Table of Contents

Festive Treats

Hark! by Iain Grant

Mary’s Christmas by Margaret Egrot

The Thought That Counts by Katharine D’Souza

The Night Before the Others’ Christmas by R. E. Vance

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The Ghost of Christmas Replete by David Croser

A Country Christmas by AA Abbott

A Partridge in a Tree by Simon Fairbanks

The Owl & The Turkey by Debbie Young

Foreword

The Owl & The Turkey

Geordie Selywn and the Bucket-List by Hilary Mortz

Scent of Christmas by Katharine D’Souza

O Little Town by James Brogden

How was it for you, Joseph? by Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn

Midwinter’s Eve by Justin Lee Anderson

Going South for Christmas by Suzanna Stanbury

Christmas on Mercury by A. Stuart Williams

Elf Service by Heide Goody

Festive Treats

‘Festive Treats’ Copyright © 2016 All stories are copyright of their respective creators as indicated, and are reproduced here with permission

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Published by Pigeon Park Press

www.pigeonparkpress.com

info@pigeonparkpress.com

Cover Artwork and Design by Mike Watts - www.bigbeano.co.uk

Hark! by Iain Grant

Once upon a time, there were four archangels.

No, wait. Back up. Once upon a time, there was the Almighty, alone and sitting in majesty on His Throne. Then there were His messengers, the angels, but they were nothing but extensions of His will, delivering messages to His chosen people on Earth below. There were a lot of angels and some organisation was called for, some management structure. And so there were the archangels. There were a lot of them too, with interesting-sounding names like washing detergents or Ninja Turtles. And eventually someone noticed that further organisation was needed, with a precise number of archangels. Were there to be two or four or seven or twelve or what?

And so there were four archangels.

If you’re four individuals, otherwise unique in all creation, you can’t help but feel a certain kinship. So, once a year, the four of them met on Earth and, for the sake of convenience, the one living permanently among humans made the restaurant booking.

Michael had outdone himself. Sebastian’s, just off the high street, had a superb menu and excellent reviews. It did not have a Michelin star, but there were rumours it was to be awarded one in the New Year. In Michael’s experience, restaurants in line for a possible Michelin star tried harder than those already basking in the complacency of having one.

It had not been easy to get a booking for four on Christmas Eve. The restaurant was understandably full. There was a smattering of couples – two new loves making goo-goo eyes at each other over their starters and, by the window, a heavily pregnant woman alternately glaring at the glass of water in front of her and the Prosecco her partner was slurping – but much of the restaurant was dominated by two large parties. From the suits, the air of awkwardness and the rapid descent all were making into drunkenness, Michael assumed one was a works Christmas outing. The other, jollier and – by God! – louder, was entirely composed of thirty-something women who were acting as though they had not achieved this year’s quota of fun and frolic, and were determined to cram it all in before it was too late.

Michael was hoping that the somewhat raucous celebrations would not diminish the evening of fine dining he had planned when the restaurant door swung open, and in walked Gabriel. Like a conquering hero, like a sheriff stepping into a Wild West saloon, like he owned the bloody place.

“I am here,” he declared, not that anyone cared.

Raphael ducked round him and scuttled up to the table. “Gentle brother!” he grinned, hugging Michael for precisely one second too long. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you, too. You’re looking a picture of health.”

Raphael, archangel of healing, nodded modestly.

Michael smoothed out the creases Raphael’s embrace had put in his Savile Row suit. He had adopted human clothing for his sojourn on Earth, but his brothers retained their angelic robes, even for a night out. Raphael’s robes were a wheat coloured rough weave like the habit of a penitent monk, Gabriel’s a blinding white firework assault on the eyes. And, as for Samael, he —

Michael looked at Gabriel and Raphael. “Samael?”

Gabriel nodded at the table. Samael, the black-robed angel of death, was already seated, a half-smoked cigarette held casually between his fingers.

“You can’t smoke in here,” said Michael.

“Who can’t?” asked Samael.

On the table was an ashtray that had definitely not been there earlier. It already held a crushed Marlboro packet and a small mountain of ash, as though Samael had been sat there for a very long time.

“There are laws!” hissed Michael.

“Whose laws?”

A waitress approached.

“And now you’re going to get into trouble,” said Michael.

Tenderly, Samael took the waitress’s hand. “We require drinks. What is the most potent cocktail you serve?”

The waitress, flustered, smiled. “Ah, um, Death in the Afternoon.”

“Beyond perfect,” said Samael. “One for everybody in the restaurant.”

The waitress looked around. “That’s going to be very expensive.”

Samael glanced at Michael. “Expensive?”

“Money.”

Samael frowned. “What’s the local currency?”

Michael took a ten pound note from his wallet. Samael studied it for a second before producing a fat wad of freshly printed tenners from within his robes. He pressed them into the waitress’s hand and waved her away.

“I love alcohol,” sighed Samael. “My favourite poison. After human overconfidence.”

Drinks arrived, menus were distributed, and the human dining parties quaffed their absinthe/champagne concoctions and toasted their mysterious benefactor. The archangels attempted to decipher the starters and mains.

“What does ‘essence of cranberry’ mean?” asked Gabriel. “Does it actually contain cranberries or just, you know, the idea of them?”

“‘Hand-picked chestnuts’?” read Samael. “Is there another way of picking them?”

Confused choices were made and conveyed to the waitress.

“Right.” Raphael emptied a sleeve full of Christmas crackers onto the table.

Gabriel regarded one warily. “What are these?”

“You pull them,” said Raphael.

“Pull?”

With a sigh, Michael helped Raphael demonstrate. Gabriel’s perfect features furrowed at the surprising bang.

Samael nodded with approval. “Explosives at the dinner table. Oh, and little plastic choking hazards!”

Michael put on his paper hat and read out the cracker joke. “What is Good King Wenceslas’ favourite kind of pizza?”

“No idea,” said Raphael.

“Deep pan, crisp and even.”

“I don’t get it,” said Gabriel.

*

Michael tucked into his barbecued squid and chorizo salad starter. Samael appeared to regret ordering the popcorn crab.

“And how are you enjoying retirement?” Gabriel asked Michael.

“Retirement?”

Gabriel gestured to the world about them.

“Relocation, not retirement,” said Michael. “But for the grace of God, any of you could be in my position.”

Samael made a dismissive huff (he was also picking a piece of crab shell from between his lips so he may have been arguing with his food).

“I’m doing a lot of good work with my local church,” Michael continued. “Did you know our attendance drops in the weeks before Christmas? Apparently faith interferes with Christmas shopping.”

“Shocking,” tutted Raphael.

“And what size congregation do you have?” asked Gabriel.

Michael thought about it. “Sixty? Seventy?”

“No, I meant when it isn’t being decimated by the allure of the shops.”

“No, that’s it on a good day,” said Michael. “We were down to fifteen this week. Although Netty Fairfax and her husband left halfway through, because they wanted to see that Elf Service pop-up shop thing in the Gracechurch shopping centre.”

Gabriel stifled a yawn. “Wow. Fifteen.”

“Well, thirteen,” Samael corrected him.

“But the church keeps me busy nonetheless,” said Michael.

“When you’re managing a process bandwidth in excess of one point eight billion prayers per day, then you can tell me you’re busy,” said Gabriel.

Samael consulted his watch. “Sixteen minutes twelve seconds.”

“What is?” said Gabriel.

“Time passed before you mentioned how extraordinarily important your work is.”

“But it is,” Gabriel argued.

“And by inference ours is… what?” said Michael.

“But I mean especially at this time of year, given my own personal role in the nativity—”

“Sixteen minutes, thirty-two seconds,” said Samael.

“What?”

“Reminding us of your one moment in history’s spotlight,” said Michael. “Again.”

“I don’t!” said Gabriel. He looked to Raphael for support.

“You sort of do,” said Raphael. “Sorry.”

“You ask any five-year-old to name an archangel and who do they say?”

“Only because you announced the birth of the Son,” said Samael.

Michael nodded reflectively and chewed on a lump of chorizo. “There are these devices one can buy from the chemists. It’s a white plastic thing about so long. They’re for women who think they are pregnant, or hope to be pregnant. What happens is, the woman urinates on it.”

“Ugh, really?” said Raphael.

“She does,” said Michael. “There is a little window in the side and, if two blue lines appear in the window, it means she is pregnant.”

“Ingenious,” said Samael.

“And that’s what you are, Gabriel,” said Michael.

“I’m what now?”

“A pregnancy test kit. If they had been available in ancient Palestine, the Holy Mother would not have needed you at all.”

“You’re a glorified piss-stick!” Samael cracked his first smile of the evening.

“I’ve been thinking of launching a line of them myself,” said Michael. “I’m going to call them Gabriel’s Horns.”

Samael approved. “Nice idea.”

“Come now,” warned Raphael diplomatically.

“You go too far!” said Gabriel. “I never mock anyone else’s sacred duty or the tools of their angelic mission.” He reached deeply into his robe and brought forth a spiral ram’s horn overlaced with silver filigree.

“He’s only brought it with him,” sneered Samael.

“Hang on.” Michael started patting his pockets. “Maybe I’ve brought the lance with which I struck down the Great Dragon and threw him from Heaven.”

“I’m sure I’ve got a scythe on me,” said the angel of death.

“Mock if you must,” Gabriel huffed. “I take my duties seriously, wherever I am.”

“Actually, I have brought some aspirin and Elastoplasts,” said Raphael. “You can never be too careful.”

“This horn,” said Gabriel, completely ignoring the angel of healing, “is a herald’s call. Yes, it announced the birth of the Son – and of his cousin John the Baptist, if you recall – but it also drew the wise men to Bethlehem and roused the shepherds from their sleep while they lay with their flock.”

“I’m sure many a shepherd would love to be roused by your horn,” said Michael.

“It’s quite perilous, you know,” said Raphael. “Sleeping outside at this time of year. They might have caught their death.”

“No, no,” said Samael, raising a finger in disagreement. “Trust me, if it had been wintertime, I’d have been there: reaping their frostbitten souls. It wasn’t winter though, not that first time.”

“April, wasn’t it?” said Michael.

“I thought June,” said Gabriel.

“Damned early Christians moved the feast of Christ’s Mass to the midwinter.”

“Whatever for?” asked Raphael.

“To cash in on the existing midwinter festivals,” said Michael. “It’s like how you see all those chuggers out during the Christmas shopping season,”

“Chuggers?”

“Charity muggers. Um, like holy beggars who want you to give them alms money. Not just today, but to promise to give it every month for the rest of your life. They know people have money in their pockets and giving on their minds. Same as centuries past: the populace were already celebrating their yuletide saturnalias and whatnot, so the Christian fathers inserted Christmas alongside and encouraged people to sort of, add it to their existing festivities.”

“Underhanded,” said Gabriel.

“Smart thinking,” said Samael.

Raphael twirled his wine glass and smiled. “I like the snow at Christmas.”

“So do I,” agreed Samael. “The number of accidents absolutely skyrockets. Slips, trips, frozen folk in ditches and, in this country in particular, you get a sprinkling of snow on the ground and everyone forgets how to drive.”

Raphael shook his head. “I was thinking more about the beauty of the snow. Snuggling down inside a cosy home, cuddled up with loved ones by the fire and watching the flakes fall.”

“Whatever.” Samael turned and looked past the increasingly merry and rowdy diners in the restaurant to the street outside. “Although I notice it’s not snowing.”

“A White Christmas is a Dickensian myth,” said Michael.

Samael tutted and caught Raphael’s eye. An expression of intense concentration came over their faces for a moment.

“Look!” shouted one of the raucous female diners.

Fat flakes drifted in the outside air, turned orange and yellow and red by streetlights and passing cars.

“Aw,” said one of the lovey-dovey women, and took her man’s hand in hers.

“Who’s up for a snowball fight?” called a drunken voice from the works outing.

Raphael and Samael smiled, for entirely different reasons.

*

Samael unrolled a cracker joke. “Who hides in a bakery at Christmas?”

“I don’t know,” said Gabriel.

“A mince spy.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

Michael pushed the last of his venison and neeps main course onto his fork and popped it in his mouth. Outside, the snow was settling fast: deep and crisp and even indeed. Samael had ordered another round of cocktails for the entire restaurant and the place had broken down into four distinct categories: those who had grown drunker and louder, those who had grown drunker and sleepy, those who knew they had drunk far too much and were just trying to hold it together/in, and the sober pregnant woman in the corner who was staring at her drunken bloke with unconcealed hatred.

“I think it’s secret Santa time,” said Raphael.

Michael was surprised. “Are we doing secret Santa?”

“It’s Christmas. Why wouldn’t we?”

“Because it’s stupid and no one really gets anything they like,” Gabriel protested.

“Well, it’s okay,” said Raphael. “I’ve brought enough for everyone.” He gave his sleeve a shake and four small but exquisitely wrapped Christmas gifts dropped out onto the table.

“They’re from you,” reasoned Michael. “Not very secret, is it?”

A broad and self-satisfied smile bloomed on Raphael’s face. “Ah. But this is a real secret Santa. I asked St Nicholas to choose and wrap them. I don’t know what anyone has been given, so it is secret, see?”

“St Nick.” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I wonder what bundles of wonder that self-righteous prig has wrapped up for us.”

“It doesn’t matter what the contents are,” said Raphael. “It’s the joy of giving and receiving, brother.”

“No need to tell me,” said Gabriel. “Being in charge of a pan-universal prayer communications organisation, I’m all about the giving and receiving.” He glared at Samael, silently daring him to check his watch.

“Actually,” said the angel of death weightily, “I have brought a little something; in case anyone was interested.” He held up a square parcel, wrapped in black crepe paper and tied with a black bow.

“You brought a secret Santa gift?” said Michael.

“I prefer to think of it as a suspicious package,” Samael replied.

*

Gabriel pulled a face after trying his Cru Virunga chocolate cheesecake dessert. “How do you manage to survive down here, Michael?”

“Very pleasantly. I think earth food is delightful,” he said, even though his gin fizz jelly with lemon sherbet was painfully tart.

“You can’t tell me that this dross compares with a single bite of Heavenly ambrosia?”

“No, but this food has been produced by real human labour and endeavour. The chocolate you’re eating is made from beans from Congo. The cheese is made from the milk of Milanese cows. The sugars, the flour and all the other ingredients have only been produced through toil and effort, and artfully brought together by a skilled chef. You have to admire the artistry and the… the journey this dish has taken!”

Gabriel shrugged indifferently.

“I’m enjoying it,” said Samael. “The very real prospect of food poisoning you just don’t get with Heavenly grub. Adds a frisson of danger and excitement to the dining experience. Speaking of which…”

Over at the table of merrymaking women, one of them staggered to her feet, hands pressed firmly to her mouth.

“One too many drinky-poos,” said Samael.

The woman’s shoulders heaved as she looked around frantically for the toilets.

“And thar she blows.”

The woman started her run for the ladies, passing their table. Raphael reached out and brushed her hand. Abruptly, she stopped, straightened up and took a deep, sober and wholesome breath.

“Just stick to the water from now on, eh?” suggested Raphael.

She nodded, confused, and returned to her table.

“Spoilsport,” muttered Samael. He leaned across to the googly-eyed lovebirds on the next table. They were kissing under a sprig of handheld mistletoe.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he said. “Once you kiss, you’re meant to eat the berries to seal your eternal love for one another.”

“Aren’t they poisonous?” asked the man.

“Nah, you’re thinking of holly.”

“Oh,” said the woman.

“That’s not fair,” said Gabriel as Samael sat back in satisfaction.

“Just doing my job.”

“I’m not sure the Almighty would approve.”

“Speaking of jobs —” Michael began.

“No, you can’t have your old one back,” said Gabriel.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” said Michael, honestly. “I was going to ask, aren’t you supposed to announce births? Tootling on your horn.”

“I am famous for it,” said Gabriel.

“But I don’t see you doing it.”

“I don’t have to announce every birth.”

“Don’t have to, or can’t?”

Raphael laughed. “A challenge!”

“It’s a silly challenge,” said Gabriel. “I mean, every birth in the country?”

“In the world,” said Michael.

Gabriel fixed him with a steely stare. “That’s a lot of births.”

“Can’t do it?”

Gabriel’s face was a mask of nonchalance. “One horn blast per birth?”

Michael nodded.

“At the moment of conception or the moment of birth?” asked Gabriel.

“Your choice.”

Gabriel licked his lips, looking up and to one side as though listening to the distant rhythms of the universe. He put the ram’s horn to his lips and blew. The sound he produced might charitably have been compared to a form of wildly syncopated jazz trumpet but was closer to a stream of high-speed Morse code: a fluctuating tide of notes, sometimes as fast as a dozen per second.

Cheeks swelling, Gabriel kept it going, on and on. Notes rose high and swooped low, an improvised sacred soundscape that sounded like Hark! The Herald Angels Sing reworked by a mariachi band.

Raphael tapped Samael. “Now you.”

“What? Deaths?”

Samael shrugged, picked up a couple of spoons and beat out a superhuman drum tattoo on the table top; his marginally slower rhythm effectively blending with Gabriel’s tootlings.

“Open your secret Santa,” Raphael said to Michael.

The package contained a kazoo. Raphael undid his and took out a small harmonica.

“I thought you said you didn’t know what was in these?” said Michael.

“I’m a good guesser,” Raphael smirked.

The two of them launched into accompanying counter melodies.

“I’m going to have to ask you to stop,” said the waitress, “You’re disturbing the other customers.”

“I don’t think most of them care,” said Samael. A generally boozy atmosphere thoroughly gripped the establishment.

“But we’d really rather you didn’t use our cutlery like that.”

“Sure,” said Samael, without slowing. “I’ll stop when Dizzy Gillespie here has had enough.”

Gabriel gave him a challenging waggle of his eyebrows and blew on.

“I must insist,” said the waitress firmly.

“Insist away,” said Samael.

Michael tried to be conciliatory. “Please, guys. Let’s not get into trouble.”

It was too late. The manager came over; strong words were said. Either Samael’s grip slipped or it was deliberate: one of his spoons sailed over the bar. Michael stood up to apologise and received an accidental elbow in the face. Gabriel put down his horn at last. One of the other diners shouted he had something Gabriel could blow if he wanted. The waitress said something quite unprofessional. Raphael attempted to heal Michael’s banged eye but missed and instead removed a mole from the manager’s cheek.

Before things got totally out of hand, Gabriel, with an angelic click of his fingers, caused the pregnant woman in the corner to go into spontaneous labour. It diverted everyone’s attention quite nicely.

*

Michael counted out the cash to pay for their meal along with a generous (and apologetic) tip.

Gabriel read the last unread cracker joke. “What’s the difference between snowmen and snowwomen?”

“Snowballs,” said Samael.

Gabriel stared at the joke. “No. Sorry. Still don’t get it.”

Michael gathered the money together. “Let’s go.”

As the others made their way out, Michael pressed the cash into the waitress’s hand. “And can I say again how sorry we all are.”

The waitress made a doubtful noise in her throat.

“Also,” he added, “Samael brought in a ‘suspicious package’ that none of us feel inclined to open.”

The waitress’s eyes widened. “Sus-suspicious package?”

“Consider it a gift,” said Michael. To the thoroughly inebriated farewells of the other diners, he joined his fellow archangels on the street.

The snow was shin deep in the town centre, and still mounting. Traffic crawled along roads that were rapidly being obliterated. Kerbside benches and litter bins were merely abstract mounds.

“That’s a lot of snow,” said Michael.

Samael lit a cigarette. “Do you have hills round here? For tobogganing and such.”

“You wish to toboggan?” asked Michael.

“Not me. I wish to watch. And maybe harvest a few souls in the process.”

Michael pulled his suit collar up against the cold. “Sad to say, there aren’t any real hills. Not unless the kids try to sledge down the motorway embankments.”

Samael seemed cheered by the idea. “That could be good.”

“Before you go, I want to show you something,” said Michael. “This way.”

He led them towards the pedestrianised shopping precinct. The doors of a pub flew open and a stream of people tumbled out into the snow, laughing and giggling. A woman in a cocktail dress grabbed a double handful of snow and slammed it into another’s face. She retaliated without much aim. A snowball fight erupted.

“Have those young ladies lost their clothes?” Gabriel asked Michael.

“No. That counts as ‘dressing up’ in these parts.”

“They’ll catch their death,” sighed Raphael.

“Here’s hoping.” Samael passed a tightly compacted snowball to one young man. “Remember son, if you put some stones or ice in there, it will fly much better.”

“Thanks, mate.” He let loose.

Two men ran past them, barging Michael and Gabriel roughly aside. Michael caught the other archangel’s elbow, holding him back from a fall.

“You all right?”

“Only my wounded pride,” said Gabriel. “I’m not used to people not knowing how important I — Wait! My horn! Someone’s taken my horn!”

He stared furiously in the direction the two men had fled, but they were lost in the blur of snow and the silhouettes of revellers.

“Damn it all!” shouted Gabriel and stamped his foot like a bad actor.

Raphael put a consoling hand on his shoulder.

Michael looked around. “There’s never a police officer close by when you need one.”

As if to disprove him, two police cars and a police van marked Bomb Disposal Unit raced past in the direction from which they had just come.

“Tell me,” asked Samael, “do you blow the horn when there’s a birth, or do you cause births by blowing the horn?”

“What?” said Gabriel.

“Just curious. I’m thinking this would be an ideal opportunity to give it a rest and let me catch up a bit.” He tapped out a rapid finger-breaking beat on a shop window to illustrate his point.

“Your horn will turn up eventually, brother,” said Raphael.

Gabriel sighed. Michael followed his gaze to the blue lights of the police vehicles as they pulled up close to Sebastian’s.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Gabriel, “that I spent a week working in an emergency call centre?”

“Perhaps,” said Michael.

“Part of a fact-finding mission while we were modernising the Non-Specific Prayer Assessment Unit in the Celestial City. Of course, no call centre on earth handles anywhere near as many customers as the NSPAU. You cannot appreciate the sheer volume of prayers which we handle on a daily basis.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Michael. “Come on. Up this way.”

They trudged on through the snow, along the high street and towards the Gracechurch shopping centre. They had to step aside as a Land Rover with what appeared to be a wooden reindeer head stuck on the front raced past, trailing behind it a trailer masquerading as Father Christmas’ sleigh. Weirder still, there was a very angry man in a Hi-Vis top and what looked like one of Santa’s elves clinging to the rear bumper.

Samael clicked his fingers. The trailer bounced off something hidden beneath the snow. Both the angry man and the elf went flying, screaming their way to bone-snapping doom.

“Samael,” Raphael reproached him, also clicking his fingers. From holes driven deep in the snow came the groans of two men. Unhappy, but very much alive.

Gabriel shook his head. “The snow has made them mad. These people seem hell-bent on either causing offence to each other or killing themselves. How can you withstand living among them, Michael?”

For an answer, Michael pointed.

Ahead was a Christmas tree which the council had erected in the town centre: thirty feet high, its green boughs heavy with snow. The rainbow of lights draped around it still shone through the thickening layer.

“I love Christmas lights,” said Michael.

Gabriel sniffed. “I’ve seen better.”

“You’re missing the point,” said Michael. “This is what Christmas is about: light in the darkness. Yes, there is death and danger and horridness, but there’s also beauty and goodness and kindness.”

“The Celestial City is nothing but goodness and kindness,” Gabriel pointed out.

“Ah, but the people on Earth aren’t good because they have to be; they’re good because they choose to be. That’s what Christmas means to them: reminding themselves that there is good in the world.”

“I do like the lights,” said Raphael.

Samael sighed the sigh of an archangel who also agreed but would never admit to it.

Michael leaned towards him. “So, that suspicious package of yours. Was there anything actually dangerous in it?”

“Socks,” said Samael.

“Socks?”

“Eleven people are killed each year, and over six hundred injured, just putting on their socks.”

“Wow.” Michael was impressed.

Down the street, there was an enormous flash and bang. Gabriel turned in surprised, slipped on the snow and fell on his backside.

A passing woman held out a hand to help him up. “Here.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Controlled explosion,” she commented. “Bomb squad were outside some place down the way.”

“Oh,” said Michael.

Gabriel dusted himself off.

The woman held up Gabriel’s horn. “I don’t suppose any of you gents have lost this thing? Some idiots just tossed it in the snow.”

“It’s mine, actually,” said Gabriel.

“Oh,” smiled the woman. “Merry Christmas, then.” She placed it in his hands and, with a cheery mittened wave, went on her way.

Gabriel turned the horn over and over, checking for damage.

“See?” said Michael. “There’s good in the world.”

“This proves nothing,” said Gabriel without much conviction.

About the author

The thing Iain Grant loves most about Christmas is watching Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman. Every single year. No one else in his house likes it, and it makes at least one member of his family cry.

Iain is co-author, with Heide Goody, of the Clovenhoof books in which Satan loses his job and has to move to suburban Birmingham.

He lives in south Birmingham with his wife and two daughters.

You can buy the first Clovenhoof book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clovenhoof-Heide-Goody-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG

Website: http://www.pigeonparkpress.com/

Mary’s Christmas by Margaret Egrot

Mary McCarthy reached down by the side of her bed, picked up her stick and used it to poke the switch on her electric fan heater. She never used the timer on her central heating as she was careful with the bills. But some days, like today, it was too cold to get up in an unheated bedroom. Besides, today was Christmas Eve, and her eighty-fifth birthday, and if that wasn’t an excuse to pamper yourself a little then what was?

She smiled to herself as she stretched and shook first one leg, then the other, then both arms – just as the doctor had ordered to get her circulation going before getting up. She had a busy day ahead, so couldn’t hang about in bed too long. Still, it was lovely to wake in the morning with a sense of purpose.

Feeling the air in the room was now less raw, she pushed back the covers, propelled herself into a sitting position and put on her slippers. Then she took her dressing gown off the bed and put it on over her winceyette nightie. Feeling quite warm from all her exertions, she used her stick again to switch off her heater and shuffled into the kitchen-living room of her tiny flat to click the thermostat up to eighteen. She had agreed with the doctor that she would always put it to twenty-one.

“At your age Mrs M, you can’t be too careful,” he had told her.

But on her little pension she couldn’t afford to be anything else. After all, if it was very cold, she could always put her dressing gown on again over her clothes. Anyway, today she was going to be out and about, so eighteen whilst she dressed and had her breakfast, was just fine.

