Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  The journal sits on the coffee table. Number six.

  The leather is in worse shape than the previous ones, the surface water stained and scratched. How long had it been out there?

  Oliver flips through pages. This one is thicker than the others. He resists the urge to turn the pages slower, to stop at random and read a page, just one. But he promised he wouldn’t.

  He looks at the time.

  After another ten minutes of pacing, the apartment walls rattle. Having second thoughts, he stuffs the journal under the cushion. There’s light tapping on the door.

  Molly slowly opens the door.

  “What took you so long?” he says.

  “I got hung up. You didn’t read it, did you?”

  “No. No, I swear. I’m on break, but Ms. Megan’s getting impatient.”

  “You closing tonight?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been taking a lot of breaks lately.”

  It has been a few days since his boss said, “What would I do without you, O?”

  “Let me see.” She strokes the cover like a delicate fossil. “I can’t believe it.”

  He had texted her on the drive home. Molly made him swear not to read it. He hid it beneath his bed. It wasn’t easy waiting.

  “Did the windmill shock you?”

  “Yeah.” He explains the dry heaves and dizziness, stopping short of using the words radiation sickness. But they’re both thinking it. “I don’t think there’s a trapdoor, though.”

  “It’d be hidden if it was, take more than your boot to find it.” She places the journal on the coffee table. “And it was just leaning against one of the legs?”

  “It was hidden pretty good. Lucky I saw it.”

  “I don’t think it was luck, Oliver.”

  “I think it’s been out there a while.” He points at the water stains. “Anyone could’ve seen it.”

  “Who was going to see it?”

  “The twins. Grandmother.”

  “I thought she didn’t walk the property.”

  Not as far as Oliver knew, she didn’t. And it took a pair of binoculars for Oliver to see it when he was looking directly at it. Grandmother could’ve been standing right next to it and missed it, especially the way she looks now.

  They had stayed for tea. Grandmother took one look at the pumpkin tea and gave it back. It was Earl Grey or nothing. Her shoulders were slumped but not from a curvature of the spine. It was exhaustion, the same tiredness a coating of blush couldn’t cover. Even her lips weren’t as stiff as wire.

  “And no car in the garage?” Molly asks.

  “Not when we got there.”

  “Positive?”

  “Stick a needle.”

  Molly continues petting the journal. She was thinking the same thing as Oliver: Where did it go? There was only one way into the garage, and he didn’t hear or see the car. The trees on the other side were so dense a bicycle would have a hard time getting through. And what about those bright lights late at night.

  “We got to get in that garage,” Molly says.

  “We?”

  “Never mind. We’re wasting time.” She pats the couch cushion. “Let’s read.”

  He’s barely welcome out there. There’s no hope for her.

  Oliver props the journal on his legs and cracks it open. The smell of vintage paper fills his head.

  And the weird escapes the pages.

  November 15, 1883.

  It has been quite some time since I last wrote, my love.

  This is partly because I have been busy with this new life in the ice. The elven have gone out of their way to accommodate my needs. Summer was much more interesting. The sun never sets.

  But that is not why I have avoided writing.

  It aches too much to speak to you. Even though you are a world away, this parchment and ink spans the distance between us. These words bring you back to me. I see you in my dreams, hear you in my sleep, smell you when I wake. And yet, for all these blessings, I still cannot touch you.

  And you are not here.

  But to forget you is not my salvation. I think that is what the elven want, perhaps. They want me to file you in the past, to move on. Now that it is winter and the days are dark, I think of you more often. I dream of you in every step.

  I spend my days walking the ice. The abominables come with me. The polar bears are hungry, and I would make quite a meal. Sometimes all of the abominables come, but most often it is just Flury. His footsteps are so stealthy that I forget he is with me at times.

  He is an amazing creature. I have to remind myself, though, that he is not a creature at all. He is not the snow that makes up his massive body nor a mind inside it. He is a metallic sphere engineered in the science lab to contain elven memories. There is nothing real about him, yet when he is by my side, I don’t feel so far away from home.

  I worry that you would not recognize me, my love. I am the size of a walrus with a beard like tumbleweed. The Arctic cold affects me no more than a blustery autumn day in Colorado. Strange how relative experience is.

  There are days Nog comes with me. Where ice is exposed, he slides with little effort. He has given me flexible soles to put on my feet that would allow me to do the same, but I resist. I’m afraid, as every day passes, I am becoming one of them. That worries me.

  And that is why I am writing again.

  December 5, 1883.

  Something happened today, love.

  I hesitate to write my thoughts, but Nog assured me there is no prying into my personal journals. And I have learned the elven are as honest as they are long-lived.

  My walks above the ice have gotten longer. Sometimes I am just lost in thought and wander until someone comes for me. But lately I find myself walking with a purpose. I watch the horizon and pretend I see land. Each day, I walk farther, hoping that each step will bring something into view, a dash of terra firma, a shoreline besides ice. I fall into trances, I think, because hours feel like minutes. Sometimes Flury stops me to turn around.

  And today, something happened.

