by Matt Shaw
My Last Easter
By Jack Rollins
The first Faberge eggs were produced by Peter Carl Faberge and his company between 1885 and 1917. The most famous of these were made as exquisite gifts for the wives and mothers of Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II. Each ornately designed piece contained finely-crafted jewels and trinkets and they were produced every year except in 1904 and 1905 during the Russo-Japanese war. Two additional eggs were believed planned for Easter 1918, but never delivered due to the Russian Revolution.
A legend persists that Peter Carl Faberge lost a beloved nephew in the revolution and, sick with grief, created another egg in secret, one not intended for any Tsar, but imbued with mysterious properties that he believed could bring about an end to all conflict. Forever.
Tommy Pritchard stifled the disappointment well. No chocolate egg from Grandma Somerville this year. His heart had dipped inside his chest when she’d told them. His sister Charlotte, older than him by two years, ever the ten-year-old suck-up, climbed onto Grandma’s bed and gave her a big hug.
Tommy kept his distance. She’s too sick to go to the shops to buy Easter eggs? Then she’s too sick to cuddle me. He hated the idea of climbing up there with her. He felt like there was this film over everything in Grandma’s house and it seemed to stick to him every time he visited. Largely, this feeling came from the smell. The warm, welcoming smell of chocolate cake baking in the oven had long ago been replaced by a more clinical, plastic smell and sometimes a strong smell he recognised as being pee.
As his mum and grandma chatted, with Charlotte pretending she was an adult between them, Tommy gazed at a black and white photograph in a little brown wooden frame, propped on the dressing table. The man in the picture, Grandma had told him, was her Daddy—his great grandfather Katovich. Never having met the man, in Tommy’s mind’s eye, his great grandfather had taken on some sort of legendary, mythical quality—great meaning he was a great size, a great warrior, a great man. He certainly looked impressive in the picture, in his thick coat with buttons that fastened right over on one side of his chest, instead of down the middle, and a flat cap, that Tommy knew was an army hat. A thick moustache curled up at the corners of the man’s mouth. He looked important. Grandma said he went to a bolshy party, whatever that was, and Tommy remembered her saying the man called Lenin, was a friend of his. Tommy imagined that the old band his dad liked, The Beatles, must have played at that party.
“Give your Grandma a hug, Tommy,” his mum urged, breaking his daydream.
“Don’t want to.”
“Tomm-eeeee.”
He knew that tone, and he didn’t have to look at his mum’s face to know exactly how it looked. She could make a dog shit itself with that scowl. Shoulders slumped, bottom lip stuck out and his eyebrows knitted into a frown that matched his mum’s, Tommy trudged over the mint green carpet and leaned over to give his grandma a fleeting hug. He retreated to the chair in the corner once more, immediately, as though afraid he’d catch leprosy from her.
“Tommy, sometimes you are such a rude little boy,” his mum huffed.
“Yeah,” Charlotte chimed, “you are such a rude little boy!”
“That will do, madam,” Mrs Pritchard warned, raising a straight finger to her pursed lips.
“Yeah, leave me alone.”
“All of you leave him alone,” Grandma Somerville commanded. “He’s a little boy, he doesn’t want to go around cuddling old women like me.”
“No, he wants to cuddle Freya at school!”
“Do not!”
“That will do, you two!”
“Yes you do, Thomas!”
“Well, you want to cuddle Jeremy at school.”
“You two! I have had enough of your bickering. Go downstairs and amuse yourselves, so your Grandma and I can have some peace!”
Charlotte barged Tommy into the wall right before the top of the staircase.
“Watch it, you nearly pushed me down the stairs!” Tommy yelped.
“Watch it yourself,” Charlotte said, stomping off ahead. “I can’t help it if you’re blind!”
Tommy knew better than to keep it up. Either Charlotte would turn around and smack him, or their mum would come down the stairs like a tank, and give them both something to cry about.
