They say nothing brings people together like the holidays. Stress and strife just melt away in the sounds of a crackling fire, the sweet smell of a baking turkey, and the warm glow of a pine tree covered in twinkling lights and surrounded by a pile of shiny packages.
It’s a bit harder, however, when you have fifteen people spending the holidays in the same house. Whole families aren’t meant to be in such close proximity for more than a day. A mildly annoying habit is amplified one-thousand-fold in a matter of minutes. Something expensive gets broken. Close relationships are tested, and all the eggnog and caroling in the world won’t cut the tension.
My family celebrated such a Christmas in 1969, when my family’s attempt at a Norman Rockwell holiday moment devolved into the punchlines of a series of macabre Charles Addams cartoons.
The relatives arrived on December 23. Dad’s oldest brother, Uncle Victor, showed up first, with Aunt Helen and my weird cousin, Igor, in tow.
I had been hoping they’d show up last. The less time I could spend with Igor, the better. Hanging out with Igor was always a chore. Like most twelve-year-old boys, I wanted to talk about normal things, like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and why the New York Yankees were taking so long to get back to the World Series.
Igor couldn’t be bothered with such things. He preferred to talk about spending nights in overgrown graveyards and dank crypts, or the colony of insects he was cultivating under his bed.
“Hey Igor,” I said as he stepped out of the car. “You read the latest Spider-Man?”
“No,” he croaked. “But look at what I found last night in the cemetery.”
He held out an old cigar box and opened the lid. I leaned forward and peered inside. Laying flat in the box was a severed human hand. The skin was mottled and green. Tiny bits of flesh lay peppered on the bottom of the box. I wretched.
“N-neat,” I stammered, choking down bile.
“Watch this,” he said, taking a pin and poking at the fingers of the hand. It twitched with each poke.
“Awesome,” I groaned. He clapped the box shut and walked toward the house.
Before long, station wagons crowded the driveway like a tightly packed can of sardines. The clamor of arguing in-laws filled the house, drowning out the sounds of Barbra Streisand’s A Christmas Album playing on the hi-fi.
My father and his brothers – mad scientists that they were – quarreled over who would get priority use of the laboratory in the basement, and whether it would be used at all. Dad had promised mom that there would be no experiments over the holidays, but my uncles were insistent.
“Hank, you saw the hand Igor brought with him,” Uncle Victor said. “It’s a fresh find, and I had no time to preserve it before traveling here.”
“You’ll have enough time to fiddle with your dead tissues after Christmas,” Uncle Horace interrupted. “My cultures cannot wait. Prometheus here is getting restless. He needs a mate.”
He patted the bag he held at his waist. Inside, something thumped.
“You see, he’s teaching himself how to escape,” he said.
Over in the living room, my grandparents were lecturing Aunt Helen.
“You can’t let him think that’s okay!” Grandpa said, gesturing to the window.
“It’s horrible,” Grandma added. “How will he make any friends at school? What will your neighbors think?”
Outside, Igor frolicked among a horrific winter tableau. A headless snowman stood, arms stretched to the sky. Its head lay on the ground at its side. Behind it stood another snowman, a hacksaw clenched in its twig arms. Toward the road, Igor had constructed a makeshift gallows from the pile of wood scraps Dad kept in the garage. Under the gallows stood a snowman with a noose wrapped around its neck.
“Oh, he’s just being creative,” Aunt Helen retorted. “He’ll grow out of it, and if he doesn’t, he’ll make a hell of a writer someday.”
Just then, my mother yelled from the kitchen.
“Herbert! Keep your… son… or… friend… or whatever this is away from the food!”
I ran to the kitchen and saw my mother in a defensive crouch in front of the stove. In her right hand was a wooden spoon, in her left, a potholder. Whatever it was my Uncle Herbert brought with him stood facing her, hissing. Its arms hung limp at its sides as it leaned toward her. The green, mottled skin of its greasy nose nearly touched her.
