“Nackles”Donald Westlake(1964)
Donald Westlake examines the question of
whether gods create people or people create gods
in this bitingly satiric tale of the anti–Santa Claus.
He opens by pointing out that most of the histori-
cal gods have a nemesis, such as God and the devil
and the Norse gods and the Frost Giants, and that
good and evil are usually portrayed as being locked
in a perpetual battle, balancing each other. He
then postulates that Santa Claus is, in a sense, a
god. He is omniscient, is able to watch and keep
track of the activities of every child in the world,
and on Christmas Eve obviously has a supernatural
power that enables him to be in so many different
places simultaneously. Millions of children believe
in him, and he rewards good and punishes evil.
Letters requesting gifts are the equivalent of
prayers, and his attendants are not entirely human.
If not a god, he is certainly very like one.
The narrator is troubled by his brother-in-law,
Frank, a thoroughly nasty man who once abused
the narrator’s sister but has behaved reasonably
well ever since thanks to a timely beating with a
baseball bat. Nevertheless, he is thoroughly de-
spised and a source of terror to his three children,
and their domestic arrangements are tense at best.
When the kids became old enough to believe in
Santa, Frank tried to discipline them by threaten-
ing that Santa would leave them no presents, but
that was too mild a concept for him, so instead he
invented Nackles.
Nackles is the anti-Santa, tall, thin, and
dressed in black. He travels through a maze of sub-

terranean tunnels in a carriage drawn by eight

white goats, visiting the homes of children who

have not behaved so he can stuff them into his

sack and later eat them. Frank is so pleased with

his creation that he tells other parents, and in-

evitably some of them adopt the concept as well,

so that it spreads almost of its own volition. The

first Christmas passes, but the following year

Frank’s job has gotten worse, he is drinking more,

and his temper has become dangerously violent.

On Christmas Eve he locks himself in his study,

and the following morning he is gone. The author

concludes that despite his years, he was still at

heart a spoiled, ill-behaved child and that perhaps

Nackles became real and spirited him away. West-

lake writes in the mystery genre almost exclusively,

and this rare venture into the fantastic was origi-

nally published under the name Curt Clark.

“Naples” Avram Davidson(1978)

Sometimes the most effective stories are those that

avoid being explicit, that paint a detailed landscape

in which we become immersed. Then, just when it

appears that we understand the place and what is

happening in it, the author introduces a concept or

an event that suggests that we may have misunder-

stood everything that has gone before. That is the

case with this very prose-conscious story, which

won the World Fantasy Award.

“Naples” is set at some unspecified time in the

past when Naples was a teeming city filled largely

with the poor, when pasta was the main source of

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