Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  He shoves his hands under his thighs, but the nervous energy flows into his feet. He closes his eyes, momentarily, and counts his breath, hoping he doesn’t hyperventilate.

  “Sorry,” Molly says. “Sometimes I say too much.”

  The conversation hits a long pause, the silence filled with Clapton’s guitar. Oliver gets his nervousness under control, but the floor is slowly moving. Good thing he’s sitting. Molly, head back on her chair, comes out of her music reverie and announces she’s grabbing a refill.

  “Do you want to read the journals?” The words pop out of his mouth. There’s no taking them back. It’s a stupid thing to say, but for once he feels like there’s an anchor keeping his life from capsizing, and it’s wearing a Ramones T-shirt.

  “Um, yeah. You have them?”

  “No. But I can bring them, you know, next time.”

  “And when’s that?”

  “I don’t know…”

  She tilts her head, exposing the gap in a churlish smile. “Text me, then. When you’re in town, text me and I’ll come meet you.”

  “Okay.”

  Molly snaps a photo of him sitting in the chair. She shows him the thumbnail. He looks like a ghost. Oliver quickly gets his phone out and aims it.

  Molly jumps on the miniature stage and grabs the empty mic stand, striking a silent but shrieking pose. Oliver captures her in his contacts. He tries a sip of lukewarm coffee. She returns, and they talk for another hour. The Toye property is forgotten.

  For now.

  F L U R Y

  eleven

  Three days later, it snows.

  Oliver has completed his chores, but still isn’t allowed to go outside. He walks the staircase and not because Grandmother told him to. If he sits too long, he starts thinking, and too many thoughts are not his friends.

  Walking keeps his mind engaged.

  That night, Oliver goes to his room early. This time, he leaves his door open and listens. When the last footsteps are heard and the last door shut, he sets the timer on his phone and waits an hour.

  Occasionally, distant tree branches break in the distance.

  He doesn’t want to read, that will put him to sleep. He can’t pace; his footsteps will creak. Instead, he counts his breaths so the thoughts don’t pile up. At ten thirty, his alarm goes off.

  He stuffs a journal down the back of his sweatpants.

  His footsteps announce his journey across the third floor. He stops in the bathroom and waits a minute before flushing. He runs the water in the sink and, while the toilet is refilling, walks to the room at the far end of the hallway.

  A rope dangles from the ceiling.

  He pulls down the attic door and unfolds the steps, carefully climbing them just as the toilet goes silent.

  The ceiling is pitched at an angle.

  Pale moonlight beams through the circular window that faces the driveway. He shivers as he waits for his eyes to adjust to the lumps surrounding him. The ghosts transform into dusty sheets draped over furniture and containers.

  His phone illuminates uncovered boxes labeled kitchen or dinnerware or office. Most are sealed shut. There’s a bookshelf to his left. He takes a couple of surprisingly silent steps to flip through stacks of Newsweek, Life, and Popular Mechanics. The dates are only ten years old.

  Grandmother must still be hauling them up.

  That’s when he realizes how large everything is. It’s not just the containers, but dressers, tables and chairs. He tugs the sheet from behind a bookshelf. It’s an armoire. How did that get up here?

  The door is cracked open.

  He dares another step and pries it open further. The armoire doesn’t look old, but the clothing hanging inside does. Most are small dresses for a little girl. Maybe these were Helen’s? Or maybe a little girl that died fifty years ago and lives in the attic waiting for idiots like Oliver to come snooping around about midnight—

  He closes his eyes.

  Counts to ten.

  When his thoughts are calm, he steps away from the armoire and doesn’t look at it again.

  He goes to the circular window, where a wide coffee table is positioned. He notices, as he sits down, it’s a perfect setup to watch the driveway, which is exactly what he wants to do.

