“Nackles,” - Dark Christmas Nostalgia

 by Eric Renderking Fisk - December 11th, 2008 Bookmark and Share

I'm deeply troubled.

Not in the mental health way that leads one to be carried off in in padded wagon wearing a straight jacket after a "Code 5150" call has been made by the local police. I mean concerned for those other then myself. I'm upset with the news that the economy is in shambles while at the same time I'm hearing more and more of our friends suffering from depression or just down in the dumps. I get the feeling that nothing is right and there's cause for people to go into despair.

What's going to happen to all of us? What's going to happen to individual families and the country as a whole? There is troubling news about bail-outs, inappropriate corporate spending, political officials being arrested for corruption, and the clarion call to all us to spend more because sales are down. For those reasons and more there's a lot of anger out there.

Some might ask that maybe, just maybe we should postpone Christmas. What's there to celebrate? Why even have Christmas when nobody's really in the mood? Things are pretty dark, aren't they?

My response to that is, what better time when times are dark to celebrate a holiday that's supposed to be about Lightovercoming Darkness?

I think it's a well know and established fact that some of the best Christmas stories are about good people over-coming some horrible obstacles. The most perfect example is of course George Bailey of "It's A Wonderful Life" who fights with Mr. Potter and his attempt to take over The Bedford Falls Savings And Loan. Things for George go from bad to worse when Uncle Billy loses the weekly deposit (misplacing it in a rolled up news paper and accidently gives it to Mr. Potter.) George Bailey - at his lowest moment of weakness was about to take his own life is shown by the angel Charlie what his life would have been like if he had not been born. In the end, the people who George Bailey helped return the favor. George's kindness is returned 10-fold.

It's also well know that there are even better Christmas stories are about bad people get their dark hearts turned around when exposed to their own wrong doing. Ebenezer Scrooge is haunted by the ghost of Jacob Marley - his former business partner sentenced to hell-on-earth because of his greed - and then the three spirits of Christmas.

It's actually a complement to be called a Scrooge in the end - that is if you see the wickedness of your own soul and become a better person. Maybe Scrooge becomes the most generous benefactor people had ever known BECAUSE he was so depraved and in the deep pit of evil and was shown the damaged he caused to society? As if you can only understand the euphoria of the highest peaks if you've been to the deepest pit of depravity? Could anyone else be so giving and caring after being shown who and what they were by the Three Spirits of Christmas? I get choked up at the end of "A Christmas Carol" and wonder, can I be better? Can I be like Scrooge and see the error of my ways and be a cause for good? We all should ask that question, and then try.

But alas, there is another kind of Christmas Story that we really don't want to acknowledge that we enjoy. It's the dark Christmas Stories where the world isn't the way it "should be," but how it really is and someone always "gets it" in the end. It's "Christmas Noir." Take "The Gift Of The Magi" - a poor couple sell their worldly possessions to give a gift to the other, the man hocks his watch to buy his wife combs for her long hair and the wife sells her long hair after it was cut to buy her husband a chain for his pocket watch. They sacrifice spoils the other's Christmas gift - but the meaning of Christmas is there, it's not the gifts but the thought that counts and the extremes we go through to show our love during the special season. The couple "gets it" in the end; the true meaning of "Christmas." Are you capable of being that loved? Are you capable of loving someone so much that you would sacrifice one of your favorite things to prove it?

It's a dark tale, but with the last few paragraphs it's uplifting.

The Fedora Chronicles Twilight ZoneBut even better, there are the stories where the evil doers are consumed by their own wickedness, all the "Good" in the world takes it's vengeance out on the "Evil" and rids the world of it's venom and filth. Or the Evil Doers are removed from The World by their own actions or the evil they themselves create.

Such is the case of Nackles, a story I first read back in 1987 in an issue of "Twilight Zone Magazine." It was first published in 1967 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and written by Donald Westlake under the pseudonym Curt Clark. [Until recently I had no idea there was a small 'cult' following 'Nackles' and thanks to that cult I'm able to reprint that story here...]

Nackles


Nackles

Did God create Men, or does Man create gods? I don’t know, and if it hadn’t been for my rotten brother-in-law the questions would never have come up.  My late brother-in-law? Nackles knows.

