The Most Krampus-ful Time of the Year...

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. A beautiful sight, giving lie to the dangers that appeared shortly after the clouds lit up the blackness, drowning out the stars and moon.

Perhaps there was something symbolic about that, but she had been forced to leave education behind years ago, before they had studied such things as poetry and great works of literature.

It had been like this every December, at least as far as she could recall. At the beginning of the month, everything changed. The sky became red and dark, as if overcast by a great fire, the dark purple clouds like oily smoke, and strange beings roamed the streets in the wake of their fearsome master. Not until Twelfth Night would the world return to normal, and far too late for some.

It had not been so bad, in years past, when she was too young to work and could hide indoors, but now that she was deemed old enough to sell matches, she had been so frightened that she was willing to follow this stranger home.

The danger in such an act could be no worse than the danger of remaining on the streets.

Wrapping her shawl tightly around her against the winter chill, the little girl glanced up at her rescuer, an old man currently occupied with building a fire. "Will you tell me what happened, sir? How it came to this?"

The old man beckoned her closer to the warmth, laying out two plates filled with bread and cheese and cold meat. The meal, no doubt considered simple by most standards, was better than she had eaten in months. To hers, he added an orange, a rare treat for her even in the summer, and unheard of in the winter, when they must be imported or grown in a hothouse. "Have you heard of Krampus, my dear?"

The girl had attended the council school only briefly, before she was withdrawn to start earning a wage and looking after the house when her mother died. She paused in devouring the food long enough to speak. "No, sir. It it German?"

The Hanover Royal Family had brought over many things, since they took over from the House of Stuart after the death of Queen Anne. Father complained about it with great frequency. Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and other children began to poke their heads into the room, gathering around the fire. Some of them had clearly heard the story before, but others appeared as baffled as the Match Girl was. One, who walked with a crutch, eased himself down beside her. "Krampus originated on the Continent, but no-one is quite sure where. How he began here... well, that is a different story."

The old man laughed, warm and gentle, but with a hint of bitterness. "It began as so many things do, my dear children: with a man who thought he could play God without consequence..."

December 6th, 20 years earlier...

Ebeneezer Scrooge, a well-known businessman, and recently reformed former misanthropist, walked home though the snow, after a charitable visit to an orphanage. It was perhaps a little self-serving, paying for apprenticeships and writing recommendations for the children who showed the intelligence and determination to make something of themselves. One girl loved nothing more than books, and was good with a needle, and the book-binder a few doors down from his office was in need of someone to help with sewing the pages together. Another boy had a head for numbers, and could be a good clerk, given the opportunity.

Scrooge had kept his word to the Ghosts, honouring the spirit of Christmas by showing kindness and good-will and charity to his fellow men all the year. He was the better for it, he was sure, yet Scrooge could not help the sense of foreboding that followed him, as close as his own shadow, but forever just out of view. It was as if he had been transported back in time to a little under a year ago, when Marley's Ghost shadowed his footsteps and warned him of the afterlife that awaited him.

He tried to put it out of mind, thinking of happier things, like Tiny Tim, no longer so thin and ill as he had been last Christmas, returning from school. Fred and Clara, who had welcomed a child of their own not three months ago. (Scrooge had spent an hour in a toymaker's shop, choosing a cloth doll dressed in bright colours that reminded him of the second ghost, Christmas Present, gay and jolly, to welcome Baby Claire to her first Christmas.)

Abruptly, Scrooge whirled around, catching a plain-clothed young man before he could slip back into the shadows. Firmly reminding himself that the fellow could have a perfectly reasonable cause to be following him, Scrooge stopped and waited patiently.

The fellow was, in the way of many men, possessed of a very ordinary countenance, his manner unexceptional, his presence indistinguishable in a crowd. All that set him apart was his smile, which aimed to be knowing, but fell short somewhere between arrogant and self-satisfied. Scrooge resigned himself to listening to whatever the man had to say. "May I help you?"

The fellow shrugged. "I wished to see the results of my first experiment, before I embarked on the next."

Scrooge's eyes narrowed, "First experiment?"

The man bowed as floridly as any actor, his smile verging on an unpleasant smirk. "If the milk of human kindness will not flow naturally, one must help it along. It worked for you."

Scrooge considered his brief, dumbfounded pause entirely justified. "I beg your pardon... who are you, anyway?"

The man shrugged in false humility, "Dr Jekyll, esquire, at your service. In your case, some powerful hallucinagens, snuff mixed with a few other things for erratic sleep, and a hypnotic, to bring out what your own subconscious already knew. Mixed into powdered coal and remolded, then slipped into the stove in your office. Not to worry, your clerk was unaffected."

Scrooge could not say he wished himself unaffected by the events of last Christmas Eve - he was a better man than he had been, by a measure of leagues - but it would have been nice to have received a less traumatic explanation than the sudden appearance of his old friend's ghost. He bit his tongue against his first six responses; a businessman always remembered his manners. "And you mean to do this again, to another?"

Dr Jekyll beamed, as if Scrooge's recriminating tone had been one of support. "Oh, yes! Why should people only care about others every December? I mean to make them care the rest of the year, as well!"

