Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  Gina said nothing. The options were limited. The alternatives unattractive.

  "Well, maybe it was Santa Claus," said Polo, attempting levity.

  He parceled up the pieces of the vase and wandered through into the kitchen, certain that he was being shadowed every step of the way. "What else can it be?" He threw the question over his shoulder as he stuffed the newspaper into the waste bin. "The only other explanation-” here he became almost elated by his skimming so close to the truth, "the only other possible explanation is too preposterous for words."

  It was an exquisite irony, denying the existence of the invisible world in the full knowledge that even now it breathed vengefully down his neck.

  "You mean poltergeists?" said Gina.

  "I mean anything that goes bang in the night. But, we're grown-up people aren't we? We don't believe in Bogeymen."

  "No," said Gina flatly, "I don't, but I don't believe the house is subsiding either."

  "Well, it'll have to do for now," said Jack with nonchalant finality. "Christmas starts here. We don't want to spoil it talking about gremlins, now do we."

  They laughed together.

  Gremlins. That surely bit deep. To call the Hell-spawn a gremlin.

  The Yattering, weak with frustration, acid tears boiling on its intangible cheeks, ground its teeth and kept its peace. There would be time yet to beat that atheistic smile off Jack Polo's smooth, fat face. Time aplenty. No half-measures from now on. No subtlety. It would be an all out attack.

  Let there be blood. Let there be agony. They'd all break.

  Amanda was in the kitchen, preparing Christmas dinner, when the Yattering mounted its next attack. Through the house drifted the sound of King's College Choir,"0 Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…" The presents had been opened, the G and T 's were being downed, the house was one warm embrace from roof to cellar.

  In the kitchen a sudden chill permeated the heat and the steam, making Amanda shiver; she crossed to the window, which was ajar to clear the air, and closed it. Maybe she was catching something.

  The Yattering watched her back as she busied herself about the kitchen, enjoying the domesticity for a day. Amanda felt the stare quite clearly. She turned round. Nobody, nothing. She continued to wash the Brussels sprouts, cutting into one with a worm curled in the middle. She drowned it.

  The Choir sang on.

  In the lounge, Jack was laughing with Gina about something.

  Then, a noise. A rattling at first, followed by a beating of somebody's fists against a door. Amanda dropped the knife into the bowl of sprouts, and turned from the sink, following the sound. It was getting louder all the time. Like something locked in one of the cupboards, desperate to escape. A cat caught in the box, or a Bird. It was coming from the oven.

  Amanda's stomach turned, as she began to imagine the worst.

  Had she locked something in the oven when she'd put in the turkey? She called for her father, as she snatched up the oven cloth and stepped towards the cooker, which was rocking with the panic of its prisoner. She had visions of a basted cat leaping out at her, its fur burned off, its flesh half-cooked.

  Jack was at the kitchen door.

  "There's something in the oven," she said to him, as though he needed telling. The cooker was in a frenzy; its thrashing contents had all but beaten off the door.

  He took the oven cloth from her. This is a new one, he thought. You're better than I judged you to be. This is clever. This is original.

  Gina was in the kitchen now.

  "What's cooking?" she quipped.

  But the joke was lost as the cooker began to dance, and the pans of boiling water were twitched off the burners on to the floor. Scalding water seared Jack's leg. He yelled, stumbling back into Gina, before diving at the cooker with a yell that wouldn't have shamed a Samurai.

  The oven handle was slippery with heat and grease, but he seized it and flung the door down.

  A wave of steam and blistering heat rolled out of the oven, smelling of succulent turkey-fat. But the bird inside had apparently no intentions of being eaten. It was flinging itself from side to side on the roasting tray, tossing gouts of gravy in all directions. Its crisp brown wings pitifully flailed and flapped, its legs beat a tattoo on the roof of the oven.

  Then it seemed to sense the open door. Its wings stretched themselves out to either side of its stuffed bulk and it half hopped, half fell on to the oven door, in a mockery of its living self. Headless, oozing stuffing and onions, it flopped around as though nobody had told the damn thing it was dead, while the fat still bubbled on its bacon-strewn back. Amanda screamed.

