Claus Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Tony Bertauski

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Where’s the death certificate?”

  “There isn’t one. But that just means it wasn’t recognized by a doctor or church. Maybe he died at home and got buried out back. That’s probably how he’d want it. You should ask your grandmother.”

  Rule #892: Mind your own business.

  “I don’t see a birth certificate for your grandfather.” She clicks around. “I mean, if your great-grandfather lived here in the late 1800s, I’m guessing he was born here.”

  “Maybe he was born at the house.”

  “Maybe. No death certificate, either. That could just be country folk; you know, live and let live.” She clicks around. “What’s your grandmother’s name?”

  “Virginia.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “What?” And then he sees where the cursor is hovering. He wishes, for a moment, he could turn the screen off and erase everything. But it’s too late, he’d already seen it. And it felt like missing that last step at the bottom of a staircase, the sudden rise in your gut when the ground lurches up and you’re not sure, for just a tiny moment, if you’ll land on solid ground or just keep falling.

  “It says here,” Molly says, “Virginia married your great-grandfather.”

  “Look.” She highlights the marriage announcement. Malcolm and Virginia Toye were wed at the courthouse by a justice of the peace in 1905.

  Oliver keeps falling. “That’s got to be wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “She’d have to be…”

  “Like one hundred fifty years old.”

  “Oh, man.” He sits back when the room spins inside his head and all he can smell is the weird. This feeling couldn’t be cured with a dose of insulin. “Oh, man.”

  “What do you think?” Molly asks.

  He knows what.

  The pieces begin to click, and he knows. It bothered him the way Grandmother tearfully cradled the journals after she found them in his backpack. There was a sense of longing and loss. Malcolm Toye was his grandfather’s father. Grandmother was not blood-related to his great-grandfather. Her pain didn’t make sense. Why would she care about great-grandfather?

  Unless she loved him. His great-grandfather, not his grandfather.

  And that was impossible.

  Unless.

  “I got to go.” He shoves away from the computer.

  “You all right?”

  “No. I just…I got to think about this.”

  “Hey.” She grabs his sleeve. “Call me. I’m in this with you.”

  “I know.”

  Oliver keeps from running, even though the lights feel dimmer and the air denser. Despite the falling temperatures outside, he opens his coat before he passes out. His bike is where he left it. He rides home in the dark without a light. Even if he had one, he would’ve left it off. He doesn’t want anyone to see him. He can’t keep a secret like Grandmother. If someone saw him, they’d know it just by looking at him.

  Malcolm Toye isn’t his great-grandfather. He came back from the North Pole. He stopped aging when he did.

  Malcolm Toye is my grandfather.

  And it didn’t stop there. Oliver has a suspicion, a gut-feeling, his grandmother stopped aging, too.

  F L U R Y

  twenty-five

  “Of course I don’t mind.” Mom paces the faded kitchenette linoleum, never known to stand still when on the phone. She rolls her eyes and says, “I can pick up a pumpkin pie on the way, but Mother won’t be happy with store-bought, you know that.”

  The scarecrows in Town Square have been replaced by bundles of cornstalks and Thanksgiving displays. Oliver stares through the television. His feet already ache in the dress shoes. The Dallas Cowboys take the opening kickoff to midfield when his phone sounds off.

  “Wish I was with you,” Molly texts.

  It’s Thanksgiving. He didn’t want to go out to the property without her, but like every family in America, she’d eat turkey with her relatives. They’d stuff themselves and fall asleep in front of the television. They’d hug, they’d kiss, they’d say goodbye at the end of the day and give thanks for the company. They’d walk Molly’s grandmother to the car because she’s ninety years old. That’s how old grandmothers are.

  Not one hundred and fifty!

  He didn’t have proof his grandmother had been alive since the late 1800s, but he knew it in the pit of his stomach. It’s the way she dresses, the way she never smiles, the way she talks. Great-grandfather…no, Grandfather returned from the North Pole with the elven’s secret to aging. They lived thousands of years, he said in the journals. Somehow he brought that secret back home with a snowman and gave it to his love.

  Grandmother.

  He couldn’t look at the journal, not since putting the pieces together. He just wanted to forget. Why was this the tipping point and not a walking, talking snowman? Because this is real, this hits home. Somehow, Flury and the journals and the hobbit house all felt like a dream, but a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old grandmother?

  That was the pebble that tipped the bucket.

  “Okay, sure. I’ll let her know.” Mom wanders over to the window and pulls the curtain aside. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Oliver texts Molly. “Wish you were here, too.”

  “Aunt Rhonnie has car trouble,” Mom says. “She’s not going to make it, so it’s just me and you, kiddo. What’d you say?”

  “Good.”

  “You all right? You’ve seemed a little down the last couple of weeks.” She places her hand on his forehead. “You feel a little warm.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You’ve been working a lot; maybe you should take a few days off.”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s fine.”

  “You and Molly all right?”

  “Yes, I swear. Just a little tired, that’s all.”

  Mom gives him a chance to talk. He hugs her. When he needs space, that always works. She squeezes back and goes to the refrigerator to get a cherry pie, stuffing and casserole. It all fits in bags that Oliver can carry. He throws on his coat and takes the food to the door.

