Dancing a Raggedy Jig

Yule, the rule of the holiday seasons, what is a yule log anyway? A hard stem bulrush hardly, a yule log is more significant for being a big, fat stick you burn when it is cold outside. But Yule is more true like a Christian Christmas than you may know. Yule is the first Christmas, a celebration of the winter solstice of the coldest season of the year.

She knew her story about the Yule would be quite fitting for the holiday greeting card business. They were always looking for submissions that went beyond the traditional Santa, if you are nice, and Claus if you are naughty.

“I am Moss.”

“And the way I see it, wait, what?”

“I am Moss.”

“A yule goat that speaks, I’ll be damned.” How did that goat get down here?

She had this collection of Christ-mess as she called it, all knick-knacks that were not decor per say but something historical. An anthropologist at heart, that started when she began yul-ing hardcore. A goat, a true-blue Yule goat was in there but she had not seen the small wooden carved doll in years, maybe even decades. It was one of her first collectibles, an early find.

She snatched the goat from the desktop and stalked out of the room. Trying to decipher Yule was hard enough with everything else happening in this village, but remembering where the goat came from gave her chills. He didn’t mean to fall off the cliff, it just happened. But they all blamed her. That entire village cursed her on account of the event. It was a long time ago, and nobody acted like they remembered but then she would find these artifacts—like this yule goat.

Teddy, she called him, the yule goat. When she got the goat, her own teddy bear was all gone, dead. The goat was a gaol of remembrance. Did he fall or was he pushed? Could he have wanted to jump all along?

She grabbed her jacket, time to put this theory to the test. Somebody told her if she took her yule goat with her on this certain time of the holiday season to a particular place, “it would set her free,” they said with oomph.

Now it was time to find that place and make a deposit. She felt compelled to throw the miniature wooden sculpture right into the blazing fire and would have, on the spot, had she not remembered.

There was a woman and her omen, “You will visit someone who is arriving in the same place as you in a moment of haste and waste.”

The last two words that rhymed, haste and waste, were triggers to her and this prophecy. “Hey!” or “Wait!” were the starts of anxiety wondering if these were the haste and waste that were her prophetic phrase.

Nicknacks are Claus’, by the way. He gets very angry if you take his toys without asking…in a letter handwritten prior to Christmas Eve.

Did the yule goat just whisper…in English?

Sitting back down in the sweaty arm chair, yule goat in hand, she wanted to think about this for a second. She’d been feverish and felt light-headed all day, and who knows. Anemia, maybe? Her imagination was fired up as it was the holiday season.

Ever smelled a spruce tree smothered by hot pink flocking? A shelf filled with heavily scented cinnamon and fir candles all burning? Combined with dusty balls from decades of…

”Oh, who am I kidding,” she said thinking no one would care what this scene smelled like on a Christmas card.

The yule goat started to kick its tiny legs. If she would have been awake, she would have felt it moving, like a miniature baby deer getting its feet in gear.

A snowstorm whirled in, whipping snowflakes from the already piled up snow. Frozen flurries blocked her view in the long night sky. Getting over to the hut would be ridiculous but she had to try. The yule goat didn’t just turn up like it walked over by itself. This is a wooden toy hand carved by a person. No, someone had to be playing a joke on her. Teasing her by leaving this tiny wood yule goat knowing she would pocket it and be curiouser still.

Either way, thrusting her hiking pole through the snow with the lantern in her other hand, she felt she might see a bear faster than anything. This kind of weather was not usual and signaled something spookier than just snowfall. A smell inhaled, and she knew why. It was the weather playing tricks on her, sending her scented signals to confuse her more.

Messing with her memories, she smelled diesel fuel, the kind they used in pickup trucks, the bigger ones. They hadn’t had diesel delivered out here for months due to the harsh winter. No need, they had plenty of firewood.

The hut doorknob came into contact with her hand and she was safe. Turning the hard brass ball, opening the door to the dark interior, who knew what was beyond the entryway. Nobody uses the hut anytime during the winter. It was that she kept thinking about that knight and seeing the shelf, and that is the shelf where the the yule goat was sitting inanimately before it pranced all the way to the big house.

Pulling the lantern inside, a light brown mouse the size of a golf ball scrambled its own nut meat as it shot off the table under the doorway. All the walnut bits went flying shells and all, out onto the completely unexpected white frozen snow. Two feet of snow outside of the doorway met the mouse and froze it like a snowball as it became stuck. Scampering led to nowhere and she watched the mouse torture itself until was dead and no longer making a scratching sound.

“See you in hell, rodentia!”

The rest of the kitchen soon soared with fire, the hearth easy to heat up even in this cold storm. Warm and getting too toasty too soon, the woman stood up and started removing her boots and stockings and then her knitted wool cap and a fleece top layer and finally her water resistant snow bibs. She felt less like fainting, sniffing the burning pine and melting rosin. 

Looking out the medium-sized kitchen window, the big house was out in the distance, clear on the other side of the field, only connected to the hut by the barbed wire fence. A long fence like a prickly telephone line stuck up from the feet of snow piled up higher along the fence posts evenly dotting the ground from space. A dark black silhouette of spruce and fir trees with grandfatherly wizard hat tops tipped over slightly.

