After that, Duncan didn’t see Lou again for some time, or even any signs of him. This was absolutely no problem for Duncan. It was a lot easier to go to work without worrying about miniature Christmas trees and bags of Raisinettes labeled “Reindeer Poop” appearing in his office, and he much preferred his coffee without shots of chocolate, cinnamon or peppermint spiking the mug when he wasn’t looking. His home life was also smoother, if not happier. The sudden lack of surprise decorations and miniature Christmas gifts materializing around the house spared him from trying to explain them off, but Maureen and Gordie were becoming increasingly dispirited. Christmas Spirit or no, Duncan thought it wasn’t particularly healthy that his family only seemed to be happy when there was mistletoe in the air.

Two days before Thanksgiving, Duncan got home to find Gordie in his room, staring out the window. It was an almost pathetic sight, the boy sitting at his desk, arms folded, staring through the glass. It was as dejected as the kid had looked since the day he got his Lou-sponsored beating. For a second, Duncan was worried that the Spirit had Kringled the kid again, basically painting another bullseye on his back.

Gordie? Are you okay, son?”

Gordie looked back over his shoulder at his father. So far so good – his face was clean, no black eyes or bruises, and he didn’t look like he had been crying. But rather than answering him, Gordie just shrugged and slowly turned his head back to the window. It was getting cold again, naturally this time, and the back yard was covered not with snow, but with dead leaves.

“Had a good day at school?”

“I guess.”

“Learned anything fun?”

“No.”

“See anything interesting out there? Are those damn squirrels climbing the poles to the bird feeders again?”

“No.”

Duncan sat down on the edge of Gordie’s bed, right behind him. The bed was meticulously made and the room so neat that Duncan had to wonder sometimes if the kid had inherited anything from him. “Soooo… ready for Thanksgiving? Turkey? Mashed potatoes? All the Pumpkin Pie you can eat? Your grandfather unbuttoning his pants right there at the dinner table? That’s a good time, right?”

“I guess.”

“Come on, kiddo, what’s wrong? You’re usually bouncing off the walls this close to Thanksgiving.”

“That’s because Christmas kinda starts at Thanksgiving.”

Duncan shuddered a little. “Yeah, so I’ve been told. Well… what’s different this year? Why aren’t you happy?”

“Because it doesn’t feel right this year.”

“Gord, what are you talking about?”

“Well… you always get so cranky around Christmas. That’s the only part about it I don’t like. But when Lou was around, doing all that stuff to cheer you up… I thought this might be the first year you really liked it. Then you made him go away and now I think you’re gonna hate it more than ever. I know you will.”

“Oh.” Well… that was about all Duncan needed to make himself feel like a first-class jackass. “Oh, Gordie, I didn’t want you to think that.”

“So you don’t hate Christmas anymore?”

“Let’s not go that far. But… Dammit. Just because I’m a big grouch doesn’t mean you have to be all depressed.”

“Well why are you so grouchy? You’re supposed to be happy at Christmas!”

“Gordie… It’s just that after a while you start to feel like everything that happens at Christmas happens because people think it’s supposed to. All the decorating and the cooking and the presents and the headaches and the hassles… ugh. It’s a pain in the ass. And so many people don’t even mean it. They wear phony smiles and give presents to people they don’t even like just to keep up their image and… They’re phonies.”

“Not everybody!”

“No,” Duncan admitted, “Not everybody. But people who aren’t… people like you, Gordie… well, you’re pretty rare. You’re a decent human being. You get it from your mother’s side of the family.”

“Oh.” Gordie turned away from the window and looked his father in the eye. “So what will it take to make you happy at Christmas?”

“I don’t know, son. Just enjoy it. You enjoy it. Christmas is for kids anyway… who knows how much longer you’ll have it for?”

“What do you mean?”

Part of Duncan wanted to go straight into the “There is no Santa Claus” explanation, but he just couldn’t bear to do it. For one thing, the puppy dog look in Gordie’s big doe eyes acted like a muzzle, keeping him from opening his mouth even a crack. Also, the second he said anything to the kid he’d go running straight to his mother, and Maureen would put Duncan’s ass in a sling for a week.

“I just mean that sooner or later the world turns just about everyone into a cynic,” Duncan said. “Enjoy Christmas for as long as you can before it happens to you.” He kissed his son on the forehead, ruffled his hair, told him to wash up for dinner and left the room. Gordie watched him as he went.

“Well?” he asked. “How did I do?”

“Excellenté!” Lou bobbed out from under the desk, grinning like mad. “You were right, buddy. He’s not lost. We’ve just gotta make him see Christmas like you do again. I’ll bet that’s all he really needed all along.”

“Cool! How are we going to do that?”

Lou smiled again, and if Duncan could have seen it, it would have turned his hair stark-white.

“You just leave that to me.”

Thanksgiving was, as always, slightly more tolerable than most holidays to Duncan. Once he got past the initial irritation at watching the parade (and Santa Claus’s requisite appearance at the end) with Maureen and Gordie, it was off to Maureen’s parents’ house. Duncan got along fairly well with his in-laws, and her mother, Alice, was a phenomenal cook. After their bellies were full to bursting, it was a day on the couch watching football, and even after Ned had his pants open and his hand down the front, that was a good time.

Maureen, her mother and sister were in the kitchen and Duncan, Ned and Gordie were sitting on the couch halfway through the Lions’ game when Gordie’s ears pricked and his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He looked over at Duncan, his smile as wide as his mood had been dour a few days ago. “Daddy!” he shouted. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Duncan said? “I don’t hear anything?”

“Listen!”

Ned grunted. “I don’t hear anything either, boy. Something wrong with his ears? When’s the last time you had ‘em checked, Dunc?”

“His ears are fine, Ned. Gordie, I think you’re just imagining things.”

“I’m not!” he insisted. “Come on, listen! Are you sure you don’t hear it?”

“I’m sure,” Duncan said, but even as he voiced his protest, his ears caught a faint jingle in the air. It sounded almost like the jingle he got whenever he rang the “bell” in his forehead – even though he’d turned his back on Lou, the damn snowflake hadn’t faded.

“You do hear it,” Gordie said, a vindicated grin all over his face.

“I still don’t hear anything,” Ned said.

“It’s nothing, Ned. Come on, Gordie, we’ll take a look. It’s probably just a neighbor ringing some bells or something.”

“Our neighbors don’t have bells,” Ned said, but turned his attention back to the football game.

The jingling seemed to be coming from behind the house, so Duncan and Gordie went to the back door. Duncan led the way into the darkened back yard, lit only by a quarter-moon and the glow of the stars, which were twinkling in a fashion that, impossibly, seemed to be mocking him. As they looked around, trying to find the source of the ringing, the stars started to fall from the sky. Duncan looked up, squinting into the wind, when he realized it wasn’t falling stars at all, but pure white flakes of snow. It had only been in the 50s when they arrived, and while it had chilled a bit in the hours since, it shouldn’t have gotten cold enough to snow. Duncan shudder, certain he felt the hand of a short, obnoxious fairy in all this.

Gordie, of course, was mesmerized by the pristine white flakes, and Duncan couldn’t help but be glad to see the boy smiling again, as depressed as he had been the last few days. “Isn’t this great, Dad?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a peach,” Duncan said. “Listen, maybe we should go inside before it gets too heavy.”

“Aw, but it’s just starting.”

“Well we should at least go back and get our coats.”

“Look!”

Gordie pointed to a light in the sky – a distant star that shone brighter than any of the others. Venus, probably, Duncan thought. Or Mars.

He looked again. It was moving.

Or a helicopter.

He hoped.

“Heeeeeey, Duncan!”

It was a voice he’d sincerely hoped he would never hear again, but in all honesty, he couldn’t say he was terribly surprised when Lou came spiraling down out of the snowfall, a trail of sparkling glitter following him like the tail of a comet. He still had the same insipid smile that Duncan just wanted to slap right off his face, and he looked like he could take an axe to them at any moment.

“You again!” Duncan shouted. “I knew it!”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Gordie said. “Lou told me all about this. This is going to be fun.”

“Lou told you?” Duncan said. “Told you what? What’s going on here?”