  “We don’t have to spend the night.” Mom grabs his arm. “If you feel like coming back, just let me know.”

  That’s good, because he’s not positive he even wants to spend a minute out there. But he remembers something a teacher once taught in class. She believed in reincarnation, that when we die we come back to learn the lessons we missed. She figured that if she quit on life, committed suicide or just wasted away, she’d have to come back and do it again.

  So she may as well do it now.

  Flury was calling. Maybe he needed help. Maybe he needed Oliver. If the teacher was right, he’d have to go out there sooner or later. May as well do it now.

  “Zip up, kiddo.” Mom grabs her keys. She wraps a scarf around his neck. “It’s really starting to snow out there.”

  ***

  The driveway is buried, including the circle. Oliver will shovel that before dark. The rest will be clean by morning.

  His palm begins to warm as they approach the brooding house. It still looks like Halloween. The smell of turkey won’t change that. Oliver kneads his palm without looking. Mom carries the cherry pie up the steps.

  Oliver lags near the car, pulling the rest of the dinner from the back seat while staring across the field of snow. The silence is stifling, interrupted only by his breath. That familiar warmth tingles up his arm and gathers around his chest, this time not so sudden. This time it’s a welcome embrace.

  Welcome home.

  The faint lines have returned to his palm. He traces them. The indentions are slight. He looks around, but nothing is watching except the window from the third floor.

  And the old woman at the door.

  Grandmother is wearing a black dress that brushes the floor. White buttons are snug on her neck. A tan shawl is draped over her shoulders. Her sense of style is outdated, but not for so
meone who once rode horses to town and pumped water from a well.

  Oliver slides his shoes off on the porch.

  “And what did you see?” Grandmother closes the door behind him.

  “Snow.”

  Oliver tries not to make eye contact, but she doesn’t move. Her complexion is still ashen, perhaps more pale than before. She’s a grandmother, that’s why. Grandmothers are old. But one hundred and fifty?

  For a moment, all his convictions, his steel-cable theory about great-grandfather and anti-aging and elven all buckle and tilt.

  “What do you see?” she asks again in that question-within-a-question sort of way.

  “Nothing.”

  “Ignoring what you see doesn’t change it, Olivah.”

  Is she telling herself that?

  She points to the kitchen. Mom has the turkey on the stove. The smell does nothing for his appetite, but he helps prepare the side dishes and set the table. Later, they sit down to a traditional Thanksgiving.

  They eat mostly in silence.

  Oliver shovels the circle drive after cleaning the kitchen. It’s dusk when he finishes, stopping just short of the drive that heads out to the road. He goes straight upstairs to shower and stay in the bedroom until morning. There will be chores, but he’s due at the café by noon.

  On the way up, he stops just short of the third floor. The creepy old pictures and paintings, as usual, seem slightly different, as if they’re replications that someone didn’t get quite right. The painting of the ship has been moved. It used to be closer to the second floor.

  The rigging is barren, and the crowd of people at the bottom of the rampart appears to be travelers recently disembarking from a long trip.

  He leans closer.

  The painting seems significant, that’s all. Something is calling to him, a detail out of place. What is it? One of those men must be Grandfather. He’d bet his life on it. The details are too vague to tell. Besides, he doesn’t know what he looks like.

  The child.

  All the travelers are men, except for the fat little child. She’s standing amongst them, not holding anyone’s hand. As if she’s a paying customer. She looks…familiar.

  The bottom step creaks.

  Oliver hustles up to the third floor. He gets to the shower before anyone comes up. By the time he returns to his room, the house is silent and the windows black.

  A nearly full moon casts shadows over the snow. The skeletal frame of the windmill lays over solitary tracks already disturbing the pristine wonderland, wandering aimlessly into the field. The sun is down, and the weird is out.

  Oliver sits on the edge of the bed. When he’s certain everyone is asleep, he sneaks down the steps to look at the painting again. He knows why the little girl looks familiar. He saw that dress. It’s short and wide, black with white frilly trim.

  It’s in the attic.

  ***

  Tap, tap, tap.

  He wakes up shivering.

  His breath is foggy and his palm throbbing. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He had lain in bed trying to get the courage to wander down the hall and search the attic. That dress is hanging in one of the armoires, he’s sure of it. He saw the strange clothes when he snuck up with the journal.

  And now it’s midnight.

  What bothers him most isn’t the dress or the painting of the ship with men and an obese child. It’s the nagging feeling it isn’t a child. He brought back an elven. And her clothes are in the attic.

  But where would the elven be? Does she live in the hobbit house? Does she go with Flury? He’s dozing again, the questions carrying him to sandy beaches and soft clouds, where the surf is warm and the water salty—

  Tap, tap, tap.

  He bolts up, sits quietly, wondering if he heard that or dreamed it. The house makes sounds all the time. Grandmother might be at the door. The house is still silent except for the occasional snaps and pops. And far away, deep in the trees, the branches crack.

  He opens the door. The hallway is empty—

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The window.