Mary examined her Christmas card collection on the mantelpiece once again as she waited for the kettle and the toaster. There was, she felt, quite a bonanza of cards this year. One from her bank as one of their “esteemed” customers – they’d been sending her one since her eightieth birthday, so she felt “esteemed” must mean old; it certainly had nothing to do with the amount of money she had in her account. But it was a handsome card, even if no one had signed it. One was from the day centre she went to once a week, and all the staff had signed it, though she didn’t recognise more than two of the names. She had one from the Salvation Army too. It hadn’t exactly been sent to her personally, as it had come in an envelope with an open letter asking for a donation. She had sent them five pounds, and felt the card was a little reward to her for this. There was a lovely card from Jane who, she thought, must be the pleasant young lady who lived nearby and always smiled and said hello if she passed with her children when Mary was waiting for the bus. It was a pretty card – “With love from Jane and all the family at number six” it said inside. Mary was touched. Jane must have worked out where she lived and pushed it through the door yesterday. She would get a card to send her, and sign it “from Mary at number 22a.” Then Jane would know her name too. So nice to have neighbours that cared about you.

Mary came to the last card on her mantelpiece. It was large, and a bit crumpled as it had come all the way from Australia.

“To Mum from Sally, with love,” it read. “PS: And Happy Birthday, if this gets to you in time. PPS: Hope to see you in the summer.”

So Sally was OK. That was a Christmas present in itself. Inside the card was a photo of a couple; the woman was definitely Sally, though older-looking than Mary remembered her from her last visit. The other was a man called Jason according to Sally’s note on the back. Nothing more – and by now the kettle had boiled and the toast had popped up so there was no time to speculate. She was going to have to put her skates on if she was to have her breakfast, dress, and be down at the stop in time for the eleven-thirty bus into town.

She remembered to take her shopping list with her – no good relying on her memory these days – and once the bus stopped in the town centre she headed straight for Marks and Spencer. She didn’t normally shop there, too expensive, but today was her special treat. In the store she fumbled in her pocket and took out her list. Most of what she wanted was in the chilled section.

It was rather crowded and she worried a little about being knocked over in the crush. She worried too that, with all these people ahead of her, they might have sold out, even though it was only just gone midday. But no: there was still quite a pile of microwave Christmas dinners for one. She spent several minutes debating whether to have the one with cranberry, or the one with bread sauce. Cranberry sauce won and she slipped it into her basket and moved onto the pudding section. And yes, still plenty of Christmas puddings! She took the single one with plain white sauce as she was afraid the rum or brandy butter flavoured ones might disagree with her. Finally she went to the cheese section and selected a small platter with biscuits. It was a bit expensive and she hesitated to pick it up but then thought, why ever not? It is an extravagance, but Christmas only comes once a year, and she’d never eat it all tomorrow so it would see her through Boxing Day as well.

Mary queued patiently at the till, and surveyed the chocolates and nuts put there to tempt the customers. And she was tempted! Not nuts, they got behind her dental plate and were a devil to shift. But chocolate – when had she last had a bar of chocolate? Feeling like a naughty schoolgirl, she slipped a small milk chocolate bar into her basket. She looked then at the little bottles of wine next to the till. Why hadn’t she spotted these in previous years? She never bought wine; it didn’t agree with her medication and, even if she did feel like a glass, she’d never get through a whole bottle. But these little ones – she could have one of those over Christmas, surely, without coming to any harm. She looked at the price and winced. They were not, she thought, very good value compared with the big bottles. But she couldn’t remember when she had last had a drop of decent wine, and M&S would only stock a good one.

“Go on, treat yourself.” The young man behind her in the queue smiled at her and winked. “I can see you want to.”

She really did giggle out loud then, and blushed too. She added the bottle to her basket and had no time to change her mind as it was her turn to check out her goods. Oh my, Mary McCarthy, she said to herself, what are you coming to in your old age? Glutton and dipsomaniac!

The store assistant helped her pack her shopping away, and wished her a “Merry Christmas.”

“The same to you, my dear,” she replied, and meant it.

“And you,” she turned to the young man behind her.

“You too,” he smiled. “Not too merry mind!” he went on, and winked again, pointing at the bottle of wine.

Her shopping bag felt satisfyingly heavy as she left the store and headed for the market. Here she knew there was a stall that sold Christmas cards singly so she could get a nice one for her neighbour. It wasn’t far from the bus stop either, which was a good thing as she was beginning to feel tired and a little cold. She would write the card on the bus, then pop it in through Jane’s letter box as she passed. After that she would be glad to get back into her own home and put her feet up with a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, her usual lunch.

Mary let herself back into her flat and clicked her thermostat back up to eighteen before she sat down to get her breath back. She’d feel better once she’d had her heart tablet, and she’d keep her coat on till the room warmed up a bit. In the meantime she opened her shopping bag and took out each of her purchases. They’d come to more than she’d expected, but she wasn’t sorry when she looked at them. All top quality, she thought. She couldn’t wait for Christmas Day.

She woke up on Christmas Day with a lively sense of anticipation. She went through her usual routine to get up and out of bed in one piece and made her way through to the living room to turn up the thermostat so the radiator would come on. She looked with delight onto a snowy vista. A white Christmas! Even the grubby terraces and the derelict garages at the end of the road looked enchanting under a thin coat of snow. She was glad she didn’t have to go out and cope with it being slippery underfoot, even with her stick. No doubt it would be gone by lunchtime, she could see it was melting off the roof tops already, but for now it made the street look so Christmassy.

She dressed in a clean skirt and jumper and put on the sequined cardigan Sally had bought her many Christmases ago. She wore it so little it still looked smart. It was a bit big for her now – “I must be shrinking,” she thought. “And no bad thing, I’ve always been a bit broad in the beam, it would be nice to be slim for once in my life – even if I’m too old for anyone else to appreciate it.” She checked her outfit in the freckled mirror over the mantelpiece, combed her hair and put on a dab of face powder. Just one slice of toast this morning, she decided. After all, she had a big dinner planned for later.

Mary finished her breakfast, poured herself an extra cup of tea, took her first round of tablets for the day (heart, stomach, blood pressure, joints – not much of her now that was working properly) and settled down to listen to the carol service on the radio. She joined in all the carols, and nodded in agreement to the sentiments of the bishop – she didn’t catch which one, but liked to think it was the main one, the Canterbury fellow – as he gave his sermon. She listened attentively to the readings, which she almost knew by heart. After eighty-five years, most of which had included regular church attendance, especially around Christmas, this was hardly surprising.

She switched off her radio once the service was over and got up to look again at her Christmas cards. She was pleased with herself that she had managed to post one to Jane. Such a thoughtful neighbour to give her address. Not like Sally whose card told her nothing about her current whereabouts. But still, it did say she will be coming over in the summer. Might be anyway. Maybe she’d bring her new man friend, this Jason fellow.

Mary looked more closely at the photo. Nice looking man in that big boned, bronzed, sun-bleached-hair-way these Aussies have, she thought. He looked younger than Sally. Quite a bit younger, though Sally herself was looking quite smart in the picture. Longer hair than when she was last in England, and blonder too. With whiter teeth and browner limbs, she looked the picture of middle-aged health to her mother. But that was just it. Jason was young – thirty-five, tops. Mary knew exactly how old her daughter was, and she hadn’t seen her thirties for well over a decade. She could dye her hair, bleach her teeth, and tan her legs, but her neck still gave her age away. Still, if Jason wasn’t bothered, why should she be? Sally was her father’s daughter, through and through. Chasing younger partners hadn’t done him any good, and he’d died of a heart attack trying to keep up. That was over ten years ago now. If this Jason chap was making Sally happy – then Mary was happy too. And if she saw him as well as Sally in the summer, then that would be something extra to look forward to.

Mary was still thinking about Sally when the phone rang.

“Hello, Sally?” she responded automatically as she lifted the receiver. A bluff male voice soon put her right.

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I was just thinking of my daughter when the phone rang… Wrong number you say? No problem, easy mistake to make… You have a lot of calls to make? Well I mustn’t keep you… Thank you… You have a good Christmas too… Enjoy your meal… We’re about to eat too.” She put the phone down. Such a kind man! And so nice to hear a human voice on Christmas Day. Sally would have probably ended up arguing with her about something or other if it had been her.

She took her meal out of her tiny fridge, slipped off the cardboard sleeve and pierced the plastic film. Then she placed it in the microwave, set the timer and sat back down to enjoy the smell of the meal as it warmed up. It was one thing M&S still got right… Their underwear might have become a little skimpy for her taste these days, but they could definitely make an appetising meal. Once ready, she took it carefully out of the microwave and transferred it to a plate. No eating from the tray – she was going to dine in style today. Then she unscrewed her wine bottle and poured over half into a glass. She sat back down to enjoy her meal with the radio for company.

Mary scraped the last of the gravy from her plate and licked her fork. She drained the last drop from her glass. The meal had been delicious, even better than she remembered from last year. They must have done something different with the gravy. She got up a little unsteadily and realised she wasn’t used to alcohol these days. Must be the new tablets, she decided. Still she’d better take her second heart one as usual – the Christmas pud would help it go down. She put her plate in the sink, and her pudding in the microwave.

Again delicious Christmas smells filled the flat as she removed the pudding and turned it out into a bowl. She looked at her wine bottle. Still nearly a whole glassful left. She probably shouldn’t, not with the instructions with her medication saying, in capitals AVOID ALCOHOL. But it was Christmas, no one would see if she got a bit tipsy, and if she stayed sitting down after her meal, she’d be fine. She planned to watch a bit of TV once she’d eaten anyway, so if she put the remote within reach she wouldn’t have to move for hours.

Mary enjoyed her pudding and savoured the last few drops of wine. Pleasantly woozy she picked up her remote and pressed the “on” button. The TV screen flickered, flashed, and died. Oh no! What a terrible day for the telly to go on the blink. She struggled to get up and see if the time-old remedy of switching it off and on again at the wall would fix it.

Her foot caught in the rug in front of her chair. She stumbled and fell forward, her head only just missing the little table the TV was sitting on. She tried to get up, but felt too giddy.

“It’s the wages of sin, old girl,” she said to herself. “I’ll just lie here a bit, till I sober up.” And with that she fell into a deep sleep.

She was still fast asleep on the rug when there was a knock on the door. She slept on through several knocks and didn’t hear a woman open the door and call out: “Hallo, any one at home?” She wasn’t aware of the light being switched on and the horrified gasp as the woman rushed across the room, knelt down beside her, and gave her a small shake. She opened her eyes and looked up into the frightened face of a youngish woman she slowly realised was her neighbour – Jane, was it?

She tried to sit up, but Jane told her to stay still till she came to properly.

“I’m so glad you’re OK,” said Jane. “I thought I’d bring you a couple of mince pies whilst they were still warm, but when I saw your lights weren’t on and you didn’t answer your door, I got worried. And even more worried when I saw you on the floor. Are you sure you are all right?” she added as Mary struggled into a sitting position.

Mary smiled at her young neighbour. “Perfectly my dear. Just a bit embarrassed. You see I had a drop of wine with my lunch – more than a drop actually, and I’m not used to it. Then my telly went on the blink and I got up to try and fix it. I’m Mary, by the way. Mary McCarthy."

“And I’m Jane Baker. Pleased to meet you Mrs McCarthy.”

“Please, call me Mary. And can I call you Jane?”

Jane nodded and helped Mary into her chair.

“At least there are no bones broken. Did you manage to fix your TV?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t get that far. Oh, dear me what a silly-billy I’ve been!”

“Nonsense. Here let me have a go.”

Jane fiddled with the remote, she twiddled the switches on the TV, and she tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again. It was dead.

“Oh bother, I was looking forward to the Christmas shows. And watching whilst I munched one of your lovely mince pies would have been have been a real treat.” It was the first real disappointment Mary had felt that day.

Jane looked around the little flat: the clean but sparse and shabby furniture, the small display of cards on the mantelpiece, the remains of the microwaved Christmas pudding still on the little table, the plate from the M&S microwave Christmas meal for one soaking in the sink, the empty wine glass and the tiny (empty) bottle beside it. She looked at her old neighbour who was doing her best to hide her disappointment.

“Never mind,” said Mary after a pause. “I still have my radio. There’s always something good to listen to.”

“No!” said Jane. “You must come with me. We’re going to watch a film. That Richard Attenborough one, you know – Miracle on 34th Street. The children love it so we watch it every Christmas. It’s one of our family traditions. Do please come back home with me.”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance.” Mary couldn’t remember when she had last been to someone’s house, and tried not to sound wistful.

“But you must!” Jane had already found Mary’s coat, and was holding it out to her. “The children will think you are an extra present from Santa. Yes, really! My grandma passed away in the summer, and they’ve been missing her all Christmas. She was such a lovely lady. Please, please come! Unless you feel too poorly, that is.”

No, Mary didn’t feel at all poorly. Just a little shaky from her fall. She allowed her new friend to help her into her coat, and they set off together for the short walk down the road and into Jane’s cheerful, noisy, home. The children were a little shy at first, but soon warmed to her when she told them that Miracle on 34th Street was her favourite Christmas film too.

Jane’s husband roared with laughter when she told him she had fallen flat on her face after she’d drunk too much. He tried to make her drink a glass of port to see if she’d do it again, but she refused. Jane told him off and brought her a cup of tea instead. Then they watched the film and had more tea and a piece of home-made Christmas cake before Jane’s husband and all the children escorted her back home, singing “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” at the top of their voices.

“Thank you for coming,” Jane had said as she helped her into her coat in their cosy living room, and kissed her good-bye.

“No. Thank you. Thank you so much, my dear, for inviting me,” she had replied. “It has been the most wonderful Christmas I’ve had in years. And don’t forget – I’m always around to baby sit, any time you need a granny.”

Mary never spent Christmas day on her own again.

About the author

Margaret has recently written two novels for teenagers, Girl Friends and And Alex Still Has Acne. Although published by the American company, Solstice, both are located in the West Midlands, UK, and deal with contemporary social issues many young adults encounter with frankness and humour.

Margaret has also written several short plays and stories for teens and adults, and is currently working on a collection of short stories that give an off-stage life to female characters from Shakespeare’s plays. A number have already been published in anthologies or as stand-alone short reads. Most of the anthologies are published by Solstice, but two short stories, including the prize-winning “Living with Lady G” (written from the view point of Lady Godiva’s husband), have been published locally in the Coventry Tales series.

You can purchase most of Margaret’s work from http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00RVO1BHO and follow her blog at www.writingandbreathing.wordpress.com

The Thought That Counts by Katharine D’Souza

The landline rang, so I knew it would be my mother.

“Some post’s arrived for you,” she said.

“Has it?” I asked, biting back the impulse to apologise. She could make it sound as accusatory as she liked, but the fact that someone else had required her postman to put an envelope through her letterbox for it then to occupy her doormat really wasn’t my fault. “What is it?”

“Looks like a Christmas card. Bit early, don’t you think? Shall I open it?”

Her eagerness to do something as illicit as reading a message intended for someone else made me mean.

“Why not just forward it on?” I said. Most likely she’d already tried to peel the flap off the back of the envelope and, finding that impossible to achieve without evidence, thought she’d better call first.

“I’ll have to put it in another envelope. It’ll cost a stamp. If you’ll be home for Christmas you could pick it up then.”

I pointed out that perhaps if she was planning to send me a card as usual and hadn’t yet posted it, what with it certainly being a bit early for that yet, then she could just put this envelope inside the other. Going “home” for Christmas wasn’t a discussion I was ready to have.

She sighed, agreed, and hung up.

It was only the first week in December, definitely too early for Christmas cards, and who even sent them anymore? Especially to an address I hadn’t lived at for over twenty years. I pictured an envelope, probably red, stating my name in that house I’d once called home. It must be from someone I knew back then, someone who knew an entirely different me – the childhood or teenage one – not the woman with a career, a home, and a letterbox of her own. But why now?

I’d kept in touch with a few people from school: there were two I saw once a year or so, five or six more I’d connected with on social media. Not that I did much more than scroll past their tweets or status updates, vaguely aware of who it was without pausing to interact. We’d all moved on. Hadn’t we?

The mystery made me anticipate the card from my mum more than I ever had. She wasn’t known for doing much other than buying a mixed box of charity cards and writing purely “to” and “from” names around the printed greeting plus the appropriate number of kisses (one in my case). No thought went into whether she was sending an overly religious image to known atheists, or pictures of roast turkey dinners to vegetarians. She just worked through her address book A to Z, complained about the price of stamps, and ticked the task off the list.

Strange really, because she analysed every aspect of those sent to her – from the thickness of the card to the legibility of the handwriting. She looked at each card for a long time, even if only to make a remark such as, “Thought she was dead!”

So when my card from her arrived, the envelope bulging with its extra cargo, I opened it with more interest than usual. I barely noticed the robin in the snow illustration and set it aside unread as I turned the enclosed envelope over to reveal the written address.

It transported me straight to the classroom, surely when I’d last seen that handwriting scrawled into an exercise book by the girl beside me. We see so little of people’s handwriting now, it’s no longer a distinguishing feature I’d recognise for many of my friends. But these loops and slants forming my name, my old name, and the vocabulary describing the place I was from – the street, the town, the county I’d abandoned – it disoriented me. I had to sit down. Lorna. After all these years, of all people, Lorna was getting in touch.

I ripped into the envelope and opened the card to find a folded sheet of paper.

Dear Suze,

Hope this reaches you.

With warm wishes for a Happy Christmas.

Lorna

No kisses and the “warm wishes” part pre-printed. Holding the paper in one hand I closed the card and scrutinised the front, but the photograph of a thick-coated reindeer in the snow told me nothing more than that Lorna spent more on her cards than my mother did. She would; Lorna had always been about show, about impact – no one who met her could ever forget. But she’d vanished. Left town even more effectively than I had, presumably to impress people elsewhere and never, to my knowledge, returning.

I held the paper carefully, turning it for ease of unfolding but paused before I did. The thickness meant no ink showed through from whatever was written or typed on the other side. It could be one of those smug round robins, though it wasn’t so fashionable any more to brag to the friends and family you were too busy to keep in touch with about your successful life, your children’s achievements, your exotic holidays; Lorna would surely not be so far behind a trend.

I have to admit I’d googled her a few times over the years. It seemed so unlikely that she wouldn’t be someone and the internet even holds evidence of my unremarkable existence. But the results for the name Lorna Fielding were never her. She could have married and changed her name of course; I had. Or, more likely, she’d reinvented herself entirely.

I breathed in and unfolded the sheet of paper, choking on the breath as I recognised the photo printed at the top of the page. There was me, and Lorna, and the rest of the gang, ghosts from a Christmas past in our 1980s gear and oversized, over-processed hair. I hadn’t seen that picture in years. We’d been so proud of ourselves, such show-offs. Had selfies existed then, we’d have taken millions. Instead there’d been these poses, choreographed by Lorna – the gang arranged as though for an indie band’s album cover, moody and preened – one for every party or milestone. This had been the last Christmas, the one before we all left town.

We’d had copies made and mine had lived with me tacked on pin boards in student digs, framed when I moved into a shared house with other young professionals on landing my first job, and then stored, somewhere. I had other friends by then, more snapshots and less hair, more groomed. That framed collage with my copy of this photo was probably in a box in my mum’s loft. I hadn’t realised how much I missed it.

Below the photo was a typed message. “11 am, Boxing Day, usual place.” And below that, in Lorna’s hand: “Hope you can make it. I have something for you.” And a kiss.

I went to the kitchen, poured a glass of wine. This required consideration.

Leaving the letter on the coffee table I went to place the two cards on the mantelpiece. Mum’s wavered, required a prop to prevent it tumbling limply towards the gas flames below. Lorna’s outclassed the others. Not that there were many. “Early yet,” I could hear my mum’s voice say, but it was different now – so many people sent electronic greetings and, anyway, I expected fewer cards since the divorce. Friends had taken sides.

I picked up the letter and the wine and eased into my favourite chair. My first year in this flat and I had no Christmas decorations other than the cards, the furniture was unfamiliar except for this chair, and only the fire could be described as “cosy”. Moving in had felt like a trip back in time to those shared flats, with their unloved communal areas. The estate agent had described it as, “So practical.” Which it was – convenient, not homely. Not yet a home.

Christmas fell at the weekend this year so, with the run of bank holidays coming after it, I’d been avoiding thinking about all those days alone in the flat. I’d known it made sense to go and visit my mother, to go home, but I’d avoided the decision. It felt less like a visit now I had to go alone, more like a chore.

I picked up the page and gazed at the photo, my eye drawn immediately to the frizzy perm I’d so foolishly insisted on. Mother had known best about that one. I was sitting on the end of a bench and standing beside me was Tina, her expression inscrutable behind thick-rimmed glasses. I followed her on Twitter these days. She had a lot of opinions about politics. At the back stood the twins, Beth and Sonia. Or Sonia and Beth. I’d always had trouble telling them apart and, even though they’d given up dressing identically by the time this was taken, standing back to back in long black coats and with their bleached hair in slightly different styles, I didn’t have enough detail to identify them now. Lorna sat in the middle, posed with one leg hugged to her chest. Pouting, of course. And beside her on the bench was Tim, her on/off boyfriend – probably “on” at that point as she was leaning against him. Tim was my friend on Facebook these days. I saw infrequent status updates of him trying some obscure sport or at a gig by a reformed band from our youth, paying their pension and trying to pretend he was still young himself. I occasionally “liked”, never commented. I knew he was married, had kids, so his choice of what to share revealed nothing more than his desire to present the young, fun side of himself, as though the significant but mundane others didn’t exist if not shared. Or perhaps his wife preferred to protect her privacy.

I briefly wondered if he’d married Lorna, if it was her he was hiding. But no, he’d surely have mentioned to her that he could get a message to me more reliably than a card posted to a location dug from an antique address book. A relationship like theirs would never have lasted anyway.

Back to the photo, I finally let myself look at the boy standing at the far end. Teenage adoration is a rare thing, precious. That passion still smouldered somewhere deep beyond rational thought. Though years had passed, any mention of his name, even when attached to a stranger, had dragged at my attention. Even though I knew he’d have changed, or I’d have remembered selectively rather than the truth of what he was like, who he really was.

Stefan. Stefan with a stare as dark as his skin, his glower as effective from this reproduction of a faded photo as it had been in the flesh. The only one of us without a jacket or coat, folded arms in long-sleeved jersey caught taut to display biceps. The only one of us with any kind of muscle definition. That never used to be trendy. We’d edged close to each other, me tongue-tied, him distracted, always distracted by something else, someone other.

Lorna knew how I felt. Of course she did. And she laughed at me – but with affection, I felt, rather than malice. I knew he was out of my league; she knew I knew. It was common knowledge.

Stefan’s name had also never connected to the right person online. It was ridiculous, this compulsion to search for the past. People moved on; people changed. Life went on. Until the day someone sent you a Christmas card from that past and summoned you to it.

I reached for my phone, called my mum, made plans to visit for a few days over the festive period. Everything was entirely normal. It would be good to see Lorna again.

Of course, I wondered who else she’d invited every time I saw that card.

Christmas day dragged. The presents weren’t right, the turkey was dry, despite mum insisting she’d followed Delia to the letter and Delia never let you down. Not ever. It wasn’t as though I’d returned to my childhood bedroom; mum had decorated since then. Our adult relationship was as functional as any other I knew, but the teenage me was more present than usual. Memories of Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve in the local pub, and presents once exchanged kept surfacing. Boxing Day couldn’t come soon enough.

“What do you mean, you’re going to the park?” Mum asked.

I wrapped the new scarf she’d bought me around my neck and fastened my coat, making a show of how cold it would be out there, discouraging her from accompanying me. “Just going for a walk,” I said. “I feel like some fresh air.”

I needed fresh air. Forty-eight hours cooped up with only four topics of conversation was killing me. And, though I hated that Lorna was still manipulating me like this, I was intrigued. Who would be there? What did she have for us? Would I even recognise her?

I was overthinking it. After all, I didn’t know if anyone would be there, or if I might end up sitting alone on our old bench, or having to loiter nearby while the present day version of our gang sat down. Lorna’s message might not have reached anyone else; she might not have sent it to anyone else. To get excited about possibly seeing Stefan again was ridiculous. He wouldn’t be there. How could he? Of course I’d done my make-up carefully and chosen an outfit pitched between casual and attractive. Yes, my coat covered my clothes, but he might ask me to go for a drink, if he was there… Which he wouldn’t be.

I was a mess. After all these years, Lorna was still in control.

The paths around the park were crowded with families out in Christmas gift hats and gloves, children riding the scooters and bikes Santa had delivered, bag-eyed evidence of festive hangovers everywhere. I slowed my pace, not keen to abandon the tarmac and risk getting muddy shoes from cutting across the grass but unable to overtake the groups walking five abreast and oblivious to other pedestrians. Perhaps Lorna had hoped for bad weather so we could have had the park to ourselves. Like the old days, though possibly with fewer bottles of cheap cider.

I checked my watch as I approached our bench – the one we’d always colonised, the one with the view from the top of the hill. It had been our designated meeting place on the days we had nowhere else to be. Half way between the twins’ house on the posh side of town and Lorna’s parents’ place near the town centre. Inconvenience for the rest of us was irrelevant. I’d had the longest journey home, a benefit for the times Stefan said he’d walk me back. Not that anything ever happened.

It was five minutes past eleven, because I’d refused to be early but feared being so late that anyone else would give up waiting. But I could see there was no one there. Not yet, anyway. I balled my hands in my pockets and stopped to look back at the view. The park was unchanged, the town beyond bigger perhaps, but not much different really. I ran the spiel I’d prepared through my mind. “Yes, I’m fine. Moved away for a great job – really enjoying it. Just bought a new flat, actually. Moving’s a drag but life happens, doesn’t it? Had to sell the house after the divorce, but it’s all good. My mum’s still here, says she’ll never leave. How about you?”

I wanted to know what they’d all been up to. Any of them. All of them. Stefan in particular; Lorna most of all. What had she done with her life, that life with the same beginnings as mine?

Turning, I could see there was still no one on the bench but I walked up to it and sat down. I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Took my hands out of my pockets and smoothed down the front of my coat so the loose bulge in the fabric couldn’t be mistaken for flab. You don’t get a second chance to make a follow up first impression, after all.