  The circular drive is still clear—Oliver shoveled it after lunch—but the entry road is buried. His breath is puffing white clouds in the moonlight. He vows to stay awake until midnight. If nothing happens before then and the road is clear in the morning, then he’ll bring a coat up the next night. He’ll set his alarm to watch it at different times until he’s got all the hours covered.

  He could just ask Grandmother how the entry road gets plowed, but he wouldn’t believe her and still come up.

  It made sense not to ask.

  The road is lonely. What starts out tranquil turns to cold boredom in fifteen minutes. The journal, still tucked in his waistband, sticks to his skin. He lays it on his lap. The yellowish pages turn frosty in the moonlight.

  Random doodles fill the first couple of pages, followed by several pages torn from the binding. About a third of the way into the book, he finds the first entry.

  February 14, 1882

  Nog always arrived after I woke. He’d slide into the room wearing a different coat—sometimes long and furry, sometimes short and smooth. He’d slowly circle the room, staring at me like he had x-ray vision, looking right into my bones. He told me it was February.

  Months have passed. It feels like weeks.

  I think I’m losing my mind again. I just want out. If I’m going to die without seeing you, then let it be with the sky above me, the wind in my face. I told him this. Told him I thought he was a hallucination and that I wanted to die.

  The next morning I awoke to a very different room.

  It was bigger than when I had gone to sleep, perhaps three times as long and twice as wide. Ice shavings dusted the floor, as if it was freshly carved.

  There was a pile of clothing in the corner that included heavy sweaters and a coat with a thick pair of boots. Next to the clothing, protruding from the wall, were steel rungs that led up to a hole in the ceiling.

  Before excitement could drag me from bed, Nog slid into the room. He was wearing white this time. “Good morning,” he started. “I’d like to begin with apologies, once again, for the lengthy adjustment period.”

  He paused. I nodded. It was the best I could do. They saved my life, as far as I could tell. I couldn’t be indignant about that. But there was a hole in the ceiling that, I knew, exited to the outside.

  “Trust,” he said, “is essential. Power,” he said, “is intoxicating. And you will find plenty of power amongst my people.”

  He paused again. Maybe he was letting the words sink in, I don’t know. He can be long-winded and often used words I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to extend the conversation with a reply, but then he said, quite suddenly, “Let’s stretch our legs today.”

  I got dressed very quickly and climbed the steel rungs. I emerged on top of the ice. Outside. In the world. Alive.

  And tears filled my eyes.

  I began weeping like a child. The stars shone in the frigid sky, and the ice was flat as far as I could see. It was clean and spacious and free. If I could not die in your arms, then I would have gladly laid my body to rest in that moment.

  I began to laugh. My bellows carried long and far, perhaps all the way to the water beyond my eyes’ reach. I must’ve looked like a madman. Nog popped out of the ice. He just shot up like a cork. Others did, too. Three of them of the same size and proportion. Two were females with clean faces, one with a long gray braid that reached her feet. Nog stood next to this one and held her hand.

  All of them wore white.

  I had assumed Nog was the leader, but when the one with the braid, the one known as Merry, spoke, it was clear they deferred to her.

  “We knew this time would come,” she said. “We have aided the human race in ways you cannot imagine, and ha
ve wished to remain anonymous and peaceful. Perhaps, though, now is the time that we reconsider and join the human race.” She paused before saying, “We are not so different.”

  There was a strange current in the air. I could feel something was about to happen. Merry spread her arms and said, “Welcome to the Elven.”

  And when she said it, they all came up.

  Thousands of them, my love.

  They were just as round as they were joyful, squabbling as they pressed near me, reaching out to touch me as if I was not the one dreaming, but they were.

  I was overwhelmed. Tears, once again, filled my eyes. Merry said, above the melee, “Perhaps you would like to meet the one that saved you.”

  I expected someone larger than the elven, a beast maybe, because my memory of lying on the ice was that of a large shadow and hulking arms, something large enough to carry me against its chest and certainly the elven were not large enough for that.

