one of those CDs that… mysteriously keep getting played in this house?”

“No.”

“Then where?” He took Gordie’s chin and turned his head so they were looking eye-to-eye. Gordie tried to look down.

“Gordie. Tell me. Where are you getting this stuff?”

“He told me not to tell you.”

“Who told you?”

“My friend.”

Duncan caught a chill like he had when the snowflake on his forehead got stuck open. “Gordie, what’s your friend’s name?”

He knew what the answer would be before Gordie said it.

“He says his name is Lou.”

Outwardly, Duncan tried his best not to show any reaction. Inwardly, it was like a volcano had just erupted, spewing a lethal torrent of egg nog all over some primitive island village. Without saying another word, Duncan finished washing off Gordie and told him to go see how his mother was coming along with his sweater. With Gordie gone, Duncan marched up to his and Maureen’s bedroom and locked the door.

“Lou!” he shouted. He banged the meat of his palm into his forehead and he sent out the loudest jingle he’d yet heard from the snowflake. “Lou, get in here!” He banged it again, and again, and with each bang the jingle got louder. By the fifth jingle, he started to see double.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep that up.” Lou blipped into place on the edge of the bed, shaking his head and making a “tsk tsk” sound.

“You’re the one who stuck it in my forehead, genius,” Duncan snapped. He stared at Lou with unapologetic fury. “What the hell kind of game are you playing here?”

“Well, before you called me I was in a nice game of Chutes and Ladders with my buddy Jake – he’s a Spirit of Memorial Day most of the time – and--”

“I’m talking about Gordie, Lou! What are you doing with my son?”

“Hey, I’m just talking to the kid.”

“And telling him what? How great Christmas is and how his dad is a big Scrooge for not liking it? That I’m a big grouch and a horrible human being and when I die I’m going to burn in a giant vat of figgy pudding while reindeer prod my body with white-hot holly boughs? Is that where we’re going with this, Lou.”

“First of all, you’re not exactly doing anything to dispel that notion. Second, of course I’m not telling Gordie anything like that. I’m a Spirit of Christmas. I inspire people, I don’t scare ‘em straight.”

“You did a good job when I first met you.”

“That again? I told you, I still had my Halloween costume on.”

“Do you know Gordie got beaten up today?” Duncan shouted, pulling out the big gun.

“What? No, what happened?”

“Some of the thugs in our public school system decided to pound the crap out of him for wearing a Rudolph sweater. Gosh, I wonder who could have put him up to that.”

“I didn’t tell him what to wear,” Lou said. “I just told him there’s never any reason to be ashamed of Christmas.”

“Well you see, that’s where you’re wrong. When my son comes home crying with his clothes ripped up, that’s the point where a little shame could have saved him.”

“Have you ever thought maybe the problem isn’t with Gordie but with the kids who beat him up?”

“Of course the problem is with them!” Duncan screamed. “Gordie didn’t do a damn thing to deserve that! But showing up dressed like that gave them all the ammunition they needed to open fire on him!”

Lou looked like he’d been steamrolled. “You’re trying to look out for him?”

“He’s my son! Do you have any kids, Lou?”

“Well, we Spirits--”

“Forget it, I don’t want a crash course in Spirit of Christmas procreation methods. I just want you to leave Gordie alone.”

“Look, don’t worry. When we work with a kid this young, it doesn’t stick. If he remembers it all, he’ll think it was a dream or an imaginary friend or something – standard childhood fantasy.”

“Well, thank God for that at least.” Duncan said. “So what have you been saying to Gordie?”

“I’ve been trying to get him to help me. With you, I mean.”

“Help you? What, are you getting him to put up all that damn mistletoe?”

“No, I told him that I wanted him to help encourage you. Remind you what Christmas is about to him.”

Duncan huffed. “Yeah, well, Christmas is for kids.”

“No it isn’t Duncan. They’re just the ones who haven’t gotten cynical about it yet.”

He wanted to, he really did, but Duncan didn’t know how to argue against that.

In his room, Gordie was curled up, clutching his freshly-mended sweater. It was definitely going to have to go through the washing machine, but Maureen thought he’d be better off holding on to it while he was still upset. Duncan would have to thank her for that later. Duncan stood by the doorway, quietly watching his son sleeping off the nasty day he’d just gone through. He didn’t notice when Lou showed up next to him, but he didn’t jump when the Pixie spoke to him either.

