(click here to go back to Part Two)

Chad saw a phone on the wall and dashed across the kitchen to dial 911.

——-

Dysan sat watching a show about a man who swings through the jungle on vines. Monkeys liked the man, and he liked them.

The old man, who sat in a rocking chair, turned to Dysan and said, “So, your daddy called you ‘Dysan.’ Is that your name?”

“Yes,” Dysan said. He didn’t look away from the TV screen.

“I’m Hubert. How old are you?”

Dysan wished the old man would stop interrupting the show. Instead of talking, he held up his right hand, with his thumb and first finger pinched together, the other three sticking up.

“Oh, three. That’s a good age,” Hubert said. He leaned toward Dysan. “I haven’t been three for a very long time. But I remember when I was your age, my old grandfather showed me somethin’ I’ll never forget.”

Hubert picked up a large remote control from the coffee table and pressed a button. The TV went black. Dysan turned to look at him.

Old man Hubert had a big head. His face was wrinkled up more than Dysan’s granddad’s, and his ears were bigger. He didn’t have a beard, but gray hairs stuck out of his nose and he had very thick, gray eyebrows. The hair on his head was dark brown and smooth. It covered everything but his forehead.

“I want to watch that man swinging,” Dysan said.

“Well, I have somethin’ to show you that I bet you’ll remember until you’re as old as me. You like Christmas, right?”

Dysan forgot about the TV. “Yes. I yike Christmas a yot.”

Hubert stood slowly and grunted. “Whoo. Got a hitch in my git-along.” He started walking away, still not quite standing up straight. He stopped and looked back at Dysan. “Well, you comin’, or aren’t you?”

Dysan jumped down from the couch and followed. They walked past the TV and turned down a long hallway. It was dark, but Dysan wasn’t scared. One of the rooms they passed was a bathroom with a seashell nightlight on the wall, and the other was a bedroom with a bright lamp on a little table.

At the end of the hallway they came to a set of doors. Hubert pushed them open like cowboy doors and stepped inside the room. He turned and held one of the doors open.

“I yike those doors,” Dysan said.

“Well, if you keep it movin’, I think you’ll keep on likin’ what you see.”

Dysan took a few more steps, through the open door.

“Welcome to the Christmastime Saloon.”

——-

“They’re on the way, honey,” Chad said.

While he was on the phone with 911, Sue Bee and the old lady had seated Elena on a folding metal chair at a small kitchen table. She clutched a kitchen towel against her side.

Chad walked over to her. “Hey, how do you feel?

“Hurts pretty bad, but it’s not bleeding as much now,” Elena said. “Where’s Dysan?”

“Watching TV in the living room,” Chad said.

Sue Bee furrowed her brow and craned her neck. “I don’t hear anything.”

Chad turned to look. The couch and the rocking chair were empty, and the TV was off. He walked into the living room and looked in the dining room off the entryway. Nobody was in there, either.

His boy was alone in the house with a stranger. Or was he even in the house? He called out. “Dysan!”

——-

The first thing Dysan noticed was the train. It ran on a track way up on the walls, all the way around the room. The tiny conductor was a toy Santa, and his elves crowded the passenger cars. Coal cars and circus animal cars, painted green, red and blue, filled the space between the black locomotive and the little red caboose.

In the middle of the room, a mountain reached above where the train ran. A thin wire ran from a small building on the peak, down to another building at the base. Dysan watched as a tiny bench moved down along the wire, through the bottom building, and back up.

Another toy Santa guided a sleigh and eight reindeer in flight around the mountain. Dysan squinted to get a better look at several wires leading up into darkness. He couldn’t see the ceiling, so he couldn’t tell where the wires went.

“Watch this,” Hubert said. He flipped what looked like a light switch.

Snow started falling from the black space above. Dysan held his arms straight out and spun around slowly. It didn’t snow much in the Dallas area.

Two Christmas trees stood on one side of the room. Popcorn strung in rings around the trees took on the varied colors of adjacent blinking bulbs. From the branches hung silver balls. Dysan walked up to one and saw a distorted reflection of his face surrounded by the room behind him.

He turned around to see a bar. Behind it were large wooden barrels on stands.

“What’s in those?” Dysan asked.

Hubert laughed. “Why, apple cider, of course,” he said. “Would you like some?”

“Yes!” Dysan said.

——-

Chad ran through the living room and turned down a dark hallway. “Dysan!” he called.

He came to a set of saloon doors. Snowflakes floated from the other side and into the hall. “Snow?” he said aloud.

(continue to the end)