Claus: The Trilogy

by Tony Bertauski

  “Are you calling me hasty?”

  The decision is, sir. It’ll take time to communicate with all the toys we’ve manufactured and shipped around the world for the past two hundred years. Also, you should be aware that Pawn incarnated a fourth warmblood, who is now missing along with Joe. I hardly think now is the time to “party.”

  “Wait.” He pulls the sunglasses off. “Did you say Joe?”

  Yes. He’s the boy that was driving the truck with—

  “Sura.”

  She led him here. That energy of hers brought him to the plantation, gave him hope. She felt like home.

  “Where is she?”

  We don’t know, sir. They’re hiding.

  “Well, find them. You have to find them. Now.” Jack swaps the Oakleys for Ray-Bans and checks his reflection from three angles. “I want her back here before we blow up the world. No excuses. Call me as soon as you find her, and in the meantime, do what I designed you to do—compute. Look, I’ve been dead for two hundred years and I can’t sit around all day, so chop-chop.”

  Jack wraps a skinny, black tie around his neck and slides the premade knot beneath his fat neck, a pound of blue flesh falling over it.

  Sir, you want me to establish contact with billions of toys?

  “Tonight.”

  There’s not enough time. I really think we should—

  “Call me when you’re ready. I want to watch. Send Sura down when you find her.”

  Jack snatches the harmonica and wipes the spit off with his sleeve. He blows a few times and pockets the harp, determined to play. Determined they’ll like it. Sura, too.

  “By the way, what’s that?”

  That’s Max, Pawn’s pet. He’s been feeding his memories to it.

  “He’s using a memory box?” Jack remembers that silver box he carried with him. The little nuggets were digestible memory chips. As long as the box was pressed against his skin, they absorbed everything he experienced.

  “You’re letting him do this?”

  It’s harmless, sir. Besides, it’s a wise backup in case something goes wrong.

  Max is curled on a pillow, baring his teeth when Jack slides his glasses down for a look. Jack thinks maybe he’ll eat it. But that thing must be a hundred years old, probably taste like a leather boot.

  “Send it down to him. He’ll need something to talk to.”

  The elevator wall shimmies around the circle. Jack slides inside. His hand knifes through the gap just as the door closes.

  “One more thing.”

  Yes?

  “The statue.”

  J A C K

  December 24

  Wednesday

  Sura huddles against the gas station. The late-day shadows are cool. She hasn’t showered in days. Her sweatshirt will testify.

  The boy in the silver pickup looks away from Joe, his eyes falling on Sura. The door is dented and the hood a different color. The driver climbs out and hands Joe the keys.

  “Sure about this?” the kid says.

  Joe calls him Bean. Sura doesn’t care what his real name is, just as long as he gives them that rolling junk heap.

  “Just till after the New Year,” Joe says. “Then trade back.”

  Bean walks around Joe’s truck, fingers trailing. “Still don’t get it.”

  “Why you complaining, Bean?”

  “Because I don’t want no debt collector showing up at my house.”

  Joe clicks his tongue. “Come on, man. I just got to lay low for a bit, just till my old man cools off.”

  “Uh-huh. And what if he sees me in your truck?”

  “Tell him the truth. You met me at Edisto and I was camping.”

  “Where you going to be?”

  “North Carolina, probably.” They both know he’s lying, but at least they got their story straight.

  Bean finally climbs into the truck. He tests the radio, nodding. It’s a dumb move, but he can’t pass it up. They shake hands before he drives off. The tailpipes can be heard growling a mile down the road.

  “He’s all right,” Joe says, like this will make her feel better. “You ready?”

  “What if we don’t go?” Sura hugs herself tighter.

  “What then?” Joe asks. “Where do we go?”

  We find the nearest interstate, drive until the gas tank is empty, and call the nearest town home. We get jobs, buy a trailer, have kids, and spend the rest of our lives together, forever and ever and ever.

