How To Summon Santa

Another short one today, this time about a young, Cthulhu-obsessed girl who purchases an ancient tome online with the intention of summoning Santa Claus. However, what she actually summons couldn’t be further from St. Nick!

Enjoy.

Clouds the shape of coffins circled the sky, war-rhythm rain lashed the window, each face on her army of strange teddies winced and grimaced. A circle, then a pentagram was scorched into the carpet and from their centre rose a figure in a dark suit amidst swirls of enraged silhouettes and otherworldly cries of pain and fear.
	“Mortal, who dare call upon the Lightbringer,” he flapped his towering wings thrice. “I have answered your summons.” On closer inspection, no one was there. Like the pop of a balloon, the whole morbid affair ended suddenly and without much fuss. “Mortal?” he adjusted his blood-red tie to sit straight. “Does, does anyone reside here?”
	Green eyes peeked out from behind the head of a particularly large teddy-bear; a teddy-bear in the likeness of Cthulhu. “Uh-oh…” the girl muttered quietly. Lucifer blinked twice. He then went to complete his grand entrance, but she shielded herself from him again.
	“Mortal,” he boomed, “let me finish!”
	She leaned around Cthulhu’s tentacles and gazed with embattled eyes. “You’re not who I wanted…”
	Him and his ominous presence had been reduced to nothing; simmering the fiery malice in his ovoid pupils. “Not, not who you wanted?”
	“Well… I don’t know,” she got up. “You’re not how I thought you’d look.”
	His clawed hands found his hips. “You’re a girl… Of what age?”
	“Twelve,” she shrugged like he ought to have known that. “You?” she then asked.
	“I am ancient…” he cried, which would have inspired awe and shock equally if a twelve-year old girl wasn’t the sole member of his audience. He fell with a sigh and hovered an inch above the smoking carpet. “How, how did you summon me?” She pointed sheepishly to a leather-bound tome. Upon leafing through some of its weathered passages, he seemed to recognise the author’s hand. “Where did you get this?”
	“Occulty.com,” she half-shrugged. “Guaranteed delivery in three days, even to R’lyeh.”
	He groaned, rubbing the erupted skin around his curved horns. “Why… Why have you summoned me, child?”
	“Santa,” she whispered. “The book said how to summon Santa…” Then it clicked. Whatever font the author wrote with had made his true title indecipherable from the name of the man in a red suit that everyone loved. Alas, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
	“How, to summon, Santa,” his long eyelashes fluttered with little flames. “Girl, I am…” Disappointment shined in the pits of her eyes; disappointment in herself. “I am, I am Santa’s cousin. Satan.”
	She wiped them quickly with her sleeve. “The Devil is Santa’s cousin?”
	“In a roundabout way,” he floated around her room. Outside her door, screaming and shouting echoed. “Girl, what is your name?”
	“Lilith, Lilith Wakefield,” she whispered, following him with her teddy in tow. Satan sat on her bed and brushed the creases from its quilt. She hopped up beside him and pursed her lips. “Satan?”
	“Yes, little one?” he replied.
	“What’s… What’s Hell like?” she pondered.
	A pang of something twitched his cheek. “Cold, surprisingly.”
	“Do you like it?” she continued.
	“Does Cthulhu like sleeping in R’lyeh?” he nudged her arm. She smirked in reply, playing with her coal pony-tail. “It, it is home, to me.”
	“That’s good,” she looked up to him and, in that moment, Lucifer Lightbringer felt something that he hadn’t felt since the dawn of creation. “I tried summoning them all…” her eyes then flicked to her teddy. “Santa was the only one left.”
	Lucifer smiled sadly at her plight. “Lilith, darling. If Santa were here, what would you ask of him?”
	She took a decidedly deep breath and closed her eyes; rehearsing what she had been planning to say to Old Nick one more time – as if a thousand times over six months wasn’t enough. “I want my Mom and Dad to stop fighting.”
	Satan nodded knowingly; him being somewhat experienced in the realm of family feuding. “My Father and I used to fight all the time.”
	Hope glistened in her pupils. “Are you still fighting?”
	He adjusted his tie and grinned. “Father likes to hold a grudge.”
	“Well, my Dad’s not sure he wants to live with us anymore,” she murmured blankly, her hand tightening around Cthulhu’s arm. She then hopped from the bed. On the back of her oversized jumper, Satan could see a Hello-Kitty version of Cthulhu with ‘Cute-ulhu’ written in giant, slime-green lettering. Lilith put her teddy in amongst her others and went to the tome.
	“Lilith,” his viper-like eyes glanced through her room. “I see you have an obsession…”
	“Hm?” she looked back.
	“Your teddies, your jumper,” he added.
	“Oh, yeah,” she chuckled. “I just think they’re neat, y’know? Cthulhu is my favourite… I wish I could give him a hug. He must be lonely down in R’yleh; waiting on his friends.” Satan felt her words resonate in whatever was left of his soul. “Do you have friends?”
	“I have a dog,” he smiled, flicking his hair from his nose. Downstairs, a door banged shut with a blossoming echo.
	Lilith’s lashes became wet and sparkly. “I think, I think Dad’s made his mind up…”
	“I believe he has,” Satan winced, secretly cursing a lifetime of car-trouble on Mr Wakefield. “Y’know Lilith,” he finished the curse with a stroke of his finger, “my Father wasn’t sure he wanted to live with me either.”
	She turned. “You miss him?”
	“Everyday,” he shook his head with a sorry simper. “I hated him for it, but time is the healer of all wounds. And besides,” he alluded to himself with a silly expression, “I turned out ok.”
	“Satan,” she closed the tome and put it aside, “can we be friends?”
	He grinned as pleasantly as he could, revealing his silver fangs that pinched his maroon lips. “Lilith, my dear. We can.” A crack of joy lit up her face, but it wasn’t enough to make her smile, not fully. “But… I’m sorry I can’t grant you your wish. You pesky humans are a law unto yourselves.”
	“I’ll get over it,” she feigned a smirk. “It was a stupid idea anyway…”
	“On the contrary,” Satan stood and approached her. “You managed to summon the Lord of Hell in your bedroom.”
	Her cheeks blushed a maddening hue of pink. “It’s not like I knew what I was doing.” Satan laughed, the first genuine laugh he’d had in years, but Lilith’s expression hadn’t changed. “So, I guess you’ll be going back to Hell?”
	“Yes. Someone has to keep a firm grasp on the place. But,” he threw his hand to the wall over her bed. Numbers began burning into the paint and plaster: 1501-666-666. “That, is my direct line,” he took his crimson phone from his pocket and showed it off. “If you ever, EVER, need anything. Call me.”
	Lilith didn’t move, not until the tears burst free from her eyes whereupon she ran and hugged him tight. Shock gripped him first, but his arms instinctively came down around her shoulders and he hugged her back; his wings enveloping them both.
	After a time she pulled away and looked to him with a giant, teary-eyed grin. “Thank you, Satan.” He allowed his grasp to fall loose, freeing her to skip to her bed. From under it she pulled a tiny diary and began scribbling furiously. “I’m not very good at drawing, but I want to give you something to take home.” She tore a ragged page from the journal and held it out; a stick-figure girl and a big black shadow – holding hands, no-less. He folded it thrice and hovered to the middle of the summoning circle, fighting his eyes to keep them dry.
	“Farewell, little Devil,” he turned and whispered. A column of silent, screaming faces enveloped him and, just like that, he was gone.