It all depends, you see, like the chicken and the egg, on which cam first.  Did God exist before Man first thought of Him, or didn’t He?  If not, if Man creates his gods, then it follows that Man must create the devils, too.

Nearly every god, you know, has his corresponding devil.  Good and Evil.  The polytheistic ancients, prolific in the creation (?) of gods and goddesses, always worked up nearly enough Evil ones to cancel out the Good, but not quite.  The Greeks, those incredible supermen, combined Good and Evil in each of their gods.  In Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda, being Good is ranged forever against the Evil one, Ahriman.  And we ourselves know God and Satan.

Santa ClausBut of course it’s entirely possible I have nothing to worry about.  It all depends on whether Santa Claus is or is not a god.  He certainly seems like a god.  Consider: He is omniscient; he knows every action of every child, for good or evil. At least on Christmas Eve he is omnipresent, everywhere at once.  He administers justice tempered with mercy.  He is superhuman, or at least non-human, though conceived of as having a human shape.  He is aided by a corps of assistants who do not have completely human shapes.  He rewards Good and punishes Evil.  And, most important, he is believed in utterly by several million people, most of them under the age of ten.  Is there any qualification for godhood that Santa Claus does not possess?

And even the non-believers give him lip-service.  He has surely taken over Christmas; his effigy is everywhere, but where are the manger and the Christ child?  Retired rather forlornly to the nave. (Santa’s power is growing, too.  Slowly but surely he is usurping Chanukah as well.)

Santa Claus is a god.  He’s no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus.  Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn’t ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stores.  And don’t gods reflect their creators’ society?  The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love.  What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption?  Secondary gods of earlier times have been stout, but surely Santa Claus is the first fat primary god.

And wherever there is a god, mustn’t there sooner or later be a devil?

Which brings me back to my brother-in-law, who’s to blame for whatever happens now.  My brother-in-law Frank is – or was – a very mean and nasty man.  Why I ever let him marry my sister I’ll never know.  Why Susie wanted to marry him is an even greater mystery.  I could just shrug and say Love is Blind, I suppose, but that wouldn’t explain how she fell in love with him in the first place.

Frank is – Frank was – I just don’t know what tense to use.  The present, hopefully.  Frank is a very handsome man in his way, big and brawny, full of vitality.  A football player; hero in college and defensive line-backer for three years in pro ball, till he did some sort of irreparable damage to his left knee, which gave him a limp and forced him to find some other way to make a living.

Ex-football players tend to become insurance salesmen, I don’t know why.  Frank followed the form, and became and insurance salesman.  Because Susie was then a secretary for the same company, they soon became acquainted.

Was Susie dazzled by the ex-hero, so big and handsome?  She’s never been the type to dazzle easily, but we can never fully know what goes on inside the mind of another human being.  For whatever reason, she decided she was in love with him.

So they were married, and five weeks later he gave her her first black eye.  And the last, though it mightn’t have been, since Susie tried to keep me from finding out.  I was to go over for dinner that night, but at eleven in the morning she called the auto showroom where I work, to tell me she had a headache and we’d have to postpone the dinner.  But she sounded so upset that I knew immediately something was wrong, so I took a demonstration car and drove over, and when she opened the front door there was the shiner.

I got the story out of her slowly, in fits and starts.  Frank, it seemed, had a terrible temper.  She wanted to excuse him because he was forced to be an insurance salesman when he really wanted to be out there on the gridiron again, but I want to be President and I’m an automobile salesman and I don’t go around giving women black eyes.  So I decided it was up to me to let Frank know he wasn’t to vent his pique on my sister any more.

Unfortunately, I am five feet seven inches tall and weigh one hundred thirty-four points, with the Sunday Times under my arm.  Were I just to give Frank a piece of my mind, he’d surely give me a black eye to go with my sister’s.  Therefore, that afternoon I bought a regulation baseball bat, and carried it with me when I went to see Frank that night.

He opened the door himself and snarled, “What do you want?”

In answer, I poked him with the end of the bat, just above the belt, to knock the wind out of him.  Then, having unethically gained the upper hand, I clouted him five or six times more, and the stood over him to say, “The next time you hit my sister I won’t let you off so easy.”  After which I took Susie home to my place for dinner.  And after which I was Frank’s best friend.

