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“You weren’t kidding, were you, Dingleberry,” I said. “Cane was hoarding toys. Now it all makes sense. Cane got me out of the way because as long as I was about naughty children, not as many toys got made. So when every kid in the world gets what they want, production has to ramp up. Cane starts to skim while Santa works himself to death. Suddenly, Santa’s too tired to take care of Christmas and Cane’s got a storehouse of toys. Like a white knight, he rides in, saves Christmas Day and, like Rudolph, goes down in history.”

“And to think I helped him do it!” Dingleberry cried. “Me and the other elves worked triple shifts to make more and more toys and didn’t notice Cane was taking them until it was too late. Santa is just as sick as he can be!”

At that, Rosebud and I looked at each other having the same awful thought. The wheezing we heard coming deep from the maze of toys was Santa’s. A second later, the three of us dove down the trail, trying to hear the hiss of a dying breath over the pounding thump of our heartbeats.

Santa couldn’t die. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t just a jolly old elf and toymaker. He was God’s own angel, sent here to show the spirit of Christmas to the poor souls too stubborn or stupid or scared to step into a church. Believing Santa could deliver gifts to the whole world in a single night made it possible to believe that on one quiet night, God gave the whole world the greatest gift. That notion would get in people’s craw and it would never go away. It might get quiet, the noise of the world might drown it out, but hearing Santa’s “Ho ho ho!” and seeing his rosy cheeks would make them remember. And when someone gave another person a gift, when they played Santa, and saw their friend’s eyes light up with surprise, their hearts might just get a little air under them. Then maybe, just maybe, they would learn and know and believe. Santa couldn’t stop and he couldn’t be replaced by Cane. Cane would poison it. Piling presents up on a kid made the presents and the kid worthless. The giving would no longer be a blessing. It had to remain special. It had to be something you believed in more than you could hold. A wish that would make you know you were special. Santa knew how to make that kind of gift because he put his good, beautiful and pure heart into it. I ran faster because Santa wasn’t going to die on my watch.

I finally rounded a corner and the walls opened up into a small, cluttered room. I saw a gray hooded figure standing over a man on his deathbed. It was the end of my world.

“Whose bottom do you have to butter to get a cup of tea around here, old chap?” the specter chirped. The question caught me up short and I stopped where I stood. Dingleberry and Rosebud plowed into me, but I didn’t feel a thing. I just stared at the faceless figure. Under the hood was a black hole, an inky, endless pit with nothing in it but a couple pins of orange light for eyes. “You would think in a palace of this sort, a bloke could find something for whistle wetting, but chaps in the Foreign Legion are more dewy than me, I’d wager,” said the voice coming from the faceless black hole.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, trying to make some sense of everything.

“Well, I’m not talking to him,” the phantom said, pointing a long, spindly finger at the man in the bed gasping for breath. I followed the finger and saw that the dying man was not Santa. It was Cane! “What’s wrong with him?”

“Oh he’s dying, I’m afraid,” the phantom said with a shrug of the shoulders. “Buying the farm, expiring, his candle has a reservation in Snuff Town, so if you’ve come to say farewell, you’ve ankled in here just in the nick, believe me.”

“Are you the Angel of Death?” Dingleberry asked, his eyes wide with wonder.

“Oh no, ducky,” said the figure. “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Angel of Death needed a few days off. I can’t say that I blame him. Escorting chaps to the Finis Express can get dreary day in and day out. Even if a bloke is tossing the old mortal coil for an eternal romp behind the Pearlies,