Claus: The Trilogy

by Tony Bertauski

  Electrified.

  His hair tingles.

  Oliver pulls his hand out. The orb is locked into the glove. The storm dies inside the room, wads of bright paper wedged beneath the chairs, pushed against the walls.

  The squall outside dies.

  The flurry settles.

  The windmill emerges from the whiteout. A path is dug from the field, wandering all the way to the distant trees. Walls of snow have been thrown to the sides like a commercial snowplow passed through. And in the middle, limping near the windmill, walking toward the house, is a figure hunched in a hooded cowl. Things move in the mist settling around the figure.

  Disfigured lumps of snow.

  “Henry,” Grandmother says. “Let your grandfather inside.”

  F L U R Y

  twenty-nine

  “What?” Aunt Rhonnie says. “What did you say, Mother?”

  The hooded figure makes his way toward the house with a slight limp. Oliver had assumed, when he snuck into the attic, that it was Grandmother in the driveway. Of course, there could be another black cloak, but the frail nature of the man she called his grandfather matches what he saw that night he watched from the attic. And those things in the field, the ones behind him, the creatures that chased him at night…the snowthings…they’re with him.

  A dozen of them line the gash cleaved across the field.

  They don’t march like soldiers but slide like half-baked snowmen, bodies slushy and gray. Leaves, branches and gravel are packed into their bodies; their throbbing heads are without features except for a single, dark hole.

  “Tell me what is happening?” Aunt Rhonnie says. “Tell me who that man is and what those things are and what is happening, Mother!”

  Her voice rises, each word building on the one before it until she sounds like something at the zoo. The long spikes of her heels hammer the floor. Her arms are inflatable appendages with lives of their own.

  “Aaaaaanswer me!”

  Grandmother turns. “Open the door, Henry.”

  Aunt Rhonnie storms out.

  Molly’s hand finds Oliver’s. Their fingers entwine.

  His mom stands behind them as the back door opens. There is a short bout of muttering, followed by boots hitting the mudroom floor. Henry returns to the living room. His pale face is as white as winter.

  Oliver’s fingers ache in Molly’s hand.

  The hooded figure stops in the doorway. He lifts his right arm; a spotted hand with knobby, curled fingers emerges from a hanging sleeve to push back the cowl, revealing a bushy gray beard and sagging eyes.

  “Hello, Virginia,” he says. There’s a smile somewhere behind the whiskers.

  Grandmother says nothing.

  Aunt Rhonnie clops back into the room. Her drink tumbles on the floor. She lifts her hand, the painted nails trembling over her red lips. “Oh, my…”

  “Father,” Mom whispers.

  “Hello, girls,” Grandfather says. “It’s been quite a long while.”

  “What are you…where have you…” Mom stutters.

  “That, my dear, is a long story that I’m afraid I haven’t time to tell.”

  “What are you doing here?” Aunt Rhonnie says.

  He turns his stiff neck toward her. “Your mother knows why I’m here. I won’t stay long, but some tea would warm these old bones, if you have some ready. And I know you do.”

  When no one moves, Oliver starts for the kitchen. “Not you, Olivah,” Grandmother says. “Helen, prepare a cup for your grandfather.”

  “Bring sugar,” he says.

  He favors his right leg.

  Stopping near Mom, he reaches with his right hand, the arthritic fingers incapable of straightening. He stops short of touching her cheek. Again, the grin returns somewhere behind his beard, his eyes scrunching.

  “Debra,” he whispers.

  Mom’s grip on Oliver’s shoulders tightens.

  Grandfather pauses at the picture window, running his curled fingers over his thinning scalp. The snowthings patiently wait near the windmill. Helen returns with a saucer and cup. He thanks her, dropping three sugar cubes into the tea. The tongs shake in his feeble grip.

  He sips.

  They watch him stir in three more cubes.

  Wistfully, he stares outside. “I thought my gift might ruin your Christmas.”

