Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  “They’re talking six inches,” he adds.

  Cath turns around. The frother is still quiet.

  “Take a break, O.” Ms. Megan tickles his back. “I got this.”

  Oliver takes a deep breath. He goes to the bathroom, splashes water on his face, and washes his hands. The tingling fades, but it’s still wrapped around his chest. Even the bathroom feels dim.

  He grabs a small coffee and heads to the front of the shop to get some fresh air and test some blood. He was up late the night before, texting with Molly and scrolling through social media. He’d already had a cup of coffee that morning. Sometimes he gets the jitters. This is different.

  He steps outside and realizes Art wasn’t brushing sawdust off his sleeves; he wasn’t sweating.

  It’s snowing.

  Large snowflakes are coming down. Oliver brushes it off the small metal chair outside the door. First snow since he left Grandmother’s. And now his chest humming. His hand burning. He packs a snowball and holds it until his fingers are numb.

  His hand still burns.

  ***

  The lights are off.

  The fluorescent closed sign reflects off the dark windows and The Black Keys thump in the café. Oliver cleans the frothing nozzles. The counters are cleared except for a skinny latte in a to-go cup.

  He loves to close. It’s his little secret. He likes to pretend Ms. Megan sold the place to him and he lives upstairs. He comes down whenever he wants, makes killer coffee for his mom, and hangs out after hours with the music turned up. He wouldn’t change a thing about the place, except maybe add a few more loungers. If code would allow it, a fire pole would make it easy to slide down from the apartment.

  He washes out a cup and turns it upside down in the sink. He’s maxed out on caffeine for the day, especially after that burning episode. He feels normal except for his hand. He touched the frother while it was steaming.

  That doesn’t explain the lines.

  There’s a light rapping on the window.

  Molly is at the front door, huffing on the glass and drawing a smiley face, her finger poking through brown gloves with the tips cut off. She dyed her hair black and frosted her pigtails pink. Large snowflakes stick to her coat.

  Oliver goes to the front, drying his hands. “We’re closed.”

  “I need to speak to the manager.”

  “Password?”

  “The what?”

  “The password.”

  She pinches her bottom lip, thinking. “The pearl is in the river?”

  Oliver turns the locks and sticks his face in the narrow opening. “Do you mean ‘zee pearl iz in zee river’?”

  “Ahoy, matey.”

  She plants a kiss on him, her lips moist with chapstick. Oliver pulls the bandana off his head and opens the door. The streetlights glow in the halo of falling snow. Four inches cover the sidewalk.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” she says, unwinding her scarf.

  Oliver returns to the sink. Molly cradles the to-go cup and inhales the latte before sipping. She closes her eyes, a foamy mustache on her lip.

  She tells him about her day at school: an upcoming homecoming dance and the football cheerleaders and the jocks that love them. Afterwards, she worked a shift at the library. Oliver wipes down the counters and equipment as she tells him about a storyteller that entertained a bunch of grade schoolers.

  She stops to sing along with the Pixies.

  Oliver runs one last pitcher of water through the frother. Fueled on non-fat latte, Molly tells him the storyteller’s story—“wide…mouth…frog.” She’s on the last chorus as the frother runs out of steam. He turns the knob—

  And jerks his hand back.

  Oliver massages his palm when the sensation crawls up his arm again. A tingling net falls over his chest and tightens around his heart—warm, protective but stifling. A storm thrums in his head.

  “Oliver?”

  Molly’s by his side. He’s missing a chunk of time, long enough for her to come around the counter. The storm continues howling in his ears. He rubs his chest and throat.

  “What’s wrong?” Molly asks. “Your blood sugar low?”

  He dosed himself just before she got there. Besides, this isn’t diabetes; at least nothing he’s ever experienced. He describes the sensations, says it happened that morning, too. Maybe he’s dehydrated. He hasn’t had water, come to think of it. Or tinnitus, Molly says. She’s heard of people getting hit with mysterious ringing.