“It’s simple, Duncan,” Lou said. “I’ve been trying to make you remember the Christmas Spirit, but you spend every day in a world of grumpy, cynical people – like yourself – surrounded by commercials with Santa hawking tropical cruises and beautiful Christmas Carols turned into stale elevator music. It’s no wonder you can’t get into it!”

“Well… but… SO WHAT? ”

“Soooo,” Gordie said, “we’re going to take you somewhere that you won’t be surrounded by those sorts of grouchy people who ruin it for you. Remember the other day? You said there are a lot of people who are fake and phony around Christmas?”

Lou giggled, and his laughter chimed like reindeer bells. “Well we’re going to take you some place where everybody loves and appreciates Christmas!”

The wind was kicking up now, and the blanket of snow was getting much thicker than it should be from the short time it had been coming down. The breeze whistled and howled in Duncan’s ears, and it was already getting more difficult to hear.

“Someplace everyone appreciates Christmas?” he repeated. “What, are you taking me to the psycho ward?”

“Don’t worry, Duncan!” Lou shouted. “You’re going to love this! It never fails!”

“EVERYTHING you do fails!”

By now the wind was blasting snow into Duncan’s eyes, completely blotting out his vision. He’d heard of getting snowblind before, but he never though it would happen to him in his father-in-law’s vegetable garden. Then again, since Lou started mucking in his life, there was nothing that could surprise him.

The blasting wind forced Duncan down to his knees and the snow pelted his face. Whenever a flake hit him in the forehead, he heard a jingle. Other than that, the only thing he could hear over the howling wind was the occasional titter of laughter from Lou or Gordie. When all this was over, he was going to have a long talk with his son about choosing his friends more carefully.

After what seemed like forever, the wind sputtered out and died and Duncan was able too open his eyes again. He was on his hands and knees, staring straight down into a foot-deep snow bank. He was covered in snow, buried up to his elbows, and he felt its weight on his back. He looked up and flakes fell away from his head like a mountain of dandruff.

From the angle he’d been at when he lost his vision, he expected to find himself staring at Ned’s toolshed, blasted by the wind. Instead he was looking out into an empty, snow-blanketed field. At the edges of the field he saw a thin border of pine trees, and the sky was blazing with more stars than he had ever seen. On the snow in front of him, he saw his own shadow, outlined by blinking lights of various colors.

“We’re here, Duncan!” Lou shouted. “Turn around and have a look.”

Shivering in the snow, Duncan pulled himself to his feet, brushing off as much of the white as he could, and slowly turned around. Lou and Gordie were standing together, pleased as punch, standing beneath an archway held up by support poles sporting the same candy cane pattern as Lou’s socks. The arch was wrapped with Christmas lights of every color, blinking in a pattern that Duncan didn’t recognize but seemed far too systematic to be random. In the center hung the biggest bough of mistletoe Duncan had ever seen. Beyond the arch was an ancient pine forest and, beyond that, a mountain range, with a road leading up towards the highest peak. There Duncan could make out a village of some sort, flashing and humming with the most brilliant lights he had ever seen.

“Lou?” Duncan asked. “What… what did you do?”

“I brought you someplace you can’t help but get into the Spirit!” Lou said. “Welcome, Duncan, to Christmastown!”

Duncan looked around, shivering, feeling his teeth ready to rattle right out of his head, and there was only one rational response he could fathom.

“Lou?”

“Yes, Duncan?”

“I hate you even more.”

Still shivering, Duncan stood beneath the arch, trying to figure out what he had ever done to deserve this. Sure, he may spend the entire year dreading and decrying Christmas, but it wasn’t like he was a serial killer or an insurance adjuster or anything like that. The punishment felt far out of proportion with any supposed crime.

“What the hell have you done to me?” Duncan shouted. “What, did you spike the cranberry sauce with LSD?”

“Duncan, Duncan, Duncan,” Lou said, shaking his head. “After all this time together, you’re not still going to fall back on that hallucination crutch, are you?”

“Well what other explanation could there possibly be?”

“That it’s real, Dad!” Gordie said gleefully. “Look around you! We’re really here! We’re really in Christmastown!”

“And we’re really going home!” Duncan excplaimed. “Listen, you, whatever you did to us, fix it! Send us home right now!”

“I can’t,” Lou said.

“Oh, the hell you can’t! If you can get us here, you can get us back!”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head like a math teacher after a student gave a stupid answer. “It doesn’t work this way. There’s only one way to Christmastown – once there’s enough goodwill and Christmas spirit on Earth, we Spirits can open a one-way portal to this spot, the entry to Christmastown.”

“One way?” Duncan said. “One way? ”

“Don’t worry, there’s an easy way to get home.”

“Thank God. What is it?”

“You just have to take the portal back.”

“Well where’s that.”

Lou pointed straight to the glittering village atop the mountain. “There. The Winter Palace. All you have to do is follow the path and it will take you straight there.”

“That must be ten miles away!”

“Oh, considerably farther than that, I should think.”

“Don’t worry, Dad, Lou told me all about this. It’s gonna be fun.”

Duncan looked down at his son, grinning his way through all this nonsense, then back at Lou. “Did you have to bring Gordie through all this?”

“Actually, yes. You’re going to need him, Duncan. Somebody with as little Christmas Spirit as you’ve got is going to need someone like Gordie if you want to survive.”

“SURVIVE?”

“Or make it there in time, whatever.”

“When’s the last time I told you I hate you?”

“Aw, Dad, cheer up!” Gordie said. “Look at this place! It’s going to be great!”

“I am looking at this place. It makes me want to find a great big sack of toys--”

“Yeah?”

“—and beat Lou over the head with it. Come on.”

Duncan flipped up the collar of his shirt, crossed his arms and began walking forward into the wind.

“Well… it’s a start,” Lou said.

The pathway led straight into the pine trees, and the three of them trudged forward, talking it up the whole way. Lou and Gordie were sharing beloved Christmas memories (the boy was particularly interested in the wooden soldiers Lou got when he was only 107 years old), while Duncan grumbled, moaned and vocally pondered about the various things he would like to insert into Lou’s various orifices, starting with a partridge in a pear tree and working his way up. The boys did their best to ignore him, although Lou would occasionally remind him that attitude was not going to serve him well here.

“Did I ever tell you about the year I went along on Santa Claus’s route with him, Gordie?” Lou asked.

“No! Tell me!”

“Oh, it was great. We were about to deliver to this house where a kid wanted a BB-gun, and Santa was about to deliver it, but I double-checked the list and saw that he’d been really naughty that year.”

“He was?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it. Fighting after school, telling his mother that one of his friends taught him dirty words… he even let this one kid get his tongue stuck to a flagpole.”

“No!” Gordie pondered for a moment. “Does that really work?”

“If it’s cold enough. Anyway, Santa was going to give him the old coal treatment, but I suggested we switch one of his presents with pink bunny pajamas.”

Gordie bellowed, his laughter ringing out over the wind in Duncan’s ears.

“Yep. He thought it was from his aunt. Didn’t quite pan out thought… turned out his father had already gotten him the BB-gun.”

“Aw.” The ending was kind of a let-down, but the story seemed to invigorate Gordie nonetheless. “Hey, Dad, do you think we’ll get to meet Santa Claus while we’re here?”

“Who knows what I’ll hallucinate next?” Duncan muttered. “Hey, Lou, if we’re going to be stuck marching through all this, do you think you could at least whip us up a couple of coats?”

“Huh,” Lou said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If you’d been paying attention while I was screaming at you, you would have.”

“Wait here a second.” Lou flittered off into the pine trees, then flittered back just a second later. “Almost forgot,” he said. He whipped out a tape measure and wrapped it around Duncan several times. “Hmm. You’re a 48 long. Be right back!”

He flittered off again, leaving Duncan and Gordie dancing in the snow, trying to keep warm. After a few seconds he came back, a pair of coats dragging behind him. He handed Duncan a long black topcoat and Gordie a blue padded jacket. “You’ll find gloves and hats in the pockets,” Lou said.

Duncan took the coat, for the first time feeling something close to gratitude to Lou until he reminded himself Lou was responsible for them being there in the first case, and slipped it on. It was much warmer than it looked, and the gloves and hat in the pocket were a perfect fit.

“Not bad,” Duncan said. “Where did you get these from?”

