The Advent Calendar

by Steven Croft

  Sam reached for his phone. A text message had arrived. Alice stood by the calendar, finger poised. ‘Call out the numbers.’

  Sam brought up the message: ‘You’ve won a holiday in Benidorm. Ring this number immediately for more details.’

  ‘Sam, stop teasing. It’s not the time.’

  ‘No, seriously, that’s what it says. Maybe it’s not time yet. Yesterday it didn’t come until just before six. Still, I may as well ring and find out what I’ve won.’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ yelled Alice. ‘It has to be now. It’s the only time today. Are you sure your phone’s working?’

  Sam checked, nodded and slipped off to the loo. Alice paced up and down. Sam came back. Still nothing. They had breakfast. Still nothing. Megs came down yawning, dreamily chattering about all they had to do. Still nothing. Grandma and Grandad emerged and they made Grandad comfortable in the front room – opposite the calendar. Even Sam was on edge by now.

  ‘Anyone coming shopping?’ Megs said to them both.

  ‘Busy,’ muttered Sam sheepishly. ‘Presents to wrap.’

  ‘Can’t, Mum,’ said Alice. ‘Television.’

  Megs looked at them both curiously. Something was going on. ‘Tesco calls,’ she sighed. ‘Last-minute stuff. Wish me luck.’

  Somehow Alice and Sam shuffled through the morning. Sam checked the mobile every ten minutes. Still no code. Alice tried punching in yesterday’s, but all of the buttons were still in place. She played on her Game Boy. Sam made a serious attempt to wrap up a present for Josie. In the end Alice rescued him. Together they made a half-decent job of it. The minutes dragged by. As Alice put Josie’s gift under the tree, she had a closer look at the three gifts which had arrived in the night. They were beautifully wrapped, with classy paper and trimmings, not like the ones they normally gave each other.

  ‘Sam! Look at these,’ said Alice. ‘Look at the labels.’

  Sam came over and they pulled out the three gifts. Each one had a similar label. The first was very heavy. ‘To Alice and Sam with love from Mel.’ The second was light and smelled fragrant. ‘To Sam and Alice with love from Bal.’ The third was wrapped in dark paper and was of medium weight. It gave off a powerful, sweet smell. It was from Caspar.

  ‘Should we open them?’ said Alice.

  ‘It says “Wait for Christmas Day” on the back of the label,’ said Sam.

  Morning turned into lunchtime. Megs came back from Tesco’s and Sam and Alice meekly helped put the food away. The cupboards and the fridge were full to exploding point. Alice opened the cupboard to put the plastic bags away and 5,000 fell out on top of her. Megs and Grandma spent the afternoon preparing yet more food. Alice tried to watch the television. Normally she liked the old films but not today. Christmas Eve always dragged but on this one every second seemed like a minute and every minute like an hour. When would it come? Bal had said to be ready and not to leave the house but he never said what time. Even waiting for Father Christmas when she was very young had never seemed this bad.

  At four o’clock, while Grandad slept in his chair, Sam tried the emergency number given by Mr Gabriel. Perhaps something had gone wrong. There was just an annoying voicemail message in a very cultured Welsh accent. Alice tried the number 266 433 555 herself and listened to the message:

  ‘Hello, Gabriel here. Thanks for calling. So sorry I can’t take your call. It’s Christmas Eve and I’m rather busy. Please leave a message or call back another time. In an emergency text 4447 7772 4442 44. Goodbye.’

  ‘What use is that?’ said Sam and popped out to the shops. He’d remembered he needed to buy his Mum and Dad’s present. ‘Won’t be more than half an hour. Promise!’

  Alice played around with Sam’s mobile for a while. She resisted the temptation to read his text messages – except the different codes. All of this time she’d never really figured them out. They seemed like random numbers when they arrived.

  Grandad woke up just after Sam had gone out. ‘I meant to give you something earlier,’ he said, getting up. ‘We brought it yesterday. I didn’t bother to wrap it up. Hope you don’t mind. Those codes have been on my mind. I don’t know but you might find it has something to do with this.’

  He passed over an old book in a brown paper bag. Alice took it out. It had a plain black leather cover, gold leaf on the edge of the pages and was clearly very old and well read.

  ‘Belonged to my grandfather,’ said Grandad. ‘He was a preacher, I think. Wanted you to have it. Kind of an heirloom.’