“Cute kid.”

“He’s a good one, too,” Duncan said. “That’s why it irritates me when you spur him on. He doesn’t deserve to get hurt. And force-feeding him jingle bells and snowflakes won’t do anything else in the long run.”

“What happened to you?” Lou asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I hear how pained you sound there. I can tell you see yourself in Gordie. What happened to make you so down on Christmas?”

Duncan sighed. “You really want to know?”

“Of course. Maybe I can help you if I know.”

Duncan turned and looked Lou square in the eye. He motioned for the Elf to follow him out in the hall where their voices wouldn’t disturb Gordie, then closed the door.

“I was about Gordie’s age,” he began, “And I lived out in the country. We had a tradition in my family. Every Christmas Eve, my dad would go out and chop down our Christmas tree, then drag it back to the house and we’d all decorate it. But one year, he went out and he just… he never came back. That night, just before Mom was about to go out and look for him, there was a horrible blizzard. We were snowed in for two weeks. When we finally managed to get out, we started to search for him. We finally found him, crushed, in the middle of a snowbank.”

Lou’s lip began to quiver, and tear beaded in the corner of his eye. Duncan wasn’t finished, though. “That’s not the funny thing. The funny thing is… they did an autopsy. He didn’t freeze to death. He was beaten to death.”

Duncan took a deep breath before he could conclude the story.

“By reindeer.”

Lou’s eyes began to gush and he pulled a handkerchief with an embroidered gingerbread man pattern from his pocket, wiping his face and blowing his nose. “Oh, Dunan,” he said, “I had no idea. Did all that really happen?”

“NO, you idiot!” Duncan hissed. “I grew up in Cincinnati! My dad is a patent attorney! And he’s retired, not dead! Get it in your head! Sometimes people just don’t like Christmas! ”

Huffing, Duncan marched off and tromped down the stairs to the living room. Lou hung there for a moment, alone, outside of Gordie’s room.

“How rude,” he finally concluded.

Lou wasn’t exactly pacing, but he was doing the equivalent for a non-corporeal entity who doesn’t actually make contact with the ground when he’s moving. If he were just a little lower, he’d be wearing a path into the shingles of Duncan’s roof. As it was, anybody who happened to see him bobbing back at forth at three in the morning would just assume he was an animated Christmas Elf that wasn’t turned off overnight.

This assignment was maddening. Every time he thought he had Duncan Marks figured out, he went and threw a monkey wrench into the works. He was grouchy, but he wasn’t evil. He hated Christmas, but he loved his son.

“I think I’m gonna have to take extreme measures,” Lou said out loud.

How extreme?

“You know how extreme. I think we’re going to have to send him on the Trip.”

The Trip? Oh, Lou, you know we can’t do that now. It’s too early. You can only open up the portal to mortals when there’s enough Christmas Spirit on Earth to crack open the gateway to our world. And that never happens before Thanksgiving

“Thanksgiving? That’s still two weeks away.”

Yes, we know.

“And I’ll only have five days until the end of the month to finish the job if I have to wait that long.”

Then you’d better find some other way to handle it, don’t you think?

“You’re not making this easy on me.”

I’m not supposed to.

Lou stuck his tongue out at thin air, then drifted off into thin air, lowering himself until he was staring into Duncan and Maureen’s bedroom window. They were asleep, and although Duncan’s back was to Lou from this angle, the Spirit could tell Duncan had his arm wrapped around his wife. It was actually a sweet pose. Actually loving. As usual, it wasn’t what he would have expected from this hard man.

“Heeeeeey,” Lou said. “Look at that.”

Look at what?

“I think I’ve got an idea.”

Ah. That instills me with such confidence.

“No, this idea is different.”

How?

“This one is good.”

Lou let the grin grow across his face. If using Gordie’s good nature wasn’t enough to crack through Duncan’s stony shell, maybe Maureen could do the trick. After all, he’d known her longer.

