Imagine a world where Santa Claus, that right jolly old elf who spreads joy and happiness at Christmastime, had a black heart beating under that fuzzy red suit?
Sure, he still delivers toys to children everywhere, but at what cost?
That’s the premise behind ‘Twas the Night, a new horror novel by St. Petersburg author Kevin Johnson. It’s published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.
“I’ve been writing manuscripts for many, many years, and this is the first one that finally broke through and we sold,” relates Johnson, a Pinellas County native who works as Director of Product Management at Global Payments Inc., a payment technology and software company.
Johnson spent years in the corporate tech industry, handling everything from marketing to client development. He also happens to have a degree in English from Florida State University, and writing has always been his passion.
“I’ve been a fan of the horror genre my whole life,” he says. “I grew up on Goosebumps by R.L. Stine, and then that led me into Stephen King. So I read all his stuff, like all horror writers.”
Indeed, ‘Twas the Night is set in Maine, King’s backyard. Johnson’s familiar with the state’s brutal winter weather – his parents retired there – and it only made sense to set a frosty, freezy Christmas tale in Maine, as opposed to say, Florida.
Here’s the setup: Investigative reporter Halley Belanger, a card-carrying Christmas hater, is determined to find out what’s become of dozens of missing children, mostly foster kids. The trail leads her to Yule, a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town in the center of one of Maine’s darkest and most impenetrable forests.
“Christmas horror,” Johnson explains, “is a subgenre that I have a lot of fun with in the holiday season. I started thinking, in these horror Christmas movies, it’s always a killer that dressed like Santa Claus, or a snowman or like a whatever. And I was like ‘What would it look like if Santa was not only real, but actually evil?’”
Yule is populated by strangely downtrodden townsfolk, most of whom don’t want Halley there, sniffing around. There are secrets everywhere.
But she’s befriended by Bob and Barry, an eccentric gay couple, who over the course of a few days, and with the aid of supernaturally strong martinis (that’s Bob’s department), tell her the whole, sordid story.
Or most of it, anyway.
“I’m the kind of writer that once I get an idea, I just go for it,” says Johnson. “I don’t have an outline. I just kind of write. I kind of have an idea of how I’m going to end things, and then I’m off to the races.
“I have a few scenes in mind I want to get to, but other than that I just write off the cuff. I come up with characters, I put them in crazy situations, and then I see how they react.”
For example. “I knew I wanted to have a scene where Santa Claus goes berserk and murders a bunch of people in a basement. I was like ‘That’s going to be kind of fun,’ because I have a sick, twisted brain.”
‘Twas the Night is suspenseful, and quite frightening in places. Johnson was shrewd enough to leaven the darkness with humor here and there, courtesy of Hally’s ongoing inner monologue, and Bob’s decidedly dry wit.
But that Santa dude? You better watch out, you better not cry …
He consider Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (subtitled Being a Ghost Story of Christmas) “the OG Christmas horror novel.”
“He kind of had the idea way back when. It is kind of a spooky time.”
Johnson believes “there’s a lot of fun to be had” in taking something wholesome like Christmas and making it ugly.
“And when I fell down some Internet rabbit roles, like where the Santa mythos originates, and all the different parts and pieces that now make up what we know as Santa Claus, to my surprise I found it to be pretty gnarly!
“I’m not saying everything I wrote in the book is one hundred percent accurate, but I didn’t have to make up whole lot. There’s a lot of meat on the bones for tracing Santa’s origins back to these more gruesome pagan rituals.
“And I thought that was really fun, and decided to share it with the world.”