  Jack dived for the door as the bird lurched into the air, blind but vengeful. What it intended to do once it reached its three cowering victims was never discovered. Gina dragged Amanda into the hallway with her father in hot pursuit, and the door was slammed closed as the blind bird flung itself against the paneling, beating on it with all its strength. Gravy seeped through the gap at the bottom of the door, dark and fatty.

  The door had no lock, but Jack reasoned that the bird was not capable of turning the handle. As he backed away, breathless, he cursed his confidence. The opposition had more up its sleeve than he'd guessed. Amanda was leaning against the wall sobbing, her face stained with splotches of turkey grease. All she seemed able to do was deny what she'd seen, shaking her head and repeating the word 'no' like a talisman against the ridiculous horror that was still throwing itself against the door. Jack escorted her through to the lounge. The radio was still crooning carols which blotted out the din of the bird, but their promises of goodwill seemed small comfort. Gina poured a hefty brandy for her sister and sat beside her on the sofa, plying her with spirits and reassurance in about equal measure. They made little impression on Amanda.

  "What was that?" Gina asked her father, in a tone that demanded an answer.

  "I don't know what it was," Jack replied.

  "Mass hysteria?" Gina's displeasure was plain. Her father had a secret: he knew what was going on in the house, but he was refusing to cough up for some reason.

  "What do I call: the police or an exorcist?"

  "Neither."

  "For God's sake -”

  "There's nothing going on, Gina. Really."

  Her father turned from the window and looked at her. His eyes spoke what his mouth refused to say, that this was war.

  Jack was afraid.

  The house was suddenly a prison. The game was suddenly lethal. The enemy, instead of playing foolish games, meant harm, real harm to them all.

  In the kitchen the turkey had at last conceded defeat. The carols on the radio had withered into a sermon on God 's benedictions.

  What had been sweet was sour and dangerous. He looked across the room at Amanda and Gina. Both for their own reasons, were trembling. Polo wanted to tell them, wanted to explain what was going on. But the thing must be there, he knew, gloating.

  He was wrong. The Yattering had retired to the attic, well-satisfied with its endeavours. The bird, it felt, had been a stroke of genius. Now it could rest a while: recuperate. Let the enemy's nerves tatter themselves in anticipation. Then, in its own good time, it would deliver the coup de grace.

  Idly, it wondered if any of the inspectors had seen his work with the turkey. Maybe they would be impressed enough by the Yattering's originality to improve its job prospects. Surely it hadn't gone through all those years of training simply to chase half-witted imbeciles like Polo. There must be something more challenging available than that. It felt victory in its invisible bones: and it was a good feeling.

  The pursuit of Polo would surely gain momentum now. His daughters would convince him (if he wasn't now quite convinced) that there was something terrible afoot. He would crack. He would crumble. Maybe he'd go classically mad: tear out his hair, rip off his clothes; smear himself with his own excrement.

  Oh yes, victory was close. And wouldn't his masters be loving then? Wouldn't it be showered with praise, and pow
er?

  One more manifestation was all that was required. One final, inspired intervention, and Polo would be so much blubbering flesh.

  Tired, but confident, the Yattering descended into the lounge.

  Amanda was lying full-length on the sofa, asleep. She was obviously dreaming about the turkey. Her eyes rolled beneath her gossamer lids, her lower lip trembled. Gina sat beside the radio, which was silenced now. She had a book open on her lap, but she wasn't reading it.

  The gherkin importer wasn't in the room. Wasn't that his footstep on the stair? Yes, he was going upstairs to relieve his brandy-full bladder.

  Ideal timing.

  The Yattering crossed the room. In her sleep Amanda dreamt something dark flitting across her vision, something malign, something that tasted bitter in her mouth.

  Gina looked up from her book.

  The silver balls on the tree were rocking, gently. Not just the balls. The tinsel and the branches too. In fact, the tree. The whole tree was rocking as though someone had just seized hold of it.

  Gina had a very bad feeling about this. She stood up. The book slid to the floor.