As far as reunions went it was everything I’d anticipated: the mixture of dread and intrigue in the days beforehand, the planning of everything I’d do and say, the analysis of who might be there, what they might be doing with their life. All entirely predictable and nothing had even happened yet. I rested one elbow up onto the back of the bench, found the height awkward and shifted to sit with my hands in my lap again.

Quarter past eleven and I had to make a decision. How long should I remain? This was worse than being stood up for a date – these were my friends. Not that any of them had actually guaranteed to be here, but still. Lorna could have put her mobile number on that letter. It wouldn’t have killed her to be less enigmatic.

I pulled out my own phone and clicked to Tim’s latest online update. He’d been given a drone for Christmas but, from the shot he’d posted, I could tell that he was either somewhere with much worse weather than here, or an incompetent photographer. One of the two. Tina’s last tweet had been four days ago, so that gave no clue as to if she might be in my vicinity.

Returning the phone and my hands to my pockets I leant back and studied the view. There was the roof of the sixth form college where we’d met. Mum told me it had a terrible reputation these days. There was the chimney above the factory where Dad had worked, redundant now the building had been converted into flats, the workers long pensioned off and probably all dead. There was the playground where I’d swung high enough to terrify myself, the kiosk where mum had bought me ice lollies, the tree whose shade I’d lounged beneath as Beth and Sonia read poems aloud. God, we’d been pretentious.

I stood up, determined to leave. It would be pathetic to wait longer. Surely I had something better to do?

Taking one final look around, just to be sure, I noticed that the bench had one of those memorial plaques fixed to the back rail. It gleamed newly against the old wood and, as I bent to see the text, I laughed. It read, “Memories aren’t for living in. Make more.”

So that was Lorna’s gift to us. Perhaps I was the only one who’d found it. But I had seen it. Her gamble had paid off. I snapped a picture of the plaque and went home. It might not be the place I lived in any more, but it was where I was from and the person who mattered most was there.

Mum served up turkey curry for lunch and we both admitted it tasted better that way. We talked about the past, and the future. I didn’t look for the old photos. I took a few of her. We agreed it was our best Christmas so far.

About the author

Katharine D’Souza writes contemporary fiction, most of which is set in Birmingham. Her love of stories began young when short-sightedness meant books were the only things which made sense. Even since getting glasses, she generally still finds that books are the only things which make sense.

As a ponderer and people-watcher, Katharine often finds herself wondering “why would they do that?” Writing fiction is one way of finding out. It causes less offence than starting awkward conversations with strangers.

When not writing, Katharine leads the PowWow writers’ group in Moseley, chairs the organising committee of the annual PowWow Festival of Writing, runs writing workshops, and undertakes freelance editing work.

Her novels are available online from www.amazon.co.uk/Katharine-DSouza/e/B008S6Y7HK

The Night Before the Others’ Christmas by R. E. Vance

Chapter 1

The gods are all gone; they left in the night,

Abandoning myth and legend alike.

And when they departed, shutting Heaven and Hell,

Ev’ry creature immortal, to Earth they all fell.

Born not to die, now mortal made low—

The gods were so cruel, when they said, “Time to go!”

How could they do this to beasts of their birthing,

Who know of our culture not even the first thing?

Angels of light, and fairies of dust;

Jinn smokeless fire, and succubae lust.

All creatures were formed as the gods did deem,

Save one who appears in ev’ry child’s dream.

He’s not angel, nor fairy, nor mischievous gnome,

Yet children ’round Earth oft welcome him home.

They don’t call him Zeus, Achilles or Rick,

Instead they call out, “Bring us presents—”

“St Nick?” I cast a skeptical look at the hobo lying in the gutter. Lying next to him was my best friend, Penemue, the twice-fallen angel. “I’m pretty sure that’s not St Nick.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, for one, St Nick is not real.”

“Not real? Not real!” Penemue spluttered. “Do you honestly believe the man responsible for bringing joy to millions of children is not real? Do you honestly think that a being who not only ushers in a joyous season, but also is the guest of honor at an annual festival, is not real? The arrogance of you humans… Not only is St Nick real, he is a legend! A legend… and a saint!” Penemue sat in a clinking bed of discarded Drambuie bottles. I counted twelve. A strange mashup of “12 Days of Christmas” and “99 Bottles of Beer” started playing in my head.

“OK. St Nick was real. But he died… When? Several hundred years ago?”

“Legends never die,” the twice-fallen angel said, patting the unconscious hobo on the head with a sanctimonious tenderness.

“Legends might not, but people do.”

“I assure you, this is St Nick.”

“No… It’s a hobo with a white beard.”

“Are you telling me you don’t believe in St Nick?”

“I’m telling you that he’s just an unconscious hobo, Penemue, and you should leave him alone. And as for believing… Yes, I am telling you that I don’t believe in Jolly Ol’ St Nicholas.”

“Let me remind you,” Penemue said, struggling to his feet. The discarded bottles of Drambuie clinked their agitation, and at this late hour it sounded like the ringing of discordant bells. Once standing, the twice-fallen angel spread his wings pointedly. “There was a time you didn’t believe in any of us – angels, especially. Yet here I am, a living, breathing, drinking angel.”

He was right. I never believed in dragons, fairies, jinn or gods until, that is, the gods left. Apparently they got bored or frustrated or whatever emotion gods feel when abandoning their creations, and packed up and left. And what was their last message to humanity after eons of us worshipping them? “Thank you for believing in us, but it is not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.” Then – poof – gone, and with their departure they closed all the heavens and hells, forcing creatures once thought of as myth onto Earth where they live as unwanted refugees.

I didn’t believe in the gods before they left and I don’t believe in them now that they are gone.

As for angels…

Penemue arrogantly thrust out his chest – Pride goeth before a fall, I thought – and overbalanced by his wings, he fell back on his rump. The Drambuie sounded its discord once more.

“You’re drunk,” I said.

“And you have an unshakeable need to point out the obvious.”

“True,” I said. “And here’s something else that’s obvious: that’s not Santa Claus.” As if to accentuate my claim, the fat hobo stirred in his sleep, letting out a snort that would have scared off a parcel of hogs.

Penemue lifted a finger. “First of all, how do you know? And secondly,” Penemue lifted another finger, this one on his other hand, “I didn’t say ‘Santa Claus.’ I said ‘St Nick.’ ”

“What’s the difference?”

“One is fictional; the other is not.”

This was going nowhere and, what’s worse, I found my rage beginning to bubble up. Again. It had been a tough month. Who was I kidding? It had been a tough year – the love of my life, Bella, died, effectively leaving me alone to run the One Spire Hotel. I’d been at my wit’s end trying to keep her dream alive ever since. A hotel, she’d said. A place where Others will never be turned away, no matter what.

And how will we pay for this if we let them all stay for free? I’d asked one night when she was still very much alive and I was still very much happy.

Those who can pay, will pay.

You think so? I mean… humans wouldn’t.

Others aren’t humans. Then she’d given me that Don’t-worry-it-will-all-work-out look of hers and, well, I’d melted. That’s what I always did when she gave me that look. Hell, that’s what I always did when she gave me any look.

But that was a lifetime ago and now Bella was dead and gone, and I was the one stuck finding a way. But I made a promise to Bella: to help Others as they found their way in this GoneGod world. That promise is the last thing I have of her, and so I’d keep it, even though it would probably kill me one day.

Penemue, the once-upon-a-time fallen angel, now drunk and permanent non-paying guest at the One Spire Hotel, tried to stand again, this time with considerably more success because he used his massive, dirt-stained wings as crutches.

The commotion was bound to annoy the neighbors – again – and since most of them had the police station on speed dial, I knew I had to get these two inside as quickly as possible.

I lifted a finger of my own and said, “Firstly, you find a fat man with a jolly big beard snoring in the gutter and, because tomorrow’s Christmas, you instantly think he’s Santa Claus – that is what we humans call profiling. Secondly...” I lifted a second finger on my other hand and placed it alongside the first one, doing so with considerably more grace than Penemue had managed. “If we don’t get you and your hobo-who-is-not-Santa-Claus-or-St-Nick inside, you’re going to spend yet another night in the drunk tank. Wouldn’t you rather get upstairs and sleep—”

“On a bale of hay?” Penemue interrupted.

“I was going to say in your own room, but yes… on a bale of hay.”

Penemue huffed at this. “In Hell, my bed was made from alabaster and gold.”

“Look, I already told you, they don’t make beds big enough to carry someone your size and weight.”

“I know, I know, but still… I’m not a chicken,” he pouted. “I’m an angel.”

“An angel who is literally sitting in a gutter with a passed-out,” I waved a hand at the hobo, “whatever he is. Inside, Penemue. Now.”

“And him?” he asked.

“Yeah, him,” I sighed. “Room 4 is empty. Help me get him up there.”

“How charitable of you,” Penemue said, and I honestly couldn’t tell if the angel was being sarcastic or genuine.

*

Carrying a five-foot-five passed-out fat man into the hotel is a damn-near impossible task, but when your helper is an eight-foot drunken angel, the task shifts from impossible to absurd. We manipulated rolls of fat and pushed against pudgy skin, and by the divine grace of the GoneGods, we somehow managed to plop him into the tiny hotel room.

As soon as his ample frame hit the bed, he stirred, a smile cracking open the gray bush of his beard. “You’ve been nice. No coal in your shoes,” he said before promptly passing out again.

“See?” Penemue slurred. “St Nick.”

“Drunk hobo,” I countered and threw a blanket over the snoring man.

*

As soon as we left the room, I was greeted by a chorus of “What is going on here?”

The closer, more pleasant voice came from the succubus, Astarte, who lived in Room 5. Astarte had been living in the One Spire Hotel for three years now, but unlike most of my regulars… Astarte actually paid. You see, after the gods left, Others struggled to find their place in this new GoneGod world – but not Astarte. For the uninitiated, a succubus is a being who literally sucks your life energy out of you via sex – think of her as an orgasmic vampire. After the gods left, her sexual photosynthesis – or rather, orgasmosynthesis – abilities were no longer viable. So, Astarte used her talents in more traditional ways. In other words, she traded sex for money, which she in turn used to buy everything she needed: food, water, shelter and lingerie. Today’s ensemble included a black see-through teddy, matching panties and nothing else. ’Tis the season.

The other, far more judgmental voice came from Judith, my mother-in-law, who was human… sort of. She used to be human, but then she died and, because she never approved of my marriage to her precious Bella, came back to this world to haunt me as a ghost (well, poltergeist if you want to be technical). For years things would go missing, I’d wake up in the night in a cold sweat and I constantly heard this nagging voice that told me I wasn’t good enough for Bella. Turns out that nagging voice was Judith’s, haunting me from beyond the grave.

But then the gods left and ghosts like Judith no longer had the ability to remain invisible and incorporeal, and thus were forced to manifest. She came back in the same dress she was buried in… and, to the casual observer, looked normal enough, until you realized that Judith didn’t walk, but instead floated around on the tattered remains of what used to be her legs.

I lifted up my hands in surrender. “What is it now?” Before they both could begin their relentless complaints, I cried out, “One at a time! Astarte, since I can guess what your issue is, I’ll let you go first.”

“You promised me Room 4,” she said in a sultry Parisian accent. I was pretty sure Astarte didn’t speak French and had never been to Paris, but only spoke that way because she knew the accent drove me wild (I prayed to the GoneGods that Judith didn’t know this).

“I did?”

“Yes! Humans aren’t the only ones who have parties on Christmas. When I ruled over the Fertile Crescent, we frequently used the Winter Solstice to—”

“Let me guess: host an orgy.”

“Worship, Jean-Luc. Worship.”

“Worship with lots of people in one room?” I asked.

Astarte nodded.

“And most if not all of them are naked?” I asked.

Again the succubus nodded.

“Orgy, Astarte. That’s an orgy.”

“Actually, Jean-Luc,” Penemue interjected, “many sex cults in the Far East do not experience climax during their fornications, oft times—”

“Penemue. Get to the point,” I said.

“Not all orgies are orgies,” the angel muttered under his breath.

To this Astarte nodded in agreement.

“Fine, fine,” I said, turning back to Astarte. “The two rooms on the second floor are empty, will they do?”

Astarte grumbled but, seeing that this was the best deal she was going to get, acquiesced with a bow.

“Now hold on…” Judith said, staring at me with eyes of condemnation. “Tomorrow is Christmas Day, and I will not sing Christmas carols to the accompaniment of moans and groans!”

“Fine,” I said. “Astarte can throw her party in the cellar, which should be soundproof to any… musical ‘accompaniment.’ There’s more space down there anyway.”

Astarte cocked a subtle grin and I got the feeling that the cellar was what she wanted in the first place.

“Now, if there isn’t anything else I can help you with—”

“Actually there is,” said all three this time.

“What now?”

All three of them started talking. From what I could gather, Judith wanted access to the kitchen to cook a turkey; Penemue wanted more hay, Drambuie and books (and had no money for any of it); and Astarte wanted the master key so she could take the bedding and linens from the unoccupied rooms to furnish her worship party downstairs.

And even though it was damn near midnight, they all wanted it now.

Just as their demands were reaching a crescendo, I cried out, “Enough!” The force of my voice must have been quite jarring because all three stopped speaking at once. “I don’t get it… All year, I do stuff for each of you. You,” I pointed at Penemue, “I bail you out of jail, I give you money that you squander on booze and I’m constantly helping you with some harebrained idea.” I gesticulated wildly at the room housing the drunk hobo to prove my point.

“And you,” I pointed at Astarte, “I let you have your parade of costumers, but no matter how many times I tell you, you just don’t seem to get that wearing lingerie out in public is not an acceptable thing to do.”

I finally turned to Judith. “And as for you… I get why you think I wasn’t good enough for your daughter. She was amazing and the truth is, no one on this Earth was good enough for her. But I did my best and she loved me! For that reason, if nothing else, I deserve some slack!”

I started down the stairs to my room, then turned back. “Do any of you know how hard running this damn hotel is? We hardly have any guests and when we do, half of them can’t pay anything and the other half thinks that a vial of ground granite is a perfectly acceptable form of payment.”

“Actually, for dwarves, granite dust is very valuable—”

“Shut it, Penemue! Seriously. Not now. Just for one day can’t you act like what you are? An angel.” I shook my head in frustration. I looked at my watch – quarter past midnight. “You know what? It’s officially Christmas Day and I’m taking the day off. For the next twenty-four hours I’m on holiday and you guys are on your own. Now, if you’ll excuse me… Goodnight.”

And with that I left a drunk angel, a succubus and the poltergeist of my mother-in-law alone on the stoop of the third floor landing.

Hellelujah!

Chapter 2

Inside the room, the hobo hears all;

Jean-Luc is just mad, sad and appalled.

Though this hotelier thinks he’s no St Nick,

He is—or was, but the world lost its magic.

The gods may be gone, and with them magic’s throne,

But there’s still a bit left in ol’ St Nick’s bones.

So harkening back to who he once was,

He touches the hearts of ghost, angel and succubus.

Inspiration’s within and also without,

For these Others three, there’s little to doubt:

They owe Jean-Luc for One Spire’s refuge;

So this Christmas Day, why not give back what they’ve—?

“I refuse to take this anymore,” I said with a huff as I walked into my room, slamming my door. Immediately I regretted it. Tink would be asleep. I looked over at my shelf. It was filled with relics of my childhood: the complete ensemble of 1984–’91 G1 Transformers, a troop of GI Joes, Smurfs, Voltron, Cabbage Patch Kids and a herd of My Little Ponies. Castle Grayskull – Tink’s home – didn’t light up, so either I didn’t wake up the three-inch-tall golden fairy or she knew I was in a mood and chose to pretend to sleep.

Either way, I whispered “I’m sorry” in the direction of the castle and went to bed.

The real world might have been overwhelming and frustrating, but there was one place I could always go to find peace. My dreams.

I closed my eyes, figuring it would take a while to fall asleep… but it didn’t. Either I was more exhausted than I thought, or I was excited to see the girl of my dreams again.

***

“Merry Christmas,” she says.

Bella stands on the beach, wearing the same sleeveless sun dress that she wears on all our nightly rendezvous. It’s the dress she wore the night I proposed to her. The same dress she wore when we drove up to my PopPop’s cabin for what would pass as our honeymoon.

The dress she was wearing the day the Others killed her.

“How do you know it’s Christmas…” I start, but then I remember. Tapping my head, I smile and say, “Because you’re in here.”

“And in here.” Strolling over to me, she places her hand on my chest. Her hand passes through me like a ghost. But Bella is no ghost… She can’t be. For when the gods left, they closed all the heavens and hells. Since the GrandExodus, the souls of the dead have had nowhere to go. They just fade into black and disappear forever.

And Bella died after the gods left. After the GrandExodus.

My Bella is gone. Forever.

But not in my dreams. This Bella – standing on the beach with her hand pressed to my heart, but not actually touching me at all – is just a hallucination conjured by a sad man who misses his wife. And for reasons that Freud would have a conniption trying to figure out, Dream Bella and I never touch.

As her hand passes through me, I feel the old pain. What I wouldn’t give to be able to touch her again… Hell, what I wouldn’t give to have any part of our past be tangible once more.

Bella senses my disappointment and says, “No pouting. Not today.”

“Why not? Today seems like a totally reasonable day to pout.”

“Christmas?”

“No. Tuesday.”

“Oh, ha-ha, mister. OK, fine, pout. But while you do, why don’t I give you your Christmas gift?”

“There’s only one thing I want for Christmas,” I say, reaching out my hand.

She doesn’t try to take it. “Remember our first Christmas?” she says. “As man and wife?”

She waves her hand and the beach that we stand on fades away, its grains of sand coming together to form a hard, uneven wood floor. The water of the sea rises up and becomes four walls covered in terrible, pastel wall paper.

She has transformed the beach into our first apartment, the one we lived in right after the gods left. The world was in turmoil during those days and we were broke, afraid of what the appearance of Others meant for our world and unsure what the future would bring. And I had never been happier.

An old foldout poker table sits in the middle of a living room. On the table are lit candles and a red-and-blue polka-dot tablecloth. “What? Where did you get this from?” I say, rubbing the cloth between my fingers. “I lost this thing years—” I stop myself. “You have it because this is a dream and you are a figment of my imagination built from my memories of you.”

“Bingo,” the dream of my Bella says.

“So what else will my subconscious conjure today?”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” she says. “Such a cynic. Tell me, are you happy to be here, with me, now?”

“Yes.”

“Then just because this isn’t real doesn’t mean you can’t be happy to be here. Besides, reality is overrated.” She gestures for me to sit down. “And I say we indulge the lie for as long as this night lets us.”

She pours me a glass of wine and picks it up, sipping. Even though I can’t taste it, the memory of that cheap, supermarket wine floods back to me. It’s bitter, bordering on vile. And I love it.

She balks at the taste, passing me the glass. “I’ll never know how you could drink glass after glass of that stuff.”

“Just gets better with age.”

“Or inebriation.”

“Indeed,” I say, lifting the glass. I look over at the love of my life and suddenly I feel a vast emptiness come over me. I miss her. And dreams, as pleasant as they are, will never be enough.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“It’s been tough and I don’t see it getting any easier.”

“I know. But you can take it, I know you can.”

“Can I? I know I made you a promise to keep the hotel working and always open for Others, but…” I shake my head.

“Jean-Luc,” she says, her voice carrying with it a kindness that makes my soul swoon with comfort, “I would never ask you to do something you couldn’t handle. You know that.”

“I do, but still…” I take a deep breath, then put down my glass and exhale with a sigh. “Bella, can I ask you something? A Christmas gift of my own, if you will.”

“Of course, anything.”

“Can you free me?”

“Of what?”

“My promise.”

“But Jean-Luc,” she says, giving me a curious look that I have never seen before. “You think I’m a figment of your imagination. Following that logic, I can’t free you of anything.”

I mull this over. “Maybe. But you behave exactly like Bella does, so in a very real way, you are her. Tell me, if she were alive today, would she free me of my promise?”

This seems to hurt Bella’s apparition, because she looks down and she bites her lower lip. I honestly don’t know if she is upset because I don’t see her as my wife or because I want to be free of my promise.

She sits silent for a long moment before getting a smile on her face. She stands up and walks over to the hole-in-the-wall that once passed as our kitchen and pulls out a tray of cookies. “I made these for you. Your favorite. Chocolate chip and macadamia nut.”

The memory of freshly baked cookies whisks into the room as she places the tray in front of me. I pick up a cookie but don’t eat it. “You didn’t answer my question,” I say.

“What good would an answer be?”

“I need to know that, if I walked away from this, she — ah, I mean you — would understand.”

“She — ah, I mean I — would want to know why,” she says, her voice mocking my cadence.

“Because they cause me nothing but misery.”

“They’re lost. Refugees on a planet that doesn’t want them. Our culture is so foreign to them and—”

“So what?” I say. “They should learn. Adapt. Evolve.”

“They’re trying, but it takes time.”

“Again, so what? Why do I have to suffer because they’re slow at catching up.”

“Because no one else will do it. You have fought in their corner for so many years—what’s suddenly changed? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is—” I throw the cookie back on the tray. “—is that I can’t do it anymore! Yeah, I fought for them, but that was because of you. You were my strength. You were – are – the best part of me. But you’re not here anymore. You’re dead, killed by them.”

“Jean-Luc, you take that back right now,” she says, anger rising in her voice. “Penemue, Astarte and my mother had nothing to do with my death. Lumping them all into one neat little package is not only wrong, it’s irresponsible. You know that.”

I lift my hands in surrender. “Yes, yes, I do. I’m sorry. It’s just that lately it’s getting harder and harder to hold onto you.”

“But Jean-Luc… I’m here every night.”

“No, the memory of you is here every night. You’re dead.” I point at the tray. “And this… None of this is real.”

As if to accentuate my words, there’s a thudding noise that causes one of the walls to come crashing down. “You see?” I say. “That’s the real world knocking. Probably Penemue drunk, or Astarte throwing some wild orgy and Judith complaining about it.” Another thud, followed by another wall falling. “Answer my question, please… Before I have to face another day of this, please answer my question.”

She gives me a look that says, patience.

“No.” Another wall comes crashing down. “Not this time. I need an answer.”

“Do I relieve you of your promise?”

“Yes?”

“In answer to your question, I say… Wait a day. Wait a day, and if you still feel like you’re done with it all, then the answer is yes, you are free of your promise.”

“Thank you.”

The final wall comes crashing down and reality replaces my dreams.

*

I woke with a jolt to another thud on a door. “Coming,” I said, pulling off my blanket.

Light streamed in from the window and I looked over at my clock. It was one in the afternoon. I guess I did manage to sleep in after all.

Another two knocks, and with a bitter “Yes, yes… I’m coming,” I readied myself for whatever drama waited for me on the other side of that door.

Chapter 3

But succubus, angel and ghost alike,

Know not what are Jean-Luc’s preferred delights.

Each ponders and pines and wonders and plans.

What gift to bestow on this frustrated man?

Astarte knows lust would not entice;

If anything, Jean-Luc wants her to play nice.

And as for Judith, once flesh and bone,

She does not like her son-in-law’s tone.

The twice-fallen angel, now sobering up,

Knows not what Jean-Luc prefers in his cup.

With a wave of his wand, a flick of his hand,

Good ol’ St Nich’las helps them under—

“Stand still,” Astarte said in a British accent that would have made Jane Austen proud. “You’re going to mess them up.”

I looked over at Astarte, who was wearing a Victorian dress complete with bodice, a crinoline skirt and white lace gloves. She was carrying a little parasol. “Oh, like they did a good job on you?” I said, overemphasizing my sarcasm in hopes that she would detect it.

She didn’t. “Exactly. They did a perfect job for me, and if you’ll only stand still, they’ll do a perfect job for you.”

Ten minutes ago she had knocked on my door dressed like an extra in a Monet painting. That threw me off. I was used to her being barely clothed, often completely naked and, on more than one occasion, in the throes of passion. If Astarte sensed my confusion, she made no show of it; she daintily lifted her hand in my direction and said, “Shall we?”

“Shall we what?”

“Why, prepare for Christmas dinner!” And with that Astarte had simply taken my hand and led me to her room, where four pixies greeted me with scissors and needles in hand. They tore off my clothes, which, considering I was still in my pajamas (in other words, T-shirt and underwear) wasn’t much. Before I could protest, they immediately started fashioning a suit over my body. Talk about bespoke. It felt like high fashion’s equivalent of being in a NASCAR racing pit.

Soft wool was sown over my legs to make my trousers. Egyptian cotton was measured, cut and sown over my torso to make a shirt, complete with pleats. More soft wool, lined with silk for my jacket. Hell, there was even a dwarf in the corner cobbling my shoes.

In less than twenty minutes I was in a three-piece suit, complete with a red silk tie.

“Ah, they forgot my underwear,” I said.

“They didn’t forget.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Jean-Luc… You can only stop a leopard from mounting its mate for so long.”

“I don’t think that’s the expression.”

“Is it not?” Astarte lifted her hand and guided me out of her room and down the stairs.

*

The One Spire Hotel isn’t big. Once upon a time, it was a hostel for backpackers who made their way through Paradise Lot to wherever was next on their trek. The One Spire Hotel was built to be small yet fit lots of people, so it was efficiently designed for sleep and nothing else.

But amongst those unshowered young trekkers, it was considered “upscale,” simply because it had a small room in the basement that was used to serve breakfast. Now that room was mostly abandoned, only used by Miral, the local doctor, to throw her weekly “Coping with Mortality” seminars.

A table was set up in the middle of the room, and Judith stood at the head of the table with a carving knife and a smile. I hadn’t seen Judith smile since, since… Well, since forever. I looked at the big knife in her hand and gulped. That smile wasn’t helping, either.

But before I could say or do anything (like run away, perhaps), Judith clapped her hand and two fairies flew into the room. They guided Astarte and me to our chairs, placing napkins on our laps and pouring us each a glass of wine. They buzzed off and returned with turkey, cranberry sauce, three kinds of potatoes, Brussels sprouts and stuffing. Judith’s smile widened as she started to carve the turkey, asking only one eerie but oddly appropriate question: “White or dark?”

“Both,” Astarte said, with a sultry moan that implied she wasn’t just talking about turkey.

“White,” I said, still unconvinced that this wasn’t some kind of trick or dream or trick in a dream.

“And dark for me,” Judith said, unable to resist throwing Astarte a judgmental look before shaking it off and smiling again.