“There’s a path around here somewhere that leads to a closet. Hasn’t been used since this bunch of kids found it one time Santa was having some problems with a witch. Come on! Onward!”

The group made it up to the line of the forest and, without missing a beat, Gordie charged forward. Lou flitted after him, but Duncan held back.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” Gordie asked.

“Yeah, Duncan,” Lou said. “I know you’re a sourpuss, but I didn’t think you were a scaredy cat.”

“It’s pitch black in there,” Duncan said. “How about a lantern or a flashlight or something?”

“Hmm… I don’t have anything like that,” Lou said. “Wait, I’ve got an idea!” He flitted up to Duncan and raised up a hand. Then, without warning, he smacked him with the meat of his palm right in the center of his forehead. Duncan heard a loud jingle and felt a quick hot flash.

“Ow! What the hell did you do?”

“Take a look.”

Lou buzzed back into the woods and Duncan carefully followed him. When he stepped into the dark shadows of the trees, he saw a bright silver glow appear around him.

“What did you do?”

“I just made your snowflake light up, Dunc.”

“Wow, Dad!” Gordie shouted. “You look like Cyclops!”

“Oh joy. Come on, kid, stay close to me. Looks like I’ve got the only light around here.”

The path wasn’t as treacherous as Duncan had immediately assumed. The light in his forehead kept them pretty straightforward, and he hadn’t heard a peep from murderous wolves or starving polar bears from the forest around them. Yet.

“Your mother must be worried sick about us by now,” Duncan said.

“Naw, she’s fine,” Lou offered.

“How do you know?”

“Because you guys are still there. Well… ectoplasmic avatars that look and act just like you.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, Duncan, yours is programmed to grouse and complain anytime somebody mentions Christmas. No one will ever be able to tell the difference.”

“But… but… what if Maureen wants to… you know… be… intimate?”

Lou blushed. “Duncan! Please! Not in front of the kid!”

“Well I don’t like it.”

“Well no one’s asking you to.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gordie broke in. “Do mean there’s another copy of me back at home?”

“That’s right, buddy,” Lou confirmed.

“Cool,” Gordie said. “I always wanted a twin brother. Can we keep it when we get back?”

“No,” Duncan grumbled.

The three of them wandered farther and farther into the woods, and Duncan was starting to think the path would never reach its end, when he saw a sign enter the range of his snowflake-light. The sign was perched at a fork in the road, with paths splitting off to the left and the right. Both paths were dusted with snow, but easily distinguishable from the thick forest on either side of the walkways.

“A fork,” Gordie observed. “Which way do we go?”

“Let’s find out, son,” Duncan said. They walked up to the sign, but found that it didn’t give clear directions either to the Winter Palace or the village on top of the mountain. On the left fork, the sign read, “To get to the Winter Pa.” The right fork read “lace, go North.”

“Well that’s helpful,” Duncan said. “Did you design this sign, Lou? It looks like something you’d do.”

“Not me, but I like it!” Lou said. “I’m writing a letter to the Department of Transportation, they should implement this program.”

Duncan pondered for a few moments, trying to decide which of the assorted witty retorts that came to mind he should go with. Finally, he just shrugged and turned back to the sign.

“Go North,” he read. “Okay, which direction is north?”

“North,” Lou said.

“What?”

“You said north. It’s North. Capitalized.”

“How on Earth could you tell if I capitalized ‘North’ or not?”

“We Spirits know these things.” He flittered up to the sign and read it carefully. “Let’s see… North… North… Oh that’s easy. It’s… Um… It’s…”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“Not as such, no.”

Duncan looked down at Gordie. “How do you like that? He’s case sensitive to the spoken word but he can’t tell which direction North is on a clear night like this.”

“Oooh, I know!” Gordie said. “We learned in school that moss always grows on the North side of a tree.”

“See?” Lou said. “He capitalized.”

Duncan ignored the Spirit and returned to Gordie’s suggestion. “Good observation, Gordie. Let’s see… Do you know what moss looks like?”

“I think so.”

“Great. Let’s take a look.”

Duncan took Gordie’s hand and led him into the woods, where the cool light from his snowflake-torch let them see in a fairly wide circle around them. Together, father and son circled one tree after another, looking for the telltale directional marker.

“Hey Dad?” Gordie finally said.

“Yes, Gordie?”

“I don’t think there’s moss on any of these trees.”

“I don’t think so either, Gordie.”

“I found it!”

The looked back to the path, where Lou had been staring at the sign since they left. Now, through the trees, they could see his bright, shiny teeth glimmering back at them.

“Found what?”

“North!”

Duncan sighed. “Come on, Gordie, let’s see if that little Rankin-Bass reject actually knows what he’s doing.”

Back on the path, Lou was looking at the sign, then peering back up at the night sky, looking up and down as though he was using the sign as a Rosetta Stone to unlock the secrets of the stars. “What have you found, Lou?” Duncan reluctantly asked.

“Well, while you guys have been having your male bonding – very nice on that by the way, Duncan – I’ve been looking at the moon. Seems to me that the moon moves from East to West, right? So if I could tell what direction the moon is moving in, then I’ll know which way is North.”

“Wow. Something you said made sense,” Duncan said.

“So it looks like the moon is coming from that direction,” Lou continued, pointing back from where they had come from. “And it’s going that way.” He pointed in the general direction of the sign. So that means that north is… um… North is… don’t tell me…”

“So close and yet so far,” Duncan said. “Assuming you’re right about the moon, that means North is--”

“Right!” Lou cheered, triumphantly.

“Bully for you,” Duncan said.

“Good job, Lou!” Gordie offered.

Now that they knew which way they needed to go, Duncan took stock of the two respective paths for the first time. To the left, the road was relatively well-lit and clear, with bright moonlight streaming down and keeping the path perfectly in sight as far as Duncan’s eyes could make out. To the right, the path was dark, with a much thicker forest of trees. There were a pair of glowing eyes in the distance, and Duncan heard a sound that was some sort of combination of a hoot and a howl.

“Now that just figures,” he said. “Come on Gordie.”

“And Lou!” Gordie reminded him.

“Come on, Gordie,” Duncan reiterated.

They began the walk down the darker of the two paths, and Duncan became especially grateful for the light glowing out of his head. Without it, there would have been no way to tell which way they were going, how far they had gone, or even if they were still on the path or not. Oh, he was pretty sure he’d know he left the trail when he ran face-first into a tree, but all things considered, having the light was a far preferable way to get from Point A to Point B.

“How much farther is it, Lou?” Duncan said.

“That’s actually hard to say.”

“Hard to say?”

“Yeah. To tell the truth, Duncan, it really depends on you.”

“Me?”

“You’re the miser I’m here to help.”

“Curmudgeon.”

“Whatever. But the point is, you’re the reason we’re here.”

“I’d argue that point too, but go on.”

“Well here’s the thing you’ve gotta remember, buddy. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

“I’ve never been to Kansas.”

“You’re not on Earth, either. Not what you think of as Earth, anyway. Reality here is a lot more elastic.”

“Elastic?”

“As in stretchable.”

“I really don’t like where this is going, Lou.”

“It’s simple, Duncan. The longer it takes you to open up and accept Christmas, the longer it’ll take you to get there. Now if you stay on the path, or in other pre-approved, designated areas, you’ll reach the end eventually.”

“If we do what? What happens if we don’t stay on the path?”

“Well… you know. People tend to get lost. But hey, you’re fine! You’ve got me as a guide!”

“How comforting.”

“You’re going to make it, Duncan, I promise you. But you’ll get there a lot faster if you can open up your heart and let Christmas inside.”

“Open up my heart.”

“Yep.”

“And let Christmas inside.”

“Right inside, you got it.”

Duncan glared at Lou, then looked down at his son.

“Hike up your boots, Gordie. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

Duncan was true to his word. Although Lou and Gordie both kept urging him to enjoy the night sky or the beauty of the trees around them, he kept trudging through the snow, wordlessly, wishing he was anywhere else, anywhere else in the universe than on this idiotic march to Christmastown. Duncan was cold and getting colder, grumpy and getting grumpier. Lou’s idea of helping out was to whistle choruses of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and point through the rare gap in the ceiling of trees to ask Duncan if he thought various constellations looked like reindeer, camels, Christmas trees or snowmen. Duncan would simply look up and grunt that they looked like stars to him. Eventually, Lou drew a parallel between Duncan’s stars and the Star of Bethlehem and decided to call it a win.