  But I was not ready for this.

  As the snow began to swirl, I felt my knees weaken. My savior made these words possible. Without this one, there would be no hope that I would see you again.

  Merry held out her hand. She was wearing a strange glove. I looked around for my savior, but no one stood taller than the elven. Then I realized she had something in her hand. It was an ornament, my love. A big metal ornament with the most beautiful designs etched into its surface. Excitement was all around, but I didn’t understand. How could the ornament save me?

  She tossed it into the air.

  The elven scrambled away, giving it room to land in the snow. But it never came down. Instead, a cyclone of snow swirled from the ice, a frosty cloud puffed across my eyes. And when it settled, when the air was clear, I saw him, my love. I saw the creature that saved my life.

  He was made of snow.

  Something cracks outside.

  Someone’s out there!

  The person is wearing a long black coat dragging over the snow; the head is hidden beneath a heavy cowl. A faint layer of gray is on the shoulders and hood—snow that’s trickled out of the trees. The person is staring down the entry drive, where a cloud billows like an approaching dust storm.

  Oliver is frozen on the coffee table, his heart thudding in his chest.

  His neck muscles, rigid.

  The snow cloud gets denser. Branches snap and drag. The black figure steps back before the thickening cloud engulfs him. Oliver can hear something coming, like a distant train.

  And then he sees it.

  In the depths of the burgeoning snow cloud, he sees the whirling ball of branches. It spins like a bristled sphere made of a thousand twiggy arms that grind through the snow and scrape the asphalt as it moves back and forth, back and forth. It reaches the roundabout and stops.

  The snow clears.

  The thing rests in front of the cloaked figure. Its body is a dirty, slushy snowball, a pincushion of coniferous branches, the ends softened with pine and spruce needles. Short stumps emerge from the bottom, like legs, and another set grows where arms would be.

  Oliver stops breathing.

  It’s a snowthing, sort of like the snowman that saved him but different. It’s thicker, rounder and shorter. The snow slurpy and lumpy.

  The black figure flicks his wrist.

  Had Oliver not noticed the figure’s hand, he would not have leaped up, the journal would not have slammed against the window. He would have remained an anonymous voyeur. It was a gleam of metal.

  Moonlight reflecting off a glove.

  Grandmother.

  Oliver did leap.

  The journal did slam.

  And the figure turns toward him. The cowl, deep and dark, does not fall away. The snowthing, however, is gone in a cloud, the branches and slushy snow swishing into the trees.

  Oliver closes his eyes and holds very still. When he opens his eyes, the driveway is empty. He runs to the steps and climbs down, paying no attention to noise.

  He pauses.

  Motionless, his ears filter out the natural ticks and creaks of the house in search of a door opening or a footstep falling. He goes to the bathroom and, once again, flushes the toilet and runs the sink. If anyone asks, he’s having a bad night. On the way to the bedroom, passing the stairwell—

  A ghostly figure watches.

  Oliver actually shouts this time.

  It sounds like a small dog stepping on a thorn.

  The surprise flings him against the wall, and, he realizes, there’s nothing to drop or throw.

  The journal is still in the attic.

  Grandmother, clad in a flowing beige robe and fuzzy slippers, methodically climbs the steps, crossing through a slice of moonlight. She looks like she should be carrying a lantern.

  “What are you doing, Olivah?”

  “I had the…the bathroom.” He rubs his stomach. “My blood sugar was…I think it was something I ate.”

  She looks like she just climbed out of bed. It couldn’t have been her out there. She couldn’t have gotten up the stairs that fast. She’s not even winded. But her hair is pulled back in a tight bun.

  She doesn’t sleep like that.

  “What makes you so afraid?” she asks. “The things you see?”

  She looks in the bathroom, then at Oliver. It sounds like something is caught in her throat. She returns to Oliver as silently as she walked away and takes both his hands, turning them over like she’s checking for stolen goods.