  “Maybe you need a doctor,” she says.

  “I’m all right. I’ll drink water.”

  Molly helps turn over the last couple of chairs and hang the damp wash towels. He takes a breather, downs a bottle of water, and he’s already feeling better. Besides, he doesn’t want to ruin the night.

  He stands up, gives it a second.

  “Sounds like an allergic reaction,” Molly says. “Better check what you’re drinking.”

  She’s got a point. They cracked open a new brand of coffee beans that morning. He needed to ask Ms. Megan if anyone else feels this way. It would kill business if they did.

  Oliver grabs his book bag and slings it over his shoulder. Molly’s waiting by the front door. The flap is unzipped and spills books.

  He freezes in the grip of another tingling wave.

  There’s a book on the floor. One he didn’t pack.

  A book he hasn’t seen since last winter.

  He squats down to pick it up, staying on one knee as he brushes the leathery cover. The bottom corner is broken with three spots of spilled ink on the edge.

  The journal from the attic.

  “Where’d you get that?” Molly asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  His hand throbs. He turns it over. In the red glow of the CLOSED sign, they see a pattern in his palm.

  The intricate lines of the orb.

  F L U R Y

  twenty

  The next day, the snow becomes slush.

  Molly waits on the sidewalk. Snowmelt drips from the café awning. Oliver leaves with a dish towel over his shoulder. His hair curls from beneath the stocking cap.

  “You all right?” she asks.

  He turns his hands up. The redness has faded, but the lines are still there, like he’d been squeezing the orb. The warm tingles have disappeared, but the invisible net of claustrophobia remains. Oliver looks down the sidewalk. The Little Professor sign hangs four doors down. Mom won’t get off work for another hour.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  Molly nods.

  Oliver clutches the book bag in one hand. It hasn’t left his sight.

  There’s a green door around the corner and a flight of noisy stairs. The oak door slams behind them as they run up the steps. The apartment is down a short hallway, first door on the left. He holds the door open for Molly. Inside, it smells like a coffee grinder. The couches and chair were all purchased from garage sales. To the left is the kitchen where the refrigerator rattles.

  Nothing matches the olive green walls.

  “There’s not much time.” He slings the book bag on the couch. A dust cloud wafts into a beam of light. Oliver slides the journal out. He feels slightly dizzy.

  “I still don’t get it,” Molly says. “How’d it get in your backpack?”

  He had told her that he recognized the journal. It’s the one from the attic, the one he dropped when he saw Grandmother in the driveway. And this buzzing sensation, he says, that’s what he felt whenever he squeezed the orb or when the snowman was nearby.

  Without snow, there is no snowman.

  “Snow.” He turns toward her. “There hasn’t been snow since we moved out, not until yesterday. I think my hand started burning when it started snowing.”

  “And the journal shows up?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I think he’s looking for you. He wants you to know something.”

  He never should’ve come to you.

&n
bsp; Grandmother said that, she thought the snowman had come for Oliver. Henry did, too. He was angry that he’d been out there all his life and never got the orb. Grandmother, though, wasn’t jealous. She was worried. He didn’t know if she meant for him to hear that. Maybe she thought once he was off the property, he’d be safe.

  Maybe she’s wrong.

  The binding cracks as he opens the journal. The coarse pages are musty. Oliver reads aloud the portions he had seen while in the attic, about the day his great-grandfather, Malcolm Toye, first left the ice room. He went above to see the elven. And met the one that saved him.

  Made of snow.

  It stood ten feet. Maybe fifteen.

  Its legs were thick like timber, the long arms bowing from a stout chest that pulsed not from the beat of a heart but something more precise and mechanical. The head was wide like a turret and featureless except for two indentions where eyes would be.

  I expected its steps to crack the ice or, at the very least, make the world shudder. But it was soft and silent. The elven reached for it as it passed, clinging to its legs and hanging from the swinging arms, laughing as they fell and rolled.