Lou pulled back for the next few days, figuring that Duncan could use a little time to cool off. He didn’t stop working entirely, though. Duncan found his coffee at work switched with egg nog, holly leaves and little red berries stenciled onto the border of his car windshield and, just to make sure he was in a happy mood at all times, little bells sewn into many pairs of his socks. Maureen was most impressed with the last one.

“When did you even learn to sew?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” Duncan grunted, but not too loudly. Maureen still didn’t believe him when he insisted he wasn’t behind the various holiday happenings, and the more he protested against it the closer he started to come to sounding like a certifiable Looney Tune. It was actually something of a problem for him – on the one hand, he hated to let her keep getting so excited, believing he was getting into Christmas with her. On the other hand, it was putting her in a good mood, making her happy… and that was something he had to approve of. He just hoped like Hell Lou didn’t decide to recruit his wife the same way he had his son.

Gordie, on the other hand, while still trying to keep his optimistic position intact, was really starting to show lower and lower spirits, especially since his “new friend” Lou stopped appearing to him. Duncan couldn’t help but feel guilty about that – Lou hadn’t even talked to him for days, which was just fine. He hated to see Gordie so down. But at the same time, it was better for him in the long run. Duncan would be damned if he allowed his son to spend his life relying on a magical sprite or his bogus “Holiday Spirit” to carry him through.

It wasn’t until November 15 that Lou took another hand direct enough to drive Duncan batty, which was only compounded by the fact that at this point he’d been tormenting him subtly for over two weeks. Duncan woke up about five minutes before his alarm clock was about to prod him out of sleep. There was a lot of rustling going on in the room, and it was disturbing him right out of his slumber. His initial impulse was to wake up and shout at who or whatever was stupid enough to be making noise at this hour of the morning. His impulse was shattered, however, when he cleared his eyes to see Maureen standing there at the side of the bed, smiling – beaming at him. He didn’t think she’d looked this happy about anything since she found out she was pregnant with Gordie. Maybe not even then.

“What’s going on?” he mumbled. “You’re smiling. You’re smiling a lot.”

“You,” she said, the smile not falling from her cheeks. “You wonderful, wonderful man.” She hopped into the bed then and kissed him, cuddling into him so closely he was afraid their bodies would meld together, making it far more difficult to go to work. He certainly could not fault her sudden enthusiasm, though.

When she broke the kiss, finally, she smiled again and said, “You’re amazing.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “But what brought that on?”

“Oh… nothing.” She smooched his cheek and asked him what he wanted for breakfast. A bit surprised – Maureen wasn’t quite the domestic sort to whip up a hot breakfast for her man every day – Duncan put in a simple order for scrambled eggs and toast and watched his wife trot out of the room in her bathrobe.

“Well,” he said. “That was unexpected.”

Duncan pulled himself out of bed and marched off to the bathroom, whistling a happy tune that had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. He took a nice hot shower and brushed his teeth, then was halfway through his morning shave when an alarm bell went off in his head.

“Lou?” he said. He tapped his forehead (he could still see that damnable snowflake in the mirror” and waited for the Spirit to appear. He popped in a second later, dancing in the air behind him, perfectly visible in the mirror.

“Hey, Duncan. You rang?”

“A little, yes. Lou… what have you been up to lately?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. I had a picnic with a couple of Halloween witches last week – nice gals, but their cooking leaves something to be desired…”

“Let me rephrase the question, Lou,” Duncan said. “Have you been… conversing with Maureen?”

“No, I haven’t appeared to her, Duncan. I haven’t said a word and I haven’t done a single thing to make her suspect I’m even around.”

Duncan let out a breath. “Well… good.”

“Of course, that doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything to make her think a bit more highly of you.”

Duncan turned then, shaving cream still covering half his face, and grabbed Lou around the throat with his free left hand. The Spirit’s body was small enough that Duncan’s big hand easily wrapped around him. He shook the little creature and shouted frantically, “WHAT DID YOU DO? ”

Lou’s smile was more than disarming, it was downright chilling at that point. “Aw, come on, Duncan old buddy. Do you really think I’d do anything to upset things in your happy little household?”

“YES! ”

“See you later!” Lou vanished with a wink and Duncan was left empty-handed, with the beginnings of a stomachache. There was no telling what the runt had done this time, but it was a safe bet he wouldn’t be happy about it. He finished his shave in record time, cutting about three sizeable gashes into his face in the process, rinsed off and ran down to the kitchen.