People like that are so impossible to understand.  Until the baseball bat episode, Frank had nothing for me but undisguised contempt.  But once I’d knocked the stuffings out of him, he was my comrade for life.  And I’m sure it was sincere; he would have given me the shirt off his back, had I wanted it, which I didn’t.

(Also, by the way, he never hit Susie again.  He still had the bad temper, but he took it out on throwing furniture out windows or punching dents in walls or going downtown to start a brawl in some bar.  I offered to train him out of maltreating his wife, but Susie said no, that Frank had to let off steam and it would be worse if he was forced to bottle it all up inside him, so the baseball bat remained in retirement.)

Then came the children, three of them in as many years.  Frank Junior came first, and then Linda Joyce, and finally Stewart.  Susie had held the forlorn hope that fatherhood would settle Frank to some extent, but quite the reverse was true.  Shrieking babies, smelly diapers, disrupted sleep, and distracted wives are trials and tribulations to any man, but to Frank they were – like everything else in his life – the last straw.

He became, in a word, worse.  Susie restrained him I don’t know how often from doing some severe damage to a squalling infant, and as the children grew toward the age of reason Frank’s expressed attitude toward them was that their best move would be to find a way to become invisible.  The children, of course, didn’t like him very much, but then who did?

Last Christmas was when it started.  Junior was six then, and Linda Joyce five, and Stewart four, so all were old enough to have heard of Santa Claus and still young enough to believe in him.  Along around October, when the Christmas season was beginning, Frank began to use Santa Claus’s displeasure as a weapon to keep the children “in line”, his phrase for keeping them mute and immobile and terrified.  Many parents, of course, try to enforce obedience the same way: “If you’re bad, Santa Claus won’t bring you any presents.”  Which, all things considered, is a negative and passive sort of punishment, wishy-washy in comparison with fire and brimstone and such.  In the old days, Santa Claus would treat children a bit more scornfully, leaving a lump of coal in their stockings in lieu of presents, but I suppose the Depression helped to change that.  There are times and situations when a lump of coal is nothing to sneer at.

In any case, an absence of presents was too weak a punishment for Frank’s purposes, so last Christmastime he invented Nackles.

Who is Nackles?  Nackles is to Santa Claus what Satan is to God, what Ahriman is to Ahura Mazda, what the North Wind is to the South Wind.  Nackles is the new Evil.

I think Frank really enjoyed creating Nackles; he gave him so much thought to the details of him.  According to Frank, and as I remember it, this is Nackles: Very very tall and very very thin.  Dressed all in black, with a gaunt gray face and deep black eyes.  He travels through an intricate series of tunnels under the earth, in a black chariot on rails, pulled by an octet of dead-white goats.

 

And what does Nackles do?  Nackles lives on the flesh of little boys and girls.  (This is what Frank was telling his children; can you believe it?)  Nackles roams back and forth under the earth, in his dark tunnels darker than subway tunnels, pulled by the eight dead-white goats, and he searches for little boys and girls to stuff into his big black sack and carry away and eat.  But Santa Claus won’t let him have good boys and girls.  Santa Claus is stronger than Nackles, and keeps a protective shield around little children, so Nackles can’t get at them.

But when little children are bad, it hurts Santa Claus, and weakens the shield Santa Claus has placed around them, and if they keep on being bad pretty soon there’s n shield left at all, and on Christmas Eve instead of Santa Claus coming down out of the sky with his bag of presents Nackles comes up out of the ground with his bag of emptiness, and stuffs the bad children in, and whisks them away to his dark tunnels and the eight dead-white goats.

Frank was proud of his invention, actually proud of it.  He not only used Nackles to threaten his children every time they had the temerity to come within range of his vision, he also spread the story around to others.  He told me, and his neighbors, and people in bars, and people he went to see in his job as an insurance salesman.  I don’t know how many people he told about Nackles, though I would guess it was well over a hundred.  And there’s more than one Frank in this world; he told me from time to time of a client or neighbor or bar-crony who had heard the story of Nackles and then said, “By God, that’s great.  That’s what I’ve been needing, to keep my brats in line.”

Thus Nackles was created, and this Nackles was promulgated.  And would any of the unfortunate children this introduced to Nackles believe in this Evil Being any less than they believed in Santa Claus?  Of course not.