The fairies started serving us the trimming. Once they were done, they fluttered out of sight.

I took a cautious bite… It was good. Better than good. “Judith, did you make all this?” I asked.

Judith nodded.

Astarte took a bite of cranberry and said, “This is almost as good as what the hobgoblins of Sherwood would make. Back in the seventeen hundreds, I spent a lot of time in their woods and—”

“Astarte,” Judith said in an admonishing tone, “it is not polite to compare a hostess’s meal to that of other cooks. We promised to try.”

I braced myself for one of their typical full-blown rows. But instead Astarte took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. How silly of me.”

This day was getting weirder and weirder.

Awkward silence followed, and I took several bites before wading back into the conversation with, “Where’s Penemue?”

“Who knows?” Judith smirked. “We knocked and knocked on his door, but he didn’t answer.”

“I believe the human expression is ‘sleeping through it’, ” Astarte mused.

“Actually it is ‘sleeping it off’,” Judith corrected.

“Off?” Astarte tilted her head at this. “Humph, I guess that makes sense. In ancient Assyrian, we used to say, ‘Sleeping until the carp passes through’.”

We both gave her a blank look.

“That makes little to no sense,” Judith said.

“Well,” Astarte said, “it is a rough translation and in my culture carp are sacred and… Yes, it makes no sense. But then again neither do so many of your human expressions. ‘Hammered’: I have heard you refer to Penemue as such with nary a hammer in sight. ‘Sloshed’: yet there is no liquid in which he wades. ‘Sleeping it off’: what is on him that needs to fall off.” I thought Astarte was goading Judith into a fight, but the succubus was smiling as she spoke and I realized she was making a joke. I’ve never seen Astarte make a joke. Well, not clothed at least…

Judith laughed. I mean she actually laughed.

“Regardless,” Judith said, wiping away a tear. “We figured a hungover, annoyed angel would ruin lunch and we wanted to… You know.” She nodded in my direction.

“Well, this is lovely, thank you,” I said.

“Yes,” Astarte said. “I have never enjoyed an event without sex until now.”

“Well, maybe this is the start of a new life for you,” Judith mused.

Astarte nearly choked on her wine. “I doubt it,” she said with a sultry wink.

“I don’t know… The occasional party that isn’t punctuated by moaning and groaning—”

“Wouldn’t be a party at all. Not for the Queen of Lust that is,” Astarte pointed at herself.

“Astarte, remember we said we’d try. Trying means—”

“I said I’d try today. Once today is over I will—”

“Trying doesn’t last for one day,” Judith said.

“Well then, why don’t you try my way for a while?” Astarte purred. “A poltergeist’s rage can really shake things up when—”

“As if I would ever—”

“Here we go again, questioning my ways. But have you ever considered that maybe it should be I who question your ways? After all, a chaste life is a boring one.”

“ ‘Chaste?’ Just because I don’t fornicate with everyone that I see—”

I slammed my hand on the table. “As nice as it is to go back to what makes us comfortable – namely ripping into each other’s character – I was actually starting to enjoy the peace and quiet.”

Both Judith and Astarte looked at me, evidently remembering their promise to be good for a day.

So Judith smiled and Astarte became conservative again, and we enjoyed our meal for exactly three minutes before Astarte muttered, “I know how to make that smile more permanent… After all, someone without legs can be quite—”

“Astarte,” I said.

“Why, you sex-obsessed—”

“Judith, please,” I cried out.

“Have you ever slept with a ghost? You never know what you can go through and what you can’t—”

“Both of you, please shut up!”

But it was too late: Astarte and Judith had returned to their old ways.

I was considering flipping the table, perhaps throwing gobs of meat at both of them, when a giant THUD! shook the entire basement.

We all ran upstairs, followed by a flurry of fairies, and out the front door, where we saw a friggin’ eighteen-foot pine tree standing in the middle of the road. On top of it was Penemue, striking a majestic pose as he balanced on the topmost needle – a single angel on the head of a pine.

“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.

The twice-fallen angel cocked an eyebrow before saying hesitantly, “What you asked me to do?” He returned to his regal stance.

“I don’t remember asking you to uproot a tree and—”

“I beg to differ. You said that all you wanted for Christmas was for me to act like an angel. It’s Christmas. What is more angelic than an angel standing atop a Christmas tree?”

“He has a point,” Judith said.

“Get down from there!” I said, slapping my head. I could just see the police report: unauthorized kindling in a city street. How much would the fine for that be? “Now!” I screamed.

“Oh, Human Jean-Luc, you are being quite ungrateful,” Astarte cut in. She was selectively ripping off pieces of her Victorian dress in what can only be described as a reenactment of an 1800s burlesque show.

“I’m being ungrateful?”

“Indeed. Look at us. Judith is being polite. For you. I am dressed like a… a… I don’t know what I’m dressed like. All I know is that I tried,” she said, removing her glove. “And as for the angel… He only did as you instructed. Don’t you see? We’re all trying very hard to give you a very merry, merry Christmas.”

“This is a ‘very merry, merry Christmas’?” I said. And then it hit me: Judith standing there, her lips pursed so tightly together that her lip line was (quite literally) whiter than a ghost, Astarte in her dismantled Victorian dress, and the angel Penemue on top of a GoneGodDamn Christmas tree…

It was too much. It was too… “Ridiculous,” I muttered to myself. As the word came out of me, so too did the months and years of my life pour out. The relentless Other drama, the absurd situations that they put themselves into, the hilarity of this new GoneGod world. It was all too much.

I did the only thing I could do when faced with lunacy: I laughed.

And laughed and laughed. I laughed until my guffaws were chortles mixed with titters and snorts. I laughed until my sides hurt and my eyes had no more tears to shed. I laughed until I was dizzy, as my soul emptied of rage and filled with mirth.

I laughed until I started seeing things. For in the blur of bliss, I could have sworn I saw Santa’s sleigh fly over Penemue’s Christmas tree.

The sight of it only made me laugh some more.

I laughed and laughed because in the end, Astarte was right. They did give me a very merry, merry Christmas.

*

I was right. Well, half right. The police did come and they did fine me, but not for the tree. By the time they showed up, Penemue had already hoisted it up in the air and returned it to wherever he’d stolen it from. The fine was for disturbing the peace and public intoxication. I tried to argue that I wasn’t drunk, but all that came out were tear-filled chortles. Officer Steve, the youngest of the Billy Goats Gruff and one of Paradise Lot’s finest, even called Miral – our angelic local doctor – to make sure I wasn’t, in his words, “broken”.

Miral said I was suffering from the terminal condition of being human.

I couldn’t agree with her diagnosis more.

Eventually the police left and Astarte, who at this point had ripped off enough of the dress that she might as well have been naked, went inside with a lustful wink. Judith rolled her eyes before floating away, and that was when I knew things were returning to normal.

As I walked to my room, I thought to myself that I would keep my promise to Bella – if only for a little bit longer. After all, she was the best part of me, and why throw that away? It didn’t change the fact that I missed her, and that I would give anything to have at least a small part of her with me.

Maybe that was what my promise gave me, that for as long as I kept it, the part of her that cared for everything around her would still be with me. That would have to be enough.

*

I opened my bedroom door with a sigh, and what I saw waiting for me on my bedside table brought forth sober tears. For, sitting there was a plate filled with chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies.

Cookies are for Santa, freshly baked and fair,

But even St Nick is willing to share.

And as for believing—you don’t have to! It’s OK!

I believe in you—Merry Christmas and good day!

About the author

R.E. Vance lives in Edinburgh (with his wife, recently-born child and imaginary dog), where he enjoys a beautiful city, whisky (Scottish spelling, not mine) and long walks. All he really wants is to quit his job and write stories based in Paradise Lot. All he really hopes for is that his child is healthy (ten fingers, ten toes and at least two eyes is a good start) and that eventually he can get a real dog so that he can have an excuse to go on even more long walks.

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/R.E.-Vance/e/B00WOUBB3Y/

Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/R.E.-Vance/e/B00WOUBB3Y/

Website: www.paradise-lot.com/gonegodworld

The Ghost of Christmas Replete by David Croser

(With apologies to Boz)

London. Autumn term finally over, and all the children swarming down Oxford Street. Filthy December weather. As much slush in the streets as splattered on buses and up the sides of the stores along Regent Street. Steam billowing out from overworked central heating boilers, mixing in a fog of sleet, tumbling, tossed and flung among the people down below. They jostle one another in a collective miasma of impatience losing their footing where tens of thousands of others have been slipping and sliding all day, thickening their frustration further.

Tinsel everywhere. Tinsel up Piccadilly, where it flashes and sparkles, reflecting the neon and never-to-be-repeated offers blaring round the Circus; tinsel down Shaftesbury Avenue, where it coils among the cash machines, round the necks of drunken, drawling revellers of a great (and desperate) city.

Tinsel out in the sprawl east of East Ham, tinsel among the heights of Canary Wharf. Tinsel creeping along single-glazed windowsills dripping with mould and condensation, tinsel lying out back-yards, among the fairy lights on the eighteenth floor of a tower block in Hackney; tinsel drooping, discarded, in gutters or peeling off a menu in a kebab shop window.

Tinsel in the eyes of the homeless, wheezing in doorways or queuing up outside the Connection, by St Martin-in-the-Fields; tinsel round cups of free soup handed out from vans down under Waterloo bridge, or draped over cardboard boxes and blankets.

Looking up, their occupants might chance to see commuters on the bridge above – tourists more like – peering out along the misty river, floating, insubstantial amongst the sleet.

Streetlights looming through the fog of sleet and tinsel in many places, much as the sun should but can’t on this shortest of days. Most of the shops and offices lit hours before a pointless sunset, haggard and unwilling to make a difference to the tawdry day.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the tinsel is thickest, and the slushy streets are filthiest near that neon-plated magnet, Leicester Square. And hard by Leicester Square, in the heart of its brightest corner, at the very heart of the sleet and the light and the tinsel, there is a rooftop.

Never can there come sleet so thick, never can there come slush and cold so profound, that it won’t fade into insignificance beside the suited figure, sat on the parapet, one of many, contemplating his end in the sight of remote, hidden heaven above and glittering, beckoning earth below.

The bottle Leon chugs from says Highland Dew Olde Scotch Whisky, bought from an all-night off-license squeezed between a halal butchers and a phone repair shop on Commercial Road. It cost him the last of his cash, the cards he had attempted to pay with – all declined – stuffed back into pockets as he trudged back west. The cardboard box with his desk belongings discarded by a bin at St Paul’s. The “Sorry to See You Go” and “Best of Luck” cards from erstwhile colleagues torn and scattered as he wandered up Fleet Street. The only thing that passes through Leon’s mind, like whispers in another room, are the possible methods. Plenty of traffic – but most of it shuffling along like an ill-tempered conga. Under a tube – but his Oyster card is as empty as the rest. There’s the river – but might be too slow. Something quicker, more certain. The cheap whisky has done the job, and even through the haze something appears with absolute clarity – there, above and behind the dome of the National Gallery. Discarding the overcoat, splattered with mud and filth as he wandered, he headed into Soho.

Now, here he is, up on the parapet, the last of the whisky drunk, shuffling forward. Only then does the figure next to him speak.

“Get a move on, mate”, he says. “I’ve got another one at half past.”

Leon looks at him dimly, takes in the rotund, balding figure, the flashing reindeer antlers, the Santa jumper, the incredibly long multi-coloured tinsel scarf, Bensons in one hand, Carling in the other.

“What..?” Leon mutters.

“Busiest day of the fackin’ season, I get ones what can’t make up their mind.”

The fat man leans towards him, beery breath making Leon gag in spite of himself.

“Can’t do it for you, can I? ‘Gainst the rules,” he belches. “More’s the pity.”

The fat man reaches behind and comes up with a half eaten turkey leg, which he chews, glancing disinterestedly at Leon.

“Who – who are you?” Leon asks.

“Ghost of Christmas Replete,” the fat man says, tossing the turkey leg over the edge, following it with the empty beer can. “Watch out below!”

He shifts his buttocks, farts, and cracks open another can from thin air.

Leon runs a hand through his hair, wipes the sleet from his face.

“A ghost.” He laughs, pulling up the lapels of his jacket against the biting wind.

Despite the same wind fluttering the ends of his tinsel scarf around him, the fat man barely seems to acknowledge the cold.

“Yep. Time was, situations like this you’d have the others – Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, Yet to Come – but, thing is, way things are going there’s no demarcation any more. One Christmas like all the rest, so I got roped in, like. Ghost of Christmas Replete.”

“Replete?” asks Leon, in spite of himself.

The fat man nods, taking a mince pie from his pocket. “Replete. Means full, stuffed, complete, chock-full, brimming, awash, rife.”

From under his jumper he takes a tub of brandy butter and upends it over the mince pie.

“Time was, I never got a look in. These days, what with Christmas starting end of September, the old guard weren’t up to it no more. Needed someone who’s used to the queues, the debt, the desperation, the greed. Me.”

He smiles, and stuffs the pie into his mouth, swallowing in one go. “Lahvly!”

Leon stares at him. “That’s disgusting.”

The fat man shrugs, drawing on his cigarette. “Wouldn’t know, mate. All I am is all I know. All I know is what made me what I am.”

He reaches under his Santa jumper and takes out crumpled ads for payday loans, catalogues for the latest toys and tech on easy terms, for cases of booze for four ninety-nine – yes, only four ninety-nine – and scatters them out along the parapet, where the wind carries them off, down onto the crowds in the square below.

“If… If you are a – what you say you are – why are you here now? Why me?” asks Leon.

“Funny thing,” says the Ghost, finishing his fag. “Even now. Even with everything being so easy, like, you still gets the choice.”

Leon looked at him blankly.

“Hard to believe, I know, what with you losin’ your job, spendin’ all your dosh on your nippers, them your ex only lets you see of a Boxin’ night, buyin’ their love with stuff they don’t need and’ll get bored with in a fortnight – like that Blackberry you bought your D’enelcia last Christmas, hopin’ she’d use it to keep in touch with her old man.”

Leon’s face becomes drawn, set, and looks down over the edge.

“Yeah. You got that,” says the Ghost.

From his jumper he takes a scrap of paper, examining it as he lights up again. As he draws on his cigarette he holds the lighter close to the paper. The flame, pale, guttering, flickers this way and that, towards the paper, towards the Ghost’s face.

Leon, recognizing the paper, rifles through his pockets for where it had been, amongst the useless credit cards. In the delicate flame, the paper, a serviette – ghost of a different kind, of a night with Lucy, of drinks and laughter and talking long into the night – seems to glow in the darkness.

“Lucy. Lucid. Lux. Light,” says the Ghost.

Leon stares past the paper, past the flame, past the sleet and the darkness.

“She lives in Bermondsey. That night we talked. She said how much she wanted to see me again, how good I’d made her feel.”

The Ghost shrugs. “Bermondsey. Wouldn’t catch me going south of the river, not this time of night. Right trek from here. Still…”

The Ghost pauses, and in that pause Leon reaches out for the paper, wraps his hands around it. In the same moment the cigarette lighter blows out, and they are in darkness.

When Leon opens his eyes, wiping the tears away with the back of his hand, he is alone on the parapet, alone but for the discarded lighter, a mobile phone and a single mince pie.

After the call he lingers a while longer, eating the still warm mince pie and looking down over London, down, through the sleet, past the tinsel and the illuminations to the distant lights beyond, so pale in the great darkness.

About the author

David Croser was born in Carlisle, Cumbria, in the wild borderlands between England and Scotland.

He went to university in Nottingham and lived in Cardiff and Bristol before settling in the West Midlands, where he now lives. When not writing Christmas stories, he writes lots of scary stories – about London, and French detectives – and one day will be getting round to writing that novel.

Just for variety he acts a bit, reads comics and likes very long car journeys in the most amazing country in the world.

His first collection of short stories, Rice Pudding Reality, is available on Amazon. He is the creator of Eric Foche, psychic and French detective, whose adventures you can read about in Four Seasons of Foche, also available through Amazon.

He has also contributed short stories to the horror anthologies Terror Tree Book of Horror Stories and Cadavers (both available through KnightWatch Press), and Worlds of the Unknown, Volume 2, available through Spectre Press.

A Country Christmas by AA Abbott

He switched the radio off. “You know I don’t like you singing,” he admonished her.

Ciara took it well. She didn’t sulk, simply started playing a game on her phone. An only child, she’d always been self-sufficient.

Ben risked a sidelong glance at her once the traffic eased. Dark and slight, a wisp of a girl, she was the spitting image of her mother. He sighed as he thought of Lucy, how he’d waved to her as she left with her choir on the coach, a coach that didn’t come back after its death plunge off a French mountainside.

Although the motorway’s tarmac ribbon merely passed over flat fields, he resolved to focus only on the road. It stopped him dwelling on Lucy, his grief, or the Christmas he was about to spend with Michaela.

She was his first love and had become his first wife, albeit briefly. A year into their marriage, she’d informed him she was leaving to go travelling. He’d thought that wound had healed once he’d met Lucy, but now he wasn’t sure. It was uncommonly generous of Michaela to offer him the chance of a family Christmas, however, and he’d accepted for Ciara’s sake.

Ben’s anxiety rose as soon as he saw Hickwinton Hall. It was very different from the poky studio he’d shared with Michaela many years before, or indeed, the tiny terrace he owned now. Of course, he knew Michaela and Simon had one wing only, but who could fail to be impressed by the avenue of larches, the sweeping grounds and the huge old pile itself? Gothic arches, gables and lacy fretwork adorned the creamy stone mansion. He felt insignificant, simply an ant crawling along the avenue in his little Fiat.

Simon, his arm around Michaela’s shoulder, was standing outside the main door. A tall, bearded man, he was an architect who designed cutting edge skyscrapers in the City of London. Like most of that ilk, he’d never dream of living in one. With a pipe in one hand and a golden Labrador at his feet, he looked every inch the country gentleman.

“Welcome,” Simon said, stepping forward to shake Ben’s hand. “Let me take your bags. Michaela will organise drinks.”

A beer was just what Ben needed. Ciara trailed after him, clutching her princess-pink backpack, as he followed Simon inside. The door opened into a wood panelled hallway with a grand marble staircase.

Simon gestured. “Our flat’s upstairs.”

The flat was larger than most houses. After a short stop in the shiny kitchen to thrust drinks in their hands, a beer for Ben and a Coke for Ciara, Michaela offered to take her guests to their rooms. It was the pretext for a tour. Michaela was self-assured, breezy as an estate agent. He was left in no doubt that she was proud of the flat, her recent marriage to Simon and their life in the country. Smiling, she showed off her drawing room, dining room, games den where Simon’s two student sons looked up briefly from a PlayStation, and an upper floor filled with bedrooms and bathrooms. The décor was tasteful; original fireplaces, panelling and cornices gleaming with polish and paint. If his ex had intended to evoke jealousy towards Simon, a hint of resentment that her new squeeze could provide far more for her than Ben, she couldn’t have succeeded better.

“You like pink, don’t you?” Michaela asked Ciara.

Ben saw Ciara’s eyes widen at the rose-strewn wallpaper and crammed bookcase. He softened towards Michaela again. The books were age-appropriate classics, old but of good quality. Michaela had obviously made more of an effort for his small daughter than the sugary Coke had suggested.

“May I stay here and read?” Ciara asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Ben said. The two lads were hardly going to bother amusing a small child. He allowed himself to be whisked back to the drawing room for more beers with Simon. It didn’t take long to unwind, his antipathy vanishing, as Simon chatted about sport. Michaela popped in with a tray of sandwiches, but otherwise busied herself in the kitchen. It transpired that she had carefully mapped out activities for the next two days. They would walk to the local church that afternoon for carols, then return to a drinks party Michaela was hosting for neighbours. On Christmas Day, they would open presents and enjoy a traditional lunch. The next morning, Boxing Day, Ben and Ciara would return home.

The ground was still crunchy with frost as the two families walked to church in the last of Christmas Eve’s sunlight. Ciara seemed cheerful, if quiet, looking solemnly at the white Christmas roses Michaela pointed out. The only sour notes came from the two gangling students. They evidently weren’t attending of their own free will. Dawdling behind their father, they talked of tropes and memes within video games, a discussion Ben too might have enjoyed in his carefree youth. Nostalgia nagged at him until Ciara placed her hand in his.

The spire of St Stephen’s Church was visible in the distance, its slates reflecting the sun’s red rays. The rest of the mellow stone edifice came into view once they left the grounds of Hickwinton Hall.

A group of carollers already stood outside, the strains of Good King Wenceslas floating through the chilly air.

Ciara’s eyes shone. “Come on, Emily,” she said, pulling away from her father and skipping towards the singers.

“Emily?” Ben asked Michaela, puzzled. “Since when did you change your name?”

“Isn’t Emily her imaginary friend?” Michaela asked. “She’s been talking to me about nothing else.”

Mildly alarmed, Ben was about to express concern when a song sheet was handed to him.

“Come on,” Simon whispered, “It’s men only on the next verse.”

When the children joined in again, an exceptionally pure voice trilled from Ciara’s direction.

“Beautiful,” Michaela said, nudging Ben in the ribs.

The remainder of the day was unremarkable. They were ushered inside the church shortly after their arrival. The service, heavy on carols and light on religion, passed swiftly. Although he knew no one, the evening drinks were pleasant enough, alcohol blurring the edges and causing Ben to forget the name of every neighbour to whom he was introduced. Ciara stayed in her room, venturing out only to ask if there would be a mince pie for Father Christmas. On being reassured, she put herself to bed.

Christmas morning began with a heavier frost, much appreciated by the Labrador, Taffy. After a bracing walk through the grounds, Michaela announced communal opening of presents. There was even a bottle of port for Ben. That was unexpected, and rather decent of Michaela. Ben’s finances were so stretched, they’d agreed he would bring a gift only for Ciara.

“Where’s Emily’s present?” Ciara asked anxiously.

“I expect Santa left it in her stocking,” Michaela replied, to Ben’s relief.

“No.” Ciara shook her head. “I’ll show you.”

Ben shrugged. At least he might find out more about his daughter’s imaginary friend. He let her lead him to her room.

“Look,” she said, pushing the tall bookcase with all her might.

The bookshelves swivelled round, revealing a further chamber beyond.

“It’s Emily’s room,” Ciara said.

There was little to see: bare floorboards, a wooden chair, and a bed. The covers might be white below the thick dust. An old rag doll in a lacy crinoline, grey with age, sat in the chair. Ben couldn’t lose the feeling that its button eyes were fixed on him. Despite the dust, a faint scent of roses hung in the air.

“You see?” Ciara said triumphantly. “No presents for Emily!”

“Let’s invite Emily to lunch with us,” Ben suggested. He might as well make the best of a bad job. Michaela was pragmatic; she was bound to agree.

“Emily would like that,” Ciara said, “although she only eats mince pies.”

Ben recalled the mince pie left out for Father Christmas. That had disappeared by morning. He’d assumed the dog had eaten it. It was a more likely explanation than a figment of his child’s imagination, conjured from an empty room. In any event, the Labrador gave Ciara a wide berth once a place at the table was laid next to her for Emily.

When everyone was seated, Simon served smoked salmon mousse and flutes of champagne. A can of lemonade was produced for Ciara.

“Merry Christmas!” Simon said, raising his glass. Inevitably, after the first toast, he led another for absent friends.

Michaela hugged Ben. “We know it’s hard for you,” she said. “Thanks for spending the day with us.”

Ciara addressed the empty chair. “My mummy isn’t here,” she said. She sounded quite matter of fact. “But my daddy is.” Pointing to Ben, she beamed with pride.

Michaela had done everything for her menfolk on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, they rallied round to cook for her. Nearly everything except the turkey came out of a packet, Ben noted, but it was none the worse for that. Champagne, red wine and port were liberally splashed into his glass. Emily’s mince pie disappeared, as did the rosy Turkish delight Ciara had chosen for her before leaving to play alone. Again, Ben hadn’t seen who ate it. He dismissed the twinge of unease that flitted into his mind.

Despite the huge amount of alcohol he’d consumed, Ben felt sober enough to drive the next morning. All things considered, the stay at Michaela’s hadn’t been especially traumatic. It had been uplifting for Ciara to enjoy a family Christmas again. He almost broke into a tune as he drove home.

Their cat came running to greet them at the sound of the car engine, halting as Ciara emerged from the ageing vehicle. The smell of the dog, Taffy, must be clinging to her still, although evidently not to her father. The animal followed Ben into their small house as he unlocked the front door and carried their suitcases inside.

Ciara’s eyes sparkled. The trip really had done her good. He realised how withdrawn they’d both become since Lucy’s death.

“Can I play in my room, Dad?”

“Of course.”

Clutching her backpack, Ciara ran to the top of the stairs, humming. A short while later, Ben heard that gorgeous pure voice again. He really must encourage her to sing after all, perhaps even join a choir. There was no reason for lightning to strike twice.

He went to her room to tell her. There was just a hint, the faintest whiff of roses, at the threshold. Her singing had stopped now, and his daughter lay on her bed, sleeping. She was obviously exhausted. Nevertheless, as she breathed gently, her sweet face wore the most blissful smile.

The old rag doll was lying in her arms. It was merely a trick of the light, Ben was sure, that its button eyes appeared to wink at him.

About the author

AA Abbott (also known as Helen) chose her pen name in a shameless attempt to slot into the first space on your bookshelf. She writes fast-paced suspense thrillers set in London and Birmingham. “This book has it all” and “the twists and turns of the tale keep the pages turning over”, according to readers of her latest, The Vodka Trail.

Earlier books include The Bride’s Trail, After The Interview, and Up In Smoke. Find out more about AA Abbott, read her blog and request a free e-book of her short stories athttp://aaabbott.co.uk/.

You can also find AA Abbott on Facebook, Twitter as @AAAbbottStories, and LinkedIn.

A Partridge in a Tree by Simon Fairbanks

Nicholas Partridge dreaded the morning after New Year’s Day because it was when his dad would leave him for another year. He wouldn’t see him until the following Christmas Day.

Nicholas woke early and caught his dad leaving by the snowy garden path.

“Dad!”

“Nicholas!” his dad turned. “Go back inside, you’ll catch a cold.”

“Please, Dad, stay a little longer. You’ve only been here a week.”

“You know I can’t, son. I have to get back to work.”

“But I won’t see you for another year!”

