... And All Through the House ...

[cyberghostface]

This comes from the The Vault of Horror #35.

The story opens with "Santa" narrating the story with a tale of Christmas. It opens with a woman murdering her husband.







The woman proceeds to board up her house as Santa tries to break in. Then she throws her husband’s corpse down the stairs to make it look like he died accidentally. Afterwards she discovers her daughter is missing.

Comments

[lonewolf23k]

The whole "The Killer will not Harm Children" thing always seemed like a cold comfort to sneak this story past what censorship horror comics still had at the time, because otherwise, it's plainly obvious that Carol's also a goner.

[crinos]

Yeah and lets be real here, Carol's about to watch her mom get ground up into hamburger meat by Santy Claus,

Like that's literally set up to the movie "Silent Night, Deadly Night."

[donnblake]

Well, there's two options, as I see it. Either Carol grows up to be a violent Santa Clause themed killer herself or, she grows up to *hunt* evil Santas.

[tripodeca113]

Ah,, the magic of Christmas.
Santa works in strange ways to bring justice to the world.

Ah this old classic

[steverodgers5]

The first time I read/saw this I was suitably horrified. But jeez, the older I get the more realistic this tale seems to become. Either way though, the dark, ironic ending still works like gangbusters..

Thanks very much for posting it!

[bravest_spinja]

If the woman was smarter she could have easily used this to her advantage. Lock the daughter in her room "as a precaution", call the police, tell them her husband checked up on some strange noises a couple hours ago, hasn't been seen since. Throw the body outside, clean up the poker and place it one feet from him, or the woods, it makes no difference. When they get there and grab the guy, everyone will come to the conclusion of him being "provoked" by an edgy and zealous family man. It won't be how he recalls it, but I think in a he said/she said situation, the fugitive serial killer is going to have a hard time making the case the body just happened to be dead when he got there.

[cyberghostface]

Going outside while Santa is waiting for her there is just asking for trouble.

[bravest_spinja]

Until the eleventh hour she still had "get in her car" in her docket, so she was playing with fire either way, just throwing him outside and making a couple of tracks would have gotten it over with.