  She can’t stop the fantasies; they come to life when he’s near her. She’s afraid if they go back to Frost Plantation, it’ll be the end. Her mom still loved Jonah. She denied that love to raise Sura, but she loved him.

  “If we run,” Joe says, “we’ll never stop. We’ll always be looking back. The yellow-hat helpers said we have to go back, that Mr. Frost needs us. I’m afraid if we don’t, bad things are going to happen that we can’t outrun.”

  “You trust the yellow-hats?”

  He looks down the road. “Yeah. I trust them.”

  Bean’s truck starts on the second turn. Joe throws the door open and waves Sura over. She kicks empty Red Bull cans off the floorboard and sinks into the sprung seat, arms still clamped around her chest. Her eyes ache with insomnia.

  He takes her hand.

  The ache subsides. She hates that it does, hates that it feels good to be near him, to touch him. To need him. She wants to love him, not feel compelled to. It feels like she’s betraying herself, giving in to what Mr. Frost wants her to do, becoming the person he wants her to be, but she can’t help it.

  They hold hands until their palms sweat, and then he pulls her close. She leans in.

  They take the country roads, drive north for an hour, and then circle around. Without a phone or a GPS, they get lost twice. The sun is setting when they turn on to a weed patch cut out of the trees. It might have been a road once, but now it’s kudzu and pines.

  Joe kills the lights. They listen to the engine tick as it cools.

  “We’re on the north end of the plantation,” he says. “I used to come out this way when I was little, explore the woods, fish and hunt. Helpers come out this way every once in a while, but this time of year, they’re busy making toys.”

  “You mean like Christmas toys?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird, right?”

  A week ago, she would’ve agreed. Not now. Nothing seems weird, not a short, fat man with engorged feet named Mr. Frost, not Christmas gnomes making presents, or secret gardens that transform into a Neverland. Normal has been redefined.

  They start down the overgrown road.

  Twilight is extinguished in the forest. Joe pushes through the brush, making a path for her to follow. The going gets slow, the nonexistent trail thicker and stickier. Thorns tug at Sura’s sweatshirt and snag her jeans. Joe holds her hand.

  The ground turns mucky. Water sloshes over her shoes, soaking her socks. The trees give way to marsh grasses and black water. Beyond, a hill slopes up to live oaks, their branches weeping with moss.

  He looks up and down the tree line. The moon is bright.

  They slog just inside the trees. Sometimes, the water reaches their knees. If she wasn’t a Southern girl, she’d be thinking about alligators, but they’re coldblooded. So are snakes.

  Am I Southern?

  Sura is an Inuit name that means “new life.” She looked it up once for a class project but didn’t think much of it. But now they’re returning to the house of an elven from the North Pole.

  “There.” Joe points at a leaning tree with a thick rope. He splashes along the bank and pushes the weeds apart until an upside-down boat is revealed.

  “Help me.”

  They flip it over. Joe stares at the beaten john boat. “I used to take this back and forth. The helpers put the rope up and we’d swing all day long. Can’t believe the boat’s still here.”

  “Can’t believe it floats.”

  “It’ll get us to the other side.”

  And it does. The
y paddle with their hands. The frigid water seeps through holes, but they make it before sinking.

  Joe huffs on his quivering hands. “We’ll climb the slope and slip through the sunken garden. The back door will be open. If we’re fast enough, we can reach the elevator. The yellow-hat helper said Mr. Frost is expecting us.”

  Sura is grateful to be walking. Her knees are stiff. By the time they cross through the orchards and reach the north end of the gardens, she feels much better. Joe pries open the hedge and finds the hidden path inside. The wishing room is to the right, the garden to the left.

  There’s a dull thumping ahead.

  “What’s that?” Sura asks.

  Joe listens. “It’s late; no one should be in the gardens.”

  They creep along the darkened path. She stays close to Joe. The pounding gets louder. Joe puts his fingers to his lips, then peeks around the corner. His cautious expression turns to confusion. It takes a few moments to process what he’s seeing. Confusion becomes shock. Sura reaches out for him, but he steps into the open.