  Or dust from the attic.

  “I washed my hands,” Oliver says. “I always do when I…you know, go to the bathroom.”

  “Do you think I’m a tyrant?”

  He shakes his head, but she can see the truth. That sound returns to her throat again. Is that laughter?

  “We know nothing in our little worlds.” She pats his hands. “Only when we know everything do we realize we know nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  He waits for her to leave, to return to her bedroom on the first floor, but she doesn’t move. Her icy stare is fixed on him, her eyes like black marbles. She appears to smirk, but he can’t be sure it’s not just the wrinkles.

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.” He goes to his bedroom.

  “Oh, Olivah.”

  He stops.

  “Be not afraid. It’s only your thoughts that have come to get you.”

  The moonlight through the window catches the side of her face. Even from this distance, he’s sure he sees it.

  She’s smiling.

  He climbs into bed and pulls the covers over his head, thinking she must be sleepwalking. What disturbs him most, though, was the feel of her hands.

  They were very cold.

  F L U R Y

  twelve

  Christmas arrives like any other day.

  He opens presents with his mom. Grandmother joins them for breakfast. She wishes them a Merry Christmas, but no gifts are exchanged. Aunt Rhonnie and the twins arrive for tea. They all have new sunglasses and coats.

  In the afternoon, the twins make their journey across the field.

  Oliver says he’s not feeling well, which he isn’t. The weird has a stranglehold on him. He’s woozy and dreamy. He tries not to think and sleeps as much as possible. The twins return before supper and leave early because Helen says there’s a party that night and they must leave now.

  Later, he realizes the chore board has been blank all day.

  Merry Christmas, Olivah.

  ***

  He doesn’t leave the house for the next couple of days.

  Oliver sleeps later than he should, and his blood sugar drops too low.

  He does his chores.

  He walks the steps.

  And he avoids Grandmother.

  Even at tea, he keeps his eyes forward, exerting perfect form and manners. On occasion, he glances at her when she looks away, careful not to make eye contact. But the old Grandmother is back. That smile he thought he saw in the moonlight is long buried. This is the one thing that gives
him comfort.

  Maybe I was dreaming.

  Maybe he dreamed about everything, because pincushioned snowthings don’t plow driveways, they don’t take orders from old women…they don’t live!

  But no matter how much he throws himself into his chores or how long he sleeps, the world is still covered in snow. Every morning, he opens his eyes and he’s still on the property. Things are not getting better.

  Oliver thinks about Molly often, but it’s so much easier to pretend none of this is happening. As the days wear on, the memories don’t disappear, but they do fade.

  In the middle of January, when normal kids have already gone back to school, Mom drops him off at the library. It was her idea. He waits for the car to leave. Instead of going inside, he clears the snow off a bench. With service, his phone downloads a list of emails and unread text messages. Five of them are from Molly.

  The last one just before New Year’s Eve.

  Oliver can see the circulation desk through the sliding glass doors. Molly is helping someone check out. He stays outside long enough to become quite cold. When his phone buzzes, he pulls his gloves off with his teeth, but it’s just an update reminder for one of his games.

  He can’t stop chattering.

  It’s late afternoon. Mom won’t be back for another hour. Oliver wants to go inside, but if he does, he’ll talk to her. If he talks to her, color and detail will return to the faded memories. He’ll also get her in trouble with Ms. Chatty Pants. So he’ll sit on the bench until his mom picks him up.

  “Oliver? Is that you?”

  Molly stands at the entrance without a coat. Her yellow and black rugby shirt is long-sleeved. She crosses her arms and walks beneath the awning. Oliver buries his hands in his pockets as his stomach drops twenty floors into fear and, for once, a little excitement.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Using the wifi.”

  “Out here?”

  “My mom’s picking me up. And I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He looks back. Ms. Chatty Pants is at the circulation desk. “There’s no service at the property. That’s why I didn’t text you. I’m sorry.”