His dad crouched down in front of him and took his hand. “I know it seems unfair but my work is very important. People look up to me.”

“Can’t you visit?”

“It’s a long way to come for a visit and I won’t have time.”

“But we had so much fun this week.”

“So did I Nicholas. It was my favourite week of the year, it always is! I don’t enjoy leaving but I have to.”

“I’ll miss you,” said Nicholas, sniffing.

“I’ll miss you too,” said his dad. “Be good for your mum and Dennis. I’ll be back before you know it.”

He hoisted his big bag over his shoulder and headed down the path to his ride.

“See you next year, Nicholas.”

He waved goodbye to his father but he was determined not to wait another year before seeing him again.

Nicholas Partridge had a plan.

Workman Dave had worked for Birmingham City Council all his life and each year his first task after New Year was to chop down the enormous Christmas tree in Victoria Square.

The tree was a fifty-foot spruce donated by Norway and it would take an entire night of sawing to cut through its vast trunk. His bosses made him work through the night so his chainsaw wouldn’t disturb the shoppers scurrying around in the January sales.

Besides, nobody wanted to see the tree fall down. For the people of Birmingham, the tree embodied the spirit of Christmas. Once the tree was gone, Christmas was gone.

Workman Dave thought chopping down the tree was a terrible responsibility and they made him do it every year. He felt like the Grinch.

With a heavy heart, he reached for the cord on his chainsaw — Shuffle shuffle — and froze.

Workman Dave heard movement inside the tree. He suddenly became very aware that he was working alone in the middle of the night. Victoria Square was deserted except for him and the giant looming tree about to be executed. There was no one else around to hear him scream if something jumped out of the branches.

Shuffle shuffle.

More movement. Did the tree know it was about to be cut down? Was it coming alive? Or was it an otherworldly visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Now?

“H-h-hello?” he said. “Be warned, I have a chainsaw.”

Even as he said it, he realised his chainsaw wouldn’t be much use against a ghost.

The shuffling movement seemed to be climbing higher and higher, shaking off snowflakes in its wake. It looked like a belch was bubbling up through the tree’s insides.

And then something popped out at the top of the tree. Workman Dave squinted up through the falling snow and saw the head of a young boy.

“Who goes there?” he called through cupped hands.

“My name is Nicholas Partridge,” the boy shouted. “And I’m not coming down until my dad fetches me.”

Workman Dave scratched his head. “But I’m supposed to cut down this tree. Christmas is over.”

“Not any more,” said Nicholas. “Christmas is back on!”

Workman Dave lowered his chainsaw. He could hardly cut down the tree with a child sitting at the top. For the first time in forever, he was spared the horrible duty of putting an end to the festive holidays. He could head home to a warm fire and a cup of cocoa. Workman Dave was feeling better already.

“Well in that case,” he shouted back. “Merry Christmas!”

After he waved goodnight to the workman below, Nicholas settled down for his first night in the Christmas tree.

He picked a spot at the top of the tree, so he could shelter under the skirt of the large decorative fairy which sat there. Nicholas gathered a giant wad of tinsel for his bedding, whilst one of the fairy lights would serve as his nightlight. There was a big tree decoration shaped like a snowflake nearby which was ideal for hanging up his clothes and rucksack.

Nicholas had packed a woolly Christmas jumper knitted by his mum, his new pair of binoculars given to him by Dennis, a lunchbox full of leftover turkey and smelly cheese, the tangerine from his stocking, a thermos flask of hot chocolate, lots of socks and his favourite book.

He had also packed sunglasses and shorts.

Nicholas planned to be here for a while.

“Linda, why is the Christmas tree still standing?”

Councillor Cromwell was staring out of his office window, which overlooked a snowy Victoria Square. His personal assistant Linda, appeared at the door.

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“There is a boy living at the top of the tree.”

“What?” said Cromwell. “How do you know that?”

“Everyone knows,” said Linda. “Workman Dave told his boss, who told his boss, who told her boss, who told his assistant to send an all staff email.”

“But Christmas is over!” shouted Cromwell. “That tree needs to come down!”

Cromwell shared the same loathing of Christmas as his ancestor. He thought the festive season was a depraved holiday, saturated by noise and glitter and commercial tat. It was just an excuse to eat too much and drink too much and spend too much and watch too much television.

“Linda, phone the police and fire services,” ordered Cromwell. “Tell them to meet me in Victoria Square.”

“Yes, Mr Cromwell,” sighed Linda, who had been looking forward to a quiet start to the year.

“And dust off my megaphone!”

Cromwell stood to attention in front of the fireplace, above which hung a portrait of his stern-faced, Christmas-hating ancestor, dressed in his Roundhead military armour.

“I won’t let you down. Christmas is finished.”

By lunchtime, the tree was surrounded by the flashing blue lights of the West Midlands police and the West Midlands fire services, not to mention the cameras of every newspaper and student newspaper in the city. Word travels fast in Birmingham.

Cromwell was not an authority on police matters, or child safety, or tree surgery, but he was an authority on cancelling Christmas. His heritage was widely known. Plus, Cromwell had a megaphone and it made him look important. He scowled up at the tree. The boy looked down and waved – obnoxious brat.

“Chief Inspector Tubbs!” he yelled.

“Yes, sir,” said the inspector.

“Who is that boy?”

“His name is Nicholas Partridge.”

“And why is Nicholas Partridge sitting at the top of our tree?”

“We can’t forcibly remove him, sir,” said Tubbs. “He’s not breaking any laws.”

“What about trespassing?”

“This is Victoria Square. It’s a public area.”

“What about trespassing in the tree? That boy is a squatter!”

“We don’t own the tree, sir. It was a gift to the people of Birmingham from the people of Norway.”

“So?”

“The boy is one of the people of Birmingham. Technically, the tree partly belongs to him.”

“Well, then technically the tree partly belongs to me as well and I want it chopped down.”

“Ah,” said Tubbs. “Now that would be illegal, sir. You would knowingly endanger the life of that young boy.”

“Nonsense! He would soon start climbing down once the tree starts shaking.”

“We don’t know that, sir. He seems pretty set on staying. He has a thermos.”

“Good for him,” said Cromwell. “Now give me that axe.” He clicked at Captain Cole, the highest ranking fireman, who stood beside Chief Inspector Tubbs.

“Sorry, sir,” said Cole. “You are not qualified to swing this axe.”

“It’s an axe, man! How hard can it be?”

“Sorry, sir, it’s a health and safety thing. I had to go on a training course before they even let me pick it up.”

Cromwell growled. “Can’t you at least point your hose at the little troublemaker and give him a soaking?”

Cole shook his head. “The blast might knock him out of the tree. If not, getting drenched with cold water in this freezing weather might give the boy hypothermia.”

“Either way, it is attempted murder,” said Tubbs.

“Poppycock!” spat Cromwell, stamping his foot. But the crowds of journalists were circling and there is nothing more terrifying for an elected representative than the threat of their face in the paper.

“Right, enough of this. Boy!” he shouted through his megaphone. “Yes, you in the tree. Get down here. No more silliness!”

“I can’t, sorry mister,” the boy shouted back.

“We’ll see about that. What are your demands?”

“I want to see my dad.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“His parents arrived earlier today, sir,” said Tubbs.

“Well then, bring them here!”

A woman and a man were ushered to the front of the crowds by police offers.

“Look,” Cromwell shouted upwards. “Your dad is here. Now get down!”

The boy shook his head. “No, that’s Dennis.”

“I’m Dennis,” said Dennis, helpfully.

“Dennis?” said Cromwell.

“Dennis is Nicholas’s step-father,” explained Mrs Partridge. “Nicholas’s birth father is working overseas.’

“Well, tell him to come home. This is important!”

“He works in a very remote region,” she said. “He is only contactable by mail.”

“Write him a letter then! There is a post office right there. Here, you can borrow my pen.”

“I wrote to him this morning.”

“You did? Very good.”

“But you should know, he gets a lot of letters. It might be some time before he reads it.”

“Then you talk some sense into your son.”

Cromwell thrust the megaphone into her hands. She accepted it casually and cleared her throat.

“Nicholas, honey, are you okay up there?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Did you pack your toothbrush?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Are you eating enough fruit?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Are you warm enough?”

“Yes, Mum,” said Nicholas, standing up and gesturing with his arms. “I’m wearing that jumper you knitted.”

A lot of camera bulbs flashed and Mrs Partridge turned to her husband. “Dennis, my knitting is going to be in the paper!”

Dennis gave her a thumbs-up. Cromwell rubbed his face in frustration.

“Okay, honey,” Mrs Partridge called up to her son. “Stay safe and shout if you need anything.”

“Thanks Mum,” said Nicholas with a smile.

“I’ll have your teachers bring your homework.”

“Thanks Mum,” he repeated with much less enthusiasm.

“Is that it?” Cromwell said to Mrs Partridge. “You’re not going to tell him off?”

“We believe in child-led decision-making,” said Mrs Partridge, taking her husband’s arm. “Nicholas has made up his mind, so we will support him. It looks like the people of Birmingham will support him too.”

Sure enough, a large crowd was gathering and they were very excited.

“The tree is still standing!”

“It’s a Christmas miracle!”

“I’m coming back with my reindeer onesie!”

And then it started. A gentle bit of singing from one or two people, which grew louder and louder, until all of Victoria Square were bellowing out the carol.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells…”

Cromwell gritted his teeth and snatched the megaphone back from Mrs Partridge.

“Get down here this instant!” he yelled, but the singalong was drowning out his cries. “This isn’t over Partridge!”

Over the next week, half of Birmingham travelled to Victoria Square to see the Partridge in the tree. It became customary for people to arrive in a Christmas jumper to show their allegiance to the festive cause. It was also expected that each pilgrim be ready to sing a raucous rendition of Christmas carols, whether they be about jingling bells or little donkeys or silent nights.

Nicholas attracted tourists from across the country and Mayor Rosey thought it would be rude not to allow those tourists an opportunity to spend their cash.

It was not long before stalls started popping up selling mulled wine and German bratwurst and sugar-coated almonds and roasted chestnuts and pungent garlic bread. Eventually, Mayor Rosey decided to haul out the entire Christmas market from the warehouse where it was stored. Every vendor, fairground ride, and animatronic reindeer was reinstated. The ice rink too.

“You stay up there as long as you like,” cheered the rotund Mayor, waving a fistful of cash. Cromwell folded his arms and watched his boss with utter disdain.

With the snow falling throughout January, it was like Christmas had never left.

Nicholas’s food ran out after just a few days but he had no shortage of deliveries. Little children were putting their Christmas presents to good use, such as remote-controlled helicopters fresh out of Santa’s sack, and flew food packages up to the top of the Christmas tree. Pigeon fanciers trained the pigeons residing in Pigeon Park to deliver messages of support.

His step-dad Dennis was especially helpful, having bought himself a drone with his Christmas vouchers. The drone delivered food, clothes and the homework which his mum had promised. Nicholas kept the English homework but an unexpected breeze caused him to drop the maths homework, which was a terrible shame.

Even without the homework, he could never be bored. Every time he glanced down into Victoria Square, he would see people waving at him, wishing him a Merry Christmas, or singing carols. There were twinkling lights and brass bands and the spinning carousel. He never once felt lonely.

There were only two things that bothered young Nicholas Partridge.

Firstly, the tree itself was starting to wilt. It was a real tree and it was dying all the time. More and more pine needles fell off each day. Even the branch where he slept felt less sturdy every time he went to sleep.

His second concern was his dad, who had still not arrived. He looked out at the stars each night before going to bed. “Come on, Dad. Where are you?”

But Nicholas should have had a third concern, which was Councillor Cromwell. The reinstatement of Christmas was too much for him to bear. Too much singing, too much good will, all that dashing through the snow and wearing garish Christmas jumpers. It was sending him mad: sparkling, twinkling, chiming, everywhere!

Cromwell had hoped it would stop when winter ended and the snow finally ceased to fall. But Mayor Rosey did not want the lucrative tourism to end, so he installed a series of snow machines to keep the Christmas vibe going.

He thought it would definitely be over by Valentine’s Day. Surely the arrival of another holiday would edge out the old? Yet, the two holidays merged into one. Valentine’s Day was celebrated around the Christmas tree with much smooching under the mistletoe.

And that was just the beginning. On International Women’s Day, there was a parade of people paying tribute to Mrs Claus in fancy dress. On St Patrick’s Day, the stalls started selling mulled Guinness. At Easter, they sold tankards of eggnog.

Then came the April showers. Cromwell watched eagerly from his office window as the rain descended.

“Let’s see how long you last now,” he cackled, rubbing his hands together.

Three months later.

Cromwell sat seething in his office, staring out at the Christmas tree which still stood proudly over Victoria Square. It was mocking him. The Partridge boy had made Cromwell into a laughing stock.

Nicholas had survived the April showers, sheltering under the skirts of the angel at the top of the tree. Now it was July. Christmas T-shirts had replaced Christmas jumpers, sandals had replaced wellies and people clinked glasses of chilled mulled drinks. Christmas was evolving with the seasons and looked set to stay all summer.

Cromwell could not escape the festivities. The lights and the noise poured in through his office window. He slumped in his chair, rubbing his temples. That tree had to come down.

There was a tap at his office door. It was his personal assistant Linda.

“Only me, sir. I thought you might like a cup of tea.”

“Ah, thank you Linda.”

Cromwell took a sip then spat it out.

“Blurgh! It’s mulled!”

“Of course,” she said. “Everything is mulled now.”

“Out!”

Linda scurried out, wondering why she bothered, and Cromwell was left stewing in his anger once again.

“They’re laughing at you,” said a voice.

Cromwell turned and realised it was the painting of his ancestor, Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, above the fireplace. He was only mildly surprised that his deceased relative was talking to him.

“I know,” he said. “But what can I do?”

“Take matters into your own hands,” said the painting. “The Christmas spirit has infected our city. It must be wrapped up, sent back up the chimney, stuffed back in the stocking and told that the inn is full.”

“Yes it should,” said Cromwell, standing to attention. “Christmas should be outlawed.”

“You must make new laws,” said the painting. “It should be illegal to brew and distribute mulled substances. Eggnog should be reclassified as a Class A drug.”

Cromwell nodded enthusiastically.

“And you must regulate clothing. Red should never be combined with green or white. Christmas jumpers should be banned altogether.”

“Yes, they will be,” said Cromwell.

“Set up speed cameras around the city,” ordered the painting. “Anyone caught dashing through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh or otherwise, must be arrested.”

“Yes, yes,” said Cromwell, excitedly. “We will arrest anyone found kissing within a three-mile radius of mistletoe and charge anyone giving money to charity out of sheer goodwill. We will spot-check donations to make sure they were given begrudgingly.”

“Now you’re getting it,” said the painting. “What else?”

“We will ban Christmas carols and arrest anyone loitering with seasonal intent,” said Cromwell, starting to enjoy himself. “We will burn copies of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Both are atrocious festive propaganda. We will print improved editions with new endings, wherein the Grinch successfully steals Christmas and Scrooge prosecutes the three ghosts for breaking and entering!”

“Yes, Cromwell! What else?”

“We will shoot any reindeers gathered in groups of eight and execute any partridges found nesting in a pear tree.”

“What about partridges in a Christmas tree?” said the painting with a sneer.

“Yes,” said Cromwell darkly. “I will execute any Partridge in a Christmas tree too.”

“The boy has to go. The tree has to go.”

“They have to go,” agreed Cromwell.

“That tree is a rotting turkey carcass stinking up our fair city. And do you know what time it is?”

Cromwell cracked his knuckles. “It is time to throw out the leftovers.”

“Exactly! Because this is not Lapland,” said the painting. “This is not the North Pole.”

“This is Birmingham!” shouted Cromwell.

Cromwell and Cromwell laughed manically together until there was a faint knock at the door. Linda peeped her head into the room and Cromwell snapped out of his trance.

“Who are you talking to sir?” said Linda.

“Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell,” he said. “Did I ever tell you he was my great-great-great-times-twelve grandfather?”

“Yes, a few times, sir.”

“He told me what I should do.”

“I’m not sure you should listen to Oliver Cromwell, sir.”

“Why?” snapped Cromwell. “Because he is a regicidal dictator?”

“No,” said Linda slowly. “Because he is a painting.”

Cromwell frowned. “Look Linda, if you want to be useful, get me Workman Dave on the phone.”

“Yes, sir,” said Linda, relieved for an excuse to leave. “Er, may I ask why?”

“I need to borrow his chainsaw.”

Nicholas had been in T-shirt and shorts all day, enjoying the July weather, but he was back in his Christmas jumper now that the sun had gone down. The midsummer nights were as chilly as his first few nights in the tree, back when there was still real snow on the ground.

It was midnight, so Victoria Square had emptied for another day. It gave him time to do his usual night-time routine of searching the sky for any sign of his dad. It had been seven months and Nicholas had expected his dad to visit by now.

The Christmas tree had died long ago and the branches were darkening and wilting all around him. The pine needles would be gone before the month was finished and then Nicholas would have no shelter at all.

Even worse, that crazy man with the megaphone was getting crazier all the time. Looking through his binoculars, Nicholas had seen him pacing up and down in his office most days. He was worried the man might snap and set the tree on fire.

“Come on, Dad,” he said, scanning the night sky. “You must have read Mum’s letter by now.”

Nicholas paused. There were eight shadows on top of Town Hall, which stood opposite the tree. Each had sharp horns.

“What the —?”

The branches behind him rustled. Nicholas was not alone in the tree.

“Who’s there?”

A figure stepped out wearing a red-and-white suit with shiny brass buttons, big black boots and a matching red-and-white hat. His face was round and jolly and boasted a bushy white beard.

“Hello Nicholas!”

“Dad!”

Councillor Cromwell arrived at the foot of the Christmas tree, wielding Workman Dave’s chainsaw. The tree was going to topple with or without the Partridge boy inside. That was up to him and how fast he could climb down. Either way, it would be sawdust by morning.

“Christmas is cancelled!” he shouted.

Cromwell pulled the cord on the chainsaw and it came alive in his hand. He shrieked with laughter and drove the metal into the tree trunk.

“What took you so long?” said Nicholas, giving his dad a big hug.

“I came as soon as I found out. Your mum’s letter was buried under a pile of letters from children all over the world. I’m Santa Claus. I get a lot of mail.”

“Well, you’re here now and that’s what matters.”

“Nicholas,” said Santa, bowing his head. “I’m afraid I cannot stay.”

“What?” Nicholas pulled away from his dad. “Why not?”

“You know why, son. I have to get back to the North Pole. We still have a lot of presents to make before Christmas Eve. There is only five months to go before the big night.”

“Can’t the elves do that?”

“Yes, but someone has to watch over the elves and tell them what to make.”

“Just leave them instructions.”

“There are duties they cannot help with. I read the letters myself, I prepare the naughty and nice lists, I have to plan my route across the globe —”

“Fine!” shouted Nicholas. “But if you go back to the North Pole then I’m staying in this tree.”

“Nicholas, you can’t,” said Santa. “It is wonderful that you have spread Christmas cheer throughout the year but living in this tree is dangerous. You have to come down.”

“Not unless you stay.”

“But millions and millions of children depend on me.”

“But those aren’t your children!” said Nicholas, beginning to cry. “They might need you to be Father Christmas but I just need you to be a father. I know it’s selfish but I don’t want to share my dad with every child on the planet. Those children have their own fathers who spend time with them and tuck them in at night and embarrass them when dropping them off at school. I deserve to see my dad more than once a year. I love Mum and Dennis but you’re my dad. You’re supposed to be there for me.”

“Nicholas —”

“I’m not finished!”

“No, really, Nicholas, we need to get out of this tree.”

“So you can get back to your precious workshop?”

“No, because that sounds like a chainsaw.”

Nicholas listened. There was a faint buzzing noise down below. He poked his head out the tree and looked down through his binoculars. His dad was right. The crazy councillor man was cutting through the trunk.

The tree suddenly lurched.

“Dad!” cried Nicholas.

“Son, give me your hand. We are leaving right now. I’m parked on top of Town Hall.”

“But how did you get over here?”

Santa whistled. A red glow appeared amidst the branches and Nicholas was worried that the councillor had set fire to the tree. Instead, a reindeer stepped out with a glowing red nose.

“Rudolph!”

The tree lurched again.

“Come on, Nicholas,” said Santa, lifting him up onto Rudolph’s back before jumping on himself. “Fly Rudolph!”

Rudolph did not need telling twice. The tree started to fall and Rudolph leapt into the sky.

“Ho, ho, ho, hold on!”

Cromwell pulled out the chainsaw and admired his handiwork. The tree started to fall.

“Victory!”

However, his victory was short-lived. Cromwell was not as experienced as Workman Dave and he had cut the tree from the wrong angle. The Christmas tree was now falling in his direction.

“No, no, no!”

Cromwell ran as fast as he could but he slipped on a pile of fake snow and fell on his back. He watched as the tree came soaring down towards him. It landed on top of Cromwell with a deafening crash and his last thought was:

“Bah, humbug.”

Rudolph landed softly on the roof of Town Hall beside the other eight reindeer and the sleigh. Nicholas and his dad climbed off Rudolph’s back and caught their breath.

“Are you okay, son?”

“Not really,” said Nicholas. He looked sadly at the fallen tree which had been his home for the past seven months. “You got what you wanted. I’m out of the tree. You can go back to the North Pole now.”

“No,” said Santa, shaking his head. “You’re right. I’m your dad and I should be here for you. You put yourself in danger because you wanted to see me. If I hadn’t shown up then you would have been in that tree when it fell. I clearly need to show up more often.”

Nicholas watched as his dad pulled a long scroll of paper and a quill from his pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“I have been a rubbish dad,” he said. “I’m adding myself to the naughty list.”

Nicholas chuckled. “So you’re really staying?”

“Yes,” said Santa. “We’ll make it work. I’ll visit Birmingham, you can visit the North Pole. We’ll spend more time together, I promise.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Nicholas ran forward and gave his dad a big hug. It may have taken seven months of non-stop Christmas but Santa finally gave Nicholas the present that he wanted.

The next morning was very chaotic in Victoria Square.

The tree had crushed several stalls and statues, including the fountain itself, so Mayor Rosey had to part with his newfound tourist money to pay for the repairs. He sobbed as he handed over the money. Linda was reassigned to help the Mayor keep track of the many bills.

Meanwhile, Workman Dave was helping Captain Cole and the West Midlands fire service hack up the fallen tree. Around mid-morning, they pulled Councillor Cromwell out of the wreckage. Workman Dave was more relieved to be reunited with his trusty chainsaw than the crazy councillor.

“Is Christmas over?” asked Cromwell, delirious.

“Yes,” said Chief Inspector Tubbs, arriving on the scene. “Today is Boxing Day and we have a special box reserved just for you.”

The inspector slapped handcuffs on the councillor and escorted him to a local gaol cell.

Nicholas Partridge and his dad landed the sleigh at his mum’s house, far from the chaos of Victoria Square.

Nicholas ran inside to tell his mum and Dennis that he was alive and well, whilst Santa waited patiently outside with the reindeer.

When Nicholas emerged, Santa said: “Well, son, I’m all yours. What do you want to do? I can pull a few favours with Jack Frost to bring the snow back. We could build a snowman and have a snowball fight and go sledging. Or we could just eat loads and loads of candy. My elves have been working on some delicious new recipes. Or we could take the sleigh for a ride. These fellas will fly you anywhere you want. We could see the world. Or, if you prefer, I have a whole sack stuffed with toy prototypes that we could play with —”

“No,” said Nicholas. “Remember, I don’t need you to be Father Christmas, I just need you to be a father.”

His dad looked confused. “No candy?”

Nicholas laughed. “I want you to make me eat my greens and take me shopping for school shoes and teach me how to kick a ball and tell me off for not washing my hands before dinner.”

“Okay then,” said Santa, pulling out another scroll of paper.

“What are you doing?” laughed Nicholas.

“That is a lot to remember. I need to start a new list.”

“Come on, Dad,” said Nicholas, taking his hand.

“So what’s the plan for today?”

“You can help me with my schoolwork. I have seven months of maths homework to catch up on.”

About the author

Simon's first novel, The Sheriff, was released in March 2014. The following month, it was chosen to participate in the One Big Book Launch. The next book in the series, The Curse of Besti Bori, was released in October 2015. His debut short story collection, Breadcrumbs, contains twenty-one short stories, including a new adventure starring the characters of The Sheriff. Simon was one of ten writers selected for the Ten To One project. Their collaborative efforts resulted in the novel Circ. Simon studied MA English Literature at the University of Birmingham and has been a member of the Birmingham Writers’ Group since 2011.

You can read about his writing projects at www.simonfairbanks.com and his Twitter profile is @simon_fairbanks.

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Simon-Fairbanks/e/B00IW8PPAW

The Owl & The Turkey by Debbie Young

Foreword

When my daughter was eight years old, she announced just before Christmas that she was turning vegetarian. Next morning, as I pottered around the kitchen debating whether to bother cooking a traditional Christmas dinner when there were now only two carnivores in the house, I caught a snippet of news on the radio that seemed to have immediate relevance to my dilemma. According to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “The problem is that Turkey does not have its own defence missile system.”

It was a few moments before I realised that this wasn’t a “silly season” story about festive catering options, but a serious report about conflict in the Middle East. But it was too late to prevent the following story unfolding in my imagination.

The Owl & The Turkey

or

The Real Reason Why We Eat Turkey at Christmas

It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and the newly-crowned Queen was not looking forward to the next day’s festive banquet. Not roast boar again! She drummed her fingers impatiently on the wooden embroidery hoop that lay neglected on her lap.

For generations, roast wild boar had been the focal point of the royal court’s traditional Christmas feast. But the new Queen’s sensitive young palate was bored of roast boar. And of deer and elk and moose, for that matter. She was not impressed by any of those cumbersome creatures that the huntsmen insisted on dragging in for her dinner. Why had her late father, the King, like all men, always thought that the biggest catch was the best?

Well, she was Queen now, and if she wanted a more elegant centre-piece for the royal festive table, then a more elegant one she would have. She called to the servant that stood to attention by the door, always poised to rush off on any errand that took her fancy.

“Thomas, please summon the royal huntsmen,” she commanded. “And be quick about it. It will be dark in a couple of hours, and I need to dispatch them without delay.”

