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

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  Lark Lane was deserted. An unsold Christmas tree loitered in a shop doorway, a gargoyle craned out from the police station. Once Margery had moved away, the nearness of the police had been reassuring — not that Dorothy was nervous, like some of the old folk these days — but the police station was only a community center now.

  The bus already sounded like a pub. She sat outside on the ferry, though the bench looked and felt like black ice. Lights fished in the Mersey, gulls drifted down like snowflakes from the muddy sky. A whitish object grabbed the rail, but of course it was only a gull. Nevertheless she was glad that Simon was waiting with the car at Woodside.

  As soon as the children had been packed off to bed so that Father Christmas could get to work, she produced the card. It felt wet, almost slimy, though it hadn’t before. Simon pointed out what she’d overlooked: the age of the stamp. “We weren’t even living there then,” Margery said. “You wouldn’t think they would bother delivering it after sixty years.”

  “A touch of the Christmas spirit.”

  “I wish they hadn’t bothered,” Margery said. But her mother didn’t mind now; the addressee must have died years ago. She turned the conversation to old times, to Margery’s father. Later she gazed from her bedroom window, at the houses of Bebington sleeping in pairs. A man was creeping about the house, but it was only Simon, laden with presents.

  In the morning the house was full of cries of delight, gleaming new toys, balls of wrapping paper big as cabbages. In the afternoon the adults, bulging with turkey and pudding, lolled in chairs. When Simon drove her home that night, Dorothy noticed that the unsold Christmas tree was still there, a scrawny glistening shape at the back of the shop doorway. As soon as Simon left, she found herself thinking about the unpleasant card. She tore it up, then went determinedly to bed.

  Boxing Day was her busiest time, what with cooking the second version of Christmas dinner, and making sure the house was impeccable, and hiding small presents for the children to find. She wished she could see them more often, but they and their parents had their own lives to lead.

  An insect clung to a tinsel globe on the tree. When she reached out to squash the insect it wasn’t there, neither on the globe nor on the floor. Could it have been the reflection of someone thin outside the window? Nobody was there now.

  She liked the house best when it was full of laughter, and it would be again soon: “We’ll get a sitter,” Margery promised, “and first-foot you on New Year’s eve.” She’d used to do that when she had lived at home — she’d waited outside at midnight of the Old Year so as to be the first to cross her mother’s threshold. That reminded Dorothy to offer the children a holiday treat. Everything seemed fine, even when they went to the door to leave. “Grandma, someone’s left you a present,” little Denise cried.

  Then she cried out, and dropped the package. Perhaps the wind had snatched it from her hands. As the package, which looked wet and moldy, struck the curb it broke open. Did its contents scuttle out and sidle away into the dark? Surely that was the play of the wind, which tumbled carton and wrapping away down the street.

  Someone must have used her doorway for a wastebin, that was all. Dorothy lay in bed, listening to the wind which groped around the windowless side of the house, that faced onto the alley. She kept thinking she was on the ferry, backing away from the rail, forgetting that the rail was also behind her. Her nervousness annoyed her—she was acting like an old fogey - which was why, next afternoon, she walked to Otterspool promenade.

  Gulls and planes sailed over the Mersey, which was deserted except for buoys. On the far bank, tiny towns and stalks of factory chimneys stood at the foot of an enormous frieze of clouds. Sunlight slipped through to Birkenhead and Wallasey, touching up the colors of microscopic streets; specks of windows glinted. She enjoyed none of this, for the slopping of water beneath the promenade seemed to be pacing her. Worse, she couldn’t make herself go to the rail to prove that there was nothing.

  Really, it was heartbreaking. One vicious card and she fell nervous in her own house. A blurred voice seemed to creep behind the carols on the radio, lowing out of tune. Next day she took her washing to Lark Lane, in search of distraction as much as anything.