  ‘Thanks, Grandad,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll always keep it. But what’s it got to do with the codes?’

  Grandad yawned. ‘That’s the curious thing,’ he said. ‘If I remember rightly, there are sixty-six books inside that one cover. Every book has a different number of chapters. Every chapter has a different number of verses. So every verse has a reference, see?’

  Grandad opened the book at the first page. ‘This first book is called Genesis. This is chapter 1, verse 1. Only the way you write it would normally have a colon in: one, colon, one. Chapter 1, verse 1. Like your codes. Make sense?’

  ‘It does,’ said Alice, excitement stirring. ‘I thought they must mean something. But how do I know which book?’

  She went back through the codes in the phone and wrote them down in sequence: 9:2, 2:4, 40:5 and so on. Surely they must mean something. Everything about the calendar had a meaning to it. Her mind worried at problems sometimes like a dog with a bone. She tried a few mathematical formulae out but nothing seemed to stick. Then she tried applying the first code to the first book in the Bible and so on but that didn’t make sense either. She dialled Gabriel’s number again and got the same message. This time she wrote it down. What kind of number was the emergency text line? It wasn’t like any phone number she’d ever seen. She wasn’t really in an emergency but she was tired of waiting.

  She went into text mode and typed in the sequence of numbers, just for interest: 4447 7772 4442 44. ‘Giggssssaigai,’ Alice read aloud. ‘What kind of word is that?’

  ‘Has it come?’ said Sam, back from the shops. ‘Sorry I was a bit sharp earlier. Tension.’

  ‘Nothing so far,’ said Alice. ‘But Grandad had a really good idea about the codes. He thinks they are references to verses in here.’ She held out the Bible. ‘He gave it to me as a present.’

  ‘Coo,’ said Sam. ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘The only problem is, which books? I’m trying to make that number of Mr Gabriel’s answerphone mean something. I typed it in to see if it was a code.’

  ‘How about turning off the predictive text?’ said Sam. ‘That might be another kind of code.’

  ‘How do I do that?’ Alice asked. ‘I didn’t know you could turn it off.’

  ‘Press star and hold it,’ said Sam. ‘Now type the number in again. Each sequence of numbers is a letter. Press 4 three times, 7 four times and so on.’

  Alice followed his instructions. A word appeared. It was one she recognised from flicking through the old book. Her hands were shaking. ‘What was the first code again – remember when we went to Choshek?’

  Sam ran his finger up the list Alice had made. ‘Nine, colon, two,’ he said.

  Alice found the place and read the first code, a tremble in her voice. There was an exact match with the adventure and with the picture in the calendar. The second was the same. And the third.

  Now the time flew by. Megs came in first, then Josie, then Grandma. ‘Reading the Christmas story, darling? That’s nice,’ she said.

  ‘No, Grandma. Just checking something out. It was Grandad’s idea,’ said Alice.

  Grandad woke up at that point and they took him through the sequence once again – although Sam wasn’t sure in the end he understood text messaging.

  Alice had to break off for tea on day thirteen. Every adventure and every p
icture meant more now. It was after eight when she got back to her place by the fire.

  Andrew arrived for the evening and sat on the sofa with Megs and seemed kind of, well, at home. Josie sat cosily in an armchair. Sam looked proud and content. Grandad dozed off, then woke up and said something funny. There was a half-hearted family game going on around her. Alice joined in a bit, getting sleepier and sleepier.

  And then, just as she got to the final code, it happened. Grandma and Grandad had gone up to bed, having had, they said, ‘Enough excitement for one day.’ Josie had gone home. Megs and Andrew had popped out to the pub for half an hour. For the first time since morning, Sam and Alice were alone in the room with the calendar. The phone broke wind. The code arrived.

  ‘Didn’t know you’d changed it back again,’ said Alice.

  ‘Some bits of me don’t want to grow up just yet,’ Sam smiled. ‘Ready for the final adventure?’

  ‘You bet. Read it out.’

  ‘Seven, colon, one, four,’ called Sam. They stood in front of the calendar for the last time. Alice resisted the temptation to look up the reference. That would come later. She solemnly pressed each button as soon as Sam read it from the phone. Each clicked as before. As the last one was pressed into place, at exactly the same instant for Sam and Alice, the house and the calendar and everything in it were taken away.