  The tree began to spin. "Christ," she said. "Jesus Christ."

  Amanda slept on.

  The tree picked up momentum.

  Gina walked as steadily as she could across to the sofa and tried to shake her sister awake. Amanda, locked in her dreams, resisted for a moment.

  "Father," said Gina. Her voice was strong, and carried through into the hall. It also woke Amanda. Downstairs, Polo heard a noise like a whining dog. No, like two whining dogs. As he ran down the stairs, the duet became a trio. He burst into the lounge half expecting all the hosts of Hell to be in there, dog-headed, dancing on his beauties.

  But no. It was the Christmas tree that was whining, whining like a pack of dogs, as it spun and spun. The lights had long since been pulled from their sockets. The air stank of singed plastic and pine-sap. The tree itself was spinning like a top, flinging decorations and presents off its tortured branches with the largesse of a mad king. Jack tore his eyes from the spectacle of the tree and found Gina and Amanda crouching, terrified, behind the sofa. "Get out of here," he yelled.

  Even as he spoke the television sat up impertinently on one leg and began to spin like the tree, gathering momentum quickly. The clock on the mantelpiece joined the pirouetting. The pokers beside the fire. The cushions. The ornaments. Each object added its own singular note to the orchestration of whines which were building up, second by second, to a deafening pitch. The air began to brim with the smell of burning wood, as friction heated the spinning tops to flash-point. Smoke swirled across the room.

  Gina had Amanda by the arm, and was dragging her towards the door, shielding her face against the hail of pine needles that the still-accelerating tree was throwing off.

  Now the lights were spinning.

  The books, having flung themselves off the shelves, had joined the tarantella.

  Jack could see the enemy, in his mind's eye, racing between the objects like a juggler spinning plates on sticks, trying to keep them all moving at once. It must be exhausting work, he thought. The demon was probably close to collapse. It couldn't be thinking straight. Overexcited. Impulsive. Vulnerable. This must be the moment, if ever there was a moment, to join battle at last. To face the thing, defy it, and trap it.

  For its part, the Yattering was enjoying this orgy of destruction. It flung every movable object into the fray, setting everything spinning.

  It watched with satisfaction as the daughters twitched and scurried; it laughed to see the old man stare, pop-eyed, at this preposterous ballet.

  Surely he was nearly mad, wasn't he?

  The beauties had reached the door, their hair and skin full of needles. Polo didn't see them leave. He ran across the room, dodging a rain of ornaments to do so, and picked up a brass toasting fork which the enemy had overlooked. Bric-a-brac filled the air around his head, dancing around with sickening speed. His flesh was bruised and punctured. But the exhilaration of joining battle had overtaken him, and he set about beating the books, and the clocks, and the china to smithereens. Like a man in a cloud of locusts he ran around the room, bringing down his favourite books in a welter of fluttering pages, smashing whirling Dresden, shattering the lamps. A litter of broken possessions swamped the floor, some of it still twitching as the life went out of the fragments. But for every object brought low, there were a dozen still spinning, still whining.

  He could hear Gina at the door, yelling to him to get out, to leave it alone.

  But it was so enjoyable, playing against the enemy more directly than he'd ever allowed himself before. He didn't want to give up. He wanted the demon to show itself, to be known, to be recognized.

  He wanted confrontation with the Old One's emissary once and for all.

  Without warning the tree gave way to the dictates of centrifugal force, and exploded. The noise was like a howl of death. Branches, twigs, needles, balls, lights, wire, ribbons, flew across the room. Jack, his back to the explosion, felt a gust of energy hit him hard, and he was flung to the ground. The back of his neck and his scalp were shot full of pine-needles. A branch, naked of greenery, shot past his head and impaled the sofa. Fragments of tree pattered to the carpet around him.

  Now other objects around the room, spun beyond the tolerance of their structures, were exploding like the tree. The television blew up, sending a lethal wave of glass across the room, much of which buried itself in the opposite wall. Fragments of the television's innards, so hot they singed the skin, fell on Jack, as he elbowed himself towards the door like a soldier under bombardment.

