THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  Billy was lifted up onto his father’s lap, and Henry began to read the poem.

  Alerted by the warning that this must be his farewell to Santa Claus, Billy gave the words his total attention, and he was able to pose any number of relevant questions by way of drawing out the story. What are sugar plums? Why did they wear hats to bed? How does the snow have a breast? If Santa rides in “a miniature sleigh” and is able to come down through a chimney, what is his actual size? Why was he called an elf? Had he really been the bishop of Myra, like Sister Symphorosa said, or was that someone else?

  “Now, Billy, I’m not the world’s leading authority on Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, or the bishop of Myra. In fact, Billy, we should probably have a serious discussion about this. I promised your mother we would clear up any confusion before you went back to school, so maybe this would be the right moment.”

  “Aren’t you going to finish reading the book?” Billy asked with alarm.

  “All right, we’ll finish reading it, and then we’ll have a serious discussion.” Henry looked down at the page that showed a close-up of Santa smoking a pipe and winking. “ ‘He was chubby and plump,’” he read for a second time, “ ‘—a right jolly old elf; / And I laughed, when I saw him, in spite of myself. / A wink of his eye and a twist of his head / Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. / He spoke not a word—’”

  “What’s ‘dread’?”

  Henry laughed. “It’s the same as being afraid.”

  “Why should anyone be afraid of Santa Claus?”

  “They shouldn’t. That’s what the poem is saying. When Santa winks at the man in the poem, he knows he has nothing to dread.”

  “But he must have been worried before he saw Santa wink at him, or he wouldn’t be thinking that. Would he?”

  “I never thought about it before, but that seems to make sense. Well, it must be because Santa’s got magical powers. He’s got flying reindeer, and he can change his size to get down chimneys, and if he can do things like that, who knows what else he might be able to do, if he wanted.”

  “Is he like the good witches?”

  Henry cocked his head to the side, and checked the beginning of a grin. “What and who are good witches?”

  “Like in the movie you went to see today.”

  “The Exorcist? Has Ned been talking to you about that?”

  “There was a witch in Snow White, so we were talking about witches, and he said there are good witches and bad witches, and the good witches use their magic to make people better.”

  “Well, Billy, in my experience witches have always been women. When a man uses magic, good or bad, he’s called a wizard, or maybe a sorcerer, and I’ve never heard Santa Claus referred to by either of those terms. The poem calls him an elf, and I think all elves know some magic.”

  “He looks just like a person though. Except he’s fat. But he doesn’t have pointy ears.”

  “Like Mr. Spock?”

  “Like elves do,” Billy explained impatiently.

  “Who’s to say exactly what elves look like? It all depends on who’s telling the story about them. They may have pointy ears, they may not. They’re only make-believe, after all.”

  “But you said—!”

  “What?”

  “You said Santa Claus is an elf.”

  Henry nodded. “Right.”

  “But Santa Claus isn’t make-believe. Sister Symphorosa telephoned!”

  “Billy, she did that because your mother asked her to. She did it to be nice and so you wouldn’t be upset at Christmastime. And there’s a way in which it’s true to say there is a Santa Claus.”

  “But what about my train?” Billy demanded, aghast at this unexpected betrayal.

  “What about it?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “From us.”

  “From a store?”

  Henry nodded. “From K-Mart.”

  “You just paid money for it?”

  “No, actually—we charged it. Someday, hopefully, we’ll pay money for it.”

  Billy looked at the picture book with dismay. He tried to slide down from his father’s lap, but Henry scissored his legs together and trapped him.

  “Hey, don’t you want to hear the end of the poem?”

  Billy shook his head, but avoided meeting his father’s eye. He tried to press his legs apart, and Henry, feeling sorry for him, let him loose. He stood beside the bed in his pajamas, looking balefully at the toy train that had been bought at K-Mart, mute.

