Well, here's me Christmas tale. Started in November. Yeah, go me. :|

(Incidentally, I'm working on far too much.)

A Christmas Tale

Prologue: The Old Man and the Judge

Gather round, lads and lasses, gather round and here a tale…

Fifty-five years ago, there was a small town in America called Cape Columbus. This town was as normal as you could bear of a town in the Nineteen-Fifties – a stereotypical community constructed on moralistic values and the idea of the American way of life. It was completely and utterly unremarkable.

Then one day, a man came from out of town. He was a strange fellow, a somewhat stout, beared old man wearing only red. He introduced himself as Nicholas, an immigrant from Holland hoping to start a new life in the United States.

The people of Cape Columbus treated him with mistrust. Nicholas, to them, was a stranger, and the townspeople were a simple folk. They had heard tell of crime in larger cities which had large immigrant populations.

With this in mind, they shunned poor Nicholas. He could not find work, as nobody would employ him. People in the streets would keep away from him, whispering to each other. Children found his appearance and his origin to be a joke, and laughed and threw stones at him.

Despite this, Nicholas persisted, and eventually got a job at a nearby factory as a supervisor. He gained a good reputation from the workers, all of whom he treated fairly, without prejudice against blacks, or Chinese, or Irish and Italians.

This behaviour astounded the people of Cape Columbus, who had thought it right to shun those who were different to them. The townsfolk began to believe that Nicholas was a troublemaker, a spy, a communist. They planned to teach the old man a lesson.

Rallying around the mayor of the town, the people plotted and planned, and by the time the snows came, they were ready. One night, as Nicholas returned home from the factory, he found the county sheriff waiting for him. He was handcuffed, and taken to the town square, where the locals had all gathered.

The mayor spat out accusations against Nicholas, calling him a communist, a terrorist and a conspirator. All this time, Nicholas begged the people to help him, but not a single word of support was given.

Under agreement by the mayor, the county sheriff and the town attorney, Nicholas was sentenced to deportation – he was to leave Cape Columbus and never return.

Nicholas was taken to the town limits and thrown into the dirt. Climbing to his feet, Nicholas gave the people a sad glance, before hobbling away down the road. He was never seen again.

A few days later, on Christmas Eve, a cloaked figure walked into the square. He introduced himself as a judge, and asked to see the mayor, sheriff and attorney. When the three men turned up, he gave them three small gems – a red one, a green one and a blue one. Then he politely asked for a meeting of the villagers, which was reluctantly agreed to.

Within an hour, the judge stood before the people. He spoke scathingly to them, accusing them and condemning them. They, he said, had thrown out an innocent old man simply because he was different, and told them that that would be their undoing. He uttered a single whisper, a whisper of 'Guilty', and then he was gone.

The next day, the mayor, attorney and sheriff all vanished without a trace. Local authorities and the FBI tried to locate them, but with no luck. Over the next few years, each time in December, more people vanished, never to be seen again. By 1960, the town was abandoned, its remaining people having fled in fear.

As for the gems, they quickly vanished. They were stolen, not by the judge or the townspeople, but by a vile man named Zwarte Pete. Every December, it's said that Zwarte Pete descended upon innocent people, cursing them before running off to the dark night.

…

Ah?

I see you picked up the 'descended' there, didn't you? Well, I've certainly got the time to tell you how Pete was stopped, I suppose. It's quite recent, actually – just last Christmas, in fact.

Get comfortable, my friends. It's a long story…