Charlotte snatched up the TV remote and plonked herself down in Grandma Somerville’s favourite seat. Tommy knew this was his sister claiming superiority in the room. “I wish Grandma had Sky,” she muttered jabbing the channel up button, flicking from boring show about cooking, to boring show about houses, to boring show about antiques. “There’s never anything on normal telly.”
Tommy ignored her and peered out of the window, watching raindrops chase each other down the glass. No eggs ‘til we get home, and that’ll be ages now that Mum and Grandma are gossiping, he thought – his inner voice as gloomy as the weather. He glanced over his shoulder to see that his sister had settled on CBBC and that programme about the kids in the care home. He hated that show.
As he turned his attention back to the window, the china cabinet caught his eye. Long had he yearned to slide aside the glass panel and inspect the treasures within, but Grandma never let him even stand close to the cabinet for fear he would trip and smash everything and hurt himself (Tommy often wondered what her order of priority was on that particular matter).
Tommy pressed his thumb into the gold-painted plastic ring nested in the glass and applied pressure to the right, hoping the glass plate wouldn’t stick in the runner and make a noise to get him caught.
“What are you up to?”
Tommy’s cheeks flushed and he snapped his hands back by his side. “Nothing.”
“You were going to steal from the china cabinet, weren’t you?”
“Was not.”
“Were so and I’m telling Mum!” Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at her little brother.
“Do what you want. I can’t get told off for looking.” Tommy turned his attention back to the cabinet. He saw crystal animals that looked dark without sunlight, or the cabinet’s built-in lamp shooting rainbows through them. Ballerinas stood on pointed tiptoes, lifeless and dull. These things held no interest for Tommy, however. There was a specific piece that had captured his imagination ever since he had first clapped eyes on it.
A tripod of gold fixed a golden belt in place, within which sat an egg about as tall as his Batman action figure and at its fattest section, about as wide as the span of his thumb to the tip of his forefinger. He reckoned he could fit about four Cadbury Crème Eggs in it at a push, or maybe only three and he could eat one. Staring at the ornamental egg caused him to lick his lips even though he knew the piece was anything but edible.
The exterior of the egg was painted, but the decoration was elaborate and included a finely painted scene of the grown-up-baby-Jesus with his beard and the little towel around his rude bits, and he was hanging on a cross. Tommy rubbed the palms of his hands, when he remembered the gross story about the nails going through the middle of his hands, and through his feet. The story reminded him of that bit in Home Alone when the robber stands on the nail and you see it go right into the middle of the soft bit of his foot. He could never watch that and hid his eyes from the screen every time it came on.
At the foot of the cross, bright orange flames lapped at the wood and shadowy, horned figures seemed to prance and dance around, long tongues poking out between their sharp teeth.
They looked like bad-guys. They looked like Green Goblin, but shadows. And it looked like they were happy that the grown-up-baby-Jesus was in pain up on the cross. The picture looked like the baddies had won, and it made him feel very strange, because the bad guys were always supposed to lose.
“You like the egg, don’t you?” Charlotte asked.
Tommy nodded, never taking his eyes off the piece.
“I touched it once. I held it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did. I got it out and touched
it, then put it back before anyone could see.”
“Liar.”
“Want to see me do it again?” Charlotte asked.
“No,” Tommy murmured. “I’m going to do it.”
Right then the floorboards creaked as their mum moved around in Grandma’s room. Charlotte’s eyes turned skyward, but no more sounds came. When she levelled her gaze at her brother, her jaw fell open.
Tommy had slipped his thumb into the plastic hoop once more and pressed his free hand against the glass, sliding the pane aside. He had reached up and snatched the egg, whipping it free of the golden stand, which toppled as he had not the height to lift the egg free in a direct upwards movement, it was more of a drag. The stand collided with a crystal squirrel, which fell from the open front of the cabinet, to land on the thick burgundy carpet with a soft thud.
“Look what you did!” Charlotte gasped, pointing at the angular little squirrel.
“Look what I did!” Tommy exclaimed, holding the egg inches in front of his nose like Indiana Jones with a hard-won treasure. Turning the egg, he saw that the scene was repeated front and back, but now, able to see the piece from all angles, he noticed a hinge embedded in the back. “It opens, look.” Tommy showed his sister the discovery.