“Maureen?”

“Duncan, what happened? Did you shave your face with razor wire?”

“Forget about my face for a minute. Um… you’re really… um… happy.”

She gave him a wry grin and smooched his cheek. “Why Duncan, I’m so glad you noticed.”

“Yes, I’m a wonderful person, we’ve covered that. Maureen… why are you so happy?”

She blushed. “Oh, Duncan, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have peeked.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay… peeked in what?”

“The shopping bag. The one I found in the bottom of your closet.”

“Oh. The shopping bag.” Duncan gulped. “You found that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He forced out a smile and gave her a hug, then backed out of the kitchen slowly. The minute he was out of her sights, he tore up the stairs at lightning speed. Down in the kitchen, Maureen and Gordie heard him banging to his bedroom, thumping on the stairs like a herd of elephants who needed to sign up for Jenny Craig.

Duncan dove head-first into his closet, pulling out clothes, shoes and assorted boxes of junk until he found what only Lou could have planted there: a bright red shopping bag. His hands trembled as he peeled open the top and peered inside, then he began to shake even harder.

“Isn’t it great?” Lou asked from behind him.

“You lunatic,” Duncan said back.

The bag was full, absolutely packed, with the most dangerous substance known to man. More than explosives, dynamite, plutonium – scarier than chemical weapons, toxic waste or fatal viruses.

Duncan was looking down into a bag full of jewelry.

Jewelry boxes, to be exact, but as he reached down and took them out one at a time, he knew he’d find jewelry waiting for him, and he was right. A ruby signet ring. A pearl necklace. A pair of the biggest diamond earrings he had ever seen. A white gold watch encrusted with some sort of pink gemstones Duncan didn’t even know the name of. And best of all, firmly affixed to each box was a tag that happily proclaimed “From Duncan to Maureen – Merry Christmas, My Love!”

There was even an exclamation point. Duncan hated exclamation points.

“You put all this stuff here so Maureen would think I was giving it to her for Christmas?” he said. It was meant more as a statement, but came out as a disbelieving question.

“You’re welcome,” Lou said, giving Duncan a playful punch on the shoulder.”

“You put all this stuff here so Maureen would think I was giving it to her for Christmas?” he repeated.

“That I did,” Lou said proudly.”

Duncan shuddered. “No, no, you put all this stuff here so Maureen would think I was giving it to her for Christmas?”

“You know you’re not as appreciative of this as I expected you to be.”

“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?”

“Look, if you’re worried about the money, relax! It’s taken care of!”

“And what happens when Maureen decides that she has to repay my generosity by getting me gifts of equal value?”

“Why would somebody think that way?”

“I blame her mother, she ingrained that habit into her as a child. But look at this stuff! We can’t afford for her to be reciprocal of presents like this!”

Lou’s face scrunched up and, for the first time, the Spirit looked genuinely mad to Duncan. “Why do you have to do that? Why do you always look at the negative? Why can’t you just appreciate how happy she is?”

“Yes! Let’s do that! My wife is suddenly extraordinarily happy! And why? Because out of the blue she thinks I can afford to buy her all kinds of expensive presents! How wonderful! How heartwarming! Tell me, Lou, is that how your Spirit of Christmas is supposed to work?”

Lou stammered. “I didn’t mean…. I wasn’t trying…”

“No, of course you weren’t, but the fact remains, that’s what you did Lou.” Duncan kicked the jewelry bag. “How in the hell am I going to explain this?”

“You could tell her--”

“I wasn’t asking you! You’ve helped more than enough! Good grief… why don’t you just GO AWAY? Leave me and my family ALONE! ”

Lou’s bottom lip started to quiver, then he steeled himself. “I’m not giving up on you, Duncan.”

“Well too bad, because I’ve given up on you.”

“Duncan…”

“GOOD-BYE, Lou. ”

Lou deflated right there. His eyes and shoulders fell, he dropped about a foot in the air… even his pointy hat started to droop. Duncan’s ice-cold glare didn’t falter.

“I’m sorry,” was all Lou could say before he vanished.