  Is he angry with me? Henry asked himself. He wouldn’t have blamed him if he was. The kid obviously had a thing about Santa Claus that went beyond the usual simple ploy of believing in Santa so you could ask for more expensive presents than your parents could afford.

  “Well, I want to hear the rest of it, and you can listen or not listen, just as you like.” Henry turned to a new page that showed Santa loading up the stocking hung by the chimney, and read:

  “He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

  And filled all the stockings; then turned like a jerk…”

  Henry glanced sideways to see if this violation of the familiar text would provoke some protest from Billy, but he just stood there looking stricken.

  “And laying his finger aside of his nose,

  And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

  He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

  And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;

  But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight…”

  Henry paused, as he always did, for Billy to join him in a choral rendition of Santa’s farewell cry, but Billy would have none of it.

  Henry closed the book with a sigh and got up from the bed. “Listen, Billy, I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you, but your mother and I decided—”

  “She’s not my mother,” Billy said, in an even, colorless tone.

  “We decided,” Henry went on, “that as soon as Christmas was past we’d better tell you. Maybe we were wrong. You’d have figured it out yourself as soon as you started thinking about it.”

  Billy walked over to the light switch beside the door. “I want to go to bed now,” he said, with his hand poised over the switch.

  “Right,” said his father. He put the picture book on top of the chest of drawers. In the doorway he turned round to ask: “What about a good-night kiss?” He hunkered down invitingly.

  Billy shook his head, and turned off the light. “I’m too old for that now,” he explained, with just a tremble of bitterness in his voice.

  He closed the door.

  10

  That very night Icksy the witch dispatched her raven Karn to the secret Tinker Toy–built office of Cardinal Richloo between the dresser and the closet door. Karn told the aged chancellor that the time had come when he must help Icksy defeat Dundor or else she would reveal his, Richloo’s, secret name and coloration (for Cardinal Richloo was actually pink and had been painted over with green fingerpaint at the time he had joined the Green faction, back in September when Dundor’s son Hans was murdered and the war began). Richloo was very upset, but he agreed to obey Icksy’s command to derail the troop trains bound for Ho Chi Minh Mountain.

  Then, as Karn was returning to the Reds’ territory, the darkness of the bedroom started to shimmer and the wind of the raven’s wings made a strange whistling sound, and Billy caught his breath, knowing that the story was no longer for him to make up, that whatever was going to happen now would happen without Billy’s say-so.

  Karn flew higher and higher, and Billy felt himself being drawn upward after the powerful raven, like a car at the end of a tow line. Then at a certain height the raven lighted on the branch of a tree, and Billy found himself beneath the tree face to face with a young man in a short white dress of a type to be seen here and there in the pages of his brother’s Junior Universe of Knowledge. The man’s eyes were black as the raven’s feathers, and his lips were so red he looked like he
’d put on lipstick. Billy felt strange being there under the tree in his pajamas, meeting with such a weird person, but underneath the strangeness there was a new kind of excitement he’d never felt before.

  —Hi there, Billy, said the red-lipped stranger in a rumbly voice just like the voice of Santa Claus, though clearly he was too young to be Santa Claus. We meet again.

  “You’re not Santa Claus.”

  The red lips curled in a superior, grown-up smile.—Indeed, I am not Santa Claus.

  “Who are you?”

  —That’s for me to know and you to find out.

  “You’re a pagan god.”

  The stranger laughed. It was a warm, good-humored laugh, and Billy remembered the line from the poem: “I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.”

  The stranger winked and twisted his head to the side.—That’s quite warm. But which pagan god, can you guess that?

  Billy shook his head.

  —Have you ever heard of a god called Mercury?

  “Mercury?” Billy echoed. “There’s mercury in a thermometer.”

  —Yes, and there’s a planet called Mercury too. But before those things were, I was a god. The god of thieves and criminals, but also the god of doctors and of businessmen. Surely you knew that though. Didn’t you read the paper your brother wrote for Extra Credit in Miss Brophy’s class?