The road did seem to get longer and longer as they marched. In fact, Duncan would begin to pick a landmark – a specific tree in the distance, for example, or the gap that led to a clearing where he saw a silvery pond shimmering in the moonlight – and then try to calculate how long it would take to reach that point. Indeed. It became clear to him that it was taking at least twice as long to reach those points than he would have anticipated. If he had seen a rock lying on the side of the path, he would have gleefully picked it up and chucked it at Lou.

“Do you think Mom would like to be here, Dad?” Gordie asked.

“I’m pretty sure she’d be happier here than I am,” Duncan said.

“Hey, how did that happen anyway?” Lou said. “How did a grumpy old goat like you ever wind up with a cheerful, beautiful gal like that?”

“I’ve wondered that too,” Gordie said. His son’s faith in him helped steel Duncan’s resolve like you wouldn’t believe.

“I don’t know if it’s any of your business.”

“Aw, Dad.”

“Come on, Duncan!”

“No. You’ll make too big a deal of it.”

“No we won’t!”

“We promise!”

“Besides, how the heck else are we gonna spend the time on this little walk?”

Duncan sighed. He knew it was the only way to shut them up. “We met at Christmas, okay?”

There were a few seconds of cold silence from Duncan’s two traveling companions. This was followed immediately by uproarious laughter.

“You met at Christmas?” Gordie laughed.

“This is so Freudian!” Lou howled. “I think!”

“Come on, tell us the story, Dad.”

“You two aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

“No,” Lou and Gordie said in tandem.

“Fine. I’d been working at SpectraSoft for about a year and my boss, Aaron, had some children’s book he wanted me to read because he thought it would make a great video game. It had just come out and his kids were ga-ga over it. Now if you’ve ever met Aaron’s kids, you’d know these two could be mesmerized for hours by a shiny piece of aluminum foil hanging from a piece of dental floss, but hey, when your boss tells you to read a book, you read a book.

“It was called Oswald, the Owl that Saved Christmas. It was about this little baby owl that was afraid of the dark. It wouldn’t go out and play, it wouldn’t go to Owl School or any of that stuff, because apparently Owl School convenes at night. The kid slept all night and stayed up all day instead of vice-versa.”

“I’m enraptured,” Lou said. From anyone else, it would have sounded sarcastic. “So go on, what happened to the owl?”

“Well, on Christmas Eve, he got a hold of some egg nog flavored coffee. I know, I didn’t write it. And he was having trouble getting to sleep, but none of the other owls had woken up yet. So he was the only one who saw when Santa Claus landed on a roof nearby. There was this big gust of wind, and the map got blown right out of Santa’s hands. The owl was the only one who saw it, so he offered to help Santa find his way around town, but of course, he had to do it in the dark. Long story short, the owl wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, Christmas was saved, I was sick to my stomach, the end.”

“The feel-good story of the year!” Lou shouted.

“Anyway, I didn’t really see much potential in this for a video game, but Aaron was adamant about it, because if his kids liked it, dammit, than so would every other child in America. Well, we would later prove that to be wrong during the whole Galactic Brussels Sprouts fiasco, but that’s another story. Since the damn kids loved it so much, that means I had to do anything in my power to get the video game rights. And that means I had to get in touch with the woman who wrote the book.”

“And it was Maureen!” Lou announced. “And you fell madly in love and lived happily ever after!”

“Wrong as usual,” Duncan said. “The woman was named Estelle… I don’t know… Owl Woman or something. But her agent, the one I had to go through to try to get the rights… that was Maureen. Now she thought the book was brilliant, of course, and she was in total Christmas mode because it was December. I went into Holiday Overload the minute walked into her office – lights and trees and wreaths and everything else. I thought I was going to throw up. But… man, Maureen. Somehow she made a bedazzled Nativity scene sweater look fantastic.”

“Eeeeew,” Gordie said.

“Get used to it, kid, your mom is a hottie. Anyway, I completely forgot about the video game and wound up asking her out.” Our first date wound up being on Christmas Eve. I took her out on a driving tour of the city’s most beautiful Christmas lighting displays and we listened to Christmas music on the radio the whole time. That part was easy, the station started playing Christmas music nonstop three days before Thanksgiving.”

“Why Duncan, you soft touch,” Lou said. “I thought you hated all that stuff.”

“I do hate all that stuff. I hated it then and I hate it now. But I liked her enough to forget about all that and do whatever it took to get her interested in me. Heck, we’d been dating for two years before I finally admitted to her I couldn’t stand Christmas.” He chuckled a little there. “I was actually afraid she was going to dump me over that one, but she just patted my check and told me that she would fix all that right up. And I’ve got to give her credit, she still hasn’t given up on me. Even though she probably should have. And I know that look, Lou, don’t you dare tell me you haven’t given up on me either.”

Lou shot Duncan a glare. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Well, the rest of it is pretty standard stuff. Fell in love, got married. Gordie showed up 19 months later. And even though I keep telling her it’s not going to work, she keeps trying to Deck my Halls and Jingle my Bells year after year.”

“But it bothers you so much when she does that stuff,” Gordie said.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Duncan admitted. “But I don’t know if I’d love her as much if she stopped trying.”

Lou sniffled and whipped out one of his Holiday Handkerchiefs, giving it a nice blow. “Aaaaw, Duncan. That’s downright beautiful.”

“I have a knack once in a while.”

“Of course, that still leaves one major question.”

“It does? What?”

“Whatever happened to the video game, man?”

“Oh. That. Well, I got the rights, we made the game and it was one of the biggest flops in video game history. Aaron blamed me and I got set back about three years before I could get a promotion I deserved. Incidentally, Gordie, that’s the reason you never get that motor scooter you keep asking for on your birthday every year.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, maybe Santa Claus will bring it to me this year.”

“Maybe he will,” Lou said. Duncan picked up his pace just slightly to catch up with the Spirit and smacked him on the back of the head.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Karma. Come on, keep going.”

The march kept going, and eventually, Duncan saw the moon fall behind the mountains ahead of them and saw the first tentative rays of sunlight poke through the trees at their backs. As it got brighter, the sheer sparkle in Lou’s glitter trail faded slightly, and the snowflake in Duncan’s head dimmed as well.

“Wow, Dad, it’s morning,” Gordie said. “We’ve been walking all night.”

“Yeah, we have,” Duncan said. “But I’m not sleepy.”

“Me neither.”

“I’m tired, though.”

“Me too. And I’m hungry.”

Duncan stuck a thumb down the waistband of his pants. It had been nice and tight when they arrived in Lou’s little winter wonderland, stuffed tight with a healthy Thanksgiving dinner. The waistband was still a little snug, but that was normal.

“I could eat too,” Duncan said. “Hey, Lou, I don’t suppose you could whip us up some breakfast the same way you did these coats.”

“Oh, right, breakfast. I keep forgetting how you mortals need to eat real meals.” Lou shoved his hands into his pockets and pulled out a few peppermint sticks. “Um… I don’t suppose this is what you had in mind, is it?”

“Not quite,” Duncan said. “Is there any way we could get something a little more substantive?”

“Something hot if you’ve got it,” Gordie said. “I don’t think I want a cold bowl of Frosted Flakes today.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Lou bobbed into the trees, then zipped back just for a second. “Wait here!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal enough to wander off this path.”

Lou vanished and Duncan and Gordie sat down with their backs to a tree. His feet were barking like dogs, his back was sore and he was pretty sure that his neck was about to enter a state of open revolt. He looked over at his son, wondering if he felt the same, then reminded himself that he was about 30 years younger and still had all his hair, and that boys like that were practically made for adventures.

“How are you holding up, buddy?”

“I’m good, Dad,” Gordie said. “I’m a little tired, but I’m having a great time.”

“You’re not scared?” Duncan asked. “You don’t wish we were back at home?”

“Heck no. I mean… I don’t want to be gone too long, but this is a lot of fun.” He smiled. “I like your stories.”

“Stories?”

“Like the one about you and mom.”