  They were on a hillside on a clear spring night. There was enough moonlight to see by. There was a nip of frost in the air and light from a small town in the valley.

  Together they took in the scene. All was still. Then they heard voices and turned to look back up the path. Coming towards them at great speed down the hill was a crowd of the roughest-looking men Alice or Sam had ever seen, calling to each other in a strange language. Just in time, Sam pulled Alice out of sight behind a big gorse bush. Alice stifled a cry as the thorns pressed into her legs through her jeans.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ she hissed as the men ran past.

  ‘I don’t think they’re supposed to see us,’ Sam hissed back. ‘Did you see their faces? They looked scared out of their minds but at the same time you would have thought that they had won the lottery. We’re meant to follow them.’

  Alice didn’t ask Sam how he could know that. She knew it as well, as clearly as if someone had told her out loud. They hurried down the path, keeping out of sight. The men were half walking, half running down the hillside towards the town. They were all ages: young lads and older men. The ones at the back kept looking behind them as if they expected to be followed. Sam and Alice kept diving behind rocks and bushes.

  Alice supposed later that they covered about a mile. She had a stitch and was out of breath in no time and so was Sam, but they kept going. Nothing was going to make her miss this.

  They came now to the walls of the small town. There were gates but no one was guarding them. There was hardly anyone around. They passed through the gate following where they guessed the men had gone and came to what looked like a large inn. The light from the lamps spilled out through the windows into the street. Alice caught a glimpse of the hustle and bustle and life inside. They were close behind the last of the men and she felt sure they would go straight inside. Sam was ready for a drink.

  But no, they went straight past the door, then darted down an alleyway. There was a strong animal smell mixing with the town’s drains and the beer from inside.

  Both Alice and Sam saw them at the same time. They had looked at them often enough over the last few weeks. There round the back of the inn was a life-sized version of the doors in the centre of the calendar. One of the shepherds they had been following took hold of each door and pulled them backwards. Inside there was only the dimmest light from a dozen small lamps.

  Alice and Sam crept nearer, behind the shepherds who were moving more slowly now, faces still full of joy and fear combined. Alice pushed her way through the cattle to the very back. Her feet brushed against the straw on the floor. The warm bodies of the animals made the small stable feel warm and comfortable but the smells were strong. All she and Sam saw next were the shepherds in a line, hats off, heads bowed and eyes down. Then someone said something and the line of shepherds parted.

  And there was Mary, sitting in the centre of all those rough men, exhausted yet smiling. Her eyes met Alice’s at once and there was understanding and joy and love and a challenge too – then the same for Sam.

  And there he was, the tiny child, sleeping in his mother’s arms, wrapped in rough blankets: the one she had learned to call by so many names, the one at the centre of the whole story.

  There was no need for words. Time stood still. There was silence in the stable and great peace. Sam and Alice had reached their destination. With one mind with the shepherds, both of them knelt in the rough stable floor and gazed and wondered and wanted to stay there for ever.

  ***********

  If you asked Sam, in later years, what he remembered about that moment, he would stop and think for a while, savouring it again, returning to the scene captured so vividly in his mind’s eye.

  ‘The silence,’ he would say. ‘The silence was awesome. In that one moment, I swear, earth and heaven held their breath. In that one instant in all of time, everything changed.’

  ‘I’ve been very blessed,’ he loved to say. ‘So much has gone right for me.’ He would point you, then, to the pictures he carries of Josie and the twin boys and the two girls who followed on.

  ‘But that moment is beyond words, beyond describing. To be there. To be so close. To be changed, completed almost.’

  And Alice? Alice grew up to be beautiful and strong and wise, a source of life to all who knew her. In later years she had a smile to lighten any burden, a listening ear to unravel the most twisted pathway, love and strength in abundance for those who needed care.

  And in those years, when she poured tea and offered strength to the many who came, you would sometimes catch her looking over the shoulder of her visitors, especially if the tale they told was particularly dark or sad. Her eyes would rest on a curious and ancient calendar made from olive wood in the shadows in the corner of the room. She would hardly ever show it to her guests. Some of our inner stories, you see, even the happiest ones, can never be fully told.

  But she would say, if you asked her, that the best part of the adventure was not that she once lived in the story and visited for a while (although she never, ever forgot the events of that December). She would tell you, if you asked her, that the best part of the story was that for ever and for ever and for evermore, the story lived in you.

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