“As the shoppers rush home with their treasures…”

Jake’s deep tenor boomed along with the radio as the decades’ old carol kept him company on his vigil.  The van’s wipers squeaked out a mismatched accompaniment as they tried to keep the glass clear of the season’s first snow. The wind blew it almost horizontal against the windshield as if he were speeding along the freeway rather than parked.

“I love this time of year,” he announced to the empty van.

And he did. Other folks might cringe as the holiday sales ads and store decorations slowly crept their way back towards summer.  He’d heard complaints when they started making their appearance before Thanksgiving, and this year it was “out with Halloween, in with Santa” for a lot of stores.  Some people didn’t like it, said it was making the holiday too commercial.  But for him, seeing the first fake snow of the season meant only good things were coming, and they were coming faster and earlier each year.

Christmas Eve was his favorite. Everyone was either home with the lights on the tree blazing, or out enjoying their last minute holiday shopping and mingling. Especially in this bustling coastal town, filled with vacationers and year-round residents, everyone seemed to have someplace to be, something to do.  Every year, Christmas Eve was always the best night of the year for him.

As the sun set over the grey Pacific shore, Jake watched as one family and then another down the block began loading up into their SUVs.  Some emerged laden with presents, brightly colored boxes piled high and stashed in a kaleidoscope of commercialism in trunks and back seats.  Others left their homes empty handed, just bundled against the bitter cold. Their breath hung in the early winter night, visual testament to the words they tossed back and forth before sealing themselves into their luxury suburban vehicles and driving away towards the coastal highway a few blocks eastward. Finally, it was quiet, and dark, save for the ubiquitous multi-colored lights.  Jake went to work.

He started with the house he’d seen folks leave from bearing gifts.  While those who’d left empty-handed might have more loot still under the tree, those who’d carried presents with them were likely to remain gone longer.  After more than a decade of holiday “shopping” and a few close calls, he’d got this down to a science.  The fear-thrill that had once accompanied every trip was now mostly gone, which was, he supposed, a good thing.  He had no desire to end up in jail, or with a record, but sometimes he missed the jolt of adrenaline he experienced when things went a little off plan.

He backed the van into the drive and grabbed his favorite duffle off of the passenger seat before slipping around to the back door where there was less likelihood of him being seen. The back yard butted up against a strip of beach, with a stairway descending down towards the water, but this late in the year, no one was likely to be out on the ice-frosted sand.  Within a minute, he was inside of his chosen target.  He let his instinct, and the glow of the low-wattage desk lap, illuminate the way to the home’s office.  A quick peek in the filing cabinet produced a box of checks, banking information and a file conveniently labeled “Passwords and PINs.” He removed the important files with surgical precision.  Placed carefully in the bottom of the huge dufflebag, they weighed only a few pounds, but were worth their weight in gold.

On top of the paperwork went the laptop from the desk, along with an mp3 player, and a digital camera with its own printing station. Jake loved the trend for miniaturization of luxury electronics; it made his job so much easier.

He hefted the bag, gauging its weight and checked his watch. 3 minutes, and maybe 10 pounds. He had plenty of time and space for a more thorough search.  Leaving the office light on behind him, he padded back out to the front room following the glow of red, blue and green Christmas lights.

The TV was too bulky to bother with, and, worse yet, five years old at least.  The game system, however, looked to be this year’s model, and the DVD player was nearly as new.  Both would be quick to pawn and fit easily in the duffle, along with the conveniently stacked games and movies from the shelf beside it and a double handful of high-tech accessories.  The bag was still more than half-empty, though.  He turned to the tree that took up fully a quarter of the living room’s hardwood floor. The space beneath it was bare. 5 minutes. Maybe 30 pounds. Plenty of room in the sack. Time for a little holiday cheer.

He hit the jackpot on the third try. The presents, already wrapped and ready to be put beneath the tree, filled most of the hallway closet.  “Bingo.”  Now to figure out what to take.