Charlotte pounced, snatching the egg away from her brother. “I want to open it!”
“Give it here!” Tommy yelled.
Charlotte stopped in her tracks, holding the egg high above her head, where her little brother couldn’t reach it. “Shhhh!” she hissed. “If you bring Mum down here, neither of us will see what’s inside.”
Tommy seethed, knowing his sister was right. He nodded his acceptance of the situation; his need to see the surprise inside this expensive-looking Kinder Egg outweighed his need to be the one to actually open it.
“Who is queeeeeeen?” Charlotte crowed.
Tommy rolled his eyes up.
“Who is queeeeeeen?”
“You’re the fupping queen, okay?”
“Oooh, swearwords. Maybe I should just put this egg back in the cabinet and tell Mum about your foul mouth.”
“Then you don’t get to see what’s in there, either,” Tommy said, his wide eyes seeming to glow with this little victory.
Charlotte grasped the top and bottom of the egg and applied gentle pressure. The top portion tilted on the hinge and a blue glow was cast across Charlotte’s face, turning the whites of her eyes into pools of sapphire light.
“Wow!” Charlotte gasped.
“Let me see it!” Tommy cried.
Charlotte lowered the egg so that he could share the view. Within the outer, painted egg, was a glass egg which housed some sort of swirling blue mist, crackling with contained lightning, like a tiny storm trapped in glass.
“Maybe it’s like a snow globe,” Charlotte suggested, shaking the piece with such violence that the inner egg dislodged and fell from the outer shell. She gasped, waiting for the crash.
Tommy pounced and caught the orb in his right hand. Both he and his sister breathed a sigh of relief. He perched the orb on his fingertips and stared into the glass in awe.
“Look at this,” Charlotte cried, holding up the painted outer shell, revealing that the colours had bled away, blurring like a watercolour in the rain, revealing a skin of black porcelain beneath.
“Mum is going to kill us!”
“It’s your fault, Tommy!” Charlotte yelled, dropping the outer shell to the carpet. She lunged at her little brother, but Tommy tucked the egg close to his chest and barrelled into her, shoulder first. Charlotte crashed to the floor, winded.
Tommy glanced back at her, stopping in the corner to inspect the orb. The swirling clouds contained within had a mesmerising effect, he found it incredibly difficult to focus on anything else. He could hear his mum’s footfalls on the stairs. He knew that trouble was on the way, but he could not move. The orb seemed to thrum with a tightly contained power—he could feel it, it was like the feeling he got on his tongue when he licked the top of one of those square batteries, but in his fingertips.
“Give that here!” Charlotte snatched at the orb, knocking it from Tommy’s fingers, but her own grasp failed her. The orb shattered against the wall with an ear-splitting crash.
“Look what you did!” Tommy screamed, his face turning red, cheeks burning with rage. His fists squeezed into tight balls and he turned, ready to pound his sister’s face.
“What the hell is going on in there?” their mum cried from the stairs.
Charlotte stared over Tommy’s shoulder. “Look!”
Tommy turned to see that the storm from the orb was no longer contained. Blue lightning flickered outward, like impossibly fast tentacles, snatching at the curtains, the carpet, the door handle. The clouds swirled and stretched – a vortex of impenetrable darkness forming in the heart of the miniature storm.
“Fupping hell!” Tommy squealed.
“Telling on you.”
The skirting board’s white paint lifted and splinters of bare wood gravitated to the growing clouds. The corner of the carpet tore free of the staples that pinned it down, its threads unravelling, sucked into the vortex like dark red spaghetti.
Tommy backed away as his mum entered the room. “Right, you two! We’re going! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?”
“Charlotte did it!”
“Tommy did it!”
The lightning forks snapped at the doorframe and wallpaper peeled away from plaster and splinters of wood darted through the air into the nothingness.
“Out! Get out!” Mum cried.
Tommy stood mesmerised as Charlotte ran to her mother’s side, hugging tightly to her hip.