  “That’s right,” said Billy. “I forgot about that.”

  —Did you forget—or were you lying? Eh? The red lips pursed in a smile of mild amusement. Mind you, he went on, there’s nothing wrong with lying, so long as you’re not caught. But what is wiser than a lie is a partial truth. I received my staff from Jupiter on condition that I never tell a downright lie. Yet some say I received it from my brother Apollo, who is actually my half brother. And I can’t remember which is the truth, for I was your age at the time of the transaction.

  “You mean… the caduceus?” Billy asked in a whisper.

  Mercury nodded.—You have read your brother’s paper, and so you know the secret name of my staff. But you do not know where it is hidden, and you do not know how to use it.

  “Tell me!” Billy insisted.

  —And why should I do that?

  Billy had to think. Then: “Because you promised. You said if I kept our talk a secret, you’d tell me where it was.”

  The young god ruffled the feathers of his winged helmet, as though deliberating.—Wasn’t it Santa Claus who made that promise? he countered at last.

  Billy shook his head vigorously. “It was you.”

  —Why do you think that?

  “Because there isn’t any Santa Claus.”

  —But I do exist?

  “Yes.”

  —Again: why do you think that?

  “If the poison stick is where you say it is, that’s why.”

  The god began to disappear, not by fading away into the blackness all around but by shrinking into a smaller and smaller size. When he had shrunk almost as small as Billy, Billy remembered something he had said and called out. “Wait!”

  —Yes? said Mercury, while he went on shrinking.

  “You said you’d teach me how to use it.”

  —No, what I actually said was that you didn’t know how to use it, and so you don’t. But I made no promise. I only promised I would help you find it. And I will. It is in the garage.

  “Where in the garage?”

  —Where Karn might find it, if he looked.

  “And when I’ve got it, will you show me—”

  Mercury lifted his hand, and though he was now no taller from head to toe than one of the larger bowling pins, the gesture silenced Billy at once.—Do what I tell you—and I will tell you what else you want to know.

  “What must I do? Tell me and I’ll do it tonight.”

  —Bomb Dundor’s railway. Destroy it utterly. Let the Greens be overwhelmed and the people of Wyomia enslaved. Do this, and all the power of the caduceus will be yours.

  “Swear!” Billy insisted.

  —By the beard of Jupiter I swear! By the tits of my mother Maia, I swear! And by my staff—suddenly, just as he vanished into a pinpoint of brightness, the caduceus appeared in Mercury’s hand, a twisted stick to which were affixed the dessicated wings of a dead bird—I swear.

  For a long time Billy went on staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. Then, when he was sure that everyone else in the house was asleep, he put on his fuzzy bunny slippers and went downstairs to find the hidden caduceus and to carry out the god’s instructions.

  11

  The note had been put where Henry would have to find it when he sat down for breakfast at a quarter to ten, beside the cereal bowl Madge had set out when she got home from the night shift. It was written, not printed, in pencil on lined paper torn from a spiral notebook, and so at first glance Henry supposed it must have been from Ned. Reading it, he realized it was from Billy, and he didn’t know which was more amazing, what the kid had written or the fact that he was writing in script almost as clearly as Ned, who was in sixth grade.

  Henry started crying. Admittedly, he was an easy cry. On Christmas Day when he’d been watching The Wizard of Oz for the umpteenth time while the women supervised the turkey and its trimmings and the kids test-drove their toys, Henry had cried at regular intervals from the opening credits all the way to Dorothy’s return to Kansas and her family. He’d even been torn up by one or two of the commercials. Anything that smacked of doomed hopes, cheerful suffering, obdurate loyalty, or grand illusions could get to Henry right where he lived and unloose either a trickle or a torrent, depending on the levels of his emotional reservoir.

