Rise of the Miser: Claus, #5

by Tony Bertauski

  She needed something.

  The miser leaned against the window and opened the door on the first floor. Nicholas wasn’t coming back to the tower. He was acclimating to his new home quite well.

  She pulled the cloak tight and yanked the hood over her head before stepping into the snow globe. She arrived in a room much different than the one Nicholas had endured. There was no valley or campfire. Now there was a long table and flames flickering on a multipronged candelabrum. Jingle bells pleasantly rang. This would be her happy room from now on.

  We’ll call it the Christmas room.

  Naren, however, stood in the open doorway. She waited for him to enter. A nervous smile was hidden deep in her hood, but a chuckle escaped.

  “Come on. In you go.”

  He peered into the room. He’d been going to the second-floor lab all this week. She was happy with his progress. It was time to take the next step.

  Well, several steps.

  “Too Christmassy? The candles, the bells... it means nothing.”

  She knocked the candelabrum across the room. He nodded—so mysterious, so serious—but still didn’t step inside.

  “If we’re to move forward,” he said, “no more hiding. I’m here, I’m honest, I’m fully exposed. You know exactly who I am. Meet me in this moment with your true face.”

  “Honest?” She didn’t dampen her laughter.

  “You see me. I need to see you.”

  “You didn’t spend the last week in my lab to suddenly give me an ultimatum.”

  “I know you, Heather. You are not your past—”

  “Ah-ah-ah.” A tendril of smoke leaked from her sleeve. “Don’t talk that talk, not now. Not ever. And that’s not my name.”

  “That’s your cure, to forget who you are?”

  “Who I was is not who I am. The past is useless, why not cut it away? It would only slow me down if I cherished it. You carry yours like a dead fish. Put it down, Naren.”

  “Put it down, or erase it?”

  “One and the same.”

  “I don’t think you put yours down. It’s still with you.”

  “Where?” She looked around as if her past were a leprechaun darting about the room. “Don’t look so sad, Naren. Come in, sit down. Let’s celebrate the most wonderful time of the year.”

  She pointed at a seat. The candlelight brightened. Naren remain firm-footed and heavy-lidded. Stubbornness ran deep and wide in this man. It was what made him great. He considered what others said, but at the end of the day, he listened to his own voice.

  She liked that.

  The trick was to sound like his voice when he listened. And make it say what she wanted.

  “I know what you want from me,” he said.

  He was tired from lugging his past around, she tried to tell him. But something about his willingness to be there, to be open and present with everything—the past, the present, the possibilities—made her weak in the knees.

  She wanted to open the stairwell that led to the third floor, invite him to come up, to see her true face. The freedom to just be there like he seemed to be was intoxicating. She had erased her past, got rid of who she was before she became this, but she was still hiding. The more she tried to look away, the harder her true nature was to avoid.

  The impulse to invite him up took her by surprise, and she spontaneously stepped out of the snow globe before she did something stupid. She had to be in full control of this situation.

  How did he turn it so quickly?

  She threw off the cloak. Her warped reflection looked back from the watery surface of the snow globe. Long legs and sinewy arms, ribs that could be counted beneath bright red flesh. She was as red as Christmas cheer, including the rims of her eyes and long fingernails. Lips plump beneath an angular nose, her face was framed in sizzling kinky hair that reminded her of a crimson dandelion whose seeds refused to be free. She hid from the world for a lot of reasons.

  But it was mainly the ashes.

  To reveal her true self could turn everything to ashes. She’d seen it happen before. The island was for protection.

  For her and others.

  She pulled the cloak over her shoulders and cinched it around her neck, threw the deep hood over her head. Naren wasn’t leaving the island. She preferred he choose to remain, but she decided that either way he was staying. It was time to move forward whether he liked it or not.

  She needed him.

  She went downstairs and met him outside the tower. “I need to show you something.”

  He backed away, expecting her to pull the hood off and perhaps smile with relief. Instead, she offered him a gloved hand.

  CLAUS

  24

  Claus woke to merry voices and a new blanket of snow. It was freshly laid and without a wrinkle. Crystal tufts perched over objects buried beneath it. It was cold inside the warehouse, but not bitter or dangerous. Comfortable.

  The new North Pole.

  He hated that. There was only one North Pole. Even if this one was the perfect temperature, it could never replace it. It would never be home.

  The elven were singing, their voices in perfect harmony, each the same tenor and pitch. We wish you a Merry Christmas...

  They slid in lines and weaved in synchronized formations, their feet plowing through virgin snow. It had reached blizzard conditions on numerous occasions, the snowflakes so thick he could not see his ruddy companions when they were only ten feet away.

  The elven skidded to a halt and turned at attention. Their beards were thick and bright red and lay across round bellies. Their cheeks were not rosy with cheer but brightly sunburned, a color that matched their long-tailed coats.

  He had spent days exploring the warehouse, examining the endless collection of conveyors and mysterious machines that smelled of burnt clay and mechanical circuits. The room in the tower was circular and claustrophobic. He had yet to see walls inside the warehouse and feared becoming lost. The ceiling was a dizzying array of artificial lights.

  The mountain was in the middle.

