An Elf Named Edgar
written by: Carmen Baca
@carmen_author
Grandma came home on Black Friday and hollered for help from the garage. Loaded our arms with bags full of Christmas decorations she’d found on sale. Showing off the glittery, sparkling ornaments, faux crystal icicles, and multi-colored lights, she saved the largest bag for last, and grinning at my twin brothers jumping in front of her, pulled out her great reveal.
“Ta-da,” she sang. “Meet Edgar,” she said, holding by the scruff of its neck the ugliest elf I was sure existed on this side of the North Pole.
About two feet tall, it had long, thin arms and legs wrapped in stripes like candy canes. Except the shade of red reminded me of spooky movie gore, not holly berries. And the white parts weren’t white at all, but a pink-gray mix I’d only seen once when my mom took me with her to the butcher’s, and I saw intestines for the first time. I’d gagged, clapped my hands over my mouth, and run out of the store before I could embarrass myself. Good thing the alley around the corner had been empty.
Instead of forest green pointy-toed shoes that matched his tunic and hat, Edgar’s were a yellowed, dingy color—the color of old bone, I thought. Faint, curved, striped impressions on his ribcage in the fabric over his chest gave it the appearance of a skeleton more than a Christmas elf. His face had nothing to do with holiday cheer and all to do with Halloween horror.
A combination of TV and movie monster features gave him a countenance both macabre and grotesque. If this doll had emotions, I remember thinking when I shook the chills from my back and left grandma with the boys, surely a psychopathic glee upon inflicting pain had to be the one he craved most. Shades of those evil creatures that come to life in horror films colored my thoughts from that day on.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, Grandma and the cuates had set Edgar up in one of the dining room chairs, so when we showed up to eat supper, he occupied the one vacant seat usually reserved for guests.
“…the hell is that?” Dad had missed the presentation, so when he spotted the elf, he recoiled and barely caught the serving dishes he almost dropped.
Mom, right behind, had to step back or be stepped upon. Several dinner rolls tumbled from the pile she held on a platter. The twins came in from different directions just in time to bend and catch a rolling roll.
“That’s Edgar,” they said in unison and then claimed ownership by promptly biting into the bread before sitting at their places.
“Isn’t he a hoot?” Grandma asked as she sat down. “I just had to have him.”
“We’re gonna hide him all over the house,” Jay declared. Junior added, “And you guys have to guess where he is all the way until Christmas Day. Them’s the rules.”
“Those,” Mom corrected. “Whose rules and why do we have to play? What’s in it for us?” she asked as she spooned servings into the boys’ plates.
The boys looked at their grandmother for answers since they’d parroted her regulations without knowing the whys or the hows or the rewards. Besides, no one doubted the originator of the challenge. They’d lost count of grandma’s impromptu games. The boys loved her and championed all of them. The rest of us begrudgingly went along only because we loved her and because we wouldn’t disappoint the twins for the world. The three of them ruled the house; the rest of us were their obedient subjects.
“We’ll keep a tally,” Grandma winked at us so the boys couldn’t see. “The one who finds him the most times wins.”
“Wins what?” Dad asked around a spoonful of tortilla-filled green chile stew.
Grandma threw him a look like she must’ve done when he was a child. He averted his eyes and focused instead on gathering up enough roast chunks for his next spoonful. “That,” she said and paused for effect, “will be the ultimate surprise. But it will be worth it—I can tell you that, too.”
Over the next three weeks, Grandma planned to alternate handing Edgar over to Jay or Junior to hide so one could play every other day. So far, Mom had found him twice when she cleaned the house and Dad once before work when he found Edgar seated in the driver’s seat of his truck. The cuates had found him three times each. I purposely avoided announcing my finding him at all, but I had stumbled across the creature six times and left him where he perched. Some days, he wasn’t found at all, which, of course, kind of spoiled the game. Were the others doing as I was?
The question needed answers. Mama first.
“Tell the truth, have you found Edgar and not said a word?”
“Cálla,” she shushed and turned back to the clothes she had been folding when I located her in the laundry room. “Yes,” she whispered. “I feel like if I say it out loud, he’s going to attack me in my sleep or something. I can’t stand having him in the house.”
“Then why—”
“Same as you. I’m not going to be the one to spoil the cuates’ fun or your grandma’s either. I’ll say an extra Hail Mary before I go to sleep just in case. It’s not like anything creepy has happened, but he gives me the heebie jeebies. I’m just being dumb.”