Six years, six months and six days later…

“Dammit!” one of the three boys snarled, sheltering his fallen friend who had, very recently, been kicked in the scrotum by a dainty foot with a dainty Doc Marten on it.
	“You’re mine!” the third lunged for her but met a glancing slice from a sharp necklace; a five-pointed star anchored in her clenched hand.
	“Don’t push me,” she backed away with certainty.
	“Kill her!” the second cried, still rolling around in a puddle of his own urine.
	The click of a switchblade reverberated along the walls. “You’re dead, goth-girl.”
	Her hand found her phone and she presented it to them. “Don’t push me,” she warned again.
	“Please,” he relished, “be my guest.”
	With an assured flick of her fingers, she dialled the only number she needed to. “Uncle Lucy, I’m in trouble.” The beeps of the call ending underscored their confident chortles.
	“Lucy?” he guffawed, “that’s a weird name for an Unc-” A bolt of black lightning struck the ground betwixt them and from the sable cloud it threw up a dark figure in an onyx suit stepped forward, calmly fixing his blood-red tie and swiping charcoal from his maroon lips.
	“You, who would dare assail a Princess of Hell,” he pointed to each boy in turn. “Go. Home.” Their anguished wails followed, but when she opened her eyes again she was met by an empty alleyway and a friendly pair of serpentine pupils.
	She smiled with relief. “Satan.”
	“Lilith,” he smiled in reply. “Are you unharmed?”
	“Yes-yes, I’m fine,” she swiped her hair back into place. “Thanks.”
	“Not at all… I’m sorry, I had to reschedule last week; something came up downstairs,” he made the appropriate finger-quotes and rolled his lazy eyes. “How’s Mom?”
	“Yeah, she’s good,” Lilith ushered him into a slow canter towards the alley’s end, sidestepping around the disembodied puddle of pee.
	“And Dad?” he asked cautiously.
	“Dad’s good,” she shrugged. “His car broke down… Again.”
	“Hmph, how strange…” he feigned cluelessness. “That must be the fourth-”
	“Fourth this month, yeah… But he’s always able to afford new ones, so,” she shrugged happily then.
	“Good, good,” Satan nodded, his wings flapping softly along with his steps. “And College? How was College this week?”
	“Eh, it was ok,” she pursed her lips. “I didn’t miss any days though, so yay-me, I guess.”
	“I’m glad you’re seeing it through.” Satan patted her back. “Philology is hard, but it’ll be worth it.”
	“We’ve only started the Necronomicon,” she moaned. “It’ll be another year before I’ll be able to say hello to him.”
	“I wouldn’t worry,” Satan winked to a passing stranger now that they had exited the alley. “Cute-ulhu is a patient soul. Besides, he’s quite fond of you, or so he tells me.”
	“Next weekend for sure?” she asked, mostly with her eyebrows.
	“Next weekend, I promise,” he nodded.
	“Ok,” she shrugged with a smile. She then gestured to the ice-cream shop on the opposite side of the street. “Wanna’ grab a milkshake while you’re here?”
	“You’re buying,” he pointed.
	“Said the Lord of Hell who doesn’t have to pay rent…” she muttered with a smirk.
	Satan veiled his wings and led her across. “Souls of the damned aren’t legal tender in these parts.” He opened the door for her.
	She entered under his arm. “Did you miss the part where I said you’re the Lord of Hell?”
	“Mhm… Mint or vanilla?” he grumbled with a twinkle in his eye.
	“Guess,” she bit her sanguine lip.
	And so they shared a pair of mint milkshakes, enjoying each other’s company, their beverages and the fading light of an October evening settling over the city.
	A stray thought entered Lilith’s mind as she slurped the last dregs of her milkshake, something Uncle Lucy had said to her on what she thought was going to be the worst night of her life – which turned out to be one of the most memorable.
	‘Summoning Santa… Best. Idea. Ever.’

Auf Wiedersehen.