  He assumed it was the middle. Everything seemed to orbit around the gigantic mound. It was a mechanical pyramid of ramps and belts and conduit like some dystopian, cyberpunk effigy and reached for the bright white ceiling.

  An orb blazed at the top.

  A low growl rumbled in its belly and seeped through the soles of his boots. The vibrations weakened his knees and stirred his insides. All of the things he had seen—the conveyors and belts and pipes—interconnected in a mad design to feed it.

  The mountain.

  As chaotic as it seemed, there was an orderly nature to its design. Despite the industrial aspects, it was elaborate and elegant and endless, like an organic Escher creation where steps led into steps and infinite belts.

  Snow was piled on its multitude of flat surfaces and teetered on ledges. Occasionally, it reached a tipping point and the internal engines would gently knock it off. Claus scooped a handful of snow. It melted in his glove. The elven did the same—grabbing handfuls and rubbing them together until they melted.

  “Do you have names?”

  They had not responded to anything he said. They only watched him. The floor was smooth and slick beneath the snow. Claus glided on his specialty boots, drifting down the line of elven like a drill sergeant inspecting recruits. They stared ahead with eyes the color of frosted ice, where not a glimmer of joy twinkled but only dusted machinery reflected. What he had assumed were sunburns looked more unusual up close. The skin was smooth, almost waxen.

  And they were identical.

  The miser called them helpers. If they had names, it was likely the same one. They weren’t elven, even though they looked like them. These were something entirely different.

  Redbeards.

  They parted ranks as he glided past them. He followed an undisturbed path that circled around the churning mountain. The redbeards fell in line and began humming “Silent Night.” It soothed his anxiety. Not only did it mask the m
ountain’s grinding stomach, but it reminded him of the elven at home when they would sing after Christmas. This respite soon collapsed as he thought of Jessica.

  If they sent a rescue mission, will they even find me?

  The miser insisted he couldn’t be found, but even she underestimated the elven. But perhaps he did not have to be rescued. The miser had built this warehouse for him. She’d brought him to the island in, what she thought, was an act of kindness to save them from the North Pole. Of course, if he refused the kind gesture, he imagined she would not sit quietly.

  She would have other plans.

  A door opened at the base of the mountain. A redbeard popped out and slid around Claus. A strange cloud of freshly popped popcorn mixed with something earthy belched out of the door just before it closed along with the breath of a dragon.

  And freshly baked pottery.

  Claus occasionally stopped to examine a gadget or a moving mystery. Little crawlies were revealed—eight-legged, mechanical things that cleaned and inspected the warehouse. They brushed the artificial snow away and pushed it into perforations. Perhaps they were recycling it.

  The snow had stopped and the air was the clearest he had seen it. The walls, now visible, were too far away to distinguish doors. He had no idea which way he was facing or if it was daytime or night.

  He came upon a new object.

  It was on the opposite side of the mountain—a large container wrapped in sparkling crimson paper with a green looping bow. While all of the machinery fed the mountain with a complex array of pipes and belts, none of the conveyors were as big as the one jutting from the giant gift.

  The mountain was feeding it.

  There were boxes and bags and packages of all colors riding down the conveyor and dropping into the crimson gift—an endless feed that would seem to fill it within the hour but continued nonetheless. There was something else riding along with the presents.

  It was gooey and gray.

  At the base of the giant gift, leaning against the wide green ribbon, a redbeard sat. Arms by his sides and fingers twitching, snow had accumulated on his belly and propped feet. The soles exposed the ice-sliding scales that the elven had evolved over thousands of years on the ice.

  Claus knelt next to him.

  The sunburned cheeks were mottled and his breath labored. They were always so cheery, playing and singing and following Claus wherever he went. This one was cold.

  Claus hoped the miser was watching. “We need help!”

  The redbeards surrounded their fallen companion. They remained silent, hands folded over their stomachs, eyes cast down. Their bright red beards bristled as their lips silently moved in song. All at once they looked up.

  Claus followed their gaze.

  MISER

  25

  The miser didn’t have to explain the mountain to Naren.

  He knew exactly what it was and what it was doing, this dynamic, self-perpetuating maker of all things. This creation lived and breathed in the inanimate sense. It was the anticipator of desires, the conjurer of dreams.

  A present-maker.

  This was the culmination of her imagination, the legacy that would change Christmas forever. This was how she would lure Nicholas and his minions down from the North Pole. No more toiling to make gifts for the children when the mountain could whip them up. It was a reader of thoughts and desires. No letter would go unread, every wish fulfilled... to the nice ones, of course.

  The lists stay.

  The mountain would keep score just like Nicholas did. Two lists, one for Mr. Goody, the other for Ms. Doody. This incentivized good deeds. It was sound economics, really. No one could argue science.

  She coiled her arm around Naren’s elbow. “Isolation and a lot of money will get you this.”

  Her endeavor was truly expensive. She had been independently wealthy in her before life, a sound investor and holder of insanely profitable patents. The miser didn’t look too closely at where the money came from—that would risk remembering a bit too much. She just spent it.

  She was still a good investor.

  All that money had created this self-sustaining island. There was no need for another penny in the bank. She had everything she could want.

