Extract and Promo Post: ‘Candy Canes and Buckets of Blood’, by Heide Goody and Iain Grant

Blurb

Christmas is a time for families to come together.

Guin Roberts can’t think of anything worse than visiting a Christmas market with her new family. Guin is perfectly happy with own company and doesn’t want that disrupted by her wisecracking stepbrother and his earnest mum.

Their Christmas celebrations are invaded by a sleigh full of murderous elves. And it doesn’t matter if they’ve been naughty or nice — these elves are out for blood.

Can the family band together to survive the night? Or will Santa’s little helpers make mincemeat of them all?

I read the blurb for this one and immediately thought ‘Oh Yes! A Christmas book I can get behind’, but it was a digital only tour and my brain weasels aren’t playing nice, so I agreed to an extract instead. Maybe one day I’ll get to read this book.

Extract

Guin and Newton had been deposited alongside the train track. It was a ridiculously narrow and low train, little more than a children’s theme park ride, with crude open top trucks behind a little pink locomotive that would have looked cute if it wasn’t so wonky and rusted.

“Steam engines,” said Newton. “Environmentally very unsound. Mum would have — Oh, my God!”

In a stall by the train line stood a reindeer — well, some sort of deer, or, some sort of hoofed … some sort of quadruped. It definitely had four legs. Of that Guin could be confident. It had probably started out as a reindeer, or reindeer-shaped but…

It was a patchwork of fur and material that was not fur, wrapped around a body featuring a couple of very un-reindeery legs (one of which appeared to be elegantly carved from solid wood) and strange, very unhealthy looking lumps and bumps under the skin. Hide, cloth and patchwork flesh were held together with fine white stitching.

And the head… The skin was almost entirely bald. One of the antlers had been fixed in place with metal brackets and screws. The eyes were grey-green and shrunken, like ancient withered grapes. Its mouth was devoid of flesh, flat teeth champed and snapped against a jawline of exposed bone.

“It’s a zomdeer,” whispered Newton.

“Frankenstein’s reindeer,” said Guin at the same time.

Whatever, it was a reindeer even Father Christmas would struggle to love.

The zomdeer or Frankenstein’s reindeer or whatever it was, reared and bucked in its dirty little pen. Elves were unpacking bales, boxes and bags from the other trucks. Newton supposed they were meant to be important goods and materials for the elves but, for the most part, looked like the leanest pickings off a rubbish heap. Regardless, the elves’ industry meant Newton and Guin were left standing alone for a while. Newton looked along the track they’d come down. There was a long high tunnel, but no suggestion of an exit apart from a quartet of elves standing on guard near the rear of the train, holding knives and larger billhook-type blades.

He looked down at Guin. Her pale little face looked even paler in this gloomy light. There was a concerned, distant look on her face. “Don’t worry,” he said, dropping into his default carer mode. “I’ll look after you.”

Guin looked at him. “What?”

“I said I’ll look after you. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just saying if —”

“Yes, but I’m not,” she said with quiet certainty. “I was thinking, why do elves need reindeer?”

The patchwork reindeer thing rolled its shrivelled eyes and stamped its hoofs.

“Reindeer are cute,” said Newton.

“That one isn’t.”

“We just haven’t got to know her yet.”

“Her?”

“Only female reindeer have antlers in winter.”

“Those antlers are bolted on.”

“We haven’t got to know it yet,” said Newton. Emboldened by his need to show Newton Woollby loved all animals, cute and ugly, he edged towards the reindeer. The creature blinked and angled its head as though trying to focus its clearly useless eyes on him.

“Hey, Blinky,” he sang softly, holding out the flat of his hand to her muzzle as he slowly approached. “I could make friends with any of the horses at the stables,” he told Guin.

“That is not a horse,” said Guin. “It barely qualifies as an animal.”

“She just needs to be shown a little love. Maybe she’s feeling out of sorts. Hey, what do reindeer take when they’ve got a stomach ache.”

“A joke? At this time?”

“Elk-a-seltzer!” Newton grinned.

Guin did not crack a smile, not even a fake one.

“You like my jokes,” Newton simpered to Blinky. “You do, don’t you? Don’t you, you lovely little —”

The reindeer jerked forward and snapped at Newton’s hand. He snatched it back barely in time before hard, yellow zombie teeth clacked together on the space where his fingers had just been.

“Bad reindeer!” he gasped in alarm. “Naughty Blinky!”

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