Uncle Herbert burst into the kitchen.
“Randolph!” he shouted. “Stand down!”
The fiend turned to Uncle Herbert and cocked its head.
“Come here and sit down,” Uncle Herbert said, and pointed to the kitchen table.
The ghoul grunted and obeyed.
“My apologies,” Uncle Herbert said. “I just re-animated him last week. He hasn’t regained his impulse control yet.”
“Just keep him away from the food,” Mom said. “I can’t police the kitchen non-stop for the next four days.”
I turned to leave the kitchen and dive back into the din of Dad and his bickering brothers. On the hi-fi, Barbra Streisand was wondering aloud what “upsot” meant. Sighing, I walked to the closet, put on my jacket and trudged outside to help Igor with his snow massacre.
———
Christmas Eve dawned with my mother screaming in the living room. My brother Billy, Igor and I ran down the stairs and saw Mom on her knees in the middle of the room, surrounded by massive splotches and smears of red, purple and orange all over the carpet. Uncle Herbert’s ghoul was draped over the arm of the couch, snoring.
“Herbert! Your thing got into the gift basket from the Human Jelly Emporium!” she yelled. “Why in the world would you let him roam around at night?”
“I thought I had the door to the bedroom locked,” he said, staring at the scene from the stairs.
“My carpet is ruined.”
“Don’t worry, hon,” Dad said, entering and kneeling down to put an arm around Mom. “One of the potions brewing in the basement should get that out of the carpet. Most of them are very caustic.”
“I don’t want it to be cleaned up,” she replied. “I want the mess not to be made in the first place. I told you to keep him away from food, Herbert!”
She started to weep. Dad lifted her up and ushered her into the kitchen. Uncle Herbert just shrugged. The ghoul, Randolph, kept snoring on the couch.
Later that day, Igor almost killed everyone at the neighborhood’s annual Christmas Eve football game. For Billy and me, the game was the best part of the season – two teams of kids, battling it out in the snow for athletic supremacy. You could tackle harder because of the snow. It was survival of the fittest out there. There would be no quarter given.
Igor, never the most athletic kid in the family, fretted about the game all morning. He, along with Uncle Horace’s kids, Septimus, Karl and Minnie, would be joining in on the fun.
Fun was the last thing on Igor’s mind. He paced the house, muttering to himself about broken femurs and impacted spines.
“No better than any of Father’s corpses,” he mumbled repeatedly.
At game time, Billy and I gathered the cousins for the walk to the park. Igor was nowhere to be found.
“I think I saw him go down to the basement,” Septimus said.
“Probably hiding,” I replied. “Let’s just leave him. No use dragging him out there if he doesn’t want to go.”
We left for the park. The air was crisp, and a fresh batch of snow covered the ground. It compacted beneath our feet with a satisfying crunch as we trudged to the showdown. Once we arrived, little time was wasted. We picked our teams, flipped coins and got ready for opening kickoff.
Suddenly, a roar pierced the pregame silence. It was coming from the direction of the house.
I turned to see a figure running toward the park at a full sprint.
“Is that Igor?” Karl asked.
It was Igor, all right, but different. His frail fame seemed to have doubled in girth. As he drew closer, I could see new mutton chops on the side of his face. On the knuckles of his hands were patches of dark, coarse hair.
“Oh no,” Billy said. “He drank one of Dad’s Mr. Hyde formulas.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
I may have neglected to mention that while his brothers were obsessed with creating new life or reanimating dead corpses, Dad was a mad scientist whose life’s work was trying to perfect the formula created by my great-grandfather, Dr. Henry Jekyll.
He hadn’t perfected it, yet.
Igor sprinted up to our side of the field.
“Kick the ball,” he growled. “I’m ready.”
What happened next was more violent than what you see in today’s NFL.
Bobby Jenkins first made the mistake of kicking the ball directly to Igor, who fielded it at a full sprint. He didn’t even wait for his blockers to get ready. He bowled all of us over, and then proceeded to chase the team on defense (all of whom had immediately decided that trying to tackle Igor was a bad idea) all over the park.