  So powerful and intimidating, like a creature carved from a nightmare, that I expected to quiver as it neared, but I found myself smiling. A feeling of warmth radiated inside my chest, pulsing in waves corresponding with the thumping of its chest. There’s no other way to describe what I felt when it stopped in front of me.

  It was love.

  “He is an abominable,” Merry said. “He protects us, but he has limits. He risked his life to find you, Malcolm.”

  Life? I thought. It wasn’t breathing, and it was made of snow, but she acted as if it was alive. How could I argue? It stood over me, filling me with a sense of belonging.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would it do that?”

  “Love is powerful,” Merry said. “Love is why we exist.”

  I remembered the locket when she said that, wishing I could see you one last time. Did the snowman know that?

  “Does it have a name?” I asked. It seemed a silly question, to ask if it had a name.

  “Flury,” she said.

  “Flury,” I repeated, and tears filled my eyes. He was a giant white blur when I reached for him and said, “Thank you, Flury.”

  He embraced my arm, and the wind began to whip around us. The elven began to cheer, and when I looked up, three more just like him had appeared as if the snow simply swirled up from the ice. They were distinctive in shape, but all massive.

  And the feeling around my chest, the love that had ensnared my heart, made me think that whether they were made of snow or flesh, these creatures were more human than anything I had ever met.

  “Oh my God.” Molly is limp on Oliver’s arm. “Not in my dreams, I never would’ve thought…”

  She leaps up, fanning her face.

  “I think I’m going to cry. Don’t look, it’s not pretty.”

  There’s a lump in Oliver’s throat. He’s not about to cry or admit it, but the passage was devastating. The handwriting started crisp, as usual, and slowly turned shaky. At the end, it was almost illegible. He must’ve been crying when he wrote it.

  What’s more, Oliver knew what he felt. There was a connection inside him. It was that buzzing vibration that was netting his chest, as if synchronizing with the towering snowman that looked intimidating but, the closer it got, was soft and warm.

  Love.

  “I believe.” Molly’s hiding her face. “I believe all this. Do you?”

  A snowman and mysterious burns are on his mind. And something about the quiet footsteps, the way the snowman walked so silently. It reminds him of Grandmother.

  “Expect the unexpected,” he mumbles.

  The apartment walls shudder.

  The door at the bottom of the stairwell had slammed. Mom’s heavy steps echo in the hallway. Oliver shoves the journal under the couch cushion and scrambles to find the remote. Molly grabs it from beneath the coffee table, pushing the buttons as she collapses against him. The journal crackles beneath her.

  Keys jingle.

  The door opens.

  “Hey,” Mom says. “What’s going on?”

  Oliver and Molly, sitting upright and stiff, both say, “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? I thought you were working?”

  “Lunch. Molly and I are just chilling, getting away from the café for a minute, you know.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She points at the television. “Just catching a little Dr. Phil?”

  Dr. Phil was introducing owners and their pets to a psychic. And Molly was wiping her eyes.

  “It’s sad,” Molly says. “They lost their beagle for a year, and now he’s back, and…he said he missed them.”

  “Really.”

  “And I’m on my period.”

  “Okay.”

  Molly blows her nose. Oliver’s arm is caught behind her at a weird angle, but he’s not about to move. Mom goes to the bedroom. They can hear her laughing. She’s smiling when she returns with a folder. “I’ll be back in half an hour, just need to drop these off. You two be all right?”

  “Yeah,” Oliver says.

  She grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. “Why don’t you watch Ellen. It’s a little more upbeat.”

  They remain still until the steps are quiet. The pictures on the walls shudder when the street door slams.

  “Period?”

  “I panicked. She thought we were doing stuff. I was under pressure. I think it worked.”

