"I Saw Him" by Carianne L.

I couldn’t fall asleep that night. I mean, which kid wasn’t able to fall asleep on the night of Christmas Eve? Certainly no kids that I knew when I was younger. I was about 6 years old at the time, still full of childhood naivety and wonder. Of course I still believed in certain holiday figures such as the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy (although, I don’t know how much she counts as a “holiday figure”), with my favorite being the jolly old Santa Claus. Going back to that night, it was around 1:30am and I still hadn’t fallen asleep yet. As much as my eager young self wanted to sneak downstairs and see if Santa had come yet, I knew that if I crept out of bed, my parents would surely hear me and give me a good scolding for waking them up. So instead, I drearily tried to fall back asleep and wait until morning. But then I heard it. A loud “thud” coming from downstairs. My heart was racing, and I knew in my heart that it could be only one thing: Santa Claus.

I raced down the stairs as quickly as I could, as to not wake my parents nor my baby brother, whose incessant cries would most definitely alert Santa Claus that someone was awake in the house. Once I got to the bottom of the stairs, I froze. I saw him. Well, I saw something behind our Christmas tree, although I couldn’t quite tell what. I tried sneaking towards the tree closer, as to get a better look at my holiday hero. But then I noticed something... off about the creature whom I believed to be Santa Claus. This...thing was almost as tall as our tree was. Now, with average Christmas trees that are around 5-6ft in height, this fact wouldn’t be so abnormal. However, my family were Christmas fanatics, so we had scoured as many tree farms as we could to find a tree that was 8ft tall. As I crept closer to the tree, I started to notice other peculiar things about the Santa Claus impersonator. He...it... was thin, like, incredibly thin. This thing was nowhere NEAR as large as the Santa Claus’s that are normally portrayed in the media. As I tried to get a better look at whatever this was, I accidentally kicked one of the boxes that was left on the floor, making a quiet, but noticeable “thud”. Whatever it was, its neck snapped immediately in my direction, and that’s when I got a good look at its face. It wasn’t human, definitely not. Its eyes were sunken in and blood red, and loose strands of grey, ragged hair fell lifelessly across its cold, twisted face. I had no idea what this was, but it seemed like something out of a nightmare. This cold, haunting creature slowly made its way towards me, like a doll being dragged by a child. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, but I had no voice to do so. Once it got almost 6-inches in front of me, it looked me dead in the eyes, brought a ragged claw up to its mouth, and whispered, “Shhhhhhh.” In almost an instant after that, the creature was gone. Up the chimney it went, like your typical Santa Claus. I was left in total shock, unable to move. And then I woke up.

‘Thank goodness,’ I thought to myself, ‘It was just a dream.’ I looked at my alarm clock. 7am. My parents and my brother should be up by now. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could to see my entire family sitting on the couch waiting for me to wake up. “Good morning Nathan,” said my dad, “Merry Christmas!” I quickly put that horrible dream aside and began to open my presents. Everything seemed like a normal, happy Christmas morning. However, I noticed one thing that was pretty peculiar: the long, chiseled scratch marks by the opening of the chimney that hadn’t been there the day before...