Often, when I lie down to sleep at night, I fall into a strange revere. I seem not wholly nor all the way in slumber. I am in a half-way world, and I sink slowly, slowly, down into darkness after darkness, until the world about me is no longer that of air, but water. I am myself, yet no longer myself... and I live a life far beneath the surface of the ocean... fathoms upon fathoms deep. I swim – propel myself with uncanny speed – deeper and deeper, exploring the abyss, finding mountains and valleys undrempt by mortal man.

And finally, after much wandering, I set my course, with all speed, for my underwater home. Great, dark caverns, portions of which are lighted by phosphorescent organisms clinging to the walls and ceilings, are my domain which I share with all the others of my kind.

And the greatest prize of all awaits me, with open arms and tender smile. We swim together and couple in ecstatic reunion, my mate and I, careful to enjoy each moment before I, the explorer, most be off on another mission of discovery.

I sometimes call myself the man of two worlds. But this, the man of the waking world, would rather fall into an eternal slumber and dwell forever in that so-called "dream-world beneath the sea."

The freezing night wind wakes up the uneasy wild beast. Recent images come to his mind: the precarious dam of the eve, yet more vividly the envisioned new prey. Such a glimpse will sustain his next hunting drive. With strength and cunning the beast will beat the new prey to quench hungers. Another kind of consumption will require different tactics. He must wait, pay attention, learn to doubt. Perhaps the new prey will come on her own before dawn, seeking his warmth, his muscle and skin. They will both lie placidly, then fornicate, and slowly resume the interrupted sleep. No morning will be sweeter. It began chilly but ended warm, peaceful and perhaps even fruitful. All in good time, my dear comrade. 

Craver trudged home through the cold night. Blake was in the hospital; it had been a profoundly bizarre accident, but he was expected to live. He was forced to work out the remainder of Blake's shift.

And then, reaching the parking lot, he realized he had a dead battery. On top of that, he had brought his other wallet--the one without his credit cards, and with only a couple of dollars in cash. How stupid of him! He had no alternative but hoof it home; but it was only four or five blocks. Hardly worth trying to find a taxi on a night like this, so he started walking.

He turned down his street, realizing it was Christmas night. Well, what the heck? He'd never gone in for things like that. He hadn't even believed in getting gifts on Christmas morning even when he was a young kid. His dad thought it was all a lot of bunk--and that's the way he felt about the holiday, too!

Suddenly a man appeared out of nowhere, bumping into him. The man was large, round-bellied, with a snowy beard and wearing a red suit trimmed in white. It was as though he had dropped out of nowhere, right into Craver's arms, so to speak.

The man carried a large bag slung over his shoulder, one evidently stuffed with--something. A lot of somethings. He looked like the pictures Craver had seen so many times, especially that ancient one advertising a soft drink. Good Lord, could it be? Had he been wrong, after all, after all these years. Could this actually be--?

Then the man grinned and said, "Sorry 'bout that, friend. I'm kinda near-sighted, and I had a couple at a bar after I finished my shift at the Mall. Playing Santa for money is a real bummer!"

Craver felt an instant let-down. "It's all right," he said sharply. The other man, the fake Santa, turned on his heel and ambled on down the street toward home, his footsteps none too steady.

Craver continued on his way, turning into his walkway. Almost home, and what a relief. It had been one heck of a day--and night!

As he slipped the key into the lock Craver heard a sound; a far-away sound. It was a voice, a faint, jolly voice. It said, "Ho, ho, ho! And a Merry Christmas to you, too!"

Was it the fake Santa he had met? Or was the man a fake after all? Was it just some drunk from up the street, or was it really--?

Well, he could believe anything he wanted to believe, couldn't he? And if he wanted to believe in--in something or someone he had never believed in before . . . well, that was all right, too, wasn't it?

And so Craver pushed open the front door, walked into his house, turned on the living room lights, raised his arms and said, to no one in particular:

"A Very Merry Christmas--and God bless us, one and all!"

Hodges and Marnes walked along beside the muddy brown East Texas riverbank. They were lifelong buddies, and Marnes owed Hodges big time. He'd got him out of that mess with the Smith woman. And now Hodges was calling in his marker.

"You say your pa-in-law'll be down from Illinois next week, eh?"

"Yeah, he likes the fresh water fishing down here, and I told him I'd take him out on the river and we'd catch a pile. Old fellow's going on 90, and I swear he'll outlive me. If I let him."

"So you want me to catch 'em, sack 'em, and put 'em in the boat, huh? What day?"

"Tuesday morning, afore six o'clock. Put 'em in the front of the boat. I'll seat him looking backwards, so they can come out while he can't see 'em."


"That oughta do the trick. Make sure they don't get you, too."


"Don't worry. I got a flap rigged in the bottom of the boat that I can pull up and keep 'em away from me. I'll take it out soon's they do their job on him."

"So you think he's worth maybe ten million bucks, huh?"

"Give or take a few. Don't worry. You'll get a nice bonus for this. I'll take care of you, old buddy."


"And I'll help you take care of him. Come Tuesday mornin' there'll be six or seven of the meanest cottonmouth moccasins you ever saw in the boat ready to take care of your pa-in-law."


Hodges clapped Marnes on the shoulder. "Let's go find us a place to get a beer. All of a sudden I'm god-awful thirsty!

There aren't many of us left up here in the mountains. We used to thrive, and for the longest time we ruled the land, so to speak. Guess you could say we're a dying breed, all right. And it won't be long before we're all gone.