  The room was so thick with a barrage of shards it was like a fog. The cushions had lent their down to the scene, snowing on the carpet. Porcelain pieces: a beautifully-glazed arm, a courtesan's head, bounced on the floor in front of his nose.

  Gina was crouching at the door, urging him to hurry, her eyes narrowed against the hail. As Jack reached the door, and felt her arms around him, he swore he could hear laughter from the lounge. Tangible, audible laughter, rich and satisfied.

  Amanda was standing in the hall, her hair full of pine-needles, staring down at him. He pulled his legs through the doorway and Gina slammed the door shut on the demolition.

  "What is it?" she demanded. "Poltergeist? Ghost? Mother's ghost?"

  The thought of his dead wife being responsible for such wholesale destruction struck Jack as funny. Amanda was half smiling. Good, he thought, she's coming out of it. Then he met the vacant look in her eyes and the truth dawned. She'd broken, her sanity had taken refuge where this fantastique couldn't get at it. "What's in there?" Gina was asking, her grip on his arm so strong it stopped the blood.

  "I don't know," he lied. "Amanda?"

  Amanda's smile didn't decay. She just stared on at him, through him.

  "You do know."

  "No."

  "You're lying."

  "I think…"

  He picked himself off the floor, brushing the pieces of porcelain, the feathers, the glass, off his shirt and trousers. "I think… I shall go for a walk."

  Behind him, in the lounge, the last vestiges of whining had stopped. The air in the hallway was electric with unseen presences. It was very close to him, invisible as ever, but so close. This was the most dangerous time. He mustn't lose his nerve now. He must stand up as though nothing had happened; he must leave Amanda be, leave explanations and recriminations until it was all over and done with.

  "Walk?" Gina said, disbelievingly. "Yes… walk… I need some fresh air." "You can't leave us here." "I'll find somebody to help us clear up." "But Mandy."

  "She'll get over it. Leave her be."

  That was hard. That was almost unforgivable. But it was said now.

  He walked unsteadily towards the front door, feeling nauseous after so much spinning. At his back Gina was raging. "You can't just leave! Are you out of your mind?"

  "I need the air," he said, as casually as his thu
mping heart and his parched throat would permit. "So I'll just go out for a moment."

  No, the Yattering said. No, no, no.

  It was behind him, Polo could feel it. So angry now, so ready to twist off his head. Except that it wasn't allowed, ever to touch him. But he could feel its resentment like a physical presence.

  He took another step towards the front door.

  It was with him still, dogging his every step. His shadow, his fetch; unshakeable. Gina shrieked at him, "You son-of-a-bitch, look at Mandy! She's lost her mind!"

  No, he mustn't look at Mandy. If he looked at Mandy he might weep, he might break down as the thing wanted him to, then everything would be lost.

  "She'll be all right," he said, barely above a whisper. He reached for the front door handle. The demon bolted the door, quickly, loudly. No temper left for pretence now.

  Jack, keeping his movements as even as possible, unbolted the door, top and bottom. It bolted again. It was thrilling, this game; it was also terrifying. If he pushed too far surely the demon's frustration would override its lessons?

  Gently, smoothly, he unbolted the door again. Just as gently, just as smoothly, the Yattering bolted it. Jack wondered how long he could keep this up for. Somehow he had to get outside: he had to coax it over the threshold. One step was all that the law required, according to his researches.

  One simple step.

  Unbolted. Bolted. Unbolted. Bolted.

  Gina was standing two or three yards behind her father. She didn't understand what she was seeing, but it was obvious her father was doing battle with someone, or something.

  "Daddy -” she began.

  "Shut up," he said benignly, grinning as he unbolted the door for the seventh time. There was a shiver of lunacy in the grin, it was too wide and too easy.

  Inexplicably, she returned the smile. It was grim, but genuine. Whatever was at issue here, she loved him. Polo made a break for the back door. The demon was three paces ahead of him, scooting through the house like a sprinter, and bolting the door before Jack could even reach the handle. The key was turned in the lock by invisible hands, then crushed to dust in the air.