“Well, then we both are,” I agreed and told her how Edgar affected me before I went to hunt for Dad. I wasn’t sure dumb was the right word though. Dad got the same inquisition but didn’t admit to any weirdness associated with the elf, only that it made him nauseous, so he didn’t go out of his way to hunt it down.
“No se por qué,” he admitted, “but every time I look at that thing I want to vomit. It’s weird.”
I only nodded and left him gagging with the thought of Edgar.
With the passing of the days, a cloak of dread draped over me, wrapping around my psyche and making me anxious, like when one waits for the other shoe to drop. But the final week of the game brought a kind of hopeful desperation into the house. Edgar would be gone. I planned on stealing him from wherever he’d be stored later and finding the perfect spot for his final resting place. Burning him seemed kind of severe, and I felt ridiculous thinking maybe I should. But we couldn’t go through this again next Christmas.
Especially since grandma went from my dad, to my mom, to me the day before and expressed her vehement desire that we participate in the game wholeheartedly for the sake of the boys, or she’d bring on Edgar’s full wrath on the house by adding more torturous rules into it—annually. I slunk away from the look in her serious eyes. I could swear she knew what I planned for her elf. An eerie ringing in my ears and a lightheaded sensation came over me as she stalked off. What the hell just happened?
Monday, Dad found Edgar sitting under a throw on his recliner.
“Fouuund Ed—urp—Edguuur,” he yelled between a couple of dry heaves at no one in particular, holding the elf up with two fingers before sitting it on a dining room chair. He covered it with the blanket before it made him lose his beer.
Tuesday, I found Edgar. I could swear he leered up at me from my underwear drawer before I grabbed him by the feet and flung him on my bed. Stuffed him in a tote from my closet and ran to the bathroom to deposit him in the hamper. The rule had changed for today. Grandma had liked the idea of changing rules and implemented them after telling the boys to ensure we couldn’t break them.
I had to put Edgar in another hiding place. “Edgar’s been found and lost again,” I yelled toward the living room where the boys played a video game before supper.
I found the beast on Wednesday, too, dammit. Today’s rule had changed again. After announcing my find, I had to place him in the hands of the next person to hide him.
“Here,” I thrust him at my dad’s chest when I passed him in the hall and ran off before he could say anything. His retching followed me all the way to my room, getting more violent as I shut my door and burst into the laughs I couldn’t let out to his face.
My mom found Edgar on Thursday, and following the new rule, spent an hour with him in tow, zipped inside a canvas cooler though.
“You’re supposed to let Edgar keep you company,” Jay told her when he saw how she’d dealt with the toy. “I’m gonna tell grandma.”
“Aw, honey,” I heard Mom when I came across them in the bathroom where she’d been scrubbing the tub. In her house dress, she stood in sudsy water, a foamy sponge in one hand and a dripping wash rag in the other. Jay, a little taller than Edgar, stood his ground, fists at his sides. She gave me a look before focusing on him again.
“You wouldn’t want to spoil grandma’s fun, now, would you?”
“It’ll be your fault.”
Mom frowned, and I could tell she grasped at solutions in her thoughts. I saw the moment it came to her. Her expression softened, and I could feel her threat coming before Jay did.
“You don’t want me to tell her what you and your brother did yesterday to Edgar in your room, now do you?” She punched her sponge into her other palm, suds flying on all of us. Jay gasped and ran past me. A whimper faded as he shut himself up in his room.
“What’d they do?” I laughed.
“They were using him as a punching bag,” she replied before dropping the rag into the water.
“You dodged grandma’s regaño,” I reminded her. “But I’ll bet you didn’t escape. The tongue lashing will commence,” I predicted and left her swishing a foot through the water to make more lather.
I heard the sponge slam against the wall at the same time the back door opened, and Grandma came inside.
She’s going to find everything out, I thought as I reached the boys’ room. She always does.
A second thought made me giggle with a twinge of hysteria at my mother’s plight. Edgar was still tucked into the cooler by the toilet. “Hi, Grams,” I yelled and closed their door behind me.
The bathroom door slammed, and Mom called out, “I’m not decent,” as Grandma approached.
“Who’s got Edgar?”
“He’s with me.”
“You pervert.”
“Wha…don’t be ridiculous, Ma. He’s in the corner facing a magazine to keep him entertained.”
Grandma snorted and all was quiet.
Jay lay facedown on his bed with Junior patting his back. I went and sat with the both of them.
“You know mom would never tell grandma what you did to Edgar,” I told them. “Why’d you guys beat him up anyway?”
“Well, I thought Jay called me a hodid…”
“Don’t say it,” I held back my chuckles as Jay turned over.