  Oliver feels like he’s holding a glowing coal. The lines are raised on his palm like a brand. He holds still. The window, though, is still black with night. Anything that might be looking through his third-story window would mistake him for a shadow, but no frosty face is peeking inside. No Jack Frost tugging at the pane.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  It’s the window frame, not the glass. It sounds like a stick, but there are no trees near this side of the house. He waits through another stretch of silence, and it happens again. Oliver creeps across the room, his steps so slow that the floorboards hardly creak. He leans near the window, searching the lunar darkness, cupping his hands to the glass. The moon is brighter, and the tracks across the field numerous. If someone, or something, knocked, it would have to climb—

  Tap, tap, tap.

  His heart thuds.

  He sees it. There, lying in a track carved into a shelf of snow just outside the window, is a wooden sphere.

  The orb.

  It takes an aggressive shake to loosen the window frame in its tracks, but he lifts it a few inches. A draft blows snow on the floor. The orb rolls across the sill, and Oliver catches it.

  It fits in his palm like a puzzle piece.

  He feels the etchings fall in line with the marks on his hand, and like the turn of a key, his body hums. No more discomfort, no more swelling—just raw assurance that he’s connected to something greater than himself.

  How did it get here?

  Oliver squeezes the orb. The house rattles. He’s filled with a pulse of warmth. The pressure surges up his arm, emboldens his heart.

  There’s another sound, this one from downstairs. Oliver feels a slight change in air pressure, followed by a distant rattle.

  The back door.

  Oliver pulls open his door and, stepping ninja-silent, ventures down the empty hallway. Pausing at the top step, he listens for any signs of life. He dips into the bathroom and climbs onto the edge of the claw-footed tub to look out the window. The garage is dark, but, in the moon’s glow, there are tracks in the snow.

  He waits. Nothing stirs. No lights appear.

  The orb heats up, and his hand tingles when the garage window illuminates like a square of light, for a moment hovering in the night. There’s a bright flash.

  And then, once again, darkness.

  It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. Nothing has changed. The tracks still lead to the garage. Oliver steps down. He stands in the bathroom with the orb humming in his palm. He knows why it appeared on his bedroom window, why it woke him up in time to hear the door close.

  To see the light flash.

  He leaves without flushing the toilet. With the orb in hand, with courage rushing through him, he races down the staircase.

  He doesn’t notice how silently he moves.

  F L U R Y

  twenty-six

  Oliver stands in the backyard.

  His loosely tied boots are fitted into a lone set of tracks. The snow is several inches deep, and Grandmother dragged her feet, making it easy for him to follow. He remains solid and still, moonlight casting his shadow in front of him.

  The seconds fall like drifting snowflakes that never seem to reach the ground. Minutes crawl past and accumulate too slowly for him to stay out much longer. He shivers in waves; his teeth chatter. Only his hand remains warm.

  The orb is full blaze.

  The garage appears abandoned. The moonlight, however, reveals the empty space where the car should be. Once again, there are no tire tracks leading out of the garage.

  Oliver waits.

  In the distance, a tree falls into water.

  Just when he can take no more, when he can no longer feel the end of his nose or stand the sound of his teeth rattling in his head, the light returns. It bursts from the window like a spotlight. By the time he blinks the world back into focus, the light has dimmed. Grandmother is climbing
out of the car’s driver seat.

  Like a two-legged gazelle, he lopes ahead, plunking his boots into every other hole. Snow tumbles into his boots and packs against his socks. He bounds around the corner and plunges into the trees’ shadows just before light slices through the dark.

  He holds his breath.

  Grandmother emerges from the garage. Keys jingle in the lock. By the light of the moon, she steps around the garage a bit livelier than the sluggish tracks she made coming out of the house. Oliver lets his breath leak out, listening for the back door. It takes too long, and he imagines her coming back, following her footsteps and noticing the errant ones heading into the woods.

  But then he hears it. The door closes.

  Oliver waits.

  He begins shivering again, thinking of the warmth of the garage. If it doesn’t open, if he’s locked out, how long will he be stuck outside? And what if the back door is locked? He hadn’t thought of that. He cups the orb to his face, but the heat doesn’t transfer like a hot coal.

  Oliver comes out of hiding.

  Without hesitating, he turns the doorknob, and like all those other times, it opens. He’s greeted with warm, dry air.

  He opens his coat and paces around, letting the chills settle. The triangular blocks are wedged against the car’s wheels. The engine is quiet, not ticking as if it were cooling from a long drive. Or even a short one. Oliver touches the driver door, realizing he’s in view of the house. If Grandmother were to look out the kitchen window, she’d see him opening the door.

  The leather is warm.

  There’s nothing special about the dashboard. The speedometer and radio and gears are exactly where they should be. He considers pushing buttons. Maybe the radio raises a secret door. But the chocks against the wheels won’t let it roll anywhere, and there’s no key in the ignition.

  The ignition!

  That’s the weird thing, the one weird thing about the car. It’s not a slot for a standard key but a square. Like something for a small cube.

  The corner of the footlocker is visible. He crawls under the workbench with his phone lit up, pulling the old coat out and pushing items aside. He finds the key in the corner and holds it up. The cube casts a blue glow like distilled moonlight.