The curtain tore free, snapping the curtain pole as this new gravitational force refused to let go. The windowsill split and disintegrated into the darkness.
Tommy’s mum grabbed his wrist and yanked him out of the lounge as a low rumbling sound filled the air. Lightning arcs flashed, blinding and ferocious in their wake, the force of their discharge thudding into the walls and furniture. Tommy could smell a metallic, burning tang in the air.
The three of them burst through the front door, into the chilly rain, in time to see the storm eating through the brickwork of the house—only a couple of bricks at first, but blades of grass rippled, standing on end, pointing at the threat. A dozen bricks collapsed inward, with more peeling away every second. The vortex seemed to gather strength with every passing moment and the lightning flashes in the lounge created a strobe effect so intense that it could even be discerned outside in the daylight.
“Keep going!” Mum ordered.
“What about Grandma?” Charlotte cried.
“I’ll get her, just keep away from that… thing!”
“Don’t do it, Mum,” Tommy warned. “Don’t go back in there!”
“I have to, Tommy. Grandma needs help to get out of there.”
“You won’t make it. Neither of you will make it.”
Tommy’s mum ruffled his hair and cast him a sympathetic look. “She needs me.”
“We need you too,” came Tommy’s response, a lump rising into his throat.
Tommy watched his mum race to the front door as the storm sucked away bricks only a few feet away from her. Daffodils and gravel whipped up from around the lawn, and a lightning flash chopped a chunk out of the turf, leaving a smoking, steaming hole in the grass.
Charlotte screamed as she saw their mum stride through the front door and stop in her tracks.
“MUM!” they both cried in unison.
A bolt of lightning shot through their mother’s forehead, neatly punching a tunnel right through her skull. She fell to her knees, steam rising from her white-hot wounds. She toppled forward and, unseen by the two children, another part of the storm must have crept closer to her, as her hair rose on end, tearing free from her scalp, pulling chunks of flesh away. Skin peeled off in layers, down to fat, the muscle, then bone as gradually, another fringe of the storm drifted into view, consuming her body.
Tommy sat on the pavement, hands over his eyes, rocking back and forth. Charlotte raced to the doorway, seemingly oblivious of the fact that what had happened to her mum was bound to happen to her.
Amid the blue glow in the lounge, flickers of orange appeared as textiles, paper and wood caught fire at the force of the lightning strikes. The window frame buckled inward, pausing as the fixing bolts held fast.
Tommy found that he wasn’t alone on the street. His grandma’s neighbours had come out to see what the fuss was about. “What the hell is that thing? Some sort of gas cloud?” one of them cried.
“Is Hanna still in there?”
“Tommy, where’s your mum, son? Can anyone see Justine?”
“Quick, fetch your Dad! I think it’s a fire. I think old Hanna’s trapped.”
Jonathan, who lived right next door to Tommy’s Grandma, grabbed Charlotte and dragged her away from the doorway. “Come on, sweetheart. You need to get away from there! It’s too dangerous, my petal.” The old man wrapped an arm around Tommy, pressing the siblings close together. He turned to the others gathered around. “I saw Justine, I think. It’s hard to tell… she’s gone.”
Charlotte seemed to crumble, squeezing into Tommy’s huddled form, knowing Jonathan’s meaning – knowing this meant she wasn’t dreaming - other people were seeing this, too. It meant that she had killed her mother. It meant that she had brought about this destruction. It meant that no matter what happened next, it was all, every bit of it, her fault. The crushing weight of this truth rendered her dumb. She didn’t want to see any more. She didn’t want to hear any more. She didn’t want to know or accept any more, but the truth rushed in around her from every direction at once, like that toon-ami that hit Japan, guilt lifting her off her feet and dragging her along with its current, drowning her.
The window frame finally collapsed, dragging with it the lintel, bricks aligned with the first floor timber and a huge portion of the lounge ceiling. The front door vanished as the vortex expanded to fill the doorframe. More brickwork collapsed inward, the whole front of the ground floor almost exposed. Three more lightning flashes drove the crowd of onlookers back across the road.
