There’s something inherently creepy about Santa: he’s always watching, even when you can’t see him. He has the power to make definitive judgment calls on whether someone has been “naughty” or “nice,” then punish or reward them accordingly. He sneaks into people’s houses while they’re sleeping. It’s not that big of a leap from “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to “there’s a stranger in my house and I’m terrified.” In Jo Gibson’s Slay Bells (1994) and D.E. Athkins’ Secret Santa (2001), groups of young adults find themselves trapped with murderous Santas and instead of telling him what they want for Christmas, they instead have to make the case for why he shouldn’t kill them all.
In Slay Bells, a group of college students are spending their holiday break working at the brand new Crossroads Mall in rural Minnesota. Rather than being located in a populated area, the developers chose to situate the mall equidistant from three nearby towns: Prairie Falls, Portersville, and Two Rivers. While this (presumably) makes for easy access to a greater number of shoppers, it also means that the mall itself is geographically isolated, not particularly close to anything else at all. They’re still expecting a great turnout for the mall’s festive grand opening, complete with Santa, prancing elves, a giant tree, complimentary gifts for all the children, and a grand prize drawing for a pair of zippy snowmobiles … until the blizzard of the century blows in, cutting Crossroads Mall off from the outside world. There are dozens of employees readying for the mall’s opening day and just a handful of four wheel drive vehicles capable of conquering the snow, and once people have been matched up with appropriate transportation to get them home, a handful of college students are stranded in the mall, battening the hatches and waiting out the storm. But there are worse places to be stuck, right? There’s food and water, heat, protection from the elements, even entertainment in the movie theatre and a bunch of beds to choose from in the furniture store.
But there’s also one very angry Santa and he knows who’s been good and who’s been bad. This Santa has a very personal vendetta against the mall and its developers, which stands on land that had once been his family’s farm. He is initially bitter and heartbroken, but as he listens to the lyrics of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” playing over the mall’s loudspeaker, he finds himself thinking that “He’d never really noticed it before, but the Santa in the song was vengeful. The first line was a warning. You better watch out. It sent a clear message to everyone who listened. Santa would get you if you weren’t good” (364, emphasis original). When the snowstorm comes, Santa finds himself in the mall with several people that, by his subjective estimation, have been very naughty, and he has the chance to make them pay.
The trapped students are an interesting group, with lots of complicated dynamics and contentious shared histories. Nice girl Diana has a crush on Jay, but Jay’s ex-girlfriend Heather—who dumped him when he lost the starting quarterback spot on the football team—wants him back too, now that Jay’s recovered, regained his starting position, and is Mr. Popular again. Jay is Diana’s roommate Cindy’s older brother and while Cindy has a tough girl vibe, she’s really a kitten-rescuing softie. Larry is Jay’s best friend and roommate, and while he’s a pretty nice guy, he has a mean competitive streak. Dave’s dad owns the Crossroads Pub and has told them to help themselves. Hal’s a quiet loner and Sue’s main motivations are directing the elf prancing line and pining for her boyfriend Ronnie, who she thinks just might propose this Christmas (though to be fair, since she dies first, there’s not much time for other motivation or characterization to develop). They all know each other from school and their overlapping social circles, but a wild card is thrown into the mix with the arrival of the local newstation’s camera operator Paul, who was there shooting a segment about the mall’s grand opening, left with the news station team, then came back through the snow because he thinks their snowbound story will make for good television … and because he has a crush on Cindy.
Things start out pretty holly and jolly, with some laughs and beers at the Crossroads Pub. But Sue got a mysterious present from Santa under the mall’s massive Christmas tree, telling her that “You better watch out; you better not cry” (382, emphasis original). And Sue really doesn’t have much of a chance to cry at all when she wanders out into the snowstorm to see if Ronnie’s coming to get her, and Santa pushes a heavy planter off of an overhang and right onto Sue’s head. Throughout the book, Gibson gives readers glimpses of Santa’s perspective and motivations, and it turns out that Sue’s unforgivable crime was canvassing local residents to solicit donations for a children’s play area at the mall. Grandpa made a pledge to pay installments, forgot about it, and the debt ended up in collections, which certainly didn’t help the farm’s precarious financial position. Sue hasn’t even been intentionally “naughty”: as Santa muses, “She was totally oblivious to the bad things she’d done, but that didn’t matter. The net result was the same. She’d cheated him out of money that should have been his, and it had gone to the very mall that had robbed him of his land” (377-8). The others’ transgressions include being rude to his grandmother, being dismissive of his grandmother’s prize-winning strawberry jam recipe, sabotaging his grandfather’s fishing tackle to win a competition, and asking his grandmother to donate pies for a fundraiser and then selling the pies for an insultingly low price. He’s also pretty mad at the fountain, which is all that remains of the now-dammed up stream where he and his grandfather used to fish, but you can’t get revenge on a fountain—or a mall, for that matter—so he has to settle for picking the others off one by one.