Presents might seem like the ultimate goal for someone in his line of work this time of year, but in his experience they were a crap shoot. For every DVD player or cutting edge game system, there were a dozen sweaters, pajamas and perfume “gift sets” that were barely worth opening. He’d gotten pretty good at judging the cream from the crap with a quick lift-and shake, but more than once he’d come back with what he thought was a electronic treasure, only to find a cheap dimestore white elephant inside the wrapping. In some ways he was doing folks a favor, he thought as he filled the nylon bag with brightly wrapped boxes.  After all, if he’d been disappointed when finding a cheap-assed cosmetic set, imagine how the intended victim would have felt when she found it rather than a new cell phone or Blackberry on Christmas morning.

Fully immersed in his humanitarian musings, it took a moment for Jake’s mind to process the creaking from over head.  It came again, and he froze, both hands wrapped around a shoe-box sized present.  Footsteps? He didn’t breathe, didn’t move, until the sound came again.

The unmistakable click of claws on floorboards. A dog.  A big, but obviously not very alert, one - no barking accompanied the slow steps crossing the floor overhead.  Jake shoved the package into the bag and reached for the hefty flashlight that hung from its holster on his belt. He didn’t carry a weapon when he worked; the penalties for breaking and entering were bad enough, but he’d heard of too many cases where the charges were upped if there was a gun involved.  He wasn’t willing to pay that kind of price.  But in a pinch the 6 D-cell batteries in his torch carried enough weight to cold-cock someone who interrupted his work, be it human or canine. A crushed-in skull was as deadly as a bullet, but much less likely to earn him “premeditated murder” rather than “assault,” if he was caught.

He stood, pulse ringing in his ears, as the click-clack tapped towards the top of the stairs and then paused, just out of sight. One hand still hefting the flashlight like a club, he reached for the bag, gauging the distance to the back door.

A soft footstep fell on the top step, and then another further down. Jake frowned, scowling at the dark stairway as a man’s bare feet and plaid-flannel-clad legs emerged down the steps. He blinked, trying to reconcile the sight with the sound he’d heard a moment ago. The man descended another step, moving slowly but with no real hesitation, and Jake realized he was wasting time.  He turned towards the back door, trying not to make noise as he began crossing the hardwood floor.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

Something in the timber of the resident’s voice caught Jake like a hand on his collar, and he found himself stopping halfway to the back door.  Outside, a gust of wind shuddered against the screen door.

“Kind of low, don’t you think? Breaking in on Christmas Eve?” The man’s voice dropped to a low growl, the rumble carrying across the space between them to vibrate in Jake’s gut.

“I…” Jake felt the rush of adrenaline tighten his muscles like a spring and he struggled to take another step forward. He could hear the man behind him and every fiber of his being screamed for him to sprint the ten feet remaining between him and the back door.  But his muscles would not obey even when he heard the man pad slowly up behind him.  Claws clicked on the wooden floor as the stranger closed the space between them.

Jake whirled, swinging the heavy flashlight towards the man’s head.  The blow was fast, fueled by fear and desperation, but the man was faster.  He caught Jake’s wrist in a steel grip, far stronger than his wiry form would have suggested he was capable of.  Jake struggled, trying to strike him anyway, and the half-naked man snarled and tightened his grip.  The bones of the burglar’s wrist grated against each other with an audible crunch as the half-naked man wrenched the blow away.  The heavy flashlight crashed to the floor and rolled to clank against the metal tree stand.  Jake dropped the heavy duffle and drew back to aim a blow at the man’s midsection with his free fist.

“I donn tink ssso.”  The man’s voice froze Jake’s blow in mid-swing. The low growl had taken on a strange lisp, and when Jake raised his eyes to meet the man’s golden-eyed gaze the reason became obvious.