  I was focused on the horizon, placing one foot in front of the other, when a chill set upon my bones. I turned to see Flury a hundred steps behind me. He stood there, inanimate. I realized that it was the distance between us that brought about the biting cold, for I feel warmth when he is near. I went back for him, but no matter how much I coaxed him, he would not go further. It was today that I realized I had been walking for several hours. How far I had gone, I don’t know.

  But I reached Flury’s limit.

  I thought, perhaps, he had read my thoughts because, at that moment, I was thinking it was not possible for me to walk to land. No matter how well insulated my body has become, I still have human limits. But Flury could carry me. He brought me to the colony.

  He could take me home.

  I learned later the untruth of this. It was Nog that provided an explanation. Flury reached his limit, he said. The abominables can only venture so far away from the colony. What keeps them from going too far, he did not say. Nor did I ask. That would have certainly given away what I am thinking.

  It was later I learned of the homing device kept at the colony that limits them. If they venture outside of it, they lose power. But if the homing device can keep them from leaving, there must be a way to turn it off.

  And there will be no limit to where they can go.

  “I got to get back,” Oliver says.

  “Oh my God, really? Call in sick or something. We can put a hot rag on your head, work up a fever. I’ve done it like a hundred times. You can’t leave, not now.”

  He doesn’t want to, but Ms. Megan will be upset. If he’s honest, he likes those kisses on the forehead. He’s also getting uncomfortable. This is his great-grandfather. His pain, for some reason, feels like Oliver’s. It’s nice having Molly to share all the weird, but he’d like to digest it alone. Get a grip.

  He stashes the journal under his bed. “We can read the rest tomorrow.”

&n
bsp; When they get to the street, the sleet has turned into snow. That night, when he’s closing the café and he’s all alone, when it’s just him and the journal, he breaks his promise.

  ***

  The lights are off. The music plays softly.

  Oliver hikes his feet on the counter and leans back. No one sees him get the leather-bound journal from his backpack. Beneath a buzzing light, he reads the entries from that afternoon again, hoping the lonely ache of his great-grandfather’s pain will settle. And like a fully loaded truck braking on ice, he blows right through the last entry he and Molly read.

  And into the next.

  December 21, 1883.

  I could hear them below.

  The entire colony was celebrating the holiday season. Strange, they’re a culture completely removed from the human race, arguably not even human, yet they have similar customs. They were exchanging gifts. They called it the Christmas season and why not. This is the North Pole, and they are elven. Nog once explained that many of our customs, habits and even language originates from the elven.

  I have become numb to these propositions.

  Some mornings I wake believing this is a dream. And then I walk onto the ice with Flury by my side to live another day. Have I lost my mind?

  So I could not celebrate this holiday season without you. Nog and Merry had given me a pair of fur-lined mittens since my fingers are the only things that still get cold. I took them above the ice and watched the Northern Lights. The urge to walk had died inside me. Now that there are limits to Flury’s range with no way to turn them off, as far as I know, I could only go so far. That took the life from my legs.

  Killed my hopes.

  I heard my name. It was a soft voice, and, for a moment, I thought the dream of you had come to visit me before slumber. But when I turned, I saw Jessica on the ice. Nicholas was with her.

  The Santas are human.

  I had gotten to know them in the summer. I didn’t see them much. Nicholas is in some ways the leader of the colony. How he came to be that I have never understood, but it is clear that all the elven respect him.

  They are as fat as me, my love. Nicholas maybe more so. His white beard and thick hair hang in large curls. Jessica’s hair is gray. It is rare that I see them, but when I do, Nicholas wears a ceremonial red coat. There are sleigh and flying reindeer, my love. There is a man named Nicholas Santa that the elven sometimes call Claus. I haven’t seen him deliver toys, but all the other stories are true.

  They arrived at the colony seventy years ago by accident. The details of their journey are strange, indeed. But strange has become normal. Nonetheless, I thought perhaps I heard that wrong because they do not look old enough for that period of time to pass. Somehow, they have taken on the age-defying ability of the elven. Will they live thousands of years like the elven? They’re not even sure why they have stopped aging like other humans. I plan to ask Nog how that is. And whether it’s happening to me. Because if there’s one thing worse than living without you, it is doing so for thousands of years.

  They had come up to soothe my loneliness, I believe. They spoke of the wonders of living with the elven, the peace and wisdom that accompanies such living. Adjustment, they admitted, is difficult at first. But they insist it is essential to understand this life because of the potential the elven possess. I had assumed they meant the technology sitting next to me: the snowman whose body was drawing snowflakes to it like metal scraps to a magnet.

  They encouraged me to come back to the celebration. After much talk, I relented. Afterwards, I journeyed back to the surface to be alone. The Santas had intended to set my heart at ease, to bring peace to my tangled mind. Instead, they brought clarity. I understand now, perhaps now more than ever, I am never going home.

  I understand, now, what I must do.

  Oliver closes the journal.