This all happened, as I say, last Christmastime.  Frank invented Nackles, used him to further intimidate his already-intimidated children, and spread the story of him to everyone he met.  On Christmas Day last year I’m sure there was more than one child in this town who was relieved and somewhat surprised to awaken the same as usual, in his own trundle bed, and to find the presents downstairs beneath the tree, proving that Nackles had been kept away yet another year.

Nackles lay dormant, so far as Frank was concerned, from December 25th of last year until this October.  Then, with the sights and sounds go Christmas again in the land, back came Nackles, as fresh and vicious as ever.  “Don’t expect me to stop him!” Frank would shout.  “When he comes up out of the ground the night before Christmas to carry you away in his bag, don’t expect any help from me!”

It was worse this year than last.  Frank wasn’t doing as well financially as he’d expected, and then early in November Susie discovered she was pregnant again, and what with one thing and another Frank was headed for a real peak of ill-temper.  He screamed at the children constantly, and the name of Nackles was never far from his tongue.

Susie did what she could to counteract Frank’s bad influence, but he wouldn’t let her do much.  All through November and December he was home more and more of the time, because the Christmas season is the wrong time to sell insurance anyway and also because he was hating the job more every day and this giving it less of his time.  The more he hated the job, the worse his temper became, and the more he drank, and the worse his limp got, and the louder were his shouts, and the more violent his references to Nackles.  It just built and built and built, and reached its crescendo on Christmas Eve, when some small or imagined infraction of one of the Children – Stewart, I think – resulted in Frank’s pulling all of the Christmas presents from all the closets and stowing them all in the car to be taken back to the stores, because this Christmas for sure it wouldn’t be Santa Claus who would be visiting the house, it would be Nackles.

By the time Susie got the children to bed, everyone in the house was a nervous wreck.  The children were too frightened to sleep, and Susie was too unnerved herself to be of much help in soothing them.  Frank who had taken to drinking at home lately, had locked himself in the bedroom with a bottle.

It was nearly eleven o’clock before Susie got the children all quieted down, and then she went out to the car and brought all the presents back in and arranged them under the tree.  Then, not wanting to see or hear her husband any more that night – he was like a big spoiled child throwing a tantrum – she herself went to sleep on the living room sofa.

Frank Junior awoke her in the morning, crying, “Look, Mama!  Nackles didn’t come, he didn’t come!” And pointed to the presents she’d placed under the tree.

The other two children came down shortly after, and Susie and the youngsters sat on the floor and opened presents, enjoying themselves as much as possible, but still with restraint.  There were none of the usual squeals of childish pleasure; no one wanted Daddy to come storming downstairs in one of his rages.  So the children contented themselves with ear-to-ear smiles and whispered exclamations, and after a while Susie made breakfast, and the day carried along as pleasantly as could be expected under the circumstances.

It was a little after twelve that Susie began to worry about Frank’s non-appearance.  She braved herself to go up and knock on the locked door and call his name, but she got no answer, not even the expected snarl, so just around one o’clock she called me and I hurried on over.  I rapped smartly on the bedroom door, got no answer, and finally threatened to break the door in if Frank didn’t open up.  When I still got no answer, break the door in I did.

And Frank, of course, was gone.

The police say he ran away, deserted his family, primarily because of Susie’s fourth pregnancy.  They say he went out the window and dropped to the back yard, so Susie wouldn’t see him and try to stop him.  And they say he didn’t take the car because he was afraid Susie would hear him start the engine.

That all sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?  Yet, I just can’t believe Frank would walk out on Susie without a lot of shouting about it first.  Nor that he would leave his car, which he was fonder of than his wife and children.

But what’s the alternative?  There’s only one I can think of: Nackles.

I would rather not believe that.  I would rather not believe that Frank, in inventing Nackles and spreading word of him, made him real.  I would rather not believe that Nackles actually did visit my sister’s house on Christmas Eve.

But did he?  If so, he couldn’t have carried off any of the children, for a more subdued and better-behaved trio of youngsters you wouldn’t find anywhere.  But Nackles, being brand-new and never having had a meal before, would need somebody.  Somebody to whom he was real, somebody not protected by the shield of Santa Claus.  And, as I say, Frank was drinking that night.  Alcohol makes the brain believe in the existence of all sorts of things.  Also, Frank was a spoiled child if there ever was one.