A nearby clock chimed the hour, and Scrooge turned to look. By the time he looked back, Dr Jekyll had vanished back into the crowd.

Scrooge slept well, as a rule, but tonight Dr Jekyll's words haunted him as much as the three ghosts had last year.

A few minutes before midnight, he bolted awake in a cold sweat, a chill running down his spine. The night was quiet and still, but seemed somehow colder, as cold as death. Something had happened, something terrible, and though it was not aimed at him specifically, Scrooge still felt the foreboding that the world would never be the same.

Scrooge threw back the bedcovers, but stopped before racing out the door. He would help no-one by freezing to death himself, and he was not as hardy as he once was as a youth. He dressed quickly, pulling on fur-lined boots and his greatcoat, and hurried downstairs to open the door.

Suddenly, the stillness was shattered by the sound of a child's screams, and the noise of what might have been a brawl, had the public houses not closed early in preparation for the Sabbath. The commotion was swift, before silence fell again. Scrooge prepared to venture toward the sound, though he doubted that there was much in his power to do, but was forestalled when an older man stumbled down the street.

He looked much like the Ghost of Christmas Present in form and dress, but his face was bloodied, and he stumbled along, unlike the spirit's dance-like gait. What could be seen of the man's face was fearful, distressed, with no trace of the jolly kindness that had so distinguished the Ghost. Scrooge hurried toward him, bracing himself in time to catch the man as he fell forward. "Steady there! What on Heaven's name is going on?"

The man steadied himself on Scrooge's shoulder, and Scrooge began to help him back inside. Better to have the man sit down before he fell down. Possibly a stiff drink, too, by the way the man trembled, speaking only a single word. "Krampus..."

Scrooge hurried him inside, up the stairs to his sitting room, where a fire still smoldered, and built it up. The kettle was still half-full, and he swung the iron arm back over the fire, then walked to the cabinet to pour them both a shot of whiskey. The stranger was not the only one rattled.

More screams erupted down the street, and the sky glowed red, though it was still hours until dawn. Scrooge set down his glass and hurried to the window, moving the curtain to peer out.

A dark, shaggy figured, scarred and grotesque, stalked the streets. Two huge curving horns rose from its head, and it carried a large sack over one shoulder, and something that could have been a club or a bundle of switches in the other hand.

Hastily, Scrooge dropped the curtain and put a screen around the fire to dim the light, before sitting across from the stranger. "Can you tell me what happened, or what will come of this?"

Supernatural or science, both were largely out of his comprehension, but he could not act until he knew how to act. The stranger shuddered again. "Krampus is my opposite, punishing the wicked as I, Nicholas the toymaker, reward the good and warn the naughty. That is how it is supposed to be, but tonight, something changed."

In the privacy of his mind, Scrooge cursed Dr Jekyll as an over-confident fool. Some things were best left un-meddled with. Something else stuck in his mind. "Nicholas... Saint Nicholas?"

The stranger shrugged, "I was a toymaker, first, and religion has diversified enough that only a few follow my creed, but my role to bring happiness remains."

Scrooge put that aside for another day. "What of Krampus? I take it this is not the usual way of things?"

St Nicholas shook his head, "No. I pacify him with the same wine and food that is left for me, and he targets only the very naughty children, the ones who must feel the consequence of their behavior before they become truly wicked. Tonight... there was something wrong with what we drank. I was weakened, and Krampus turned his eye to all children who had made even the smallest error. I tried to stop him, but..."

The saint gestured to his battered state, further explanation un-necessary. Scrooge thought instantly of Tiny Tim, as good a lad as any living, and of Tim's older brothers, who enjoyed a good-natured prank now and then, but were never malicious and on the whole good and helpful boys. "Is there anything in my power to prevent him?"

St Nicholas bowed his head. "Not tonight, when he is strongest, but his strength will wane as we draw closer to the night of Our Lord, and should vanish in the new year. If the children are repentant for their deeds, and do not venture out, they will be safe tonight, and tomorrow, we can begin doing what we may to protect them."

That had been a lesson Scrooge learned young: sometimes, there was nothing to be done. But sometimes, kindness and goodwill might prevail. For now, all he could do was pray and hope, and plan.

Present Day...

The Match Girl shivered, huddling closer to the boy with the crutch. "So, you gather the children you can find, here in safety?"

Mr Scrooge nodded. "Yes. I am changed enough, and old enough, that Krampus pays me no mind, Tim here is more likely for other children to listen to, more than lectures from an old man. St Nicholas slows Krampus as he can, and blessed us so that we may hide the children who never deserved his club."

Both of them dressed well enough that the street urchins would hide from them. But not from her, if she came to warn of danger. She was one of them. "Then tomorrow, I will join your efforts."

Tim, no longer so tiny, smiled down at her. "Good. Sometimes, kindness and goodwill to others is enough to hold him back."

The Match Girl had rarely had anything to spare to give charity or help others, but now she did. And she would, as long as she was able.

For the sake of the Spirit of Christmas.

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