  “You gave me the glove?”

  “I’ve given you many gifts, my boy.”

  “The journals?” Oliver asks. “The footlocker?”

  His eyes twinkle over the rim of the teacup.

  “This, too?” Oliver raises the orb.

  “Not that, my boy. I needed you to find that for me.”

  “Why?”

  He reaches for another sugar cube and groans. “You look good, Virginia. Don’t you agree, children? For her age, I mean. No one your grandmother’s age looks that good.”

  The silence is filled with Grandfather sipping. The hidden grin dances in his eyes. He shares a thousand emotions with Grandmother without saying another word.

  “Am I going crazy?” Aunt Rhonnie mutters. “Someone tell me what in the world is happening!”

  “He left,” Grandmother says.

  “Wrong!” The word is surprisingly powerful, exploding from the frail old man’s grizzled beard. Everyone jumps, including Grandmother. “I never left, Virginia. Now tell them what happened.”

  The silence swells.

  “Tell them!”

  Grandmother sits with perfect posture, hands folded on her lap.

  “Mother?” Aunt Rhonnie asks. “Why would you send us to boarding school and not tell us Father was alive, and why is he here now, and what the hell is out there?” She jabs at the snowthings. “Will you talk for once in your life!”

  “Mother?” Mom says. “What’s happening?”

  Grandmother remains unmoved.

  The frail woman has hardened beyond anything Oliver has ever seen. She says little because she knows a lot. And they’re about to find out what she knows.

  “You never were very good at explaining things, Virginia.” Grandfather sighs. “Perhaps you can explain it, Oliver?”

  “Me?”

  “Would you mind?”

  All eyes land on him. Molly pulls closer. Mom throws her arm across his chest.

  “I don’t…” His throat tightens.

  “Come now. You’ve read about it. You know the story. I believe you know why I’m here. Out with it, my boy.”

  The light that had twinkled in the old man’s eyes is, once again, snuffed by sudden impatience. Oliver peels his mom’s arm off and moves away from her and Molly, as if distance between them will keep them safer.

  Because he knows why Grandfather is here.

  He’s come for someone.

  Oliver squeezes the orb with the gloved hand, hoping the storm that shook the room will return and knock the old man through the window. But the power he felt earlier has diminished by his presence.

  “Oliver?” he says.

  “Grandfather was born in 1865.”

  If there was space for more shock to enter the room, it would have settled in between the pauses. But there is none.

  There was nothing Oliver could say that could surprise anyone, not when snowthings are watching, not when a previously thought dead man is sipping tea.

  Oliver continues.

  He recounts the trip to the North Pole, the discovery of the elven and their advanced technology. He explains what the orb does and the glove he’s wearing and the snowthings. Mom and Aunt Rhonnie are the only ones staring. Henry and Helen listen without watching him. Some of this they know.

  Maybe all of it.

  Grandfather nods along, occasionally sipping, but mostly staring at Grandmother.

  “He stole from the elven,” Oliver says. “He took their abominables and made those things out there.”

  The snowthings move closer, as if they heard. Aunt Rhonnie shuffles back.

  “Very good, my boy. A quick study, you a
re. You are not a disappointment.” Grandfather glances at Oliver’s cousins. “I am over one hundred and fifty years old, but your grandmother is much, much older. I look like this because, if she had her way, I would be dead. That’s what you had hoped for, isn’t it, Virginia. You wanted death to solve your problems. But death has always been our problem, hasn’t it?”

  He swirls the cup. There couldn’t be anything left but a slurry of sugar. Oliver’s grandparents share a long, knowing glare. So much left unspoken.

  “Girls,” he says, “I know I just returned, but I have to go. Perhaps another time I can explain.” He groans as his back refuses to straighten. “Come along, Oliver.”

  “You can’t take him,” Grandmother says.

  “Nonsense.”

  “I will not allow it, Malcolm. Take what you want, but you will leave Olivah.”