  “What are you doing?” Joe shouts.

  “Joe!” Jonah’s raspy voice calls from somewhere out there.

  The bushes shake and gravel crunches as Jonah’s bulky frame marches toward them with his arms spread, herding the teenagers back into the shadows.

  “Back,” Jonah hisses. “Quickly, both of you.”

  Joe tries to investigate what his father was doing in the garden, but Jonah is too insistent, too strong. His face is speckled with gray stubble, lines crunching the corners of his tired eyes. Sweat glistens on his cheeks.

  Jonah pushes to the end of the path. He closes his eyes, lips fluttering, before prying the wall open. Orange light warmly illuminates the frozen specks on his face.

  That’s not sweat, that’s ice.

  “In you go,” he says.

  A bonfire roars in an open plain.

  The salted ground is dry and hard. Sura thinks she can see the outline of distant mountains. The firelight only reaches so far into the abandoned land.

  Jonah gestures to the fire. “Warm yourselves.”

  Sura’s as close to the roaring fire as she can get, which is still quite far. She spreads her fingers, the warmth seeping through her cheeks. Steam rises from her pant legs.

  Joe is shivering. He follows Jonah to the edge of darkness. They argue in French. The wood crackles in the flames while the two shout, point, and stomp the dusty earth. They argue like adults, not father and son. Occasionally, Sura hears her name.

  Joe comes back to the fire. Jonah remains at the fringe of the fire’s glow. Sura backs up to an abandoned log, its surface smooth and gray. Joe stays near the fire, still shivering. Jonah comes to him, a slight hitch on his right side, like he pulls his leg along. He rubs his grizzly jaw and drops a thick hand on Joe’s shoulder.

  Joe doesn’t shrug him off. Instead, they warm themselves with outstretched hands. The shared moment of silence settles the tension between them. Joe sits next to Sura.

  “I don’t think we should yell,” she says.

  “No one can hear inside the wishing room,” Jonah mutters.

  That’s not what she meant. For several minutes, the fire does all the talking, grinding the wood into glowing embers that spit into the dark.

  “He’s here.” Jonah’s voice is raw. “The man that Mr. Frost has been… building. He has arrived.”

  “We know,” Joe says. “He’s not a man.”

  Jonah doesn’t seem surprised. He looks at his callused hands. “Where have you been?”

  “Hiding,” Joe says. “Helpers were at the house, and Sura was putting things together…” He looks for her response.

  She squeezes his arm.

  “A yellow-hat told me to get lost for a while.”

  Jonah nods like he’s seeing distant images.

  “We’re supposed to find Mr. Frost,” Joe says.

  “Not yet. It’s not safe.” The light can’t lift the shadows from his eyes. He returns to staring at his hands.

  “What does he want with us?” Sura asks.

  “I don’t know.” He studies the fire. “He’s playing a very complex game that’s taken hundreds of years. I couldn’t possibly understand. I’m just a pawn.”

  “We’re all pawns.” Sura tenses.

  “You don’t understand,” Jonah continues. “Everything hangs in the balance tonight. Come morning, this could be a whole new world. If Mr. Frost needs you, then you go.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Sura blurts. “You and Joe know what this place is—you’ve known about it since you were born. I’m still trying to believe that fire isn’t real.”

  He shakes his head. The light glistens in his deep-set eyes. “Joe doesn’t know everything.”

  Sura and Joe press closer. He’s still shaking.

  “This is our fate?” she asks. “We have no free will? We’re victims of our biology, is that it? Mr. Frost programmed us like puppets so that we’ll do what he says. That’s not fair. It’s not human.”

  Jonah is nodding. He doesn’t disagree.

  He grabs a twig from the dust and begins breaking it into smaller pieces, like Joe was doing on the beach. He groans when he stands, tossing the sticks into the blaze before walking away. He looks at the stars, hands on hips.

  “I was sixteen when I met her,” he says, without looking back. “I was hanging Christmas lights with my… father.”

  He doesn’t know what else to call the man that raised him.