You’ve never seen such beautiful stiff-arms. Kids flew through the air, flailing ten feet above the ground and landing headfirst in the snow. Bobby Jenkins somehow ended up at the top of a tree. His brother, Tommy, cowered under the playground slide.
When there was no one else on the other team left standing, Igor trudged to where the opposite end zone was marked and spiked the ball.
The park looked like a war zone, bodies of children were everywhere. No one was dead, thankfully, but the air was filled with groans and grunts of pain.
“Igor!” I shouted. “Come on. The game’s done.”
I turned to the Billy and the rest of my cousins.
“Let’s go get our dads and fix this,” I said.
———
Igor was finally back to normal by dinnertime. Dad and my uncles spent most of the afternoon setting bones, re-locating shoulders and promising all the neighborhood parents that they would pay for various medical bills and extra Christmas presents.
Mom had set out quite the Christmas spread on the table. Mashed potatoes, squash casserole, green beans, pearl onions, Brussels sprouts, and, at the center of it all, a glistening glazed ham. It was all untouched, too. Uncle Herbert’s ghoul had somehow been kept from the food until now, and was sitting with all of us, eagerly awaiting the feast.
Dad was about to say grace when a howl pierced the air.
“Don’t mind that,” Dad said. “It’s a full moon tonight. Mr. Hull a few doors down has probably transformed and is breaking out for a run. He usually stays away from the houses.”
Before he could continue the blessing, a gunshot echoed.
“That’s strange,” Dad said.
He rose and walked over to the window. Mom and I followed him while he stared out into the night.
“Get back!” he said. “Out of the room!”
Everyone leapt up from his or her places as a massive werewolf crashed through the window. The thing rolled as it hit the ground, stopping at the table and collapsing in a heap.
“Dammit, Larry!” Mom yelled. “It’s Christmas Eve! Why, tonight, of all nights, would you-”
Another gunshot pierced the air. Mr. Hull leaped to his feet and stood, chest heaving.
“Everyone get down!” yelled a voice from the window.
We turned to see a man climbing in, his gun trained on Mr. Hull. He wore a pair of battered dungarees and a dirty white oxford shirt, which was covered by a leather vest. On his head sat a fedora.
“This is a werewolf!” he said. “Stay where you are. Your lives are in danger!”
“No, they’re not,” Dad replied. “This is Larry Hull, our neighbor.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Mom asked. “It’s Christmas Eve, for Christ’s sake, and you’re running around, chasing werewolves and firing your gun in a quiet neighborhood.”
“I’ve been tracking this… thing for months now,” the man said. “He’s very dangerous. He could kill you all.”
“Oh, Larry wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Dad replied. “When he’s like this, he just goes out and runs through the woods. Maybe a rabbit gets stepped on in the dark, but that’s it. Put the gun away.”
“I will not,” said the man. “I’ve been hunting werewolves my whole life. I’m not just going to let one get away just because…”
He never noticed Uncle Herbert’s ghoul sneaking up behind him. The thing bit into his neck and dragged him out the window. They tumbled into the bushes, and then all we could hear were the screams.
Mr. Hull nodded, plodded to the front door and ran out into the night. When the screaming finished, we stood in silence for a full minute. Finally, Dad spoke.
“Herbert, do you want to go outside and take care of that?”
“Sure thing, Henry,” he replied. “Don’t wait for me to eat. I’ll make up a plate when I come back in. Randolph! Stand down!”
He left. The rest of us returned to the table.
“Bless us, oh Lord…” my father paused. “Ah, never mind. Let’s just eat.”
We dug in. The clinks of our silverware punctuated the silence as a cold breeze blew in through the broken window. No one looked up or said a word. We just shoveled food into our mouths, singularly focused on clearing our plates and leaving the table.
There were presents to be opened later.