Duncan blushed. He’d been telling Gordie the odd anecdote to pass the time, but he didn’t really think of them as “stories.” He was a video game designer – which gave him a little cache among his son’s friends, he had to admit – but not a storyteller. Still, if the kid was enjoying it, who was he to argue?

“You know, Gordie, we don’t have to get kidnapped to Ebenezer Scrooge’s worst nightmare for me to tell you stories.”

Gordie just shrugged. “You never do at home. At home you just sit around and complain about Christmas.”

“I’m complaining about Christmas here too.”

“Yeah, but now it’s more fun.”

Lou came back a few minutes later with a couple of sandwiches. The meat was good, but didn’t quite taste like anything that Duncan had ever eaten before. He thought the Spirit said they were having roast beef, but there was a slight lisp at the end of the second word that made him wonder if he meant something else.

Their bellies a little fuller, Duncan and Gordie started walking again, with Lou bouncing along next to them. Before long, the pine trees on either side of the path began to give way to more fir and evergreen trees, and some of those trees started to display bits of holiday accoutrements. It started with a few scraps of tinsel dangling from a branch or two. The dangling strips of plastic seemed kind of out of place in the wilderness Duncan was growing disturbingly accustomed to, but considering how insane things were, he was starting to accept just about anything.

It didn’t stop at the tinsel, though. A few trees later, Duncan saw a patch of red on one of the trees. As they got closer, he realized what it was – a scrap of red construction paper cut out in the shape of a stocking.

“How did this get here?” he said out loud.

“It grows there,” Lou said. “We’re getting onto the land of the Christmastown Ornament Farms. Every ornament you humans use on Earth grows on these trees. There are going to be more of them the farther we get – they sprout earlier the farther North you go.”

“No, I mean… how did this get here?”

Duncan touched the ornament and twirled it around so they could see the other side. From this angle they could see white cotton trim at the top and letters painted down the side in green. The stocking read D-U-N-C-A-N.

“Whoa,” Gordie said. “That’s awesome. It’s like those license plates they have in gift shops. I can never find my name…”

“No, Gordie, you don’t understand,” Duncan said. “I made this, when I was a kid. They gave us these little art projects for busy work. I cut this out and glued the cotton on, then I painted my name on myself. My mother used to hang this ugly little thing every year. I haven’t seen it since I left for college.”

“I told you, every ornament grows here,” Lou said. “Even the ones you make yourselves.”

“Well what do you know,” Duncan said.

“Careful, Duncan, people might actually think you’ve got sentiment.”

Duncan shot a look back at Lou. “Let’s just keep going, okay?”

“Fine, fine.”

The three of them kept walking, but Duncan fell back to the rear of the group. Before they turned the corner around the next curve in the path, Lou glanced back at the tree that held Duncan’s ornament. The patch of red was gone, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a small bulge in Duncan’s pocket. Lou smiled, but he didn’t say a word.

The ornaments got more and more prolific as they kept going. At first, they were all of the homemade variety – cardboard or paper, paint and glue. Gordie picked a clothespin/pipe cleaner combo with a pair of googlie eyes and a red felt ball that looked like Rudolph for himself, and Duncan picked a few kernels of popcorn from a string hanging on one of the trees for Gordie to munch on. As they got farther down the path, more of the ornaments started to look a bit mass produced. There were a lot of plastic trinkets and cheap globes with images of Santa Claus, Baby Jesus or cartoon characters in stocking caps stamped on them. Still further were the ornaments that looked like a lot of craft went into them – carved pieces of wood carefully painted to look like stars, snowflakes or angels, small dolls lovingly stitched together with wigs of real hair. Finally, these were all joined by the most beautiful of the lot – blown glass balls and ornaments of pure crystal. Candles lit and glowing even in the sunlight. Glittering creations of silver and gold. The trees were also layered with garlands and strands of lights, some white, some multicolored, some static, some blinking. All of the trees were gorgeous. If Maureen were to walk into a store full of ornaments of this quality, Duncan would walk out with an empty wallet.

“Look at all this stuff, Dad.”

“I’m looking, I’m looking.”

“Can I pick one of these for my mom, Lou?”

“Sure, Gordie. Go for it.”

The boy wandered up right close to the trees, staring up into the branches to find the one his mother would appreciate above all others. It was the same thing she would do for him, Duncan noted.

“That’s it!” Duncan shouted, pointing up into a tree. Although the tree in question was filled with beautiful creations, Duncan didn’t have the slightest doubt which one his son was pointing at. Near the top of the eight-foot spruce was a blue and white crystal carefully carved into the shape of an angel. Above the angel was a star made of warm yellow gold, connected to the angel through rays of light made of pure silver. The shaping of the crystal was exquisite and the metalwork that of an expert. Even Duncan had to admit, this was a work of art.

“Um… are you sure she wouldn’t want something from a lower branch, Gordie?”

“No way. That’s it.”

Duncan sighed. “Okay, okay, that’s it. Sit tight.” Duncan reached into the tree, careful to avoid any of the ornaments or getting tangled up with the strings of lights. He gripped the trunk and pulled himself up into the branches, pricking his fingers on the needles, getting his hands covered with sap and, more than once, banging his head right into the branch above him. Finally, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the ornament.

However, his other hand couldn’t quite maintain the grip on the trunk. He fell down through the tree, taking out a dozen glass ornaments with him, snapping right through the lights, which slowed his descent just to the point where crashing into the snow was only an inconvenience. Gordie ran up to him and quickly took the perfect crystal angel from his hand.

“Awesome!” he shouted. “Thanks, Dad!”

“Any time,” Duncan moaned. He rolled over onto his back and saw Lou hovering above, looking down at him with something resembling concern.

“You all right there, Duncan?”

“Jim dandy,” Duncan said. “Hey, wait a minute, why didn’t you just fly up there to get the ornament?”

“Heck, I was about to offer, but you were already halfway up the tree. You know, for such a grouchy guy, you really do go out of your way for your kid, Duncan.”

“How kind of you to notice. Lou?”

“Yeah, Dunc?”

“Pass me the tourniquet, will you?”

They kept on walking even as Duncan started to complain about needing time for his bones to knit, and the decorations on the trees got more and more elaborate. They started to exhibit themes – some, for instance, were done up in red velvet with Victorian-era decorations. One flocked number (a flocked tree in the middle of a snow-covered forest… somehow that summed up the entire experience to Duncan) sported only blue lights and silver streamers, looking like a seven-foot icicle sprouting out of the ground. A few were so carefully wrapped with red and white garland and lights that they looked like thick candy canes that tapered off at the top. One of them was even covered with nothing but ornaments that looked like cartoon characters. That was Gordie’s favorite.

Eventually they came to yet another clearing in the woods, this one with a gate set up where it touched the path. It looked similar to the archway they’d gone through when they first arrived in Christmastown. On the other side was a carnival barker wearing a top hat with a thin handlebar mustache, waving a cane and shouting out, “Trees! Getcher trees here! One hundred percent genuine guaranteed authentic Christmas trees! Best-lookin’ trees in any Realm! Step right up and getcher trees!” Behind him – to the side of him, all around him – were trees of every conceivable size, shape and pattern. It was as if every Christmas tree in the universe was here at this lot at this time.

People were walking on to the lot from all corners. Everyone was grinning and happy, going up to the trees that looked perfect for them. Families, parents, children, animals. Duncan had to rub his eyes when he saw a little bald kid pick out a tree that was little more than a twig with a single red ball hanging from it. The weight of the ball pulled down the top of the little tree, bending it almost in half.

“Dad, can we go in here?” Gordie asked.

“What for? We’ve been looking at Christmas trees for hours. We’re probably going to be looking at Christmas trees every step of this trip.”

“I know,” Gordie said. “But this is on a lot!”

“I dare you to argue with that logic, Duncan,” Lou cheerfully said.

“Fine, fine, let’s take a quick walk around the lot.”

As they stepped into the world of trees, though, it soon became apparent there was no such thing as a “quick walk” around this lot. They kept walking further and further back, looking at more and more gorgeous trees, and before long Duncan suspected the lot was as long as the path they’d just left. Gordie and Lou were in Heaven, comparing trees and picking out their favorites. Lou’s tastes ran towards the more traditional stuff – pink and orange aluminum with fiber optic lights sparkling on the edges, for instance. Gordie, on the other hand, seemed more enamored of tacky displays of angels, nativity scenes and stars with simple white lighting and ribbons strung throughout the trees. Lou kept asking how Duncan could have raised him so negligently.