  The Westinghouse Laundromat was deserted. O O O, the washing machines said emptily. There was only herself, and her dervishes of clothes, and a black plastic bag almost as tall as she was. If someone had abandoned it, whatever its lumpy contents were, she could see why, for it was leaking; she smelled stagnant water. It must be a draft that made it twitch feebly. Nevertheless, if she had been able to turn off her machine she might have fled.

  She mustn’t grow neurotic. She still had friends to visit. The following day she went to a friend whose flat overlooked Waver- tree Park. It was all very convivial — a rainstorm outside made the mince pies more warming, the chat flowed as easily as the whiskey — but she kept glancing at the thin figure who stood in the park, unmoved by the downpour. The trails of rain on the window must be lending him their color, for his skin looked like a snail’s.

  Eventually the 68 bus, meandering like a drunkard’s monologue, took her home to Aigburth. No, the man in the park hadn’t really looked as though his clothes and his body had merged into a single grayish mass. Tomorrow she was taking the children for their treat, and that would clear her mind.

  She took them to the aquarium. Piranhas sank stonily, their sides glittering like Christmas cards. Toads were bubbling lumps of tar. Finny humbugs swam, and darting fish wired with light. Had one of the tanks cracked? There seemed to be a stagnant smell.

  In the museum everything was under glass: shrunken heads like sewn leathery handbags, a watchmaker’s workshop, buses passing as though the windows were silent films. Here was a slum street, walled in by photographs of despair, real flagstones underfoot, overhung by streetlamps on brackets. She halted between a grid and a drinking fountain; she was trapped in the dimness between blind corners, and couldn’t see either way. Why couldn’t she get rid of the stagnant smell? Gray forlorn faces, pressed like specimens, peered out of the walls. “Come on, quickly,” she said, pretending that only the children were nervous.

  She was glad of the packed crowds in Church Street, even though the children kept letting go of her hands. But the stagnant smell was trailing her, and once, when she grabbed for little Denise’s hand, she clutched someone else’s, which felt soft and wet. It must have been nervousness which made her fingers seem to sink into the hand.

  That night she returned to the aquarium and found she was locked in. Except for the glow of the tanks, the narrow room was oppressively dark. In the nearest tank a large dead fish floated toward her, out of weeds. Now she was in the tank, her nails scrabbling at the glass, and she saw that it wasn’t a fish but a snail-colored hand, which closed spongily on hers. When she woke, her scream made the house sound very empty.

  At least it was New Year’s eve. After tonight she could stop worrying. Why had she thought that? It only made her more nervous. Even when Margery phoned to confirm they would first-foot her, that reminded her how many hours she would be on her own. As the night seeped into the house, the emptiness grew.

  A knock at the front door made her start, but it was only the Harveys, inviting her next door for sherry and sandwiches. While she dodged a sudden rainstorm, Mr. Harvey dragged at her front door, one hand through the letter box, until the latch clicked.

  After several sherries Dorothy remembered something she’d once heard. “The lady who lived next door before me — didn’t she have trouble with her son?”

  “He wasn’t right in the head. He got so he’d go for anyone, even if he’d never met them before. She got so scared of him she locked him out one New Year’s eve. They say he threw himself in the river, though they never found the body.”

  Dorothy wished she hadn’t asked. She thought of the body, rotting in the depths. She must go home, in case Simon and Margery arrived. The Harveys were next door if she needed them.

  The s
herries had made her sleepy. Only the ticking of her clock, clipping away the seconds, kept her awake. Twenty past eleven. The splashing from the gutters sounded like wet footsteps pacing outside the window. She had never noticed she could smell the river in her house. She wished she had stayed longer with the Harveys; she would have been able to hear Simon’s car.

  Twenty to twelve. Surely they wouldn’t wait until midnight. She switched on the radio for company. A master of ceremonies was making people laugh; a man was laughing thickly, sounding waterlogged. Was he a drunk in the street? He wasn’t on the radio. She mustn’t brood; why, she hadn’t put out the sherry glasses; that was something to do, to distract her from the intolerably measured counting of the clock, the silenced radio, the emptiness displaying her sounds —

  Though the knock seemed enormously loud, she didn’t start. They were here at last, though she hadn’t heard the car. It was New Year’s day. She ran, and had reached the front door when the phone shrilled. That startled her so badly that she snatched the door open before lifting the receiver.

