(Continued) Vixen looked away. I could do nothing by watch in horror, unable to do anything to stop it. The bag fell, dragging the Clauses and my brave reindeer brothers with it. While reindeer can fly, and they can "pull" a magic sled, they are not as big as you might think. I myself, on a good day can fly with myself and maybe another 50 pounds. These reindeer don't stand a chance and it was me who tied them to the bag and sent them to their deaths. I read somewhere that time seems to move more slowly to people who are about to die. I was going to live, but time for me crawled. The bag fell, not quite at the normal acceleration of a falling object, (no doubt due to the panicked efforts of my reindeer brothers) but more slowly. Then it did something quite remarkable. As I watched, the bag acted like it had hit a slope and started to level off. It look like it was traveling the path of some giant, invisible water slide 500 feet above the rocky floor below. Then, against all rules of logic and physics, it's stopped in mid air and disappeared. One by one, the reindeer that were roped to it flew toward the spot where it disappeared and they, too, were gone. Rudolph: Vixen - did you see that? Vixen: I can't look. Is it over? Rudolph: I don't know. They were half way to the bottom when they slowed, stopped and then ..... disappeared. Vixen: (turning back to look) What are you talking about? I hovered there, dumbstruck by what I had just seen. I don't know how long it was - might have been a minute or more. Vixen was speaking, but I have no idea what he said. Santa's disembodied voice: Hey Rudy - you coming or what? I turned behind me, toward where I heard the voice. Santa's ghost, smiling as he always did in life, was looking right at me. He looked like I was seeing him though a smoke filled room, his features shimmering and lost in a thick mist. Then he reached out and grabbed me, dragging me into the afterlife with him.

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