  Oliver knows it didn’t, but if his mom thought they were getting down on the couch, he was all right with that. It was better than the truth. He stalks to the door and makes sure the stairwell is empty, swinging his arm around to get the feeling back. Molly blows her nose and balls up the tissue.

  “I’m all right,” she says. “Let’s read before she gets back.”

  “You sure?”

  She nods. They pull the journal from beneath the cushion. The cover is creased. Oddly, he’s worried Grandmother will be mad. That would be the least of my troubles.

  Oliver lays the journal open, and Molly leans into him.

  The entries follow his daily life. He’s rarely alone, always surrounded by elven that, apparently, are the happiest beings on the planet—constantly playing and singing. Malcolm soon yearns for solitude. It’s like living with puppies, he says. He frequently complains about being trapped, how the elven never answer his questions about home. Once he mentions Santa, the fat man, but doesn’t get to see him. They don’t trust me.

  His spirits pick up when he’s assigned to different areas of the colony. To stay, he hopes that’s not what they have in mind. Toward the end of the journal, he visits the energy production division, and things get interesting.

  April 6, 1882.

  It’s become clear that the human race knows nothing.

  Whenever the elven explain something, they speak like it is common sense, yet I understand nothing. They push buttons and light appears. Magic happens. Nog continues to correct me, saying magic ceases when understanding arrives. Then it becomes science.

  They don’t burn coal or wood. They use the sun and wind and ocean currents, somehow converting these natural resources into power. I suppose that makes sense, but then they took me to the science lab.

  In the science lab, I was hunched over to avoid the low ceiling, eventually getting on my knees while Nog slid next to me. Fascination kept the impending sense of claustrophia at bay. These elven wore long coats. They were much more serious than all the other elven, and I liked that. Too much joy only makes my heart heavier. Their efforts to raise my spirits only sink them deeper. Do they not understand you are my only happiness?

  Our last stop, though, something felt strangely familiar. There were four spherical objects suspended in the air. They were about twice the size of my fist and gleamed like polished steel with intricate designs carved into their surfaces. They felt like the abominables.

  “Eac
h one is at the heart of their body,” Nog said.

  He went on to explain that the sphere creates an electromagnetic field that pulls snow around it, forming a body of sorts. The spheres also served as power storage, achieving enough density that their low-end gravitational field allows them to generate power and something about fusion. He pulled a sphere from his pocket, one small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.

  “This,” he said, “could power London.” He claimed that houses could be automatically heated in the winter and cooled in the summer. He said there was more they could do with a power source like this, but it was beyond my imagination. Perhaps he doesn’t realize they had already exceeded my imagination when I arrived.

  Nog pocketed the smaller sphere and put on his special glove before extending his hand. One of the spheres floated to him. He held it like a crystal balll. “This is more than a snowman,” he said. “When an elven passes from this world, he or she is absorbed inside. Their wisdom is contained in the heart of the abominable. It’s what allows the elven to grow, to remain peaceful. To learn.”

  I will tell you this, my love. Standing in the presence of the spheres filled me with peace. I do not want to admit this, but in that moment, I wished for nothing. I felt no yearning to be anywhere else but here. That this moment was perfect, with or without you.

  And I hate myself for feeling that.

  They flip through the pages, stopping at some of the sketches. Molly continues to sniffle. The apartment rattles. His mom returns, and they’re sitting on the couch, the journal beneath the cushion and the television off.

  She doesn’t ask why.

  Before he goes back to the café, Molly says, “I want a snowman.”

  Me too, he thinks.

  F L U R Y

  twenty-one

  Town Square is a long rectangle of paths and cozy benches beneath a grove of shade trees, where locals sat on a patchwork of blankets to listen to a string quartet on Wednesday nights in summer while kids played.

  Oliver leans his bike—a beater with knobby tires he found in a dumpster—against a beech tree where initials are carved into the elephant-skin bark. He drops his book bag on a bench, the boards partially decayed with lichen clinging to the armrests.