Only he wasn’t a man. Not any more. The multi-colored glow of the Christmas tree lights illuminated drool glistening on a jutting muzzle.  Above the gaping maw, feral eyes reflected back the tree’s glow.  Thick fur covered the creature’s muscular body all the way to the waistband of the pajama pants, which now looked ridiculously short as the canine-bent legs gathered up their length.

The creature’s upper lip curled back in a lupine snarl that sent a chill down Jake’s spine, and temporarily erased the firey pain from his likely-broken wrist.

“Wha….” Jake tried to backpedal away from the monster, but was held tight by its steely grasp on his injured arm.

“Nah gahna rrrrroooon Crrrrrrrasssmasss,” the creature growled, tossing Jake against the wall like a child’s doll thrown in a tantrum. It leapt the room’s distance in a single bound and snarled its talons into his hair.  The room’s lights spun, blinking wildly as his head bounced off the hardwood floor again and again. Finally, they went out.

***

Jake recognized the sounds of his van’s somewhat temperamental engine being cranked to life, even over the roar of the waves. His head throbbed as consciousness painfully crept up on him. His wrist was on fire, and the slightest movement revealed both arms to be bound to his ankles.  He was covered in… something.  Something heavy… and wet.  He turned his head desperately, despite the blinding flash of pain that moving elicited behind his eyeballs.  The searing heat inside his skull made thinking difficult.  Not covered in something… wrapped in something.  He tried to roll, to shake it free, but it encased him, and heavy lumps of something anchored it –and him—in one place.

The van sputtered away, and Jake was left alone. The cold crept in, damp at first, and then truly wet.  Soaking wet.  In a few moments the icy waves were pushing hard against him, pressing his face against the inside of the soaked canvas duffle he’d packed full of loot earlier. Only the sandy stones behind him kept him from rolling with the ocean’s tides.  Instead, as the water rose, he struggled to keep his face above the icy surf, straining for breath through the salt-water soaked fabric of the bag. Numbness quenched the fire in his wrist, drove away the lightning behind his eyes, and slowly enveloped him in a black sleep as thick as the duffle around him.

Up the beach, the monster padded slowly back towards his home, leaving large pawprints in the frozen sand along the shoreline.  He watched alone as the tide swallowed the black duffle and its contents, then slowly crossed the backyard and returned home.

At the backdoor, he shifted back to his human form and carefully scraped his bare feet on the rough mat to clear the beach sand from between his toes.  It only took a few moments to return the would-be-loot to its rightful place, but he took a bit longer to carefully arrange the presents under the tree.

He’d been disappointed at first, when they’d realized Christmas Eve fell on the full moon. He normally spent those nights “working late”, holed up in a hotel room somewhere, so doped up on sleeping pills that nothing could raise his ire enough to trigger a transformation.  No sense risking some trivial family squabble bringing about his curse in the middle of the night.  But with the family spending Christmas Eve visiting relatives anyway, he’d decided to stay at the house instead. They’d told the kids he was going to be “waiting for Santa” to make sure their toys were delivered, and thank goodness he had.

By the time the rest of the family returned on Christmas morning, there was no trace of the intruder, and everyone’s gifts were waiting under the tree.  His wife kissed him soundly, while the children made a beeline for their presents.

“Any problems?” she asked, brow furrowing slightly with worry as it did every time they rejoined after one of his “nights away.”

“Not a bit,” he reassured her.

From the front room, the children squealed at the bounty they’d discovered beneath the tree.

“Santa came! Santa Claus came!” the elder rushed back to grab his parent’s hands and pull them towards the living room.

Their father began distributing the presents one by one, then paused as something beside the tree stand caught his attention.  Unaware of her father’s discovery, the youngest squealed in joy as she opened her first present. “He knew! Santa knew what I wanted! Hurray for Santa Claus!” the young girl cheered, embracing the doll she’d unwrapped.

“Hurray for Santa Claws, indeed,” her father said, as he slipped the broken flashlight under the tree skirt where it couldn’t interfere with his family’s celebration.