While awaiting the huntsmen’s arrival, she distractedly added a few stem stitches to her embroidery. The fine golden thread rasped against her palm as she pulled the fine bone needle through the taut linen.

Suddenly there was a commotion at the door. A dozen huntsmen, dressed for action with knives in their belts and crossbows slung over their shoulders, were jostling against each other on the threshold. Each wanted to be the first to present himself to the Queen. She disregarded their open rivalry; she did not care for such obvious showing off.

“My huntsmen, I command you to go out into the forest straight away, and in the remains of the daylight catch something different for tomorrow’s Christmas feast,” she instructed them. “Something small that can be baked in the bread oven. Nothing huge that needs roasting for hours on a spit, looking for all the world like it’s being tortured. If I want to watch torture, I’ll do so in the dungeons, not the dining hall. I want faster food. Bring me a lighter, more compact creature than the usual wild boar – something that may be served up straight from the kitchen to the table. It has to look pretty, too.”

The huntsmen exchanged anxious glances. It was an unusual request, but they dare not refuse a royal commission. On this late December afternoon, they’d have to work fast if they were to accomplish their mission before dark.

“I’ll give ten guineas to the huntsman who provides the best creature,” she added, rather hoping the victor would be young and handsome.

The huntsmen perked up at this offer and immediately set off from the royal castle. Some headed for the hills, others down to the sea, but the two youngest and best-looking, Piers and Giles, decided to stay closer to the castle.

Off they stalked into the thick, dark woodland that lay immediately beyond the moated walls. Ignoring the tell-tale tracks of big game on the ground before them, they headed purposefully towards the lake where they knew smaller animals went to drink. As they entered the lakeside clearing, they heard the sound of strong wings beating above their heads.

“Birds! Of course, we should stalk birds!” cried Piers, watching a plump grey goose rising into the steely sky where no sun shone. “Light to carry, quick to cook, and unspeakably pretty to serve, especially if you retain some fancy feathers for decoration.”

From the top of a nearby elm, a rook with an inflated idea of its own good looks immediately took flight, loudly cawing its disapproval of their scheme.

“Plenty of them around, too,” said Giles, wondering how much flesh there would be on a rook. “It’s just a question of catching them.”

Their hunter’s instinct bade them to fall silent as they trod softly onward along the path that led to the lake. As they approached the water’s edge, they could already see five swans idly drifting by, ignorant of the huntsmen’s intentions.

“So shall we go for a swan, then?” whispered Piers. “You don’t get birds more elegant than swans. They’re beautiful.”

Giles narrowed his eyes against a shaft of winter sunshine that was just breaking through the clouds. He stared thoughtfully at the plumpest swan.

“Imagine it dead, though. That long, elegant neck would flop about like a string of sausages. Not exactly pretty on the plate.”

“Ducks, then,” said Piers, turning his gaze to a newly-landed mallard. The glossy bird was waddling contentedly along the shoreline, teal flashes glinting on its folded wings, droplets of water rolling proverbially off its back. “A duck’s just a swan on a smaller scale, but without that overstated neck.”

He took a few cautious steps towards the mallard, but was stopped in his tracks by a loud squelch. Looking down to the source of the disgusting sound, he realised his nut-brown calfskin boot was now caked in dark green sludge.

“Ugh! Duck droppings! Disgusting! I’m not carrying one of those back to the palace. It would wreck my tights.”

The duck emitted a mocking quack and relaunched itself onto the lake before its pursuers could change their minds. Forlorn, the two huntsmen sat down on a fallen tree trunk to reconsider. As they stared hopelessly at the lake, the water stirred gently beneath the chill December breeze. A few skeletal leaves skittered around their feet.

“If swans and ducks won’t do, the only alternative out there is geese, and surely they’re the worst of both worlds – the unwieldy long neck of a swan, but the grubby looking feathers of a duck,” said Giles, watching the departing mallard carve a v-shaped trail across the lake’s silvery surface. “I’m not sure this was the best place to come after all.”

“Bigger poo, too, from a goose,” agreed Piers. “So how about a peacock? You can’t say a peacock wouldn’t look pretty on a plate.”

“Oh yes, I can!” retorted Giles. “It’s all very well when they’re wandering about the palace gardens, preening themselves and displaying their tail feathers, but imagine the difference when they’re roasted. Their fancy tails would lie flat, trailing off the edge of the platter not standing up like a fan, and you’d barely see their fancy colours. Weird little heads they’ve got, too. Not nice. Not a pretty sight at all.”

Slouching forward, Piers passed his hand across his face as if to clear his thoughts. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, inspired.

“What’s the Queen’s favourite colour?” he asked. “Maybe there’s a clue in that. Something really bright and cheerful would be festive. Red? Or blue or yellow?”

A small blue tit that had been watching them from its perch on a low-hanging branch didn’t wait around to hear the answer, and a nearby red squirrel lobbed an acorn at the huntsmen in angry protest.

Giles shook his head, gazing blankly into the distance. “Maria says the Queen loves white at the moment,” he said with the allowable authority of a man courting the Queen’s wardrobe mistress. “Pearls, ivory, diamonds – the less colour the better. It’s the latest fashion from Vienna, apparently, more flattering for pale skin. So anything highly coloured won’t be well received.”

Piers pointed to a small stone cottage perched beside the lake a few hundred yards away.

“Let’s go and see the royal eggkeeper,” he suggested. “Maybe he’ll let us have one of those fancy big white birds that the royal explorers just brought back from foreign parts. I hear they’ve not been very productive on the egg front. Everyone’s still eating hens’ eggs.”

“I hear those new birds are fat and stupid, and don’t fly much,” said Giles. “They should be easy enough to catch. I wonder what they taste like. They must have some redeeming features.”

Piers shrugged. “There’s one way to find out.”

Feeling more cheerful, they got up and headed for the royal eggkeeper’s cottage. Entering the old man’s walled garden, they disregarded the tawny coloured chickens scratching about in the undergrowth. Instead they set their sights on the chickens’ bigger, more exotic cousins. Although these so-called turkeys (that were, court rumour had it, not from Turkey at all) had settled comfortably into their new home alongside the native flock, their size made them easy to spot. With snow-white feathers, these portly creatures were certainly of a colour that Her Majesty would find acceptable. Their otherwise neat appearance was spoiled only by foolish red wobbly flaps of skin protruding from their heads and necks. These odd protuberances would be unsightly whether the birds were alive or dead, but, as Giles was quick to suggest, the royal cooks could easily cover them up with a strategic pastry ruff or a cunningly fashioned collar of cabbage leaves.

The big birds’ conversation was less alluring than the chickens’ gentle clucking. As the huntsmen wove in and out among them, trying to scoop up a bird in their arms, the turkeys’ harsh, throaty cackle became more raucous by the minute. Undeterred by these sound effects, Giles soon managed to corner a healthy-looking specimen against the garden wall. While Giles bent towards it with arms outstretched, making what he hoped was an enticing “chook, chook, chook!” noise, Piers leapt behind the fat creature and shooed it towards his friend. A little closer… and up! Gratefully, Giles flung his arms around the shock of white feathers, pinned its wings to its sides, and swept the big bird off its feet.

“Ha!” he cried. “That wasn’t so hard. Now we’ve just got to get it back to the palace.”

“I hope the Queen will like it,” said Giles, as they headed back through the forest. He was not looking forward to the Queen’s reaction to those hideous red flaps.

With a flash of inspiration, Piers extracted a small, dark woollen hood from the leather pouch that hung from his belt. He’d been using it the day before when hunting with one of the royal falcons. The hood was a tight fit for the less streamlined turkey, but it was soon secured over its head. The turkey immediately fell silent, as subdued as if night had just fallen.

“I expect the Queen will like it once she’s tasted it,” Piers said hopefully. “There’ll certainly be plenty of flesh to go round.”

Conscious that the daylight was now fading fast, the huntsmen walked briskly, discussing how each would spend his share of the ten guineas reward. The bird grew heavier by the minute. As they neared the forest’s boundary, they passed a familiar hollow tree, often cited as a landmark for navigation due to a distinctive large hole in the trunk at shoulder height.

“Just a moment!” cried Piers. “I think there’s someone watching us from inside the hole in the hollow tree. Halt! Who goes there? Someone else trying to win the Queen’s Christmas favour, I’ll be bound. Well, I’m not having it! Giles, hide that turkey while I take a look.”

Giles raised his eyebrows, wondering exactly where he was meant to conceal a bird the size of a small child.

Piers rushed forward, adrenalin pumping in anticipation of challenging a rival. He thrust both arms inside the hole, expecting to grasp the varmint’s neck. His attack was met not with human cries but with a startled avian squawk. Hastily withdrawing his hands, he found he was clutching not the neck of another huntsman but the body of a large owl, soft, white, and fluffy as snow. The bird blinked one startled amber eye at him and strained its wings against Piers’ cupped palms, clearly optimistic that it might escape.

Giles let out a cry of admiration. “I say, Piers, that’s a beauty! Do you think we should take it back as another suggestion for the Queen’s Christmas dinner? There’s nothing unsightly about that specimen!”

Piers straightened his arms so that he could admire the bird at a greater distance.

“By George, I think we should,” he agreed. “It’s certainly a handsome fellow. Not sure how much flesh it has on it” gently he squeezed the lightweight body “but it would certainly look a treat on a silver platter.”

To keep its broad wings under control, Piers tucked the bird close against his chest. Its tiny heart fluttered undetected through the huntsman’s leather jerkin. It was a comfortable arrangement for them both.

Once back at the castle, the two huntsmen sought permission of the Queen’s lady-in-waiting to show their catch to their mistress. They were soon admitted to the royal bedchamber where the Queen was still toying listlessly with her embroidery.

Giles set the turkey gently down on the floor at his feet, its head and neck still concealed by the woollen hood. The big, ungainly bird took a few unsteady steps, trying to acclimatize to the hard, chilly flagstones that felt so different from the soft floor of the walled garden. Stumbling across a discarded croquet mallet, it took comfort in settling on the handle, wrapping its long claws securely around the wooden shaft. With the emission of a contented “caw”, it appeared to have settled down to roost.

The Queen looked at the turkey thoughtfully.

“Nice white feathers,” she appraised. “They’d make a pretty decoration for my hair on Christmas Day. Plenty of meat on it too.”

She approached the roosting bird and reached out to prod its back with the end of her golden embroidery scissors. It didn’t flinch. Then she turned to inspect the smaller, fluffier bundle that the second huntsman was clutching to his chest.

“What have you got there, Piers?” she questioned.

Piers gently set the fragile creature down on the floor. Appreciating the warmth of the candlelit room, the owl turned its head around slowly, taking in its new surroundings. Sidestepping a few paces, it stared hard for a moment at its captor. Then it paced over to inspect the turkey, which was by now emitting a low, steady rumble that sounded remarkably like a human snore. The owl looked at the turkey, then at the Queen, who was silently engrossed in assessing how much meat might be concealed under that feathery wrapper. While the Queen was busy wondering whether she could eat the whole thing herself, the owl slowly made its way towards her and stood quietly for a moment at her feet, contemplating its next action.

And then it decided. With a rattling, hacking cough it opened its beak and expelled a dark brown furry pellet that landed neatly on the lacy hem of the Queen’s long ivory silken gown.

“Ugh! What on earth is THAT?” spluttered the Queen, teetering backwards and shaking her skirts anxiously. “The wretched thing’s attacking me!”

Giles stepped forward and bent to inspect the owl’s emission. “It appears to be dried matted fur, blood, and – yes, a few bone fragments too, Your Majesty,” he reported. He bowed courteously, as if he’d just paid her a compliment. “I believe that’s how owls expel their digestive waste. It’s the remains of a mouse or a rat that it had for lunch.”

The Queen shuddered. “Surely you don’t expect me to eat something that’s got THAT muck inside it?” she shrieked.

The owl, which had been looking rather pleased with its performance, spread its snowy wings and fluttered silently up to perch on a brass candelabra, which scarcely stirred beneath the bird’s barely perceptible weight. Giles, meanwhile, had turned his attention to the larger bird, which was still perched contentedly on the croquet mallet. He extended his arm in its direction, as if offering a formal introduction.

“Then might I suggest the turkey, Your Majesty?”

The Queen nodded quickly, anxious to conclude the matter so that she could change into a fresh gown.

“Yes, yes, we’ll have the turkey. Now take them both away.”

She rang the bell for her wardrobe mistress and swept from the room, leaving Piers to coax the owl down from the candelabra. Meanwhile Giles hoisted the huge turkey into his arms to escort it to the kitchen.

As the huntsmen headed down the spiral staircase bearing both birds, they encountered Maria, Giles’s lady-love, rushing to respond to the Queen’s summons. She’d heard of their mission and was eager to learn the outcome. While Giles explained, Piers mischievously whisked the woollen hood off the turkey’s head. He hoped to frighten Maria with its ugly red wattles, causing her to faint into his friend’s arms.

“Ugh! Why on earth did Her Majesty choose that hideous creature instead of this gorgeous little owl?” she questioned, stroking the docile bird on the top of its head and wondering what it would taste like braised in mead. Assuming it was no longer under threat of execution, the owl happily allowed her this liberty.

“Oh, there’s nothing really surprising about that,” said Giles. “The problem is that turkey doesn’t have its own defence missile system.”

About the author

Following a career in journalism, public relations and charity administration, Debbie Young now writes warm, witty, whimsical fiction and helpful, friendly non-fiction from her home in a small village in Gloucestershire, England, where she lives with her Scottish husband Gordon and their teenage daughter. She also finds inspiration when travelling with her family in their camper van. To join her mailing list for news of new books and special offers, and to read her wide-ranging personal blog, visit her author website: www.authordebbieyoung.com. You’ll find her on Twitter at @DebbieYoungBN. If you’d like to read more of her Christmas stories, her festive collection Stocking Fillers is available in paperback and ebook. Debbie Young is also Commissioning Editor of the Author Advice blog of the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Geordie Selywn and the Bucket-List by Hilary Mortz

I suppose a lot of you were a bit miffed when old Matty Curtis crossed over the “rainbow bridge” earlier this year, eh? The trouble was though – he wasn’t the only one at the time, was he? Bigger and more famous people were all popping their clogs day after day a few months ago and the public was starting to get used to the shock. I know for a fact that at the time William Hill had a special offer on the odds of me being the next in line for the Reaper. Even my own wife, Eva, got into a nasty habit of shoving a thermometer into me gob every morning like she didn’t expect me to see the rest of the day out. It’s the sort of thing that makes a bloke suddenly start to feel his age and think about making a will even though he’d been feeling as fit as a lop beforehand.

Anyway, like I said, when Matty passed on it was at a bad time for B-List celebrity deaths. He’d hardly been in the public eye for years for one thing, living abroad hiding from his ex-wives and the taxman, so he wasn’t exactly high profile. All he got was a couple of paragraphs in the morning papers, and a few extra plays on the dad-rock radio stations. No one was going to change their profile picture for him on Facebook; the fecking BBC weren’t going to reschedule Top Gear to do a special programme about him – he wasn’t David Bowie or Prince; people were sorry to hear that he had gone, but it didn’t make them cry or owt. He’d made some good records back in the day, but let’s face it – all the music was still there so no one was that fussed that the actual dude who wrote the songs was brown bread. Matty was just another old rock-fart who had shuffled off to the great gig in the sky after what the papers call “a short battle with illness” and we all know fine well what that means – the poor sod had obviously had cancer and thank your lucky stars that by the grace of God it hadn’t happened to you yet.

It wasn’t a short battle that Matty fought though, and he didn’t die peacefully at home surrounded by his nearest and dearest like they all wanted you to think. It was much better and braver than that, and I know because I was there. And most of what happened wasn’t even my fault, despite what Eva and Matty’s scary Greek girlfriend Athena both seemed to think at the time. “If in doubt, blame Geordie”, that’s most women’s motto. But I did my best for the poor old fecker and I’ve got nowt to reproach myself with this time.

Not many people realise that me and Matty went back a long way. He was a couple of years ahead of me at St Bernadette’s but when you’re a bairn that couple of years makes a big difference and by the time me and my best mates Mal and Dougie were in the first year of the Seniors Matty was in the big lads’ class and he had his own band doing the rounds playing Beatles cover versions at school dances. We all looked up to him – he was the king of the school and spent his time generally swanning around like he owned the world but he didn’t even know we existed at the time. It wasn’t until years later, when Eva took over his management from her old dad, that me and Matty became proper friends but the background was still there and even though my band, Church, made it bigger than Matty’s in the end neither of us ever forgot where we had come from and that we were cut from the same cloth.

So all in all it wasn’t a big surprise when Matty turned up at Caer Urfa, my house in Northumberland, one day a few weeks after Easter, looking like death warmed up but still swaggering around like he was every lass’s young teenage dream.

“What fettle, you ugly auld sod,” I said to him – all embarrassed like, cos of the state that the old guy was in. I didn’t know what else to say; Matty had always been on the skinny side but at that stage he was like a bloody skeleton, with his sunken cheekbones and sore scabby scalp showing through what bits of hair he had left on his head. I couldn’t believe it. He was in good spirits though and he gave me a bony hug as if nothing was up.

“Just go along with whatever Athena says,” he whispered as his girlfriend glided towards us, all big hair, lip gloss and dangly earrings. “I’ll explain everything later.”

“Geordie moo!” she said, doing that awkward foreign double air-kiss thing on my cheeks.

“Please say you will do this thing for us. It will be Matty’s great miracle. The Madonna of Lourdes will take away his cancers!”

Well whatever I had been expecting her to come out with, (and I had heard her spout some absolute shite in the short time that I’d known her), this was pretty far down the list.

“Aye Geordie,” Matty said, in bits trying to keep a straight face. “The only thing I’ve got left now is my Gift of Faith. Please say you’ll come with me to Our Lady’s shrine. It’s my very last hope”.

Eva was waving Athena back into the house, obviously wanting to do her fecking nails for her or whatever it is that the lasses get up to when they are together. Athena pulled me into her massive cleavage, grabbed my hand, kissed it hard enough to leave a bruise and then floated off into the distance.

“Fecking LOURDES?” I said to Matty, who was creasing hisself laughing at the expression on my face. “Lourdes? You? With ME?”

“Don’t panic, we’re not going anywhere near fecking Lourdes, little grasshopper,” he said. “We’re off to Iceland. I’ve got the little matter of me bucket list to attend to.”

*

At first I thought that Matty was just hankering after a bit of a bender with the lads in Iceland, but no, apparently it was his dearest dying wish to go and see the aurora borealis there – that’s the northern lights to pessies like you and me. I would have never put him down for a sky-gazing nature lover – he’d certainly never shown any inclination for it in the past – but then I suppose a death sentence hanging over you brings out your hidden depths and starts you thinking along different lines and all that.

“Have you never seen the lights before Matty?” I said to him. “You went to all them cold countries umpteen times when you were touring back in the day.”

“Aye well, you know what it was like, Geordie,” he said to me, a faraway look in his bleary eyes. “I was more bothered about the booze and the lasses in those days. I can’t even remember going to half of those places, never mind what the sky was doing. It’s different now. I want to see them before it’s too late.”

“It’s just not going to happen,” my personal assistant, Young Terry, said to me later when I was telling him about it. “It’s far too late in the year. The lights still come out, like, but you only get to see them when the sky is properly dark. It’s coming up to the midnight sun in Iceland now. Matty’s going to be really disappointed.”

But Matty was so up for the trip though that none of us had the heart to break the bad news to him. He was a man with a mission and as far as we were concerned any happy days that he managed to fit into the few he had left were a bonus and we had no intention of pissing on his matches. It’s better to travel in hope than to finally arrive and all that. And Matty was as happy as I’d ever seen him, what with the fun of pulling the wool over Athena’s and Eva’s eyes about Lourdes, then buying up half of North Face in thermals for us all to wear in the frozen wastelands of Iceland and booking us into a posh hotel beside a hot spring lake; he was like a dog with two doo-dars. I dreaded to think what state of mind he would have been in without a holiday to look forward to and giving him a new lease of life.

So anyway, Matty’s big day came along and we managed to get away from the lasses without any trouble. The fact that Eva is Jewish and Athena Greek Orthodox helped a lot there, as it happened – neither of them wanted to say too much about someone else’s religion in front of the other woman and they weren’t too genned up on what was involved. So we could get away with murder – like Matty telling them that landline phones were banned in Lourdes and pilgrims couldn’t get incoming calls on their mobiles. That was all good thinking on his part. We told them that Matty was doing what the catholics call a “novena” as well and that he would be fasting and keeping a silent vigil for nine days and not to try and get in touch with us because he was “in retreat” and it would spoil the holy benefits if he broke his silence. It worked a treat, they believed every word.

*

It wasn’t until we landed at Keflavik Airport and were met by our Icelandic guide, Bjarni (it was pronounced “Barnie”, as in “Rubble”), a massive red-headed bloke with a beard on him like a hearth rug, that Matty’s bubble of joy finally got burst.

“Has the green lady been out dancing much lately, then Bjarni?” he said, turning on the rock-star charm for the natives, like.

“Ah, you mean the northern lights?” the big guy said, ignoring me and Terry making mad “zip-it” signs behind Matty’s back.

“No, my friend,” the tactless ginger gobshite went on. “The lights are now finished. You must come back in the winter if you want to see them.”

Well, I suppose he wasn’t to know that there was no way Matty would be having another winter to look forward to. I blamed myself for not having a quiet word with him before he had the chance to say owt.

Matty didn’t seem to be paying any attention to what he was saying though. It was about half eleven at night and, although there was no midnight sun shining or owt, the sky was a bright turquoise colour with stars popping up on the horizon and a pink glow to the west. It was too light; he must have realised the game was up.

“I can see some green streaks over there,” he said, pointing in the direction of what I presumed must be the north. I couldn’t see anything apart from snow topped mountains and sky. “We just need to find the right place and time. Open that aurora app you were on about, Terry and look up the forecast for tomorrow. We are definitely going to get to see those lights, Bjarni. I can feel it in me water.”

*

And so the trip went on; I spent most of the days in my hotel room watching the History Channel on the satellite telly, catching up on my sleep, chilling, and more or less doing the same as I would be doing if I was at home. Terry went off exploring in the jeep with Bjarni every day after breakfast, coming back at teatime buzzing about all the volcanoes, glaciers and hot springs they had seen on their travels. The lad was getting the most out of the trip and I was pleased that someone was, because in the week we had been in Iceland, despite what Matty insisted, we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the bleeding aurora.

Matty was totally in denial about the whole thing, the old fecker was still convinced that every night was going to be his night, as far as he was concerned the bloody things would be coming out to play and the hope was keeping him alive and kicking and in the best of spirits. He slept all day, zonked out by the late nights and the drugs his nurses were giving him, then about ten at night he would be knocking on my room door making sure I was dressed and ready to go out into the Icelandic wilderness on another wild goose chase.

We went to a different place every time, following the data on the NASA website. Every night I sent up prayers to whoever was up there to let Matty see the lights, just once, just for a minute, then we could all go home, but it was no good – night after night all we could see was shining dark blue skies with the occasional star thrown in to make us feel like mugs. I was starting to wish we really had gone to Lourdes, or Whitley Bay, or anywhere apart from this nice-looking but awkward bloody country. Why hadn’t Matty just said he wanted to do a bungee jump for his bucket list, like most dying people? At least that would have been over and done with quickly.

“Tonight’s going to be the night, Geordie,” Matty said to me. We were all having our funny Icelandic hotel breakfast together on the morning of the last full day of our trip. “Bjarni’s taking us to Skollenkirkja! It’s this deserted churchyard on the west coast. He reckons it’s the very best place to see the lights at this time of year – no light pollution, dead atmospheric and all – just the church and a massive statue of an angel on top of a hill overlooking the sea. It’s going to be mint.”

Bjarni swallowed the pickled herring he was enjoying and smiled smugly at me. “That’s right, Geordie,” he said. “Skollenkirkja is the most famous church in all of Iceland. It is a place of great magic – a place of miracles if you like. The story goes that many centuries ago there was a great storm off the coast and a cargo ship loaded with fine timbers was in trouble in the waves. The sailors, fearing that they were all going to be drowned for sure, went down on their knees and prayed to God for deliverance. And then suddenly, just as the waters reached their height, a shining angel appeared on the coast and guided the ship into the shelter of Skollen Harbour. The sailors were so overcome with gratitude that they built a church in that very spot from the timbers in the hold of the ship and it has stood there ever since, a holy place of thanksgiving, prayer and pilgrimage.”

“Didn’t the sailors get the sack for pinching all the wood?” I asked. I’m not really used to talking to other people at breakfast, like.

“Never mind all that now, Geordie man,” Matty said, not wanting to offend Bjarni, who had gone all shiny eyed after sharing the tale with us. “That’s a great story, mate. And there’s a statue of an angel as well is there? We’ll get some great photos of the lights when they come out. I’m off back to bed, lads. See you all at half ten.”

Terry pulled me to one side once Matty had got off. “It’s not looking that brilliant for the aurora again,” he whispered, showing me the forecast on his iPhone. “Look, the KP Index is really low on the NASA app, and there’s going to be a full moon. The sky’s going to be lit up like a fairground, Geordie. We’re fecked. Matty’s going to be gutted.”

“Aye, que sera, sera,” I said, not knowing what the KP Index was for a start and not exactly wanting to know either. “He’ll get to see what he’s meant to see, I suppose. Go off to look at your geysers, bonny lad. I’ll catch you later on.” You might think I was being a bit short with the bairn, but – and I don’t know how or why – an idea was starting to hatch in my head and I wanted to be on my own to mull it over.

*

I knew it was a long shot, and you might say I was planning on cheating old Matty, but I didn’t see it like that at the time; where was the harm, I thought? I was going to make sure that my old marrer got the send-off he deserved. The Skollenkirkja gig was his last chance at happiness and I was going to make sure it went off with a bang. And it just so happened that the very guys who made sure every major rock gig in the world went out on a high were in the very same neck of the woods as us, with the heavy metal band Rammstein who’d been playing at the Harpa in Reykjavik the night before. Miracles take all sorts of forms, I told myself, reaching for my phone. It was time to call in some favours from the German kraut-rockers.