“Hey, Dad, doesn’t that look familiar?”

Gordie was pointing at a nice six-foot fir tree with colored lights wrapped around it and a very eclectic mixture of ornaments – homemade ornaments, ornaments with photographs in them, some nice store-bought pieces, a few plastic dolls of characters from the comic strips. It did look familiar at that, and if Duncan had any doubt about where he’d seen it before, it was erased when he got close enough to see a series of brass ornaments adorned with pictures of an infant, etched with the words “Gordon Marks: Baby’s First Christmas,” followed by the year his son was born. “Holy crap,” Duncan said. “This is our tree.”

“No foolin’?” Lou said.

“Well, our ornaments, at least. And this is exactly like the tree we had last year, and exactly how we had it decorated.”

“Well naturally. This forest has every Christmas tree in it.”

“Every Christmas tree in the world?” Duncan asked.

“Every Christmas tree in any world,” Lou replied. “And at any time. If you look hard enough, you’ll find the tree you had when you were five years old and the tree you’re going to have when you’re 50. Assuming, of course, that your sourpuss attitude hasn’t given you a heart attack by then.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m just saying. Christmas is clinically proven to be beneficial to your health. Also, calories don’t count between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. At least, that’s what my mom always said.”

“Mine too,” Gordie said cheerfully.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Duncan said. “How can trees that haven’t grown yet or trees that have already died all be here at the same time?”

“All this and you don’t believe in magic yet?” Lou said. “Well, I guess that makes sense. Once you start believing in magic, it’s only a matter of time before you believe in Christmas too.”

They kept walking through the lot and saw many more people hunting for a tree: a four-foot mouse with a dog that kept barking at a pair of chipmunks in the tree, a bald man with a spiky-haired boy a little older than Gordie, both with strange, jaundiced skin and massive overbites… even a group of what Duncan would spend the next several hours trying to convince himself were not, in fact, giant raisins singing Motown.

“Lou, what did you say were in those sandwiches again?”

“You’re not hallucinating. Good grief, why is it always a hallucination with you? Christmastown is kind of a… nexus. It wasn’t always – Christmas wasn’t always what it is now. But once people started to believe in it – no matter why they believe in it – that belief had to go somewhere. It built this place.”

“I love this place,” Gordie said.

“Knew you would, kid.”

Duncan just wrapped his coat around himself more tightly. “Yeah, yeah… let’s just keep going, okay?”

The three started the walk back to the front of the lot, crossing the paths of even more bizarre people and creatures. Duncan started to feel a headache coming on, but then, he was used to that since Lou came around.

“How big is this place?” Duncan asked.

“Why ever do you ask?”

“Because we’ve still got a long way to go to reach that Winter Palace of yours, and I don’t want to waste too much time around here. So again, how far?”

“Oh, well…” Lou’s eyes rolled back in his head like he was trying to do some particularly strenuous mathematics. “That would be… over 2000 Christmases so far… let X equal the number of Christmases remaining… Y being the number of people on Earth minus J, representing all of the Jews…”

“Lou!”

“It’s infinite.”

“How did I know that was coming?” Duncan said. “Come on, Gordie, we’ve got to head back to the gate.”

“Aw, Dad…”

“I’m sorry, son, but we can’t afford to spend infinity walking around a Christmas tree lot.”

“Aw, shucks.”

They turned back in the direction Duncan was fairly certain would lead them to the gate and started walking. Duncan headed up the group, and didn’t see when Gordie poked Lou in the side and pointed to a tree they were passing. It had the same decorations on it as the tree they’d spotted before, Gordie’s baby pictures and all, but it had three other decorations in places of honor: A blue and silver crystal angel, a clothespin Rudolph, and a red construction paper stocking with a name painted down the side.

Finally back on the road, Duncan noticed that it was beginning to get dark again. He could feel his forehead getting warm as the snowflake there began to glow. It didn’t feel like a whole day had gone by since the sun had gone up – not even a shortened winter day – but he was learning to accept the “elastic” nature of reality here, even if he wasn’t a fan of it.

As Duncan and Gordie walked onward, Lou was drifting through the air, floating on his back and tapping his chin like he was thinking too hard – which, in Duncan’s opinion, was defined as “thinking at all.” Seeing as how about 90 percent of the problems in his life at this point could be traced back to this little sprite thinking too hard, though, even the pose was enough to make Duncan feel nervous.

“What are you thinking, Lou?” Duncan asked. “And before you answer, remember, I can punt you.”

“I’m not sure,” Lou said. “Something seems… missing.”

“You mean my house? My living room? My television? My wife? My lack of you?”

“No, no, I don’t need any of those,” Lou said, oblivious. “But I’ve done this a time or two, you know, and there’s got to be something. We’re not doing the whole ‘Spectres of the Past’ route with you, so it’s not that… What could it be?”

“Egg nog?” Gordie said. He had been introduced to the all-ages version of the beverage last Christmas and absolutely loved it.

“We’ll get some, don’t worry, Lou said.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a notepad and pen, flipping through it. “Let’s see… one grouchy old curmudgeon. Check. One cheerful and energetic tot for inspiration. Check. One gleeful and heartwarming embodiment of the holiday season. Checkerino.” He flashed Duncan and Gordie that blinding grin of his again.

“Ow. Good grief, how do you get your teeth so white?”

“We’ve got a great dentist up North. Now darn it, what did I forget?”

The sun was nearly set by now, and Duncan could barely see in the direction they were going, but he did catch a brief sensation of motion far down the path. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it looked like a man. He was worried, but just for a second. This was Christmastown, for Heaven’s sake. What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?

As they kept walking and Lou kept thinking, the sun finally set and the world around them went dark, lit only by the globe of illumination afforded by Duncan’s snowflake. In the distance, in the same direction he saw the shape approaching from, he caught a glint of light.

“Hey, what’s that?” Gordie said.

“Looks like somebody else is using this road,” Duncan answered. “He must have a torch or something.”

“That’s strange,” Lou said. “You never see anyone taking the path in this direction.”

As they kept walking, the other globe of light got closer and closer. Before long, it was apparent that there was a man inside it, but Duncan couldn’t see his face very well – he seemed to be holding a flashlight up to his head. As he got closer still, Duncan realized it wasn’t a flashlight at all. This man, like Duncan himself, had a glowing silver snowflake on his face – but in his case, the snowflake was glowing from his right cheek.

“Uh-oh,” Lou said.

“Uh-oh?” Duncan said. “What, ‘Uh-oh’?”

The other man was getting closer and closer, and Duncan was beginning to distinguish features. He wore an old, tattered coat with long tails that looked long since ripped and covered with grime. Except for the snowflake on his cheek, he was covered in filth and dirt. His pants were old, tight like a pair of breeches, and he wore high boots. On his head, perched at a jaunty angle, was a top hat in a style that Duncan was fairly certain hadn’t been in vogue since Charles Dickens muddied up the literary pool.

“Lou,” Duncan said, “again, what do you mean by ‘Uh-oh’?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Hey, you know what’s fun? Running through the woods at top speed.”

“YOU!”

The man in the path was pointing at Lou and shouting. He didn’t exactly look happy to see him – in fact, if Duncan were to select any particular emotion to describe their new friend, it would probably be “blind rage.” Lou didn’t look much better – he was hovering farther and farther back in the group.

“It’s you! I knew I’d find you, you miserable, holly-encrusted piece of filth!”

“Look, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, pal,” Duncan said, “but we’re kind of in a hurry here.”

“Is this your new charge, Lou?” the man yelled, thumbing in Duncan’s direction. “Is this the latest stupid sap you’ve roped into your little yuletide web?”

“Friend of yours?” Duncan asked.

“Josiah!” Lou said, failing to sound friendly. “Gosh, I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. You’re looking good. Um. Is that a new hat?”

“I’ve been looking for you for years, you ugly little runt! I’m gonna kill you!”

Lou floated back into the woods and Duncan grabbed Gordie’s hand, following him. They ran into the trees and Josiah broke through after them. As they tore through the underbrush, Duncan glared at Lou’s backside, huffing and puffing as he ran. “You just make friends everywhere you go, don’t you, Lou?” he snapped.