Santa’s got plenty of time though, because they end up stuck in the mall for several days. This raises some thought-provoking questions about the accessibility of the mall, the local emergency support services, and why no one ever came back in one of those four wheel drives to get any of them (or even check on them to make sure they’re okay), but that’s neither here nor there. They do their best to have a good time: they drink in the pub, check out the selections at the movie theater, hit up the bowling alley, and dress up in fancy clothes from one of the expensive boutiques and have dinner at the mall’s nicest restaurant (which is easy to do because all of the entrees are frozen and just need heated up, a questionable gourmet standard). There’s plenty of flirting and romantic intrigue. It kind of puts a damper on the fun when people keep getting murdered though. Dave gets electrocuted, Larry gets stabbed by a shard of shattered plate glass window, Heather plummets to her death in a sabotaged elevator. While the first few murders are staged as accidents, the trapped group eventually comes to the conclusion that the murderer must be one of them, and, in all likelihood, someone they’ve known for years and never suspected capable of such violence, though new guy Paul frequently makes his way toward the top of the suspect list (what do they really know about him anyway?) and it’s always possible that someone else either hid when the mall closed or wandered in from the storm.
When Hal is revealed as the secret Santa, it turns out that the others knew that his grandparents had previously owned the land and that Hal hates the mall, which has remained a completely overlooked and undiscussed motive despite multiple conversations about who might be doing this and why. It also turns out that the grand prize snowmobiles in the middle of the mall have been gassed up and ready to go this whole time, which at least two of the characters knew about and simply forgot, even when escape began to to look like a life-or-death proposition. All things considered, it’s a wonder that so many of them survived for as long as they did. When Hal’s secret is discovered, he starts shooting at everyone, then falls to his death by leaning on a railing he loosened to facilitate the next “accident,” as the conveniently romantically-paired survivors (Diana and Jay, Cindy and Paul) flee to safety.
In D.E. Athkins’ Secret Santa, the characters find themselves in another fish-in-a-barrel type situation, though in this case they are on a private island off the coast of Georgia rather than in a snowbound Minnesota mall. Memorably named mean girl Djuna Dufarge throws a wild and emotionally traumatizing holiday party every year: super exclusive guest list, always several days long and in an isolated location from which there is no escape, and with the extra added pressure of bringing several Secret Santa gifts without knowing who the recipient will be until you get there. And despite all of these horrific downsides, Djuna’s classmates are desperate to be invited.
Like Slay Bells, the guest list here is small, exclusive, and complicated: aside from Djuna herself, there’s Djuna’s best friend Barnett, a stoic and potentially traumatized Goth girl sidekick who never gets the backstory she deserves. Djuna’s ex-boyfriend Jeremy is invited, along with his perky new cheerleader girlfriend Kip. New girl Cleo and flirty boy-next-door Grant score invites, along with Pammi, who pretends she’s a boy-crazy airhead but is secretly brilliant (though still boy-crazy). Barnett’s ex-boyfriend Neal is invited, suggesting that even Djuna’s best friend isn’t exempted from her emotional manipulation and abuse; Cleo also has a strong emotional reaction to Neal, who reminds her of her abusive ex-boyfriend Dan. The group is rounded out by the people who maintain the house and island: two handsome, mysterious young men named Tuck and Teddy, and the housekeeper Mrs. West, who is Teddy’s stepmother and Tuck’s aunt. Their family used to own the island before they sold it to Djuna’s family, which seems to be a source of sublimated tension, complicated by the fact that Djuna, Tuck, and Teddy grew up together on the island and have been companions (if not exactly friends) for almost their entire lives.