  This morning those levels were low, and the pleasure of crying soon gave way to practical considerations. If the kid had really written the note himself, and not got his brother to do it for him, then he was wasting his time in kindergarten. Henry was already worried about sending Billy back to Sister Symphorosa’s classroom.

  Henry called Ned downstairs and asked him if he’d written the note. Ned said he hadn’t.

  “How did he learn to write so well? Have you been helping him?”

  “No. But sometimes he stands looking over my shoulder while I do my homework. And yeah, one time, maybe a year ago, he wanted me to show just how I held the pencil in my hand. But I thought that was for drawing. He writes okay, doesn’t he? I mean, for being only six.”

  “Is his reading just as precocious?”

  “I don’t know. He’s sort of secretive about it, I guess ‘cause he likes to get read to. He probably figures if we knew how well he could read things himself, we wouldn’t want to read to him. But he does watch ‘Sesame Street’ like a hawk. And I’ve seen him when he didn’t think I was watching, reading books that didn’t have any pictures, or anyhow not very interesting pictures. Like my encyclopedia.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Ned shrugged. “What’s there to tell? I could read when I was in kindergarten. I couldn’t write, but I could read. Lots of kids can, it’s nothing special.”

  It occurred to Henry that his stepson might not be as pleased to discern unusual talents in Billy as he was. Till now Ned had been a real overachiever at school, bringing home report cards with long strings of A’s and B+’s even in categories like Conduct and Physical Education. Ned might not enjoy the competition of a brighter younger brother.

  “Where’s Billy right now?” he asked Ned.

  “He went out with his sled. To the park, I suppose.”

  “By himself?”

  “Probably with Ronny Tuttle. I don’t know. I’m not my brother’s keeper. What I’d like to know is where he got his paper from. He doesn’t have a three-ring notebook. He must have got it from my notebook.”

  “Oh, Ned, don’t be petty. What’s a single piece of paper?”

  “It’s not the paper. It’s a matter of privacy. You wouldn’t want someone messing around in your desk, would you?”

  Henry smiled appreciatively. He was always please
d to see either of the kids score debating points. Each one represented a step onward along the road to law school, which was the ambition he secretly cherished on behalf of both boys. Madge, he knew, wanted Ned to become a doctor.

  Ned went off with a sense of having scored a point against Henry, and Henry, who believed in following his impulses without a whole lot of pondering, looked up the number of the rectory of Our Lady of Mercy and telephoned. By a stroke of good luck it was Father Youngermann who answered, not Father Windakiewiczowa. Father Youngermann agreed to see Henry at eleven thirty in the rectory, if he was free to drive over to the rectory. Henry said he was, which was not strictly true, since Henry couldn’t drive anywhere legally, his license having been revoked after a bad drunk-driving accident in ‘69, the same accident that had landed him in the hospital where he’d met Madge and courted her from the inside of a plaster cast.

  Henry walked to the rectory and explained the situation to Father Youngermann, who agreed that Henry’s idea sounded good but said the decision really belonged in the hands of the school’s new principal, Sister Fidelis. Father Youngermann phoned the nun, who agreed to see Henry briefly at the convent of Our Lady of Mercy two blocks away, beyond the school and the parking lot.

  Sister Fidelis turned out to be a young woman with a pretty face and a full figure that her habit could not entirely neutralize. She was the kind of nun you saw only in Hollywood movies, played by Ingrid Bergman or Julie Andrews or Sally Field. Henry explained the situation and his concern about Billy’s returning to Sister Symphorosa’s classroom, and Sister Fidelis nodded and made sympathetic noises all the while and even volunteered some commentary of her own on the subject of Sister Symphorosa. Without Henry’s having to make a suggestion, she proposed that if Billy could indeed read and write as well as the note he’d left at the breakfast table indicated, and if he could do simple addition and subtraction besides (or learn to with just a little private tutoring), then he would be bumped ahead to second grade, skipping first grade altogether. Henry was surprised at how little resistance he encountered and said so as he was leaving the convent.