“But I didn’t,” he cried. “And when Junior punched me, I thought he called me a ‘valever—’”
“Don’t say it,” I repeated.
“So we gave Edgar a friega instead. ’Cause someone said the bad words, and if it wasn’t us, it had to be him.”
I blinked. The boys weren’t liars, but they both had pretty vivid imaginations. Maybe they had called one another the vulgarities they heard some of their older primos use and blamed the elf for whatever reason.
I left the boys’ room just as Mom rushed down the hall. On tiptoe, I shadowed her and stood in the doorframe, peeking out.
“Edgar’s off again,” she announced and spotted dad in the kitchen. Over her head, I saw the pleading and a kind of horror that filled his eyes. She had too, so she relented and burst into laughter.
I heard later how she’d found Junior in his room, and she’d dropped the doll into his lap. He just hugged the thing tight and took off to hide him properly.
On Friday, the rule stayed the same but for two hours, not one. Dad found him right in front of his own mother, so he couldn’t hide the fact. I followed her as she followed him, both of us laughing as he gagged with almost every step. He was practically running by the time he grabbed his jacket, hat, keys, and with Edgar tucked under one arm, disappeared into the garage.
“Edgar’s going with me to buy beer,” came from the other side of the closing door.
“Cheater,” his mother grabbed the handle and shouted at his back. “You know you’re going to hide him under the seat or someplace until your time is up.”
He looked right at her and threw Edgar into the rear seat before he backed out. Jay found him there later, and then both cuates found Edgar over the next two days with no fanfare or incident, which brought us to Christmas Eve.
I rose that morning with a palpable aura of something coming besides Christmas, and that the Something with a capital S wouldn’t be welcome.
As Mom and I passed the morning in her room wrapping last-minute gifts, I told her about my qualms.
“And in my case,” she confessed, “I’ve gotten more afraid. Like when your hackles are up constantly, and you look in every dark corner when you go from room to room. Once I leave the house, the feeling goes away. I think we seriously need a limpiada here. I tried one, you know.”
“One what,” I said, distracted by the darn tape. I held it right in front of one eye, squinting the other, trying to find the edge.
“Una limpiada,” she repeated, “pay attention.” She sat on the edge of the bed, and I dropped the tape to go sit next to her.
“I went out yesterday and bought some sage. I waited until close to three this morning ready to go from room to room while you were all sleeping and cleanse the house, but the damnedest thing happened. It wouldn’t light.”
“No,” I gasped.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I lit that lighter something like four times, and every time it sputtered right out when it touched the smudge stick. I even tried matches, and the same thing happened.”
I just stared at her. Then I shivered when she added the rest: “That’s not all of it. Every time I held that flame to the stick, this cold breeze blew it out.”
“Every time? Each and every time, you felt that cold air?”
“Yes,” she nodded again. “That’s not all, either.
“Oh, fu—”
“Hey,” she flapped a backhand on my arm. Then she looked right into my face. “The stench of death was in that air. I’m convinced it was breath—whose or what—I don’t want to know.”
“Geez, Mom!” I hugged myself and hopped up to stand in front of the heater.
The boys ran in just then, so Mom invited them to make biscochitos.
We all met up in the kitchen where I shook off my chills. Memories of when I made my first batch of melt-in-your-mouth anise-flavored cookies came back as I helped my brothers.
Since the ritual included cleaning up after, the boys dealt with the greasy residue until we told them that was enough and pushed them out to go play.
“We’re gonna go hide Edgar,” Jay announced, coming back into the cocina, holding the elf in a bear hug over his chest.
“So don’t look,” Junior added, running up behind him.
“Oh, boys, maybe—”
Mom nudged my arm and shook her head. As they rushed off together to hide Edgar for the last time this season, she said, “This will be the last time, period. I’m getting rid of that thing the minute no one’s looking.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. Even if we don’t know that the elf is the cause of my acongoja, your miedo, and dad’s basca, none of us had these issues until it got here.”
“I know,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to affect your grandma or the boys though, gracias a Dios. Maybe because they don’t feel as we do about it…” she left off and shrugged.
We didn’t bring Edgar up again, much less that breath from beyond the grave.
But a cloak of dread covered me by the time Christmas Day had arrived.
Going to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee, I stopped when I saw Grandma find Edgar under the sink.
“Ah, mierda,” she muttered, yanking the elf out and searching for somewhere else to put him without announcing her find. She didn’t see me follow her. I watched her break her own rule. She had barely tucked him behind a couch cushion before she looked up and saw me.
“Cheater,” I spat at her. “Hypocrita,” I laughed. “I’m gonna tell on you.”
