The Reindeer Man Took My Brother on Christmas Eve

 

Reindeer 

The Reindeer Man

We call him the Reindeer Man because that’s the only thing anyone ever sees of him: the antlers.

Every Christmas Eve, right after the last church bell dies out in Willow Creek, Montana, he comes down from the mountains. Eight feet tall if he’s an inch, wrapped in a coat made of patched hides that still drip red when the temperature drops. The rack on his head isn’t plastic or bone-white like the ones in stores. It’s living. Black, wet, branching velvet that steams in the cold. Sometimes a string of Christmas lights is tangled in it, still blinking, like he ripped them off somebody’s roof on the way down.

He never speaks. Just walks Main Street slow, dragging something behind him on a rope made of jingle bells. The sound is wrong. Too heavy. Like the bells are full.

I learned the rules the hard way, back in 2017.

Rule one: Don’t look out the window when you hear the bells.

Rule two: If your dog starts whining at the door, you put it down yourself, because the Reindeer Man wants live things that still have a voice.

My brother Cody laughed at the stories. Said it was just some creep in a costume scaring tourists. Cody was nineteen, home from basic training, full of piss and bravado. Christmas Eve he got drunk on Dad’s Wild Turkey and decided he was going to “get a picture with the freak.”

I woke up at 2:14 a.m. to the sound of bells right outside our trailer.

Cody was already gone. Front door wide open, snow blowing in. His boots were still by the couch, laces tied. He’d walked out barefoot.

I grabbed Dad’s .30-30 and ran after the tracks. Two sets: Cody’s bare feet, sinking deep, and something else, wide, cloven, dragging a trough between them. The trail led past the trailer park, past the frozen creek, straight up into the pines where the cell towers don’t reach.

Half a mile in I found Cody’s phone. Screen cracked, still recording video. The last frame was just darkness and breathing, his and something wetter, deeper.

Then the bells stopped.

I should’ve turned back. Instead I kept going because I’m an idiot and because he was my little brother.

The clearing was man-made. Someone had taken chainsaws to the trees years ago and never cleaned up. Stumps like broken teeth. In the middle stood the Reindeer Man.

He had Cody by the ankles, upside-down, swinging him gently like a kid with a new toy. Cody was still alive. Eyes wide, mouth gagged with a red velvet ribbon. Blood ran from his ears and froze in ruby threads.

The Reindeer Man tilted his head, antlers scraping stars, and looked right at me. No eyes. Just black pits full of swirling snow. Then he did the thing that still wakes me up screaming.

He opened his coat.

Inside wasn’t a body. It was a sleigh. A child-sized sleigh made of bone and leather, lined with tiny harnesses. Eight of them. Each harness held a kid. Not dead. Worse. Their mouths sewn shut with silver bells, eyes stitched open so they could never look away. The newest harness was empty.

Waiting.

Cody saw me. Tried to scream through the gag. The bells in his mouth just jingled.

I raised the rifle. Hands shaking so bad I couldn’t find the trigger.

The Reindeer Man dropped Cody into the snow and took one step toward me. The ground under his hooves cracked like thin ice. Every step left a perfect hoofprint full of steaming blood.

I ran.

I ran until my lungs bled and the pines blurred into black streaks. Behind me the bells started again, faster, like laughter. They didn’t stop until the sun came up.

They found Cody Christmas morning. Hanging from the town’s big spruce downtown, right in front of the nativity scene. Barefoot. Smiling. A red ribbon tied neatly around his neck like a bow.

His eyes were gone. Just empty sockets full of snow.

And tangled in his frozen hair: a single strand of blinking Christmas lights.

Every year since, I stay inside on Christmas Eve. Windows boarded. Fireplace roaring. Rifle across my lap.

But tonight the wind just shifted.

And somewhere outside, the bells are starting.

Slow. Heavy.

Like they’re full.

(Part 2 drops next Christmas Eve… if anyone’s still around to read it.)