*

By the time half ten came around I was worn to a frazzle but Matty looked as fresh as a daisy and he was as high as a kite all the way to Skollenkirkja. I’ve seen a lot of spooky places in my time, but this place took the biscuit with its small pointy white church surrounded by gravestones all lit up by the silvery moonlight and the dark shape of the angel standing on its dark hill between the church and the stormy ocean. It all gave me the willies I don’t mind telling you; it was like the start of a Hammer Horror.

“Howay, Matty!” I said to him, helping him down from the Jeep. “We’ll set the chairs up in front of the hill – that’s the north, right? Let’s put this blanket around you, sonna. Don’t want you catching your death, do we?” I would be no good working in a hospice, me.

We were sat with our backs to the little graveyard in front of the church, staring past the dark angel on the hill and out over the sea to where the horizon began. I suppose it was a beautiful spot, like, but I bet the shipwrecked sailors didn’t stick round for long after they built the church – it wasn’t exactly what you would call homely. After a while I didn’t want to look behind me in case there was something icy cold with bony fingers creeping up to grab me on the shoulder. Like I said before, it was like a horror film. Poor Matty wasn’t bothered though, he was sitting bolt upright on his IKEA picnic chair like a scrawny old meer-cat who was too scared to blink in case it was missing owt.

When they first appeared, the lights just looked like clouds, weird toothpaste-green clouds in an arc over our heads, but then they started to twist and shimmer and spiral and spread across the midnight sky like a set of old fashioned theatre curtains. There was no mistake – it was Matty’s aurora and it was an awesome sight. Even knowing what I knew, I was quite moved by it all.

Bjarni and Terry were jumping up, pointing at the light show and shouting at us to look but the old dude was well away by that point. His green lady was out dancing especially for him and I’ll never forget the look on his daft, tired old face once he realised it was finally happening. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

“Matty! Matty! You were right about coming to the church. It’s a bloody miracle, man,” I said to him giving his shoulder a little shake. He didn’t reply, it had all been too much for him to take in. He wasn’t there anymore, he was as dead as a door nail.

The German pyro-technicians came out from their dugout behind the angel’s hill, where they had set up their equipment. Their aurora show had been realistic all right, so fecking realistic that it had literally shocked poor old Matty to death and naturally, as usual, it was all my fault.

“Geordie! Whats going on?” Young Terry came running over to me and what was left of poor old Matty. “That’s Rammstein’s pyro crew – where did they come from? Please don’t tell me you got them to do this? Eva’s going to slay us all.”

Well Eva and Athena weren’t exactly over the moon, as you can imagine, but at the end of the day there was absolutely nowt they could do about it. We got Matty’s body quietly back to England; Eva put out a press release saying that he had passed away peacefully at home with his family and, like I said before, there were so many other celebrities kicking the bucket around the time that the real truth of what happened never really got out. People were too busy grieving for bigger and more famous fish.

And what about me, do I blame myself for finishing the old guy off? Well yes and no, I suppose. I saw the look on Matty’s face that night when he thought that the Green Lady had finally come out to dance just for him and that’s enough to make me think I did the right thing. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him now. The aurora is just Mother Nature’s pyro-show at the end of the day. People like seeing coloured lights in the sky and that’s all there is to it. Matty wanted a miracle and he got it – even though it was just a travelling band of pyro technicians in the right place at the right time, it was still a miracle.

So there you go, Matty Curtis didn’t exactly die peacefully at home, but he died with a bit of hope in his heart and a smile on his face and none of us can ask for more than that in the end. Am I right?

About the author

Hilary Mortz is the official biographer of rock legend and reality star, Geordie Selwyn.

The legal Restraining Order placed on her by Mr Selwyn’s management after she published the sensational exposé of his private life in her previous books, Appetite for Corruption and Nevada Mind the Bollix, has now been lifted and Hilary is currently busy working with Geordie on his official memoirs, The Selwyn Files.

Hilary splits her life between working at her tattoo studio in the holiday island of Cyprus during the summer and travelling the world watching heavy metal in the winter.

She should have grown out of it all a long, long time ago.

https://amazon.com/author/hilarymortz

Scent of Christmas by Katharine D’Souza

Christmas should smell of pine trees. Cinnamon could work, or cloves. Roasting chestnuts, roasting turkey… One thing Christmas should not smell of is Lemon Pledge.

Yet, every year, when I return to my parents’ house, that scent greets me – concocted in a laboratory, designed to mimic something once related to the citrus family. I can arrive in April and the scent will not be there. Not in June or October either. Today though, the front door opened and a wave of pseudo-lemon hit me. This was because today is Christmas Day and the dining room was In Use.

The sideboard gleamed like the finish of a Ferrari’s bodywork; the table shone like a concert piano. The mirror sparkled and the light fittings gleamed. My dad had successfully accomplished his one piece of housework for the year with a generous application of chemicals. Christmas could begin.

I was first to arrive.

“Hello, love,” said Dad. “Your mum’s in the kitchen.”

I hadn’t enquired about her location, but that’s my dad. Primary mode of operation: delegate anything that appears to be female.

“Happy Christmas, Dad.” I gave him an awkward hug. That’s what I do: torture him by refusing to blend in. I let him return to the TV.

In the kitchen, Mum was barely in control. At least that room smelt of roasting turkey. It was a relief. One year she said she “fancied a change” and we had a vegetarian dinner. Disaster. I was pleased to see tradition stuffed with sage and onion and wrapped in tin foil.

“Was it you who’s bringing alcohol?” Mum asked by way of a greeting.

I lifted the bag into her line of vision. The bottles gave a reassuring clank.

“Come on then, Mags. Get one open.”

My watch from five Christmases past read eleven fifteen. I loaded the fizz into the fridge and opened the vodka. Mixed with orange juice it would provide some of the nutrients Mum was boiling out of the veg.

Simon arrived. The elder brother, the golden boy. Dad shook his hand with enthusiasm. Mum left the kitchen to hug him. A drink was not required the moment eyes were set upon him.

“Simon,” I said.

“Mags,” he replied. “Christmas again I see.”

The initial greeting went smoothly enough. He should have moved on to say something like, “The halls have truly been decked.” To which I would perhaps reply, “Hark! Herald angels are singing.”

Simon said nothing.

He wandered into the dining room where he picked up Christmas cards, winced at effusive inscriptions, and put them down again. Not always the correct way up.

“There’s a national shortage of both the holly and the ivy this year,” I said.

He didn't reply.

I went back to the kitchen and started lifting lids from pans on the hob and stirring the contents – red, green and brown.

“Don’t do that,” said Mum.

By the time we sat down to our turkey dinner, Simon had barely spoken. The rest of us played our roles around him.

“Breast or leg?”

“More stuffing?”

“Pass the sprouts.”

He refused to deliver every single line. Didn’t he realise that this was Christmas and a little participation was expected? He’s the star player in this pantomime. He couldn’t expect me – the understudy, the second fiddle – to carry the show without him.

We’d popped the fizz. The pudding had been both flamed in brandy and washed down with it. We’d eaten crackers and pulled them. Comedy crowns were in place on our heads. Dinner was done.

We adjourned to the living room with a soundtrack from the TV. We exchanged presents and faked appreciation. Simon did not put on the novelty socks I’d bought him.

“Oh, come on, Si,” I said, as I swilled my brandy glass at him. “Get into the spirit. It’s Christmas after all.”

He could barely be bothered to look at me. He just reached for the button to extend the footrest on the armchair he’d commandeered from Dad, and eased himself back.

“Leave him alone,” Mum said. “He’s tired. He works too hard. The poor thing’s come all this way to see us. He doesn’t want you nagging at him.”

Well, that really got me going.

“He’s travelled all this way. He works too hard. He shouldn’t be nagged. What about me? I work hard, I travel, I, um…” I realised it was not perhaps wise to attempt reasoned debate after two vodkas, a glass and a half of champagne, several glasses of red and a large brandy. I had mislaid my point.

“It’s different for Simon,” Dad said.

“Well, that’s just typical, isn’t it? Always take his side why don’t you?”

“Now, that’s not true,” Mum said. “No one’s taking sides, not until we get the Trivial Pursuit out.”

“Yeah, at which point whoever’s on the team with Simon will win, won’t they?” I felt a little queasy, as though the ghost of puberty past was messing with my digestion as well as my behaviour.

“Are you suggesting I cheat?” Simon asked in his best case-for-the-prosecution voice. “It’s not possible to cheat at Trivial Pursuit.” He removed his purple crown and let it fall to the floor to join the wreckage of wrapping paper that littered the carpet.

“Not unless you’ve spent hours reading the cards and memorising all the answers.”

“Neither the time nor the inclination,” he replied.

We reconvened in the dining room. The kitchen remained a bombsite, but I hadn’t yet lost the battle about who would clean it. The Trivial Pursuit board was unfolded and the teams chosen. Me and Mum versus Dad and Simon. We all knew who would win.

Simon threw the die. Naturally, he scored a five – the exact value he needed to move onto the prize space on the wheel. The category was Science and Nature: his speciality.

The small print of the question card blurred and the alcoholic embrace on my tongue made it hard to read the question with a suitable amount of levity. “To which animal family do the Quokka and the Quoll belong?”

I wondered if that could be right. Dad’s expression was blank as if I had spoken a language other than English. Simon, however, was wearing a nervous frown. It was good. He doesn’t know the answer, I thought. For once, the game might not be a walkover for him.

“OK, well, I do know this one,” he said.

No, how could he? Just when I thought things might be different.

“Actually, it sort of ties in with something I want to tell you,” he went on. “They’re marsupials. They live in Australia. And from March, so will I.”

The rest of us were silent. We looked at him. We didn’t know what to say.

“I’m emigrating,” Simon said, “to Perth. I know, I should have mentioned I was thinking about it. But I knew how upset you’d be.” He was looking at Mum and Dad at this point, not me. “It’s a great opportunity for me. I’ll miss you all, of course I will. But I need a change. I need to try something new.”

I rolled the green wedge between my fingertips. Once he stopped talking, I slotted it into the playing piece on the board, awarding him his lead. For once, he didn’t gloat. He looked at me and said, “I’ll miss you most of all, Mags. It won’t feel right not having you on hand to understand my jokes and cut me down to size when I need it.”

“But, it’s the other side of the world,” Mum said.

“You’ll be so far away,” Dad added.

I just looked at Simon, the delight of hearing him admit how much his little sister means to him spreading slowly through my mind. After twenty-seven years of thinking he didn’t care, it was a lot to comprehend. He couldn’t have presented me with a better gift if he’d wrapped it in gold leaf and stuck a diamond-encrusted bow on top.

“You do realise Christmas is in the summer there?” I said. “No holly, no turkey, no sprouts.”

“No,” he said. “Barbeques on the beach, not chestnuts roasting on open fires. It would be great if you could all join me there for Christmas next year.”

So, the language of Christmas has changed. We’ll have to abandon the old traditions, create some new ones. From next year, Christmas will smell of eucalyptus, charcoal on the barbie, and sun cream.

O Little Town by James Brogden

When fourteen-year-old Holly Peterson saw her new neighbour chatting with Callum, the homeless guy who slept in the doorway across the street, of course she didn’t think anything of it. Callum was friendly, his dog Ravioli was a harmless slobbering nutjob, and as far as she could see there was nothing more suspicious going on here than the old man giving him some loose change. It did give her an opportunity for a closer look at the person who had moved into the house next door – old, fat, bearded, with a woollen beanie on his head – but there was nothing remotely interesting about him so she forgot about it. It was when she was walking past Callum’s doorway the next day on her way home from school that she remembered.

Strolling along in the watery light of a December afternoon, she produced from her coat pocket half a tuna sandwich wrapped in her geography homework, and stopped.

The doorway was empty.

Not quite empty: Callum’s sleeping bag and the big pieces of cardboard which he usually slept on lay in a pile, alongside Ravioli’s drinking bowl. It seemed odd that they would have gone off without their stuff, but at the end of the day Callum was a tramp, and who knew how their minds worked. She looked at the half a sandwich. What was she going to do with this now? School sandwiches were rank enough without having to cart one around getting all stinky in your pocket for half a day just to feed some homeless guy’s dog.

It was only four o’clock – late enough to be getting dark but not so late as to have lost the day’s meagre warmth, and this had so far been a mild winter besides, but all the same it worried her that he’d left his sleeping bag.

She looked up and down the red brick canyon of Willow Street, and whistled. “Ravioli!” she called. “Ravi! Ravi boy!” When no answering bark came she shrugged, sod you then, and chucked the sarnie into the doorway. For a moment she considered the worksheet she’d wrapped it in, then scrunched it up and tossed it after.

She checked up and down the street again, looking for Sunny’s car. Holly usually kept herself safely out of the way for as long after school as she could, but the dark and the cold had finally forced her to take refuge in that most dangerous of places: home. It was a long street of terraced housing, crowded with parked cars, and sometimes Sunny had to park a fair distance away. Sometimes she thought he did it deliberately to try and outsmart her because he knew she was on the lookout for him. She wouldn’t have put it past him. The first painful lesson she’d learned about Mom’s latest fella was not to confuse physical brutality with stupidity. He was lots of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

No sign of him. So far, so good.

She went down the side alley, slipped through the back gate and peered through the living room window to make double sure before letting herself in through the back door.

Stacked plastic bags full of hoarded clothing formed a labyrinth through which Holly picked her way to where Mom was in her customary place on the settee, so fat that it was hard to tell where she ended and the piles next to her began. The only clear space in the room was one shelf, upon which there was a single photo frame containing a picture of Holly’s father. He had died when she was too young to really remember him. Plainly her mom did, which made the presence of strange men in their home even more incomprehensible.

There had been one argument – just one. It hadn’t ended well.

At Holly’s peck on the cheek she looked up from the Shopping Channel long enough to ask if she’d had dinner, but by the time Holly had lied, something about eating at Scarlett’s house, her eyes had already drifted back to the screen. For the life of her, Holly couldn’t imagine what any man saw in her mother, let alone someone like Sunny. Presumably she had been thin and pretty and happy when her dad was alive.

She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what that should be, so she shut it again and went upstairs to her bedroom.

It was just as cluttered, the desk unit of her cabin bed completely lost under a scree of old toys and clothes which she’d long outgrown but Mom refused to chuck; the bunk above, little better.

But above that...

She pushed aside a panel of ceiling plasterboard which she’d cut out herself, and climbed through into the loft space beyond, being careful to pull the panel closed behind her. Sunny knew it was there, of course, but there was no point throwing its existence in his face. He’d never chased her up here – mostly, she suspected, because he was too lazy, but also because it was so cramped. He probably thought how funny it was making her scurry around in the dust and spiders behind the walls like vermin in her own home. It would never have crossed his mind that she preferred the dust and spiders.

She crawled into a space close to the rear wall of the house where the roof came down, so narrow that there wasn’t even enough room to sit up. Wedged into the angle between the roof pinions and the ceiling joists, she had made a nest of duvets and old cushions. Blu-tacked to a pinion support was a photo of her dad which she’d stolen from her mom’s bedroom. He was turning away slightly, laughing at someone just to the side of the camera, probably in somewhere like a pub. She’d stolen it because she wanted something of him, but also because she didn’t think it was right that he should have to watch whatever it was her mom did with Sunny. In her nest, Holly also had a torch, emergency snacks and water in case of a siege, and in warmer months she could hear birds twittering in the eaves.

What she heard now was a very different sound, and for some reason which bypassed rational thought completely, it made her blood freeze.

It came from just beyond her head – past the ancient brick partition which separated this loft space from that of the house next door. It was a heavy, bumping, dragging noise, as if something like a table or a chest was being manhandled from one side to the other. The sound reminded her of something Mom had said once on a summer holiday – back in the dim, almost-forgotten days when holidays and summers and fathers had existed. She’d been little and scared of the sound of thunder. “It’s alright, love,” Mom had said. “It’s just God rearranging his furniture upstairs.” Someone was rearranging something, that was for sure, but it was the new neighbour, and definitely not God.

She crept closer to the dividing brick wall, listening. It was old Victorian brick, red and crumbling, and where it met the sloping underside of the roof it zig-zagged and if she peered closely into these dark gaps she could see through into next door’s attic. Normally it was pitch black and there was nothing to see, but now there was a light, moving, like a torch, accompanying the thudding and dragging noises. No way for her to see any more than that, and after a while it all stopped so she crept back to her nest in the eaves, and had a long text conversation with Scarlett but she didn’t have any more of a clue either. She’d completely forgotten about seeing him chatting with the missing Callum, and eventually, she slept.

But she remembered the next morning, when a removal van appeared outside the house next door. It was causing utter chaos in the street, half-parked on the pavement and forcing cars to creep past each other while two blokes in hi-viz vests dawdled as they lugged boxes into the house, without any apparent sense of urgency.

Their truck had managed to successfully trap old Mrs Manjula, from number forty-seven, in her mobility scooter. Mrs Manjula had terminal lung cancer and eyes like a pair of hatchets and took as little shit as she could from anybody, given that she could only get around on electric wheels with an oxygen tank in her lap. Her spice-smelling ground floor flat was one of a few friendly bolt-holes where Holly knew she could blag a meal when things at home got dangerous. She suspected that Mrs M saw straight through her stories but didn’t say anything; small price to pay for what was probably the only human contact she got other than social services. Right now, Mrs M was stuck, unable to get past Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-even-Dumber’s truck because of the lurching “rush hour” traffic, and Holly could tell she was getting agitated.

So she went over.

“Hallo Mrs M,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thoughtless buggers!” snapped the old woman. Her voice might have been muffled by her oxygen mask but the venom in it cut clean through. “What do they expect me to do? Fly?” Her sinewy fingers were twisting the plastic tubing and her breath was coming fast and thready.

“Don’t worry.” Holly patted her hands. “I’ll sort them out.” She walked over to the removal men. Mrs M was right, there was less than a foot of pavement to get past – way too narrow for her scooter. “Excuse me?”

One of them carried a box straight past her while his mate crossed the other way, both without so much as glancing in her direction.

She made a fist and thumped the truck’s door. “Excuse me!”

That got their attention, but of the wrong kind.

“Oi!” It was the fatter, hairier of the two. “Get your bloody hands off my truck!”

“You need to move your truck, is what,” she said. “It’s blocking everybody’s way!”

He took a step closer, squinting at her with piggy belligerence, and she knew how this was going to go before the argument even started. “Fine!” she snapped, thumped the truck door again, hard, and stomped back to Mrs Manjula while he spat obscenities at her.

“O-ho! What’s all this kerfuffle about?” boomed a genial voice. Out from the open doorway stepped her new neighbour, bearded and big-bellied, in a paint-spattered old cooking apron which said “Don’t Be Afraid To Take Whisks”, and wiping his hands on a rag. He took in the situation – the red-faced removal men, the gasping elderly woman, the bristling teenaged girl – and raised one exceptionally furry eyebrow. “Well now. It seems that you two...” he frowned at the removal men, “...are being louts.” Something hard in his glance made them duck their heads like chastened school boys. “Be good enough to finish your task and get on your way. Meanwhile...” He swung back to Mrs M and Holly, bestowing on them a smile as warm as mince pies, which Holly didn’t trust one bit. “We will see you on your way, my dear lady. Please follow me.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Holly. “Follow you where?”

“This way.”

And he walked between two parked cars and out into the traffic.

If it had been able to go any faster along this congested rat-run he would almost certainly have been run over. As it was, there was time enough for the car to lurch to a stop at his heels, horn blaring. Then, like an old-fashioned traffic policeman, he held one hand up at the driver, who stared open-mouthed from the other side of his windscreen, while with the other he beckoned Mrs Manjula. The old lady eased her scooter over the kerb and into the road, cruised serenely past the removal men and gave them a little wave, then nipped back onto the pavement on the other side of their truck.

He let the cars go again. There were some scowls and bad-tempered beeps but quite a few people gave a smile and a thumbs-up too.

“My name is Julius,” he said, holding out a hand, which Mrs M shook but Holly declined, scowling. She didn’t know why he made her hackles rise; maybe it was the dodgy Downton Abbey patter or just his over-friendly manner. In her experience, big men who came across all smiles and puppydogs were absolutely never to be trusted. “Please accept my deepest apologies for this unfortunate situation. I had hoped to give my new neighbours a better welcome.”

Determined not to be his anything, Holly muttered a curt and ungracious thanks before helping Mrs M to set off again along the pavement.

“He seems nice,” said Mrs M.

“He seems creepy as,” she replied.

“I think I will invite him around for tea.”

“Whatever. Just don’t blame me if he puts you in a casserole or something.”

“You are a good girl, Holly Peterson,” said Mrs Manjula. “You must come for tea after school and have some of my home-made dodol. Put some flesh on your bones, make all the boys come running after you.”

“Sure thing, Mrs M.”

“But I will test you! So you go and learn something and you come back and tell me what it is!”

Holly rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, grinned, and ran for her bus stop.

After school she killed time at Scarlett’s place, and when she saw Sunny’s car parked outside her own house went straight around to Mrs M’s, but found the flat dark and quiet, which was odd. Mrs M never went out of an evening, and more than once had made it clear that she had no neighbours or friends who she considered worth making the effort to visit, present company excepted of course. It was possible that someone had come and fetched her away for Christmas, or Eid, or whatever it was her family celebrated. Holly peered through the letter flap, and what she saw made her heart stop.

Mrs Manjula’s walking frame lay on its side in the middle of the hallway floor.

“Mrs M!” she called, and thumped on the door. “Mrs M, can you hear me?”

There was no reply, no matter how loudly she shouted or how hard she thumped.

So Holly took out her phone and dialled 999.

The police officers and ambulance staff who forced entry to the flat found no sign of life and no indication that anything untoward had happened to Mrs M – other than the fallen zimmer frame. A female paramedic tried to reassure Holly that in all likelihood she would turn up at a relative’s house and not to worry, but Holly knew deep in her gut that something much worse than being forced to spend Christmas with family had happened to the old lady. Her and Callum and Ravioli too.

She marched back down the street to Mr Julius’ house, and the sight of his second-floor curtains twitching was a grim confirmation of her fears. The strobing blue and green lights of the police and paramedics had lit up Willow Street like a burlesque dancer’s Christmas Tree. She banged on his front door, right in the centre of a festive wreath dense with holly and luxuriant with blood-red berries. “What have you done with her, you freak?!” she shouted up at the window. “Hey? Her and Callum too! I saw you talking to him! I hear what you’re doing in your loft!” She banged on the door again. “Where are they?” Harder. “What have you done with them?!”

“Girl!” a nasal voice yapped. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Sunny had come out to see what all the fuss was about. Despite the cold he was wearing one of those stupid short-sleeved shirts which displayed his outrageously hairy arms – he looked like an orangutan insurance salesman. He was out of the door, barely yards away, and reaching for her.

Holly knew how strong those arms were. She had nightmares about them.

She legged it.

That night, listening from her nest in the loft, the noises from next door’s attic were different: sawing, hammering, the weird high-pitched whining as of a dentist’s drill, and light, tinkling music.

Three days later school broke up for Christmas, forcing her to get creative with ways of avoiding home. Fortunately, spying on her neighbour was great for whiling away the empty hours, even if Holly still was never able to actually see him. There were plenty of visitors in the form of Amazon delivery drivers, but he never appeared to sign for anything in person.

Then, the day before Christmas Eve, there was a knock at her own front door.

“Get the door, petal?” her mom called from the living room.

Holly sighed and trudged down to the front door, opening it onto a small man with a scrappy moustache, brown cardboard box in one hand and a PDA in the other, which he thrust at her.

“Canyousignforthisplease?” he rattled off, obviously in a hurry.

“What is it?”

“Neighboursnotin. Signhere?” He’d probably knocked once and waited three seconds, if that.

“Sure, why not?” she shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant, despite the fact that she was seething with excitement at the opportunity this presented for snooping around in Mr Julius’ stuff. She scribbled her mom’s signature on the PDA screen and stood on the open threshold of her front door as the delivery minion drove away, having forgotten her already.

She read the name on the package.

Mr N Julius.

Nathan? Nicholas? Nagini?

“Let’s see what you’re getting from Father Christmas, this year, shall we Mr N Julius?” She crept back upstairs to her room, her bed, and her nest in the ceiling, where she tore open the package. She was half expecting to find something sick and freakish from Psychos-R-Us like knives or knock-out drugs or rolls of gaffa tape.

Inside, wrapped in layers of tissue paper and bubble wrap, was a toy carousel. It was approximately the size of a small dinner plate, and gloriously, intricately detailed. Every gold curlicue of the carousel’s decoration, every flare of the wooden horses’ nostrils, every miniature coloured lightbulb – all were perfect. The only thing it lacked was small, perfectly moulded children to ride it. She turned it over and saw that there were wires and a motor underneath; this was a working model. It probably even played music when it turned.

She was so engrossed that she didn’t hear the second knock, or her mom calling for Holly to get the door, and finally the unusual sound of her struggling out of the sofa to do it herself.

She only came to her senses when she heard the tones of her mother’s voice and that of Mr Julius murmuring together, rising to her like smoke.

“Mom, no!” she shrieked, and scrabbled at the hatch to her room. “Mom, don’t talk to him!” She shoved the plasterboard aside and nearly fell through the ceiling onto her bed.

“Mom!”

She tore through the piles of hoarded junk in her room, on the landing and down the stairs, throwing stuffed bin bags and carrier bags in all directions – suddenly and absolutely furious at them for having always been there – and got to the downstairs hall where she found the front door wide open to a chill wind. Of her mother, and Mr Julius, there was no sign.

Except she knew where they’d gone.

Holly ran back upstairs and climbed into her loft-space. Crouching to avoid knocking her head on the roof joists, she picked her way to the brick partition between the houses – that flimsy single skin of crumbling masonry – and began to kick at it.

When nothing happened at first, frustration made her reckless and she booted the bricks with increasing savagery until bits of mortar began to fly like shrapnel and the bricks began to shift with high, chalky, grinding noises, and suddenly the whole lot collapsed. She fell forward into the rubble and looked up into Mr Julius’ loft space, expecting to see chains and instruments of torture.

It was filled with a village.

On a table so large that it took up the entire attic there were model cottages and shops set along winding cobbled lanes, a school, church and playground, and at the centre of it all a village square dominated by a Christmas tree. Everything was snow-clad, twinkling with lights and tiny cast-iron street lamps. Out towards the edges, the village gave way to snowy fields and farmhouses and then finally forested slopes of a winter woodland which cut off at the table’s edge. For a moment she forgot her terror and anger, breath-taken by the detail and complexity laid out before her. The love which such painstaking attention to detail implied seemed utterly at odds with the creepiness of the man who had made it. There were scores of tiny people populating the scene: pulling sleds, throwing snowballs, ice-skating on a frozen pond, carrying brightly-wrapped presents, eating bagels, walking dogs…

She looked closer.