  He sits in the empty café, suppressing the urge to weep. Not in sadness for his great-grandfather and the long suffering he endured. Oliver fights back tears because clarity has come to him as well. After everything that’s happened, and all that he’s read, he knows something without a doubt.

  Malcolm Toye stole Flury.

  And there’s a dreaded sense that his escape, in more ways than he can comprehend, has brought pain to everyone.

  F L U R Y

  twenty-four

  Wednesday evening at the library is busy.

  Oliver stops inside the front doors with his thumbs hooked under his backpack straps. Molly’s truck is in the parking lot. He sees her reshelving DVDs and walks down the adjacent aisle, dragging his fingers over the stacks of movies, stopping in front of the T section and checking out Transformers. She looks up for a moment, then goes back to her cart.

  Oliver puts the movie back. “I’m sorry.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t read it.”

  “It put a spell on me,” he says with a chuckle.

  Molly moves to the end of the row. There are two people in the aisle and another one behind them. Oliver drops the backpack and unzips it. Carelessly, he pulls out the battered leather-bound journal and holds it out.

  “Take it.”

  “What are you doing?” She shoves it against his stomach. “Are you crazy?”

  “No one knows what it is. You deserve it. I let you down.”

  Molly takes it and casually slides it back into his backpack, but not before stroking the cover. She remains kneeling, head down. “I can’t take it.”

  “Yes, you can. We’re in this together.”

  “It’s yours, Oliver. Flury wants you to have it.”

  “No, I think he wants us to have it.”

  “Will you just let me be a baby for a minute?”

  He doesn’t know what that means.

  Molly pushes the cart to the M section, slamming a copy of The Matrix into place. Two more movies abruptly find their rightful spots before she stops.

  “I’m hurt.” She doesn’t look at him. “I’m hurt, and I’m jealous because you’ve got the family and the property and the journals.” She points blindly at the backpack. “And I’m working in a library. Let me pout in peace.”

  Jealous?

  No one in the history of humankind had ever been jealous of Oliver Toye, the kid with the hippy mom and the crappy dad. The kid with diabetes, the shot kind. They had no reason to be; he never had anything to covet. Still doesn’t. His cousins are psychopaths, his great-grandfather is possibly a hallucinating bipolar hopeless romantic, and his grandmother a manic depressive. And there are things living in the trees that, he’s pretty sure, want to eat him.

  Jealousy is new ground.

  “I need your help,” he says.

  “Not reading the journal, obviously.” She stops the cart. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “What do you need?”

  “An obituary.”

  She files five more movies. Ms. Chatty Pants, the head librarian, is watching. Oliver is about to grab a copy of Blade Runner and thinks maybe he’ll check it out, watch it for the fiftieth time, before hearing Molly whisper.

  “Meet me in the computer room.”

  ***

  It’s past dinner when a terminal opens up.

  “You looking for your grandfather?” Molly pulls up a chair.

  “Great-grandfather.”

  Her eyebrows arch. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

  She leans into Oliver. One of her pigtails brushes his cheek like a feather duster, leaving a clean trail. She mutters while typing, pulling up a website that tracks obituaries through databases that include funeral homes, churches, guest books, death certificates, birth certificates, and census records.

  “His name is Malcolm Toye?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s your grandfather’s name, right?”

  “He was a junior.”

  Several Malcolm Toyes come up. Oliver doesn’t remember if his grandfather had junior in his surname or a fancy Roman numeral. Molly
narrows her search but doesn’t find any birth or death certificates.

  “Where was he born?

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about your grandfather?”

  He shrugs. His family tree has been pruned many times over, and no one knows where the branches belong. She plays with the criteria, moving the cursor too fast for Oliver to follow.

  “There.” She taps enter. “That must be him. Look at the dates.”

  Malcolm Toye, 1860 to unknown.

  “Definitely not your grandfather.”

  “There’s no death certificate?”

  Molly clicks the name and sorts through the following lists. “Doesn’t look like it. Says here he was born in Charleston, South Carolina.”

  “Is that the right one?”

  “I think so. I found his voter’s registration in the local district in 1912. Says he joined the Navy in 1877 and was assigned to the historic journey to the North Pole. Doesn’t say anything about him returning, which is weird.” She clicks a few more times. “Think there was more than one Malcolm Toye that went to the North Pole in the late 1880s?”

  Oliver points at the screen. Molly clicks the links. There’s a brief summary of his duty in the navy, how he was selected for the journey. They follow another link to an account of the ship’s disastrous destiny and the crew that survived. Malcolm Toye was not one of them.

  “Look at that.” Molly highlights a line of text. “‘Malcolm Toye, originally thought to have perished during the journey, reappeared twenty years later in a small town in Denver. Initially, he eschewed questions pertaining to his whereabouts and how he returned, but eventually conceded that he had been back in the United States for nearly fifteen years and wished to have his privacy.’”

  Molly flips her pigtails around and frowns.

  “Maybe it’s not him,” she says. “Look at the citations.”

  There are several references to the source’s legitimacy. One citation even questioned whether Malcolm Toye was ever on the voyage. Rumors.

  “But he got here in about 1888?”