  Nobody was outside — only a distant uproar of cheers and bells and horns — and Margery was on the phone. “We’ve been held up, mummy. There was an accident in the tunnel. We’ll be over as soon as we can.”

  Then who had knocked? It must have been a drunk; she heard him stumbling beside the house, thumping on her window. He’d better take himself off, or she would call Mr. Harvey to deal with him. But she was still inside the doorway when she saw the object on her step.

  Good God, was it a rat? No, just a shoe, so ancient that it looked stuffed with mold. It wasn’t mold, only a rotten old sock. There was something in the sock, something that smelled of stagnant water and worse. She stooped to peer at it, and then she was struggling to close the door, fighting to make the latch click, no breath to spare for a scream. She’d had her first foot, and now — hobbling doggedly alongside the house, its hands slithering over the wall — here came the rest of the body.

  Robert Bloch

  THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  I DON’T KNOW how it ends.

  Maybe it ended when I heard the shot from behind the closed door to the living room — or when I ran out and found him lying there.

  Perhaps the ending came after the police arrived; after the interrogation and explanation and all that lurid publicity in the media.

  Possibly the real end was my own breakdown and eventual recovery

  — if indeed I ever fully recovered.

  It could be, of course, that something like this never truly ends as long as memory remains. And I remember it all, from the very beginning.

  Everything started on an autumn afternoon with Dirk Otjens, at his gallery on La Cienega. We met at the door just as he returned from lunch. Otjens was late; very probably he’d been with one of his wealthy customers and such people seem to favour late luncheons.

  ‘Brandon!’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been? I tried to get hold of you all morning.’

  ‘Sorry—an appointment—’

  Dirk shook his head impatiently. ‘You ought to get yourself an answering service.’

  No sense telling him I couldn’t afford one, or that my appointment had been with the unemployment office. Dirk may have known poverty himself at one time, but that was many expensive luncheons ago, and now he moved in a different milieu. The notion of a starving artist turned him off, and letting him picture me in that role was—like hiring an answering service—something I could not now afford. It had been a break for me to be taken on as one of his clients, even though nothing had happened so far.

  Or had it?

  ‘You’ve made a sale?’ I tried to sound casual, but my heart was pounding.

  ‘No. But I think I’ve got you a commission. Ever hear of Carlos Santiago?’

  ‘Can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Customer of mine. In here all the time. He saw that oil you did — you know, the one hanging in the upstairs gallery — and he wants a portrait. ’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  Dirk shrugged. ‘Foreigner. Heavy accent.’ He spoke with all of the disdain of a naturalized American citizen. ‘Some kind of shipping magnate, I gather. But the money’s there.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘I quoted him twenty-five hundred. Not top dollar, but it’s a start.’ Indeed it was. Even allowing for his cut, I’d still clear enough to keep me going. The roadblock had been broken, and somewhere up ahead was the enchanted realm where everybody has an answering service to take messages while they’re out enjoying expensive lunches of their own. Still—

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s not a good subject for me. A Spanish shipping tycoon doesn’t sound like my line of work. You know I’m not one of those artsy-craftsy temperamental types, but there has to be a certain chemistry between artist and sitter or it just doesn’t come off.’

  From Dirk’s scowl I could see that what I was saying didn’t come off either, but it had to be stated. I am, after all, an artist. I spent nine years learning my craft here and abroad — nine long hard years of self- sacrifice and self-discovery which I didn’t intend to toss away the first time somebody waved a dollar bill in my direction. If that’s all I cared about, I might as well go into mass production, turning out thirty-five- dollar clowns by the gross to sell in open-air shows on supermarket lots. On the other hand—

  ‘I’d have to see him first,’ I said.

  ‘And so you shall.’ Dirk nodded. ‘You’ve got a three o’clock appointment at his place.’