  Almost.

  His nostrils flared. The warehouse had the same familiar smell as the second-floor lab, one that could be described as baked earth and heated metal. This was the smell of synthetic stem cells put to a different task. No more organ transplants. Now these microscopic miracle workers made anything she wanted.

  “Careful.” She held him steady. “The floor is slippery.”

  He leaned into her. A warm wave moved through her, insulated by the special cloak that kept her from the outside world. It quickly faded when he peered into her hood. She turned away and patted his hand.

  “This place...”

  “Is a dream weaver,” she said. “A wish maker.”

  It was reasonable to believe the cool temperatures kept the environment from overheating. That was part of it, yes. But the snow was silly, from a practical point of view. He was about to find out why she’d made it like that. And why he couldn’t leave the island after knowing it.

  “This is the new North Pole,” she said. “What you see is what there is.”

  As they casually walked around the mountain, she explained how she’d seeded a single artificial cell with a dream. And like organic cells, it began to divide and differentiate. Her dream was like a program that told the cells what she wanted.

  It didn’t happen overnight, of course not. This was like seeding an orchard. It took years of good weather and care and love to watch it grow, years for it to bear fruit.

  Now comes the harvest.

  “Why would you do this?” was all he said.

  “Why?” She snorted. “A better question would have been why is it snowing inside a building? Or why is there a nuclear-fusion sunball on top of the mountain? Why would I plan to give all of this away for free?”

  She waved her arm, and snow began to fall in fat, wavering flakes while water splashed beneath her. Puddles formed around her feet.

  “Why, you ask? Why not? Christmas is the greatest day of all, Naren. Why do we have to wait for it? Nicholas is old and tired, and the North Pole is warming.”

  Wrinkles scrunched around his eyes. She held up her hand, not ready to explain who Nicholas was just yet. The island was a lot to take in. But explaining Santa Claus was real?

  That was a biggie.

  “I’m going to make Christmas bigger and better. Christmas every day, all day. That will be the motto, Naren. Not Merry Christmas to you, the most wonderful time of the year. It’s going to be isn’t life wonderful because it’s Christmas today and tomorrow and the day after that. You understand this isn’t a bad thing. It’s a very, very good thing. Every heart’s desire filled every day.”

  She walked her fingers up his arm and touched his nose.

  “Just be good.”

  The ground vibrated and the mountain shook. Snow trickled down. “Do people need more stuff?”

  “They have emotional holes,” she said. “We give them what they want to fill them.”

  “Stuff doesn’t fill emotional holes.”

  “It fills potholes. It fills cavities and pockets. It will fill emotional ones as well.”

  “Has it filled yours?”

  She chortled, this time quietly. The ice was no longer melting beneath her footsteps, but the snow was evaporating. Naren was agitated by her sudden warmth, but she clung to him tightly.

  “I’d like you to meet someone,” she said.

  The snow grew heavier. He noticed the spider-legged cleaners that patrolled the mountain. They were the ones that kept it tip-top. They weren’t a pretty sight, the cleaners, but neither was the mountain. The machine didn’t have to be pretty.

  As long as it made pretty things.

  She stopped suddenly and looked ahead. He followed her gaze and frowned. The scene was obscured in
snow, blankets of the white stuff settling on the giant gift-wrapped box and the overhead conveyor that fed it.

  Below, a gathering moved about.

  The bushy-bearded helpers turned at attention and formed a line. They were identical except for the fat man in the red coat and hat. He was on one knee, holding the hand of a fallen helper.

  “It’s time you meet him,” she said.

  Nicholas stood up and returned Naren’s shocked stare. Here was an ordinary man looking at the great fat one.

  And there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Those are helpers.” She shook Naren’s arm. “Everyone needs a helping hand. I have a hundred of them, maybe more. I’ve lost count. They’re fat and insulated, as you can see. Hairy and short, close to the ground. Their feet are snowshoes and the soles made for sliding.”

  The red-bearded helpers zipped toward them in two lines that weaved in and out. They circled around Naren and the miser and took their hands, gently guiding them forward. Naren stepped carefully and timidly. This was too new to rush into.

  Nicholas stood in front of the fallen helper. The fat man looked like a child caught peeking at his presents.

  Nicholas is a hider, too.

  “Nicholas, this is Naren. Naren, Nicholas. Or Santa or Claus or St. Nick, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Pelznickel... you choose. He delivers presents for a living, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He lives on the North Pole. Now he lives here.”

  No handshake, no greeting. Just gaping stares so wide she could drive a sleigh through them.

  “Let me address the elephant,” she said. “Santa is real. He’s not some shopping mall guy with a red coat or a grandpa who grows a white beard. Nicholas was the first to journey to the North Pole in 1814 and stumbled onto some magic elven—sorry, scientific elven.

  “Anyway, they gave him the ability to live this long, I haven’t figured that one out yet, but here he is. They make toys and things, the stuff we were talking about, and he delivers them with a sleigh and reindeer and a bag... it’s a whole thing and it’s real, Naren.”

  Naren’s mouth moved very slowly. The cold was inside his brain. Maybe she’d overestimated his ability to adapt.