Everything was all right until the new people came in and settled down amongst us; we tried to be friendly . . . but we had old habits and old hungers that were hard to let go. But we kept it down to a minimum.

Elias Wilson was the one who did us in. He was a brand-spanking new dentist up from one of the big cities in the lowlands. He had a lot of book-learning, and he knew quite a bit about us. So he got folks stirred up, and they got to harassing us something fierce. Because he was a dentist, it was his damned idea to bring us in, plunk us in his chair and pull ever blessed tooth in our mouths.

Every time he finished, he'd slap whichever one of us who was in the chair on the shoulder, grin and say with a nasty laugh:

"No charge for vampires. Now get on outta here and have yourself a nice day!

Dear

Well that's another year in – isn't it amazing how time passes so quickly? And so much seems to have happened in the last twelve months, too.

This year has seen Tony extremely busy at work, four big contracts, all successful – a middle-east businessman, a Mexican politician (there's so much work there at the moment), a Russian oligarch (the trickiest) and the wife of a Singapore doctor who wanted to set up with someone twenty years younger. Tony prides himself on his work, but was thrilled to receive the Guardian International Hit-Man Of The Year award in October.

Jennifer's business continues to go from strength to strength. She now has a staff of eleven, most of whom are from eastern Europe, and she her services are developing a fine reputation across the city. One new innovation is the serving of scrambled eggs, topped either with crispy bacon or smoked salmon, after what she rather old-fashionedly terms "the main course". Well, it makes a nice change from a pizza delivery. Relations with the authorities have been rocky at times this year – she received a Police Caution in February and narrowly avoided a more serious charge in August only because very conveniently all the prosecution evidence vanished from the police store mysteriously. However, Jennifer's new "Discount Loyalty Card" system has proved popular within the local constabulary and goodwill has been restored.

In the meantime, Tony and Jennifer have been very busy with their new conservatory, and now they enjoy their breakfast there every morning. Jennifer has also been very busy redesigning the front garden, which now features a rockery with a wide range of alpine plants, while both Tony and Jennifer have been consolidating last year's work on the back garden by spending many happy evenings drinking red wine into the sunset!

Timmy's rock band has just released its fourth single, a number called Smash Your Face Into The Wall. They've had some internal difficulties this year – the bass player wanted to kick Timmy out, claiming that his only contribution to the band was to sing, which he did out of tune – but it was nothing that couldn't be sorted with a flick-knife. As an experiment, Timmy himself is now playing bass until the bass player recovers.

Leigh-Ann celebrated her sixteenth birthday in April along with her two sons; Jennifer and she have come to an excellent arrangement where Jennifer looks after Zoot and Boot while Leigh-Ann earns some money working in Jennifer's family business.

Daniel turned twenty-one this year, which was a cause for great celebration. Daniel is really developing an ability with money – his twenty-pound note is quite indistinguishable from the real thing but all of his work is of a high standard. This year it's allowed the family to pay all of its employees out of our own produce as well as allowing Tony and Jennifer the odd fun night out at the casino. Speaking of which, there was a nasty incident at the casino in June where we caught the croupier cheating. The police seemed to think Tony might have had something to do with his appearance face-down in the local river two days later, so for a few days John Clark, our solicitor, had to threaten to sue them for defamation.

Jennifer has a new car, a Vauxhall Astra in red, her favourite colour of course. She particularly likes the two front seats, each of which have heating elements, always very welcome in the winter. She uses it a lot when she goes to walk the dogs either by the sea-shore or in the woods. Sadly, we had a misfortune in March when our two Staffordshire bull terriers, Pontius and Herod, chased after and mauled a six-year-old child to death. The court insisted that we have them put down, which seemed to us very unfair – after all, they'll have been seriously provoked by the little boy. After all, everyone knows what little boys are like at that age, don't they? Anyway, a friend of ours managed to get hold of a couple of replacements, Japanese Tosa dogs which are actually banned but we just tell the neighbours that they're some sort of cross-breed. We've learned not to mind what the neighbours think, and to tell the truth they're not very sociable – we get the feeling sometimes that they'd rather avoid us. Their loss.

This year we had four lovely holidays: Argentina in February, Thailand in May, Russia in October and Afghanistan in November. The Russian and Afghan trips gave us plenty of opportunities to pick up some lovely potplants and jewellery which we were able to fly back, which many of you can look forward receiving when Santa comes down the chimney! And of course there's our country cottage near Balmoral which gives us so much pleasure.

Not all of our family news has been good, however. Tony's brother Alex sadly passed away in April when he stepped into the path of very heavy steamroller near his farm – it was very messy, and when Tony went to identify the body it took him more than five minutes to walk all the way round. Then, just two months later Jennifer's aunt was shot and killed while carrying out an armed raid on a bank in a nearby town. Not a bad way to go out at eighty-seven, though! We've had all the usual coughs and sneezes of course, but we continue to enjoy good health generally.

Finally, if you happen to be reading this, we should let you know that all of our Christmas cards this year were actually posted, along with this letter, by John Clark, that excellent solicitor we mentioned earlier. After receiving last year's great wad of inane, pointless Christmas circular letters, Tony and Jennifer decided that if they received equal or greater numbers in 2014, they would put their suicide pact into operation. As a result we're sorry to inform you that on the 4th December, we retired to the garage where Tony lovingly blew Jennifer's brains out with the family shotgun, then turned the gun on himself. This will therefore be the last Christmas card and letter you'll receive from us, and you can look forward to saving a stamp next year.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas, and all the best for 2015!

Love





Jennifer and Tony