There’s no question but that Frank Junior and Linda Joyce and Stewart believe in Nackles.  And Frank spread the gospel of Nackles to other, some of whom spread it to their own children.  And some of whom will spread the new Evil to other parents.  And ours is a mobile society, with families constantly being transferred by Daddy’s company from one end of the country to another, so how long can it be before Nackles is a power not only in this one city, but all across the nation?

I don’t know if Nackles exists, or will exist.  All I know for sure is that there’s suddenly a new level of meaning in the lyric of that popular Christmas song.  You know the one I mean: You’d better watch out.

Take Away The Darkness In The Brightest Of Seasons...

Twilight Zone Mag Feb 1987Now, I will confess that when I read this story, I didn't sleep a wink that night. I remember reading it, setting the magazine down and thought about the implications that our thoughts - good or evil - can and often will manifest itself and we would reap what we sew. What about all the bad things I had ever done, could those deeds become a new life and come back to haunt me? In that way, that theme makes "Nackles" and the chains Jacob Marley wears in "A Christmas Carol" very much the same.

And then I started to wonder and examine why did this story effect me so much? And why is it that after the third or fourth reading I began to love it? The thought occurred to me when I was sitting on a bus and finished reading it again... The Bus was on Canal Street, just about ready to turn onto the road leading to the High School, I could see the car dealership (which now is home to 'Walgreens) and just beyond that "Wilson's Woods." I won't ever forget that exact moment when I was looking out and seeing all the trapping and decorations of the season.

"Nackles" is the greatest metaphor for the negative energy that we put into making Christmas "perfect."

Just as Nackles was the product of an angry, frustrated and demented mind of "Frank," and used the threat of Nackles to intimidate his children and was eventually consumed by the evil he created - we help create "Nackles" when those of us who use the threat: "Santa Claus not coming if you're bad."

We create our own "Nackles" when we use that threat against our children or anyone else's. We want Christmas to be perfect, with reserved jubilation and restrained excitement. "Better not shout, better not cry... better not pout... I'm telling you why..." Is that a threat? Children can't help be excited with the prospect of getting something new for Christmas, with the magical stories populated by flying, talking reindeer, hard working elves and animated snow-men. How can kids NOT be excited? Imagine I was going to whisk you away to "Retroland" where there are fountains of scotch or whiskey everywhere, Jazz or Swing is playing everywhere, you're seen as the rugged yet handsome hero (or gorgeous heroine) - now try to contain YOUR excitement.

... To constrain a child's excitement for Christmas (unless going overboard and spoiled) seems to me warped and a little cruel.

"Nackles" is also the misappropriation of Christmas. Nackles is the act of losing the message of Christmas among all of this hype. For Christmas to be perfect you have to buy your way into debt. Get the latest game console so your kids can play games about hate, death and war! Buy the latest movie tie-ins, the latest gimmicks. Forget the out-dated "Time alone with your family," get the latest entertainment widget to put more distance between you and your kin. Buy! Buy! Buy! The stores that sell us the junk we really don't need have to have your revenue so they can stay in business one more year!

We actually WANT there to be a Nackles! We need "Nackles" just as much as we need Santa Claus. Not just because there's a part of us, even as children, we can't believe in something if it's too much of a good thing. It's just too "nice." We want there to be punishment for the wicked - like the witch being tricked into going into the oven by Hansel and Gretel. We don't just like seeing the good being rewarded, we like seeing the wicked given the opportunity to change or suffer the consequences! We like seeing Good. It's not enough to have "Good," - we need an "Evil" to be over-come and kept at bay on our behalf. In this current economic climate, we actually want there to be a Nackles... so long as he's not coming for us. We want there to be a Nackles to tackle those people have taken away some of our holiday cheer and replaced it with the gloom. We would actually like to see the epitome of "humbug" to come out of the ground and carry off those who helped to keep his evil spirit alive for the past year.

We actually want something to take away the darkness of this world and given a new chance - a fresh start the next day. We got that, but we weren't given it by Jolly Ol' Saint Nick. Our second chance doesn't come from The Angel Charlie, our mentors or partners that come back from the dead with a message of damnation if we don't mend our ways, nor the Christmas Spirits that show us the past, present and future. And we have the chance and the choice to accept it on any other day, not just December 25th, 2008.   

 

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