There are plenty of dangers to contend with on the island, including sheer cliff faces, tunnels that fill with water when the high tide comes in, and hostile weather conditions when a storm blows in, making it impossible for them to leave the island. There’s maybe a pirate-dog ghost that howls in the night and Grant is oddly preoccupied with whether or not there are sharks, even though it’s too cold to swim and no one goes anywhere near the water. Barnett somehow cuts her hand on a Christmas tree ornament rigged with a razorblade. They draw their Secret Santa names and when the first mysterious gift is bestowed, Kip gets a dismembered cheerleader doll, floating in an odd and disgusting mix of mystery goo and dead bird. Fa la la la la.
Secret Santa is full of unexplored nooks and crannies. There’s a lot more going on with Barnett than meets the eye, but Athkins doesn’t give us many clues as to what that might be. Ditto with Cleo’s back story, including where she came from, how she’s settling in in her new hometown (bizarre Christmas party aside), and her relationship with Dan, which is alluded to several times in her responses to Neal, but rarely directly addressed. Grant seems nice enough, but is also mysterious and perhaps a bit of a lothario, though we never see enough of him to know for sure. Jeremy and Kip seem to like each other and Jeremy says he’s over Djuna, but on more than one occasion, when something goes awry, Jeremy and Kip aren’t in the same place at the same time. Kip maybe has mysterious psychic powers, though when Kip has a premonition-related fainting spell, the others shrug it off, with Djuna saying “She gets like this … Everyone knows about Kip” (82).
Barnett disappears one night and between her being nowhere in the house, the door locked from the inside, and the storm raging outside, the others fear the worst. Since Neal is the top suspect in Barnett-related foul play, he is confined to his room with one of his peers assigned to watch him at all times: first Grant, then Pammi. When Neal and Pammi disappear, Djuna is forced to admit that she and Barnett had been playing a joke on the others, with Barnett planning to hide in the boat house until they were all good and freaked out. But now Barnett is actually missing too, along with Neal and Pammi. The lights go out, the group splits up, and mayhem (of course) ensues.
Djuna tells Cleo and Kip that they need to trust her and follow Djuna out into the darkness and then down into a creepy cave, with the high tide coming in and no way out once Djuna pulls the ladder, insisting that this is the “one place where I know you’ll be safe” (130). The cave is already occupied, as they explore an even darker offshoot from the main cave and find Barnett, Neal, and Pammi. After unsuccessfully searching for the others, Djuna joins them in the cave and when Teddy follows her, she pegs him as the culprit behind everything, telling the others “There’s your Psycho Santa … Twisted little Teddy. Never right since his daddy died. Blames me for it, don’t you, Teddy?” (142). Teddy’s father died after rescuing six-year-old Djuna from the cave, only to be killed himself when some of the earth fell in. While Teddy admits that he holds Djuna responsible for his father’s death and “I guess I always will” (143), he denies having anything to do with the horrors taking place on the island. And he’s telling the truth.
Much like Slay Bells’ Hal attempts to get revenge for the wrongs committed against his grandparents, Mrs. West blames Djuna for her husband’s death, the family’s loss of the island, and the life of happiness, travel, and leisure that she believes should have been theirs, if only Djuna’s family hadn’t come along and ruined everything. As Mrs. West looks down into the cave at Djuna and her friends, she asks Djuna “what did I have after that?” (145). Other than catering to Djuna’s family’s needs, Mrs. West has nothing and therefore, nothing to lose. When she offers Teddy the chance to climb the ladder to safety, however, Teddy yanks on the ladder, causing his stepmother to fall and giving the others the chance to scramble to safety before the tide comes in. Teddy chooses to do what is right rather than get vengeance for his father’s death or buy into his stepmother’s dream of punishing Djuna, and they all make it home for Christmas (except for Mrs. West, who’s headed for jail).
With scary Santas lurking about, here are a few holiday survival tips: Always have an escape route and avoid holiday plans and parties that will leave you stranded, with no way out. Whenever possible, avoid spending the holidays with someone who may want to kill you. Be extra careful when opening gifts from anonymous gifters: it could be a song lyric or a dismembered doll, but either way, it probably won’t be good. Lock the doors, block the chimneys, and be good for goodness sake.
Alissa Burger is an associate professor at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. She writes about horror, queer representation in literature and popular culture, graphic novels, and Stephen King. She loves yoga, cats, and cheese.