Josiah was hot on their heels, shouting and screaming the various violent things that he intended to do to them as soon as he got his hands on them, up to and including ripping off Lou’s festive holiday socks and cramming them down their throats until they were vomiting red and white candy stripes.

“He’s following us!” Lou shouted.

“Good grief, but you’re observant!” Duncan shot back.

“No, I mean – he can see us!” Lou spun around in the air so he was facing Duncan, then smacked his forehead. The light surrounding them faded as the snowflake in his forehead went out. Josiah couldn’t see them anymore, which was good, but now they were running in near pitch-blackness. Duncan was certain this was intended as a benefit, but he couldn’t quite figure out how.

“Just a little farther!” Lou shouted.

“A little farther to what?” Duncan asked, but as it turned out, he already had an answer. Three steps later, he stepped out into midair, falling off a sheer drop in the woods. Clutching Gordie tight, he fell several feet onto a thick, snow-covered slope, then started to slide down the incline, trying to avoid crashing into the seemingly hundreds of trees on the way down. As they cut a swath through the white powder, spraying it in all directions, Duncan found himself shouting out everything he planned to do to Lou once he got his hands on him, most of which made Josiah’s suggestions seem pretty tame by comparison.

Finally, with his face frozen from the spraying snow and the soles of his shoes about to melt from the friction of the slide, Duncan and Gordie came to a stop, although they had to collide with a bush to do it. Duncan pulled his son up so their eyes met. “Gordie, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, Dad. Did we get away?”

They looked up the way they’d come, seeing that they’d fallen probably over 200 feet, slashing through snow and miraculously avoiding the foliage all the way down. At the top of the slope they saw a glimmer of light with a man in it. He was apparently shaking his fist at them. He didn’t wait long, though, and after a few moments, turned around and returned to the woods. Evidently, his fury at Lou wasn’t enough for him to make the same insane leap Duncan and Gordie had.

As they stared up the slope, another glimmer of light floated down, finally approaching them. It was Lou, and he was grinning like a child who’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He reached into his pocket and took out the list he’d been examining just a minute before.

“Right, that’s what missing,” he said. “An obstacle. Check.”

“So, do you want to explain that little escapade to us, Lou, or should I just guess?” Duncan asked. He felt like he’d been buried in snow like sand in a beach, and the snow was just as intrusive into his underpants.

“Escapade?” Lou said. “Oh, I don’t know if that was really enough to qualify for escapade status.”

“Fess up, Lou. What was that all about?”

Lou sighed. “Josiah was a previous client of mine.”

“No kidding!”

“He was an even grumpier guy than you are, Duncan. I know, hard to believe, isn’t it? But he didn’t have a smile on his face or a song in his heart on any day of the year. His nasty mood wasn’t exclusive to Christmas.”

“Really? He’s such a jolly and congenial fellow now. Whatever happened?”

“I had to resort to the same tactics I did with you, Duncan. I brought him here to Christmastown so that he could take the walk to the Winter Palace. You know, it’s really a pleasant trot through the countryside if you people didn’t insist on acting like big sourpusses.”

“Less commentary, more story, Lou.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Josiah didn’t listen to me when I told him… anything, actually. He didn’t have the soft heart old Duncan here has demonstrated.” He gave Gordie a conspiratorial nudge with that one, but Duncan just kept his frustrated pose. Lou coughed and moved on.

“Josiah tried to hunt the reindeer, he burglarized all the stockings we could find, he chopped down Christmas trees for firewood… he even went around telling kids there was no Santa Claus.”

“No!” Gordie yelped.

“Eventually, I didn’t have any choice but to bring him here. He wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He didn’t stay on the path, he just tore off through the woods. Said he could get to the Winter Palace faster without me. I went after him, tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t pay any attention. He just kept going. I yelled and hollered and flew after him as fast as I could go. But pretty soon, I just lost him.”

“What happened after that?”

“Just what you saw there. I told him it was dangerous to wander off the path. You might never find your way back.”

Duncan looked down at the ground. He was standing on snow, in the middle of the forest, at the bottom of an incline that he thought was going to send him straight to the bowels of hell. If he were to dig down into the snow, he had serious doubts that he could find the path beneath his feet.

“Off the path like we are now, Lou?”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ve still got me. I’m almost as good a guide, you know.”

“Well that just charges me right up with encouragement.”

“Anyway, he vanished into the woods. I never saw him again, until just now.”

“Looks like you’ve left an impression.”

“Can we go now?” Gordie asked. Duncan didn’t blame the kid for sounding frightened. He’d been far more energetic about this little adventure than his father could ever have been, but seeing Josiah worked quite well as a cautionary tale for the lad.

“Well now, that depends,” Duncan said. “Lou, can you get us back to the path from here?”

“Sure I can!” Lou looked up the slope and started to fly. Duncan and Gordie, however, stayed right where they were, glaring at him. When he realized he was alone, he stopped and spun around. “What’s keeping you guys?”

“We can’t fly, you nitwit,” Duncan said. “How are we supposed to climb up that slope?”

“Oh. Heh. Right.” Lou hovered even higher, spinning in circles as though he were doing reconnaissance. Finally, he returned to the boys on the ground.

“Okay, I think we can get you back onto the path. But we’re going to have to take the long way around.”

“Oh, of course,” Duncan said. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

The three of them resumed walking, this time following the bottom of the slope, still moving in what Duncan assumed was a more or less northerly direction. After he’d walked into his third tree, Lou turned the snowflake-light in his forehead back on, and they walked along in more relative safety.”

“Lou?” Gordie asked after they had been walking for a while. “How long as that guy – Josiah – how long has he been here?”

“Oh, a long time. It’s got to be… um… geez, five years now.”

“Five years?” Duncan said. “What was with that ugly top hat and tails he was wearing?”

“You know, that’s a good question. The last time I saw him he was in a sports jacket. He must have mugged some other curmudgeon who got lost in the woods.”

“Good grief. How many people are lost in these woods?”

“Beats me. It can’t be that many – Spirits who lose somebody get--”

“Get what?” Duncan asked after Lou gulped and covered his mouth, cutting off his own sentence.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Lou!”

“It a Spirit loses somebody – for any reason – they get put on probation. They’ve only got a few Christmases to redeem three more curmudgeons to make up for that loss. I’ve gotten two back on the straight and narrow since Josiah, but I’ve needed to call-in back up for both of those. You’ve got to do at least one of the three solo.”

“So if you don’t get me ‘straightened up’ with your little reindeer games… what happens to you?”

Lou shuddered, quivering in midair. “I get exiled.”

“Exiled? To where?”

“Whatever the newest crap holiday is. Currently, I’d get sent to ‘Sweetest Day’ town.”

“Sweetest Day?”

“Yeah, it’s a holiday they celebrate on the third Saturday in October. Supposed to be used to bring joy to the lives of orphans, shut-ins and other people with nobody else to cheer them up. Really, it’s just a poor man’s Valentine’s Day. The greeting card companies love it.”

Duncan shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold. “Geez. That sounds like hell.”

“Now you see why I’m pushing you so hard. It’s a fate worse than death.”

“Well, if you can’t get us back onto the path, you may just be able to have your own basis of comparison. Come on, let’s try to get home.”

The three of them marched along the bottom of the slope for what seemed like hours before it finally began to even out. As they got to ground that was a bit less treacherous, Duncan and Gordie finally were able to make their way back up to the top of the slope, and from there, it was only a short walk to the path. Duncan insisted that Lou fly as high as he could and try to find some sign of Josiah’s position along the way, but the Spirit couldn’t locate him anywhere. Finally, just as the sun started to rise again (it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Duncan noted, November 26th), they got back on the road and, at long last, continued their walk.

“I’m hungry, Dad,” Gordie said.

“So am I,” Duncan agreed. It was interesting, though – although they were getting hungry, they weren’t getting hungry as fast as they should, just as day and night seemed to be coming faster than normal, and they didn’t seem to need to sleep. More “elastic” reality, Duncan supposed. He wished he could get a hold of that elastic and snap it into Lou’s face.

“Lou, can you do your magic lunch thing again, please?” Duncan said. “And something less spicy than that roast beef.”

