Seeking Santa

Short Story by Charlene Pepiot

His cheeks were rosy with Christmas joy atop that giant throne. Mom ushered me forward with a smile, taking my half-eaten burger to save for later. Laughter echoed from above, and my head craned past the escalator to the couple walking hand in hand, the warm fluorescent bulbs shielding their faces. Everything was light. So perfect. The lady swung an expensive handbag from her free hand…

“Say Pip, do you think the mall still has handbags laying around?”

“Shush it!” Pip slapped his hand over my mouth and yanked me further into the bushes. “They’ll hear you!”

Flapping thuds of half-torn shoe soles slapped against the sidewalk in uniform discord. Pip clenched his rusted pliers as cracks of blood appeared on his chapped hands. A phone hit the fence behind us and sent it rattling as jeers filled the air.

“Morons! I got a good deal on that.”

A looming high schooler stomped towards our bushes in search of his phone. I could see the tattoos and needle marks visible through the tears in his ragged overcoat. Had he ever considered buying a handbag? A blue one would fit the color of those faded jeans.

The teen took a step forward. Paused. Bent down and gasped. Pip shuttered beside me as the teen stood with his phone and returned to the group. They jostled him roughly and kicked a few untouched snowdrifts before the night swallowed them up. Pip’s hand released me to clutch his chest as he took several sharp breaths.

“Well then, now that I can speak,” I said straightening up. “The mall’s just past this fence. You cut it with those pliers and I’ll search for my headphones.”

“Headphones?” Pip wheezed. He glanced down the street where the high schoolers had first appeared. “Why would you enter gangland wearing bloody headphones? Do you know what those thugs would do if…”

Pip’s voice faded as I searched around a nearby snowdrift. I hadn’t heard that song on my playlist in years. It reminded me of the mall’s seasonal hot cocoa and warm fluorescent lights, a precious memory considering the heat got shutoff last month. A crack sounded beneath my foot. Groaning, I stepped back and beheld the crushed earbuds.

“See, we’ll be like that if those guys come back,” Pip huffed. “Let’s just go!”

“You know that can’t happen,” I said simply, pocketing the broken cords. “We’ll never find Santa in my dingy apartment, so I won’t give you 10 bucks!” Pip scowled. I willed him to understand with my eyes. “The mall’s just past this fence and I only want to look around. There’s no harm in that!”

Pip groaned, but began cutting the fence while muttering about the things he does for cash over the Do Not Trespass sign clanging above us. Pip yanked the torn wire aside to make a hole. He stuck his hand in my face.

“10 bucks, mad ‘am.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“You want me to come inside a haunted mall people have never returned from? Searching for Santie Claus?”

“Not the literal Santa,” I corrected. “What he represents! Miss Hope told us just yesterday that if you really believe in something and work hard enough, it will come true! She called it the American dream or something like that, and I know it must be true because her house has a walk-in closet! And who personifies the magic of believing more than Santa himself? This mall is the only place I was ever happy and I know that magic is still there beneath all the plastic wrap. If Christmas wishes can come true, they’ll happen there.”

“Think what you will, crazy.”

I handed Pip a five and fifteen one-dollar bills. “Keep the change,” I chirped while crawling through the fence. “I won’t need it after I tell Santa what I want for Christmas!”

Pip snorted as I rushed toward the mall through the untouched snow. The isolation was comforting, no gangs came near here. In its prime, there were no gangs at all. Back then I could draw chalk dinosaurs on the driveway without fearing white vans. But the chalk always broke. It wasn’t all that fun. Not like the crayons at the mall I’d make valentine's cards with during the public workshops they used to put on.

Memory guided me to the entrance. Like the rest of the abandoned mall, the city had covered it with massive sheets of plastic. Ignoring another Do Not Trespass sign, I tapped one of the sheets. It felt thick. The city must have grown tired of gangs breaking in and sealed the place up. A sepulture of smiles and memories just waiting to be uncovered!

By the glow of my phone, I managed to cut away enough layers to reach a space where there had once been glass doors. The former scents of fresh bread had been replaced with musty chemicals that made me gag. I stepped around forgotten construction helmets and entered the void. Smelly or not, I was actually living out a real-life Choose Your Own Adventure book!

Holding up my phone, the darkness shrank back to reveal yellowed weeds rotting overtop of the cracked checkered floor. Cracked? But it had been so well polished in my memories!

“Well, a little wear and tear after eight years should be expected. It was awhile before the city fully boarded up the place,” my voice echoed off distant walls. “I’m sure those pink hopscotch tiles are intact beneath the dead leaves!”

The glow from my phone gave an almost supernatural quality to the silver studs dotting the food court where tables once stood. I missed the fluorescent lightbulbs. Rumbling sounded above me, either thunder or strained beams giving way. What had Pip meant by haunted?

“It’s but a challenge to overcome,” I proclaimed, faking the deep voice the president always had in the cartoons. “I bet Billz Burgerz (with a ‘z’) is intact. Everyone loved that place! Mom always took me there when she got home too late to cook!”

I still remembered sitting on the polished red chairs, swinging my legs that couldn’t touch the ground and checking beneath the wheat bun to ensure the cooks really hadn’t added tomato. McDonald’s always forgot, but never Billz. Surely the graffiti artists could respect that!

Avoiding a questionable brown puddle, I skirted past heaps of trash slumped against the spray-painted walls. Beside a pile of discarded clothing lay the mildewed frame of a sign picked clean for electrical parts. It was sprawled on its side like the bones of some dead thing with red and blue wires scattered about like severed veins. If I tipped my head and squinted, I could see the shape of a burger. How could something that formed such happy memories for me be a throwaway cash grab for others? My head throbbed.