  ‘Office?’

  ‘No, the house. Up in Trousdale. Here, I wrote down the address for you. Now get going, and good luck.’

  * * *

  I remember driving along Coldwater, then making a right turn on to one of those streets leading into the Trousdale Estates. I remember it very well, because the road ahead climbed steeply along the hillside and I kept wondering if the car would make the grade. The old heap had an inferiority complex and I could imagine how it felt, wheezing its way past the semicircular driveways clogged with shiny new Cadillacs, Lancias, Alfa Romeos, and the inevitable Rolls. This was a neighbourhood in which the Mercedes was the household’s second car. I didn’t much care for it myself, but Dirk was right: the money was here.

  And so was Carlos Santiago.

  The car in his driveway was a Ferrari. I parked behind it, hoping no one was watching from the picture window of the sprawling two-storey pseudo palazzo towering above the cypress-lined drive. The house was new and the trees were still small, but who was I to pass judgment? The money was here.

  I rang the bell. Chimes susurrated softly from behind the heavy door; it opened, and a dark-haired, uniformed maid confronted me. ‘Yes, please?’

  ‘Arnold Brandon. I have an appointment with Mr Santiago.’

  She nodded. ‘This way. The senor waits for you.’

  I moved from warm afternoon sunlight into the air-conditioned chill of the shadowy hall, following the maid to the arched doorway of the living room at our left.

  The room, with its high ceiling and recessed fireplace, was larger than I’d expected. And so was my host.

  Carlos Santiago called himself a Spaniard; as I later learned, he’d been born in Argentina and undoubtedly there was indio blood in his veins. But he reminded me of a native of Crete.

  The Minotaur.

  Not literally, of course. Here was no hybrid, no man’s body topped by the head of a bull. The greying curly hair fell over a forehead unadorned by horns, but the heavily lidded eyes, flaring nostrils, and neckless merging of huge head and barrel chest somehow suggested a mingling of the taurine and the human. As an artist, I saw in Santiago the image of the man-bull, the bull-man, the incarnation of macho.

  And I hated him at first sight.

  The truth is, I’ve always feared such men; the big, burly, arrogant men who swagger and bluster and brawl their way through life. I do not trust their kind, for they have always been the enemies of art, the book burners, sm
ashers of statues, contemptuous of all creation which does not spurt from their own loins. I fear them even more when they don the mask of cordiality for their own purposes.

  And Carlos Santiago was cordial.

  He seated me in a huge leather chair, poured drinks, inquired after my welfare, complimented the sample of my work he’d seen at the gallery. But the fear remained, and so did the image of the Minotaur. Welcome to my labyrinth.

  I must admit the labyrinth was elaborately and expensively designed and tastefully furnished. All of which only emphasized the discordant note in the decor — the display above the fireplace mantel. The rusty, broad-bladed weapon affixed to the wall and flanked by grainy, poorly framed photographs seemed as out of place in this room as the hulking presence of my host.

  He noted my stare, and his chuckle was a bovine rumble.

  ‘I know what you are thinking, amigo. The oh-so-proper interior decorator was shocked when I insisted on placing those objects in such a setting. But I am a man of sentiment, and I am not ashamed.

  ‘The machete — once it was all I possessed, except for the rags on my back. With it I sweated in the fields for three long years as a common labourer. At the end I still wore the same rags and it was still my only possession. But with the money I had saved I made my first investment

  — a few tiny shares in a condemned oil tanker, making its last voyage. The success of its final venture proved the beginning of my own. I spare you details; the story is in those photographs. These are the ships I came to acquire over the years, the Santiago fleet. Many of them are old and rusty now, like the machete — like myself, for that matter. But we belong together.’

  Santiago poured another drink. ‘But I bore you, Mr Brandon. Let us speak now of the portrait.’

  I knew what was coming. He would tell me what and how to paint, and insist that I include his ships in the background; perhaps he intended to be shown holding the machete in his hand.