“Beast.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Lou scratched his chin. “You know what? Instead of just zipping off and getting more food, why don’t I actually take you somewhere to get a bite?”

“There’s a restaurant somewhere around here?”

“Kind of. Hold on.” Lou zipped up again, looking around the forest. After a few seconds, his eyes caught something and he smiled down at them. “Just keep going, guys! We’ll be there soon!”

Duncan and Gordie shrugged, but kept walking down the path. After a few more minutes of walking, they saw a small wooden construct up ahead. As they got closer, they saw it was a tiny cabin with a porch and a rocking chair out front and a chimney breathing smoke into the air on the top. It was a simple brown building, and the windows were dirty and dark. Except for the smoke, Duncan wouldn’t think there was anyone there at all.

“Is this the place, Lou?”

“This is it! But, um… we’ve got to go in the back.”

“The back? Why?”

“Shortcut. Come on.” Lou waved at them and they walked around the little cabin, finding a door in the back wall. It was simple, with a little piece of wood pivoting on a screw to serve as a “lock.” There was no window, there weren’t even any stairs to the back door, but it wasn’t so high that Duncan couldn’t make the step.

“Now this looks inviting.”

“Trust me,” Lou said, turning the wooden lock and allowing the door to swing open. Duncan stepped up into the cabin, took Gordie’s hand and helped his son climb up, then Lou swung the door shut behind them.

When he turned to look around at the room he’d stepped into, Duncan was stunned. He was in a kitchen, a huge kitchen, with dozens of cooks rushing around to stoves, ovens, toasters – even microwaves. Food of all sorts was being tastefully placed on elegant serving trays and waiters were whisking the food away. There was so much energy here, after spending all that time in the still forest, Duncan’s eyes almost started to hurt. What really boggled his mind, though, was the size of the place. There was no way this kitchen could have fit into that tiny little cabin they had entered.

“Where the heck are we?” Duncan said.

“The kitchen,” Lou said. “Sorry, but it isn’t easy to get to the Infinity Bar and Grille through the front door. I happened to know a quick way in, though. One of the advantages of being a spirit. Come on.”

The three of them followed one of the waiters out of the kitchen and into the dining room, a huge room, done in wood paneling and neon, with a nicely stocked bar that appealed to Duncan at this point. The room was full of people, many of which were wearing heavy coats, cloaks and other winter clothing. More than a few had stocking caps or huge ruffles of fur on their clothing, and Duncan hated to note at least a half-dozen Spirits wearing similar clothes as Lou flying around the room at various points.

“Lou!” The bartender, a thick man with dark hair and a tiny t-shaped scar near his eye, waved at Duncan’s guide. “How’ve ya been?”

“Jolly and generous, Murphy!” Lou shouted back. “Take care of my friends, will you? Their food is on me!”

“You’ve got it,” the bartender said. He waved Duncan and Gordie to an empty table and sent a waiter over. The waiter, a skinny young man with a shock of red hair and a pencil poking out of it near his ear, pulled out their chairs and motioned for them to sit down.

“What’ll it be?” he asked, taking the pencil out and pulling a notepad from his pocket.

“Um… we haven’t seen any menus yet,” Duncan said.

“Menus?” the waiter said. “Wait, this is your first time here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“No problem. Welcome to the Infinity. Emphasis on the Infinity. We’ve got whatever you want.”

“Really?” Gordie asked. The prospect of an infinite menu clearly was appealing to the boy.

“Anything in all the Realms, kid. What are you in the mood for?”

“Can I have a bacon cheeseburger pizza with cheese in the crust and an egg nog?”

The waiter shrugged. “An odd combination, but hey, to each his own. And you?”

Duncan thought for a minute. “Fried chicken with a side of macaroni and cheese?”

“And to drink?”

“Is it too early for a real drink?”

“That’s up to you, pal – I’ve got no idea what time it was wherever you came from.”

Duncan wasn’t going to argue any cryptic statement like that in a place like this. “Whiskey sour,” he ordered.

“Been one of those days, hasn’t it?”

“One of those months.”

The waiter walked off and Lou started drifting around the room, talking to some of the more esoteric customers in the room. He seemed to know everybody by name, and amazingly, none of them appeared to want him dead, an attitude which, as far as Duncan knew, only Gordie had thus far.

“Lou! Lou! My old friend!” shouted a tiny old man with silver hair and an enormous smile. “Come, sit with us!”

“Um… some other time, Clarence!” Lou said. “Kind of busy.” Lou drifted back over to Duncan and Gordie. “Nice guy, Clarence, but he’s been telling the same story about the Bailey assignment for over 60 years now. I swear, for a while there I think he was retelling it a thousand times every Christmas.”

Like the Christmas tree lot, Duncan was noticing that not all of the clientele here at the Infinity was exactly human. He was seeing creatures of all sort – deer and elves were common, but so were less holiday-specific creatures: frogs, pigs, mice, ducks, rabbits… and damned if that wasn’t an abominable snowman throwing back drinks with a bearded man that kept licking a pickaxe.

“Good grief,” Duncan said. “It’s like the land where Christmas specials go to die.”

Lou laughed, shaking his head. “They don’t die here, Duncan. They’re born here.”

Their food arrived quickly thereafter, and Lou floated off to chat it up with an orange cat he saw at a nearby table gorging itself on pasta. Duncan and Gordie started eating and it was in fact some of the most delicious chicken and macaroni he’d ever had. Gordie tore straight into his pizza, and if the tomato sauce didn’t mix with the egg nog he was guzzling, he gave no indication that he didn’t like the combination. Once their main dishes were finished the waiter asked if they’d like any dessert, and a still-hungry Gordie summoned a hot pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream and a big plate of Christmas cookies. Duncan was still hungry himself, and he even allowed himself to take a cookie from the plate. He bit right into Santa Claus’s head, which usually cheered him up at the countless Christmas parties Maureen dragged him to. It wasn’t quite as sweet as he was used to however. He didn’t notice that he forgot to blame that on Lou.

For the first time since they’d been whisked away from Thanksgiving dinner, Duncan was actually comfortable. Privately, he thought it was a shame that there was probably no way to get here from home. His mother-in-law was a good cook, but man, this place had variety.

As Lou floated back to the table, having made the rounds, Duncan excused himself and found the bathroom. That was something else he hadn’t found the need to do as often – well, two things – but apparently, they still needed to be done.

As he left, he sidled up to the bar and ordered a hot coffee for the road. The bartender filled up not a cup, but a thermos, and handed him a second thermos full of hot chocolate for Benny. “On the house,” he said.

“Thanks. I guess you’re used to this kind of lunacy here?”

“Just another day in my bar, pal,” he said.

“Quite a place.”

“I try to make it mine. So, how’s old Lou coming along on his job?”

Duncan shrugged. “I don’t know. This whole thing seems like so much more trouble than it’s worth to me,” he said. “I just don’t get it. I don’t understand it at all. What difference does it make to the universe if I stay grouchy and happy about it like a normal human being?”

The bartender shook his head and started wiping down the bar. “Man, pal, you really don’t get it, do you? Are you asking? I mean, was that an actual question?”

“Well, I was just sort of ranting against the universe, but if you’ve got an answer, I’d be happy to listen.”

The bartender leaned in conspiratorially, waving at Duncan to lean in and listen. “It ain’t about you, pal.”

“Well then Lou has been seriously misguided since the first of November.”

“No, you’re not getting it. It’s not about you. It’s about him.”

“Him? Him who?”

The bartender pointed back to Duncan’s table, where his son was still gobbling up cookies. “What, you mean Gordie?” What does he have to do with it?”

“You keep saying that Christmas is about kids. That’s not exactly true, but it’s not exactly a lie, either. The reason Christmas has to appeal to kids so much is so that they can keep it alive for the next generation. Maureen knows that.”

“What?” Duncan said. “How did you know--”

“I’m the bartender, pal. I know everything. Maureen learned what Christmas was really about when she was a kid. You didn’t. Little Gordie there hangs in the balance. If you turn that kid against Christmas… well… he’s important, Duncan. He means something.”

“He’s a good kid,” Duncan said.

“He’s one of the best. And that’s why Lou’s gotta pester the hell out of you. It doesn’t matter if anyone saves you. It’s more important that they save him.”