“Well, the construction folks and vandalizers couldn’t have trashed everything. If I go a little further in, I’m bound to find some untouched landmark with its old magic still intact. I’ll make my wish there!”

Guided by memory, I rounded a corner to see the former glass ceiling had caved in. Weak moonlight passed through the overhead plastic and flooded the boarded-up outlet stores with an overlay of saturated silver. Clicking off my phone, I picked my way through the broken glass, heading toward the single escalator now littered with siding and empty cans.

I thought of that happy couple, the ones with the handbag. Were they still laughing, or had smiles turned to angry shouts and punches right before Christmas? Taking a deep breath, I paused mid-way on the escalator. The musty chemical stench seemed even more rancid up here. Did I really want to see the upper floor? What if it was trashed like everything else? I didn’t have to know. I could just leave with my happy memories. Shield them from whatever had become of upstairs and apologize to Pip.

Apologize for…what?

For believing in what Santa stood for? In peace for all, even a ruddy little apartment down on Saints Street? That parents could still love each other, or miracles come true if you only believed? That the bright hallways and smiles of my memories were only coverups for this cesspool of broken glass and foliage?

No. No, I would press onward and make my wish! My legs were jelly as I climbed the escalator. It was longer than I remembered. I stopped at the top to pant, nerves making me sweat despite the cold. Good heavens, the smell! My eyes were closed. I wanted to be seen but not see.

“Santa?” I croaked, shaking terribly.

“Yes, little one?”

My hand clenched the railing. Had I heard right? Had I heard him?

“Open your eyes. Do not be afraid.”

My tongue seemed to swell, making speech difficult. Opening an eye, I beheld Santa atop his throne—the same throne he’d sat on all those years ago! Yes, I could see the pretty red and green wrapping paper tapped on and the little cardboard presents scattered around. Untouched by mold and graffiti and house foreclosures and guns and gangs and pointed fingers at the crazy kid who stops to admire the moon on field trips! Yes, this was the Santa I knew and loved! His belly bulging with Christmas cheer, kind eyes round like fresh baked pies and cheeks that were so very rosy red!

Or was that red blood?

What was rippling beneath the flesh of that jolly belly? Was that a hand imprint pressing out from the inside? Now a fleshy impression of a face, jaw open in a trapped scream before fading as another hand pressed outwards further up.

“What would you like for Christmas, my dear,” Santa asked with fiery coals for pupils.

You want me to come inside a haunted mall people have never returned from?

Remember class, if you really believe in something and work hard enough it will come true!

My shaking knees locked together. “Mr. Claus, I wish t-that Mom and Pops can get along like they used to. Just for Christmas! Make them smile again, that’s all I want! Please Santa, I know there’s magic here. I felt it before when I was little. I know those feelings were genuine. That those happy times were perfect, not this.”

Santa stood and took a step toward me. I held in a cry as the disturbed roaches scattered off the throne, tearing the wrapping paper to reveal moldy cardboard. The wrapping seemed to liquify as it peeled off into a red-green pool that flowed toward me. Sticky bubbles shaped like burgers appeared within the ooze and popped with loud hissing sounds.

With a wail, I booked it down the escalator, my jelly legs wobbling as Santa howled like creaking metal. Flashes of silvery-white speckled the ground—his beard! It was moving across the boarded-up shops to grab me! To consume me like those trapped inside his belly!

Rushing back into the ground-level’s darkness, my clumsy arms thrashed around for the exit. An overturned bench caught my ankle and sent me slamming against a busted pipeline. Jumping to my feet, something sharp brushed against my leg—a trash heap! I could climb up and escape!

Digging my chewed nails into the debris, I forced myself up the pile. There was a pounding that reverberated through the entire mall and my head. I launched myself to the top of the heap and the pile rocked beneath my weight. My legs sunk into the dumped garbage bags and needles. Santa had me! His black shoes had become the shadows! Whipping out my phone, I viciously waved the light around, wailing at Santa to keep his distance as my waist went under. I twisted and jerked but Santa wouldn’t budge, each pound in my skull a deafening ho. Ho. HO!

My phone’s glow spilled across the checkered floor and the shards of a glass bottle. Within one fragment was the escalator twisting in blurred circles. In another, a painting of a woman pushing a baby in a stroller had caved in on itself. The shard nearest to me showed a fallen plastic tree with leaves curling outwards like green claws. Were the fragments distorting reality, or peeling back the façade to reveal what the mall was all along?

Only my head remained above the trash. Straining my neck toward what I thought was the entrance, I attempted to croak Pip’s name.

Santa had my throat, I was mute.

*

Breaking news interrupts Christmas Day with the finer details of reality. Mike Micron stands bundled in his overcoat as the covered stretcher roles into an ambulance behind him. He points to a hole in the fence, the trespasser’s presumed point of entry. He says the victim, whose name has not yet been released, likely snuck inside to make off with unclaimed valuables but only found the fatal dosage of Asbestemine the city had taken such strains to seal up. He explains how the victim was likely from out of town. After all, every local within an inch of reality knew of the hallucinogenic insulator within the walls that had postponed the old mall’s demolition indefinitely.

Shrugging, he signals the broadcast to turn back to Home Improvements with Harley. Miss Hope blushes as she shows Harley and the cameramen around her house. It has a walk-in closet!

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Charlene Pepiot is an undergrad at Ohio University majoring in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Ohio Northern University’s “Polaris” literary magazine as well as the newspaper “The Post.” She enjoys biking in her nonexistent free time.