  “We were in the garden when Sesi walked down the steps to collect flowers. I thought the lights were shining on her, but she was radiant everywhere she went. I felt her, right here.”

  He taps his chest.

  “She was like a smile that held my heart, a blanket that warmed my soul. The sun would rise and set with her. She said she grew up on the plantation, although I’d never seen her before. As strange as that is, I never questioned why I’d never seen her before that day.” His eyes twinkle in the shadows. “Later, I learned why.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Within weeks, we talked about marriage,” he says. “We were going to have three children and a farm. We were naïve enough to dream that Mr. Frost would one day give us the plantation and we’d raise our family with horses out back and crops in the fields. We’d live long and old and die happy.”

  Sura cringes. That’s her fantasy.

  A groan escapes him. He looks at the ground and kicks at the dust.

  “We’d been together almost a year when the sun would set and never rise again. That’s when she left. Sesi said she needed to wake up and break the cycle. I didn’t know what that meant.”

  He shakes his head.

  “The truth is sometimes hard and unforgiving.”

  Jonah reaches into his pocket and studies something flat and round, light reflecting off the edges. He reaches out, hand cupped. Joe lays his hand open and receives an antique pocket watch. The surface is nicked and worn. The etching is gone from years of friction, leaving behind a well-polished surface.

  “Stay until eleven o’clock,” he says. “Use the pocket watch to find the exit. Templeton will meet you at the back door and take you to Mr. Frost.”

  Jonah limps around the log and fades into the darkness, stopping just before he disappears. A golden string dangles in front of him. A clipped groan cuts short what he’s thinking. Perhaps he has more to say. Maybe he wants to stay with them in the wishing room, huddle next to the fire, and just let the world go on without them. They’d talk about their shared fantasy, what they would name the kids, and what careers they’d have when they grew up. If they stayed in the wishing room long enough, they could transform it into a happy place where brides-to-be don’t leave.

  And Moms don’t die.

  The darkness parts like black curtains and Jonah slips out. Joe remains stone-faced, staring at the fire. They hold each other in silence. Jonah should’ve stayed to make them go when the time comes.

&n
bsp; Perhaps they do have a choice.

  -------------------------

  Frigid air hisses down the walls.

  Mr. Frost stands in the center, eschewing the bed despite the ache in his knees. He wants it to hurt; it distracts him from his thoughts.

  Seeing Jack—the blue, fat, and bald elven—brought long-forgotten memories to the surface. There was no epic battle, no struggle for power, or clash of good versus evil. Jack slid into the tower and simply took everything from him.

  Mr. Frost became Pawn.

  Music thuds through the floor, penetrates his feet, tickles his joints. The root vibrates beneath his scalp. A song ends and another begins, faster and heavier.

  Mr. Frost locks his knees.

  The door cracks open. The earthy scent of the incubator lab wafts in from the other room. Music, too. The door swings open. There’s a crash against the wall, followed by laughter. A crumpled blue-hat helper falls through the doorway. A red-hat helper stumbles down the hall. More laughter.

  They pull themselves together and throw a sack into the room, slamming the door shut. Something yelps inside, kicking at the cloth. Mr. Frost drops to his knees and struggles to untie the knot. A white ball of fur leaps on the bed.

  “Max!” Mr. Frost falls next to the Arctic fox.

  Max’s rough tongue kisses his nose. Mr. Frost pulls the silver tin from his pocket and fishes a few kernels from the bottom, leaving three in the box. He won’t need a refill. Max gobbles them down.

  Mr. Frost goes back to standing like a vigilant guard of nothing more than a thin mattress and a curled-up puffball. He stays that way for hours while the music drones on. He resists sleep. There’s no way to know how much time has passed when the music stops. The silence feels strange.

  It won’t be long now.

  -------------------------

  “No!” Jack waves his arms. “You’re terrible. Get off the stage!”

  Jack shoves the bass player with his foot.

  “I need a bass player; I can’t do everything. My God, the instrument isn’t that hard to play.”