  “You can’t stop me, Virginia. Perhaps you should have been more active in seeking my death. It’s too late now.”

  Mom pulls Oliver behind her.

  Grandmother remains still.

  They stare like gunslingers, fingers dancing, waiting for a move.

  When it comes, Grandmother reaches for her sleeve, but Grandfather merely flicks open his hand to reveal a metal glove. Oliver’s fingers are pulled open by some invisible force, releasing the wooden orb from his grip. Instead of bouncing on the floor, it shoots across the room and slams into Grandfather’s palm with a dull clink of wood on metal.

  Wrapping paper rustles.

  Grandmother retrieves a metal glove from her sleeve. But it’s too late.

  Grandfather holds the orb between finger and thumb and sighs. He rotates it, admiring the intricate etchings.

  “I made this, but it was Flury who put part of his soul into it.” He squeezes, and a mild whirlwind tosses loose items across the room.

  “You have it now,” Grandmother says. “Now go.”

  “Oliver will come. I’ll need him.”

  “It will work without him.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “I’ll go.” Henry steps closer. “I want to go, Grandfather. Take me with you.”

  “I’m sorry.” He drops his bare hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Flury knows your intentions are no better than mine. Your mother was always selfish, and she passed those traits onto you and your sister, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s…well, that’s just not true.” Aunt Rhonnie raises her hand to her heart. “I’m very unselfish. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Flury picked Oliver,” Grandfather says.

  Aunt Rhonnie looks around. “Who the hell is Flury?”

  Grandfather chuckles. Henry and Helen don’t have that question in their eyes. They know. They’ve seen him.

  “He is something you wouldn’t understand, darling. He is someone that trusts youth and innocence. He sees the inherent goodness in a child of a certain age and offers his magic, gives his soul. Which, as it just so happens, is also the key to my freedom.”

  He displays the orb again.

  “But he’s a prisoner on this property, just like your mother and me. Right, Virginia?”

  Grandmother flexes her gloved hand.

  “We didn’t mean to become prisoners,” he says. “We brought him to the property and held him captive.”

  He gestures out the window. No one would guess he was referring to the slow-churning windmill except Grandmother. But Oliver knows what he means; he knows that the windmill is the homing device that limits where Flury can go.

  “If he leaves, he melts, so he locked us out of the lab. Revenge, I suppose. Can’t blame him.” Grandfather shrugs. “That was a problem.”

  “You started aging,” Oliver says.

  “My boy, you are the smart one. We started aging”

  Grandmother’s shaking her head. Her lips remain tight.

  “Truth is, if we leave, we become ordinary. As you know, ordinary people don’t live to be one hundred and fifty. We are as much slaves to the windmill as he is, so you see I needed Flury to return, needed him to give me the lab I built with my own hands.”

  The teacup shakes. He puts it down, grimacing, wiping away the memories that rise in his voice. He looks at the snowthings pulsing.

  Waiting.

  “We knew the key to Flury’s heart was children. We knew he’d give his soul to one of you.” He displays the orb. “And his soul would open the door. So we had kids.”

  He nods at Oliver’s mom and Aunt Rhonnie.

  “We had you to get the key, so that we could free ourselves from the windmill. But your mother had a change of heart just when you were about the right age. Not you, I’m afraid, Rhonnie. Flury wouldn’t have trusted you. Your sister, though.”

  He nods at Oliver’s mom.

  “I think he would’ve come to you, Debra. Your mother knew it, and that’s why she sent you away without my knowledge. And while I was gone, Flury betrayed me, tried to destroy me, and your mother watched. If it wasn’t for my babies…”

  The snowthings swell, drawing surrounding snow into their sloppy bodies.

  Aunt Rhonnie tries to say something, to ask anything that would make sense. But she doesn’t understand. How could she know what an abominable is and that Grandfather somehow used it to extend their lives like the elven? How could she even understand what an elven is?