“You wouldn’t dare. You’ll break the boys’ hearts.”
“Oh, yeah? They’ll break right in half when they discover their fabulous abuela doesn’t belong on the pedestal where they put her,” I shot back. “Que vergüenza.”
That was it. She couldn’t bear to be called “without shame.” Anything else she didn’t mind, but this word rubbed her wrong big time. And I knew it, too. But I wouldn’t have gone through with my threat—I just loved teasing her.
“You’re right,” she sighed after looking at me for a while. Right before it got uncomfortable, she said, “All along I’ve had the gift I promised in mind. It’s for all of you; you’re all winners. But you gave me a regalo in return.
“This wasn’t a very nice joke to play on any of you, but that’s what it was. A social experiment with you all as the subjects and…” she cut herself off. “Let’s go find the others. I need to confess, and I don’t want to do it more than once.
“…so when I found the dirty elf at the thrift store, I came up with an idea I put into play before I showed him to the boys. I cleaned him up and gave him new old clothes, ones I knew would give him a demonic-possessed doll appearance. When I brought him and the rest of the bags in that day, I told the boys I wanted to teach them a lesson in prejudice in a way they’d understand at four years old. Of course, los cuates had no idea Edgar wasn’t supposed to look like a mix of Chucky, Annabelle, those Gremlins, and anyone’s worst nightmare caused by animated commonplace objects turned into horrific killers.
“They didn’t fear him. They accepted him because their grandma had done so first.”
“But the rest of you,” she faced us all over the dining room table where she’d sat us down, “acted like he would strangle or stab you in your sleep. You avoided him and dismissed him quickly when you had to deal with him. You didn’t like handling him or even looking at him. Hell, James here couldn’t even hold his stomach contents in around him.
“You wrapped yourself with prejudice and let unsubstantiated fear and superstition, media influences—all of that—make Edgar repulsive. Who, by the way, did nothing to earn your distaste or distrust. He’s just a doll. You acted like the worst members of society who shun or fear those who are different: the disabled, the deformed, the mentally ill, the other races, groups, denominations, identifications different from themselves. And that,” she finished with a flourish before the boys, “is how prejudice works.”
I didn’t know whether to punch my own grandmother, give her the silent treatment until maybe after New Year’s, or give her kudos for teaching the twins a life lesson they’d remember. I knew I would. In fact, I never saw myself as prejudiced, but I’d behaved that way with Edgar.
The gift grandma gave all of us that day we remembered the rest of our lives. More precious than any of the holiday-wrapped boxes and bags under the tree.
But there was another lesson Mom and I will always remember because only we two learned it and swore never to breathe a word.
Christmas night after the rest of the household was in bed, we got up together and wrapped Edgar up in a bag. We took a short walk to the dumpster at the end of the block and buried him deep beneath bags and boxes and who knew what else. Mom got the sage stick and lit it with me following her around the halls into every room quiet as churchmice mouthing more than whispering cleansing prayers we’d pulled up on our phones until we finished.
Mom burst into my room around six the next morning even before Dad got up.
“Ven mira,” she whispered after she’d pressed her palms into my back and bounced me on the mattress a couple of times to wake me. “Shhh.”
She led me to the back of the house where we could see from the laundry room into the yard.
There, sitting on the ground with his back against the garage sat Edgar. I could swear his eyes stared right at me. His mouth formed into a snarl revealing pointed teeth.
***
“Hey,” Dad said, coffee in hand as he walked up to the fire pit where Mom and I had a good blaze going. The red-orange flames rose high, and we held our hands toward the heat in the chilly winter morning. But we also both reached fast for the mugs he handed over and sipped, grateful for a beautiful day. “Great idea, you two,” he toasted.
“Stay there,” Grandma yelled out the sliding door. “There we go.” A short while later as Mom fed another log onto the fire, Grandma led the boys out, all of them holding the makings of s’mores. Their robe pockets bulged with paper towels and utensils they distributed when they joined the circle around the fire. None of us complained about the unhealthy but fun and impromptu feast of melted chocolate, marshmallows, and cookies with hot coffee or cocoa for breakfast. Mom and I exchanged looks of relief that future holidays wouldn’t include Edgar.
A year later when she sent me into the garage for the Christmas decorations on the day after Thanksgiving, I struggled to retrieve the last box from a high shelf and lost my footing on the step ladder, losing also my grip on the heavy container. It crashed to the floor as I stepped down to take a look at whatever I might’ve broken. I removed the lid. Edgar with that toothy, evil grin looked right up at me.
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