Getting up from the chair, something whispered, “We don’t want you here,” soft and like a thought. Her skin turned bright red, screaming in alert that something strange was too close. Not human and certainly not animal—a spirit, it must be. Sounding in angst, the ghostly being drew back and went up to the top of the ceiling. She saw the trailing shadow of silver air moving in the dark interior.

The room wasn’t that large and the hut was one floor and one open room. A ghost could not go far. She had it cornered, sort of, like it was a moth. She couldn’t look directly at it, or it flitted around out of sight like a fly in flight mode.

Whoosh, the sound like wings of an owl and a fierce screeching sound reminded her of a barn owl. Was this a barn owl or a ghost ready to boo in her face?

Taking her lantern and a stick of hot fire, each hand extended outward and upward. Finding the root of that sound became the priority over the curse of the yule goat.

“Pow!” A gun shot in the air scattered more than her mind.

“My hand!” She looked down and someone shot a bullet and somehow she managed to get her hand in front of that very bullet in this small space. Blood poured down her forearm as she held her injured hand upright. She staggered out of the hut and down the hill in the snow. Red crimson jewels formed on the crust of icy snow as blood dropped and froze at the touch.

These bloody rubies were scent magnets for the yule goat that jumped down from her and soon as she was shot and begun galloping. The tiny wood creature started drinking from the blood gems. As each frozen blood droplet turned from large and coppery to nothing but a shaded impression in the snow, the yule goat transformed into its true self.

Soon Krampus was back, stalking her in his gigantic beast form. She continued to bleed into the snow, oblivious under the black, sparkly sky.

The omen. Haste and waste. She always thought it meant the hay way or the path of a tractor bailing hay, that was the most dangerous place in her world. Now she saw differently. The world she knew was masked in a toothsome smile with black shallow eyes and long ragged, matted hair. Bells sounded of dented tin cans banging like drums in the pits of Hell.

You will visit someone who is arriving in the same place as you in a moment of haste and waste.

Her hand was throbbing. The bullet shot straight through, leaving a quarter size wound and disturbing her inner soul. Every time she moved her fingers, each nerve ending in her hand and arm stabbed back.

No yule goat. Where’s Teddy?! She screamed in her mind. Rolling over onto the side of her body, the goat was no longer in her pocket. The snow freezing her body helped slow down the spread of pain. 

She hated to be in pain. That is why she already used enough cannabis to keep her from feeling anything much. It helped in times like these. Not moving and pressing down on the hand also slowed the blood loss. Her palm was no longer exploding in sensations every time her heart pounded.

The timing was never in her favor. The day, the hour, the sun, the moon, it all matters so much in these ancient curses. We have no idea what these are until they have arrived and by then, it is too late to change our direction. We are stuck with the hand of cards we are dealt in this life. She knew this now.

The yule deer made her go.

Whoosh! A movement over in the woods to her left. She had to go near the woods to reach the big house, but that was not happening. Tonight she would sleep outside, and if the devils let her live, she deserved as much—or to die just the same.

The pain was forcing her. It was no longer a choice. She knew this now. Nobody ever wanted to die if they were just happy and healthy. If they were stuck in a place they had no choice, well. Who are they to play God?

Above her in the black void was nothing but stars, not a cloud in sight. But on the ground it was not the same. All around her the whooshing sound became louder, bringing up the snow and shimmery ice. A fog rolled in and settled across the ground at standing level.

Along the snow cover, the wind picked up the pace. Every second a new swirl of snowflakes spun off the top layer and danced around the wind. As this continued to happen, figures started to form in white fluff. Frosted legs danced with ruffled skirts, and the occasional eyeball stared out of a toothless grin from something unearthly yet human-esque.

Getting a show of snow room ball dancers, the woman tried to slow her breath even more. She did not want to be asked to dance. This hand of hers was not in the best condition, and she would be embarrassed to faint from a loss of blood.

“May I have this dance?”

She dared not to turn around, but what the hell, this was her Hell anyway.

It was obviously a trick. She could tell the yule goat was completely grown into a real living goat-man. She knew who he was now, and she called him Krampus as that was his true title.

She took his fur covered hoof of a hand with her uninjured one and let him lead her on the dance floor. As they started to make their way onto the snow, she no longer had her feet on the ground. He had lifted her and placed her legs around his neck like a scarf.

Krampus breathed with an alligator’s rumble and caroused the beverage that made him lust-drunk. His own legs began galloping, going as fast as a clog dancer.

The woman’s near-lifeless body with long blonde ringlets bounced around her sleepy head. Her bloody hand with a hole shot through it from the wood toy yule goat was no longer bleeding. She held it in such a way at times the full moon round and white shown through the hold and red down on the snow.

In a few more minutes of this herky-jerky dancing and her body let loose of the spirit she was barely hanging onto. He was ready, knowing it was coming. Krampus could suck a soul out in a galloping jig in the best spirits of all.

That was his gig, finding the easiest way to steal a soul. It was the best day of the year for this, and she was the best bet on the block. This was as a result the best time of his life.

The Yule.

“I am Moss, by the way, also called Krampus Moss and Father Christmas. Good or bad, you get your pick, when you flip the meat card—green or red, stay or go. If you go, you get the green, Krampus Moss, and if you go red, you get Father Claus and bows and galore. Some are ready to see the green, the ground, that grassy yonder. Others want to stick around for more blood…and meat.”