  But that technology, that power, turned dark. Maybe because he was never supposed to have it. Maybe that’s why the elven didn’t want him to have it. Flury must have known; he must’ve locked them out to stop them.

  To stop Grandfather.

  Grandfather reaches for Oliver.

  Molly grabs Oliver’s arm.

  Mom stands in front of him, hand out to stop her father. Grandfather’s dark laughter rattles in his throat. In the moment of distraction, Henry reaches for the wooden orb clutched loosely at Grandfather’s side.

  Grandfather doesn’t try to elude his grasp, he simply squeezes the orb, and Henry turns solid, his outstretched fingers within inches of the gloved hand. Choking sounds gurgle from his throat; spittle rises on his lips.

  Aunt Rhonnie screams.

  Henry backs away, his feet sliding across the floor as if an invisible force drags him by the throat.

  “Not all youth are innocent,” Grandfather says. “Not all are good.”

  Henry falls next to his sister.

  Aunt Rhonnie rushes to their sides. That’s when Mom is pushed to the side by the invisible hand. Molly unwillingly lets go, shouting as her fingers untangle from Oliver’s hand. Both women struggle, both curse, but the orb in Grandfather’s gloved hand cannot be denied.

  The candlelight flickers on Grandmother’s softened expression, glinting in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “You should be,” Grandfather says. “You knew this day would come.”

  The snowthings begin their irregular sliding, advancing toward the window. Their forms loom in the dark.

  Grandfather pulls a handful of objects from his pocket that clink in his palm. He drops them on the wood floor. The metal bearings roll in all directions. Once again, the wrapping paper begins to skid over the floor, only this time it wraps around the little metal balls.

  Tiny spheres!

  Tissues shoot from a box, envelopes slide off the coffee table, a scarf creeps over the couch. They collide with the metal balls, reform around them until several little forms rise up from the shuffling mess.

  The oddball little creatures, no taller than a hiking boot, march to Grandfather’s side.

  “They’ll stay,” he says to Grandmother. “Until we’re finished.”

  “I never wanted it to be this way.”

  “I think you did, Virginia.”

  “Flury is only trying to help.”

  “He’s in the way.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “You know I do.”

  “We can end all this. It doesn’t have to involve them.”

  “I
t’s too late. I think you know that.” Grandfather reaches for Oliver. “Help an old man, my boy.”

  Oliver takes his grandfather’s arm and guides him to the kitchen. He’s not forced to help him walk through the back door, where a path is carved through the snow. He walks willingly, knowingly.

  He helps an old man limp to the garage.

  F L U R Y

  thirty

  Grandfather stops behind the car, his eyes walking over the shiny exterior. It takes several short steps for him to reach the driver’s side, exhaling like a dying engine. Oliver wonders if he might expire before falling into the red leather seat. He caresses the steering wheel, twisting the grip.

  “Get in.”

  Oliver is obedient.

  It would do him no good to disobey—Henry tried that—but a small part of him wants to get in the car, wants to go with him.

  Flury picked me. Why me?

  Grandfather begins to wheeze, coughing uncontrollably. Oliver thinks this time he’ll crumple, but the old man recovers, pulling a key from his pocket—one with a glowing blue cube—and inserts it into the ignition.

  Once again, the ride steals Oliver’s breath.

  When they stop, the wall is looming. Grandfather tries to get out but needs Oliver’s help. The old man shuffles to the door. Ogling the wooden orb one last time, he hands it to Oliver.

  “Go on.”

  Oliver knows what he means. When he takes the wooden orb, his body tingles. “It won’t work for you?”

  “Open the door, my boy.”

  “What if I say no?”

  Grandfather guides him by the elbow. “I can take the orb back. You know what I can do with it.”

  Pressure closes around his throat just below the chin, triggering a fierce headache. He’s released from the grip and, hunching over, gasps for air. The ache continues splitting his head.

  The orb is pushed into his hand.

  “Don’t test my patience, my boy.”