Small, so small, barely an inch high and yet rendered in perfect detail – that was Callum and Ravioli, she was certain. And there, further down the chocolate-box perfect high street, was an elderly dark-skinned woman in a sari the colour of boiled sweets, laughing with a rotund woman whose arms were bundled with shopping.

Holly stared, aghast. Her voice was the whisper of dry snow.

“Mom?”

“She is perfectly safe,” said a voice from behind her.

She spun. Julius was there, at the top of a set of retractable steps which led down into his own house. His big frame blocked the opening, but enough light from the hallway lit him from below to throw his eyes into shadow.

“She is perfectly unharmed,” he continued. “She is perfectly happy. You could be happy too.” He took a step forward.

“What have you done with her, you fat freak?” Holly demanded, backing away. She indicated the whole village. “All of them?”

Julius shrugged and made a miniscule adjustment to one of the trees. “I have given them a home,” he said. “The ill, the old, the unwanted, the forgotten, the unloved. I have given them the most perfect home anyone could wish for.” He took another step closer. “It could be your home too.”

She backed away further, back to the hole into her own house, her own world, shaking her head.

“At the very least you could let me have my carousel back. The children will be terribly disappointed without it.”

Holly turned and ran, dodging around the edge of the big table, stumbling over the bricks at the far end, ducking through the hole to her nest, and this time she did crack her skull on a roof joist. She fell sideways, and her full weight carried her straight through the unprotected plaster board in a cloud of dust and insulation, to crash onto the floor of the upstairs hallway. The only thing which saved her from a broken neck was the fact she landed in a pile of bin-bags filled with her mom’s hoarded clothes.

She lay, stunned, looking up at the black hole in the ceiling through which she’d fallen.

Then pain set on her from every direction like a pack of wolves, and in its teeth she passed out.

*

Holly awoke to the sound of church bells – which wasn’t half so weird as the fact that someone with terrible breath was also licking her nose. She gagged and reached up to push him away, and felt short, coarse, doggy hair.

“Ravioli?”

He barked right in her face, a shaggy, friendly mongrel.

“Oh gross!” she laughed.

“Ravi!” a man’s voice ordered. “Get down!” The dog retreated and was replaced by a young man with hair that was no less unkempt, and eyes just as brown and warm with concern.

Wow, she thought, dogs and their owners really do look alike. “Callum?”

“In the flesh,” he grinned. He looked better than she remembered. Cleaner, for one thing, and he’d lost that half-starved look.

“Where —” she reached up to touch her head, and found that her arm wouldn’t work properly. It felt heavy, numb, and stiff.

“You’ve got a cast on your arm,” he explained.

A cast of old-fashioned plaster held her left arm in an awkward right-angled crook. She found that she was lying in a small bed tucked up in clean white linen and a tartan blanket, and the rest of the room was just as twee; everything was pine wood and pastel hues. It looked like a nursery from an IKEA catalogue. Her clothes had been replaced with the kind of pyjamas she’d worn as a little girl: flannel cotton covered in flowers and teddy bears.

“You must have had a nasty time getting here,” Callum continued. “I’ll leave you to get dressed and then we’ll go find your mother.”

“Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She’s absolutely fine, honestly.”

Callum and Ravi left her, and she climbed out of bed, went to the window and opened the curtains to see where the sound of bells was coming from.

The outside world bounded at her much like Ravi had done: bright with snow and alive with colour. Her first thought was that she’d died and gone to Disneyland. Steeply gabled shops and cottages twisted smoke from their chimneys and dripped icicles from their eaves onto cobbled streets where people walked or rode horse-drawn buggies, dressed like a BBC costume drama: top hats, bonnets, walking sticks and bustles. They greeted each other with smiles of seasonal goodwill, doffing hats and curtseying.

Just like the village in Mr Julius’ attic.

She squinted up into the bright white haze of the sky, but of course it was just the sky – she didn’t really expect to see electric lights and rafters hanging up there, did she?

She got dressed (her clothes had been laid out next to a dress and gloves as if offering her the choice, but she chose her own hoodie and jeans instead), and went downstairs to where Callum was waiting for her, chatting with a woman in a starched white outfit who might have been a nurse or a nun. They were with a second woman who Holly took a moment to recognise, because her face was open and warm and smiling and it made her look much too young to be…

“Mom?”

She was hugged, and that came as a surprise too because it had been so long since she was last hugged by her mother.

“What is this place?” she asked when they pulled apart. “We’re not…” she lowered her voice. “We’re not dead, are we?”

Her mother frowned, as if the question had never occurred to her. “I don’t feel dead. Do you?”

Holly shook her head.

“Well then.”

They went outside – her and Mom and Callum and Ravioli – and walked through the village. They passed Mrs Manjula, who trilled good morning at them with clean, strong lungs.

“At most,” her mother said, “I’d say we were lost.”

“We definitely are that.”

“No, not are. Were. Before, I mean. I certainly was, anyway. But this feels like home. Doesn’t this feel like home to you?”

Holly looked around at all the faces and wondered, if her mother was right, what each of them had been lost to, before they had found their way here. “I suppose it could do,” she admitted. “But we are in Mr Julius’ model village, aren’t we?” They were walking up along the cobbled street to a market and funfair at the top of the hill.

Callum shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I think his model is more like a map of whatever this place is, rather than the place itself.”

She thought that made even less sense, but let it go.

They were at the top of the street, walking between twee alpine market stalls selling gingerbread and mulled wine, and she heard a friendly, wheezing, discordant music like accordions dancing, and saw in an open space the carousel which she’d held as a toy. Bright and gleaming gold, its horses were plunging and rearing, and someone was riding and waving to her as it slowed to a stop. It was a man she’d only ever seen in her mom’s photographs and the dimness of her earliest memories, and he smiled at her with eyes that were just like her own.

And her father stepped down from the carousel and walked across the Christmas morning snow to meet her.

About the author

James Brogden is a writer of horror and fantasy who lives in Worcestershire. His latest novel, Hekla's Children, will be published by Titan Books in March 2017. Tweeting occurs at @skippybe and infrequent blogging at jamesbrogden.blogspot.co.uk

How was it for you, Joseph? by Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn

Joseph heard rustling in the hay. Rustling, chewing, lowing – he didn’t know what was worse, the noise or the stench. What with the animals and the light from that star, he’d never get to sleep.

Then one sound emerged from the others. What was it? Crying? He listened. Definitely crying. He stretched out a hand. “Mary?” There was no answer. He turned and in the starbeam saw the glint on her cheek.

What did she have to cry about? He was the one who should be weeping. Months with all of Nazareth laughing at him, that silence whenever he walked into the tavern. And he knew only too well what they were saying: “There’s Joseph, the carpenter. His betrothed’s in the family way, and it’s not his. She says an angel appeared.” Cue raucous laughter: some angel.

The crying grew louder. “What’s up, Mary?” Joseph knew his voice was harsh, but who could blame him? The journey to Bethlehem had been a nightmare, what with Mary’s labour pains, and the donkey’s sore feet. And it meant he couldn’t work for months, so how were they supposed to pay Caesar’s damned taxes? It was humiliating enough having to sleep in a stable, without the innkeeper and a load of shepherds crowding in.

“Joseph.”

“What?” He felt Mary’s breath against his cheek.

“I’m scared.”

“Scared? You’ve got the baby. That’s what you wanted.”

“Joseph, I told you – it’s not mine.”

“I watched you give birth. It’s yours all right.”

“I know I carried him, but he’s not really mine. How can he be? I’ve never… you know.”

“Don’t start all the angel malarkey again.” Joseph flicked away some hay that was tickling his ear. If he could get his hands on that Gabriel —

“But it’s true. Everything I told you is true. I never would…”

Joseph wanted to believe her. He’d loved Mary since he first saw her pulling water at the well, and the thought that some other man might… It had eaten away at him all these months.

“I’ve got a plan.” Mary leant up on her elbow and gazed down at him. “We haven’t got much time. The innkeeper said there are kings on the way —”

“Kings? Oh, for Noah’s sake!”

“I don’t understand what this is about any more than you, but it’s not what I want.”

“Bit late for that now.” Joseph cocked his thumb towards the manger.

Mary’s eyes gleamed like the star. “Let’s run away.”

“We can’t. What about —”

“We’re ordinary folk, Joseph, and this is all wrong.” She stroked his cheek. Her palm was soft and smelt honey-sweet. “Angels, shepherds, kings. I can’t stand it.”

Joseph stood up, brushing the hay from his clothes. It was more than he’d dare hope for. He put his hand out to Mary. “If you’re sure.”

She scrambled to her feet. Bending over the manger, she touched the baby’s cheek with her lips. Then she straightened up and turned to him, smiling. “I’m sure.”

About the author

Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn writes novels, short stories and flash fiction. Her third novel, The Broken Road, was published in 2015. Unravelling was published on 2010, and came second in The Rubery Book Award in 2011 and won the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Award. The Piano Player’s Son was published by Cinnamon Press in 2013, after winning their novel writing award. Lindsay’s short stories and flash fiction have been published in various anthologies, including Fish, Cinnamon and Rubery. She has an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University, and combines writing with her work as a creative writing tutor. She is a judge on the Worcestershire Literary Festival flash fiction competition.

Website: www.lindsaystanberryflynn.co.uk

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lindsay-Stanberry-Flynn/e/B00404FTSK/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LindsayStanberryFlynn.Author/

Midwinter’s Eve by Justin Lee Anderson

Iktra couldn’t feel the end of his nose. Not even with his fingers. To be fair, he couldn’t feel his fingers either.

A particularly malicious blast of air stung his eyes, forcing them closed. Tiny droplets froze in his eyelashes. He blew into his palms, rubbing them together. His throat burned.

Kaoli frantically rubbed a stick against an old branch, hunting for the spark she needed to get a fire going. It was a risk. The light would make them a target for any nearby Ashkari. But at this stage, they might as well be ripped apart as freeze to death. Neither was particularly appealing.

“Damn!” the girl held her hand to her mouth. The twig had snapped, slicing across the back of her index finger. The drops of red against the snow were slightly mesmerising – but mostly in the Oh-dear-gods-we’re-going-to-die way.

“Kaoli!” Iktra clumped across and grabbed her hand, willing the blood to stop flowing.

“We have to cover the scent!” he whispered, urgently.

“I know!” she snapped.

Kaoli frantically searched her pocket with her free hand, pulling out a small skinpack of gloop.

“OK, let go,” she said, nodding.

Iktra released his grip and she quickly squeezed out a line of clear jelly along the cut.

“Gaahhhhhhh!” she growled as the medicine burned. It would seal the wound, but it hurt like all hells to put on. Kaoli shook the hand as if the pain might just flick off.

“You all right?” he asked after a moment.

“I didn’t even feel the cut because my hands are so damned cold,” she said, “but I felt the gloop.”

Iktra pulled out his pouch of stinkweed. Holding it at arm’s length, he carefully opened the drawstring, picked out a pinch and scattered it over the bloody snow.

“Gods,” groaned Kaoli. “I’d almost rather be eaten by the Ashkari.”

“I know,” Iktra smiled. “Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.”

“I don’t know why you insist on volunteering for this, every year,” she said. “Nobody’s coming through that thing.”

She nodded at the portal, which glowed faintly green in the near dark.

Iktra had kept the vigil his whole life. The story of Santick, the warrior from another place, who saved his people from the Ashkari two hundred years past, was told every winter in his family.

At that time, the Ashkari were a small species. They were more of a problem for livestock than people. But they first attacked the villagers that long winter, when the livestock had run low and food was scarce.

The people were farmers, not fighters. They had no weapons. The children began disappearing first. Then the women.

But Santick had come, as if in answer to the villagers’ prayers. In the dead of the longest night, he walked out of the woods and slaughtered the Ashkari single-handed, his flaming sword a beacon in the deep blue dark.

For a year, Santick protected the village from the Ashkari. He hunted them down in the summer, emptying their nests and burning their eggs. When the portal opened again, the next Midwinter, he promised to return if he was ever needed. He believed he’d wiped out the Ashkari.

He was wrong.

The strongest had survived, and though it took them two generations, they bred an army. By then, the farmers Santick had turned into fighters were old men. They were slaughtered in days. The villagers gave up trying to protect the livestock, and retreated into the hills – into the caves their ancestors had inhabited. They were easier to defend. The Ashkari were vicious, strong and quick, but not smart. Their eyes were sensitive to the sun, so they stayed in the dark during the day. It was the only time the people could forage the woods for food – berries and plants.

This was the only life Iktra and Kaoli had ever known. But still, every Midwinter’s Eve, Iktra came to the portal. To sit in vigil. To tell Santick what had happened, when he finally came back. To pray for his return.

“And even if he did come through,” Kaoli said. “What could one man do against the Ashkari now? They’re bigger than they were. There’s so many of them. And Santick would be ancient – if he’s still alive.”

Iktra smiled weakly.

“Santick is not an ordinary man,” he said, quietly. “And I believe in him. Come on, let’s light this fire before we freeze to death!”

*

The fire was small, but warm enough. Iktra could feel his nose again. It stung. The fact he could still feel the pain was a good thing, at least. It meant the frost hadn’t set in too deep.

Kaoli sipped from her wooden cup. The sweet, warm glauten was a Midwinter tradition. It served to keep the villagers both warm and relaxed. She smiled and sat up, leaning slightly towards him.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why do you do this, every year?”

Iktra sighed. “I don’t know. I suppose… Do you have any memories from the Midwinter, when you were young?”

“Not really,” said Kaoli. “I mean, I remember what it was like, but…”

“I remember it well,” said Iktra. “The smell of the roast. The songs. The candles. My parents made a big effort. We always spent it together. No matter what else was happening, we were together for Midwinter.

“And Father always brought me out here for the vigil. ‘Don’t forget,’ he’d say, ‘No matter how bad things are, as long as we keep fighting, one Midwinter’s Eve, Santick will come back through that portal. And on that day, we will go back to our true home.’ He’d tell me the story of the first Midwinter, just like Grandfather told it to him.”

“It was always slightly different each year. I don’t know if he realised. There were more Ashkari; Santick’s sword was bigger – brighter. It was the one night of the year I always had hope. ‘One day, he’ll come back. And you’ll be here to see it.’”

Kaoli smiled as she reached forward and put her hand on Iktra’s cheek.

“What?” he asked, confused.

“You really don’t have any idea, do you?” she asked, warmly.

She was right. He did not.

It was a complete surprise, therefore, when she leaned forward and gently kissed him. The sheer awkwardness of Iktra’s gormless reaction was only heightened by the fact their lips slightly stuck together in the freezing cold. A flick of Kaoli’s tongue freed them.

“I… but…” he stuttered.

“Why do you think I’ve been coming out here for the last three years?” she asked. “I’m not the one who believes in Santick. I don’t care about the vigil. And every time we come out here, we risk getting caught by the Ashkari. But I’m here anyway.”

“Why?” Iktra asked, still profoundly confused.

Kaoli stood and drank from her cup, looking into the woods.

“Because it matters to you.”

She turned and smiled down at him.

And then she was gone.

Her scream mixed with the chattering of the Ashkari in the tree above.

Iktra stumbled to his feet and drew his sword, Nightsbane, the weapon Santick himself had forged for his great-great-grandfather. The sword his father had died holding.

There were two of them. Their glistening, black skin reflected the fire back at him. Kaoli struggled with one, desperately trying to reach her own blade, but her arms were pinned. At least it couldn’t tear her throat out while it had to hold her.

The other, bigger one, though, was clambering towards them, its jerky, insectoid movements making Iktra’s skin crawl.

“Hey!” he shouted so desperately his voice broke. “Hey! Down here!”

He swung his sword wildly upwards, but he was too far away.

“Iktra!” Kaoli screamed. “Iktra!”

She surely knew what was coming. In seconds, the other Ashkari would reach her, and she’d be dead. He had to do something. Now. Iktra reached for the only weapon he knew the Ashkari feared – and probably the reason they’d crept up instead of attacking them outright.

He barely even felt his hand burning as he lifted a branch from the fire and hurled it at the monsters. The smouldering wood hit the Ashkari holding Kaoli on the back and it screeched – in fear or pain, Iktra couldn’t tell. But it dropped her as it recoiled further up into the tree.

Instinctively, Iktra moved under her, and she landed hard on him, knocking him to the ground and winding him. Iktra flailed, trying frantically to suck air into his tightened lungs. Looking up, he saw the big Ashkari diving towards them. But without oxygen, he could barely move.

Kaoli, though, reacted instinctively. With her left hand, she grabbed Iktra’s fallen sword and rolled away, slicing upwards at the monster falling towards them. Another body landed hard on him. This one was dead.

Air finally rushed back into his lungs and he gasped hard as he pushed the dead monster off into the snow.

The smaller Ashkari had dropped from the tree and disappeared into the woods. Kaoli was already after it.

“Come on!” she shouted. “We have to catch it!”

“Wait!” shouted Iktra.

“Get up!" she pleaded. "It's getting away!”

“No, wait! Look at yourself!”

Kaoli looked at the red stain spreading down her side.

“Oh, hells,” she said, just before passing out.

*

“Arrggghhhhh!” she screamed even louder this time. Iktra emptied the gloop onto her side, sealing the ugly gash. She dug her fingers into his shoulder as the pain bit.

“Here,” said Iktra, removing his coat.

“What? No.” Kaoli answered.

“Come on,” Iktra insisted, pulling at her arm. “You need to keep that covered, and my coat isn’t torn.”

Kaoli grabbed at his hand. It was red and blistered.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Nothing” he answered. “It’s fine.”

Actually, it hurt like hells. All of them.

He grabbed her coat by the sleeve and pulled it off as she sat up, then quickly helped her into his own. He stopped and looked at her for a moment.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s … cute.”

Kaoli punched him in the leg.

“Stop being an idiot and put that on.”

Iktra did as he was told. The coat was slightly tight but it would keep him warm enough. He held out the tear, which was still sticky with Kaoli’s blood.

“I don’t think we have enough stinkweed for this,” he said.

“Doesn’t really matter, with that,” Kaoli replied, pointing to the dead Ashkari.

It was true. Even if they could cover the smell of Kaoli’s blood, the stench of dead Ashkari would draw the others here.

“Well, we better move, before they have time to come back,” said Iktra, sighing.

“And go where?” Kaoli asked. She smiled at him, but there was something weak about it – and not just because she was pale from loss of blood.

“If we go home, we’ll lead them straight there,” she said.

“Oh,” said Iktra. It hadn’t occurred to him. In the panic of sealing Kaoli’s wound and thinking about getting to safety, he hadn’t realised that home wasn’t an option.

“All right,” he said. “All right. So we’ll go somewhere else.”

Iktra paced beside the fire.

“We can’t go home. We can’t go that way,” he said, pointing in the direction the Ashkari had gone.

“Iktra, stop,” said Kaoli.

He looked at her curiously.

“There’s nowhere to go,” she said, slowly. “There’s nowhere to go.”

She was right, and he knew it. They might as well sit here and wait.

*

The Ashkari’s body crackled with a green flame. It was Kaoli’s idea to burn it.

Iktra leaned against a tree, his arms wrapped around her, leaning on his chest. He stared at the portal. It was actually slightly difficult to make out now, with the green aura from the fire, but he knew it was there.

“So, I guess I waited too long,” she said.

“What?” asked Iktra.

“Three years I waited for you to notice me. And now, here we are. Like this,” she answered.

“I noticed you!” he protested. “I just didn’t… think… You know.”

“It’s all right,” she said, turning to look up at him. Her face was paler. Iktra wondered if she was still bleeding, inside. “At least I got to tell you, first.”

She stroked his face, gently running her finger over his lips. Only when she wiped away a tear did he realise he was crying.

This time it was he who leaned forward and kissed her, deeply. Gods, how had he never realised? All this time, how had he never realised? He pulled her close to him, as if he could somehow protect her from everything in that moment. He’d do anything, go anywhere to save her.

“Wait.” He opened his eyes. “There is somewhere we can go.”

Kaoli looked at him, confused.

“We can go where Santick went.”

“We can’t go through the portal, Iktra!” she said. “Nobody who’s ever gone in has come back out again. Santick is the only one who ever came out!”

“What? No,” said Iktra, “I don’t mean the portal, I mean where he went when he arrived. We can go to the village!”

“What?” asked Kaoli, incredulous. “Why would we go there?”

“Think about it!” he pleaded. “It’s away from home and in almost the opposite direction from the Ashkari.”

“It’s indefensible!” Kaoli argued. “It’s in the middle of a wide open plain! That’s why we don’t live there!”

“We don’t live there,” he said, pointedly. “It doesn’t matter if it’s indefensible. The Ashkari aren’t going to go there, because they think there’s nobody there.”

“But,” Kaoli began. “But…”

Iktra looked at her with wide open eyes, begging her to have faith in his plan.

“OK,” she finally said. “We might as well try. Makes no difference if we die here or there…”

*

Every gust of wind had Iktra snapping his head round, looking for a glisten of black skin. He heard the chattering of teeth in every creaking branch. But they trudged on. Kaoli held his arm above his bad, left hand. They held their swords in their free hands. Iktra’s was up, on alert. Kaoli’s smaller weapon was more like a walking stick. She barely had the strength to hold it.

And all either of them could smell was the stinkweed he’d rubbed all over their clothes.

“Hey,” Iktra said, breaking the silence. “You know what we’re doing?”

“Trudging through knee-deep snow?” she asked.

“No, stupid,” he said. “We’re following in the footsteps of Santick! We’re walking out of the woods on Midwinter’s Eve!”

He’d said it as way of lifting Kaoli’s mood, but actually, now it was out, he was genuinely a little bit excited.

Kaoli snorted a laugh at him.

“You and your Santick. You know you’re a big child, don’t you?” she said, smiling.

They stopped at the edge of the trees. The vast, empty bowl of the valley spread out before them. A thick layer of virgin snow sparkled in the moonlight. Once, animals had grazed these fields. Smoke had risen from chimneys and candles had burned in windows. People had lived, and loved, and thrived here.

“Wow,” whispered Kaoli. “It’s so big. And so quiet.”

She was right. The only sounds were the gentle winter breeze and the low crackle of snow. It was beautiful.

“OK,” he said. “This is where it gets dangerous.”

“Because it’s been so safe until now,” Kaoli answered, quietly.

“We’ll be exposed. If we’re caught out there, in the open, we’re dead.”

“I know,” she said. “But hey, if we’d stayed at the portal, we’d probably already be dead, right? So what do we have to lose?”

Iktra kissed her again. She pulled herself close. He felt her warmth against him.

They had to survive this night.

*

They were over halfway down the slope, towards the battered, haphazard collection of ruined cottages when he saw it. Just a glint in the trees opposite. The moonlight reflecting off something smooth. Dark. Insectoid.

“Come on, little turtle,” he teased, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Let’s get out of this cold.”

“You idiot,” she said, breathing slowly. “It’s not going to be any damned warmer in one of those cottages.”

Iktra started moving a little quicker, but Kaoli was leaning heavily on him now. They were barely moving at a stroll.

And Iktra was sure he could already hear the chattering.

*

Two hundred feet from the first cottage, he saw them clearly. There were at least six of them, barrelling down the opposite side of the hill. Kaoli still hadn’t realised. She was watching her feet as she dragged them through the snow. His heart pounded in his chest and his stomach churned. He had to get her inside, at least.

“Nearly there,” he tried to say cheerfully, but his voice cracked and gave him away.

Kaoli snapped to attention and looked around.

“Hells,” she hissed, when she saw them. “Come on!”

And suddenly she was running – running! – toward the cottage. At first, Iktra was too stunned to move, but he quickly followed her. Despite her second wind, she still dragged her sword behind her, drawing a neat line in the snow. Iktra barged through it as he caught up.

They finally reached the door of the cabin. Now they really could hear the chatter, mixed with the excited screeching of the Ashkari. It was the noise they made when they hunted. Like stone grating on stone. The door didn’t budge when Kaoli stumbled against it. She was out of strength. Fortunately, Iktra was still full of adrenaline. One shoulder and the door crunched open. The air inside was fetid and cold, just as Kaoli had said it would be. It smelt of damp and mould and death.

Iktra jammed the door closed again and pushed a piece of unrecognisable, old wooden furniture behind it. He pulled the remains of a chair from a corner and gave it to Kaoli.

She smashed it on the stone floor.

“What are you doing?” Iktra asked, scanning the room for entrances. The windows had been boarded up long ago by whoever used to live here. But the wood was no more likely to hold than the chair had been.

“We know one thing they don’t like, right?” she asked, kneeling and lifting two sticks from the remains.

“Are you crazy? The cottage is made of wood! You’ll burn the whole place down!”

A resonant thump against the door focused Iktra’s attention. The screeching was louder. He nodded at Kaoli, and she frantically rubbed one stick between her hands. Thankfully, the Ashkari really were not smart. On the one hand, that meant six of them were all trying to get in the front door, the same way they’d seen the pair come in. On the other hand, that meant six of them were all trying to come through the front door. And it wouldn’t last long with them bouncing off it. Iktra started piling everything he could find behind the door. Chairs, the remnants of a table. Some bowls. He paused when he picked up something awful. Even in the midst of fighting for their lives, the dirty, torn doll reminded him that someone had lived here. Someone had died here.

The scrape of the wood and the damned screeching shook Iktra out of his trance. He went back to throwing everything he could find at the back of that door.

And then there was nothing left to throw. The rhythmic, repetitive banging just kept coming.

Iktra paced like a caged animal. His sword raised and ready. A part of him almost wanted the door to break – wanted the monsters to come flooding in. He’d spent a lifetime training to face them, after all. This was what it had all been for, wasn’t it?

“Come on!” he howled at the door. The roar came from somewhere in the depths of his soul. He had barely known, himself, that it was coming.

The screeching stopped. For a moment, there was silence, and then the low chatter. Iktra cocked his head to listen more closely. Was that a pattern? A rhythm? Almost as if… they were talking to each other?

Silence.

He stared at the door. No sound. His own breathing and nothing else. Not even…

Iktra spun round to see Kaoli, collapsed next to the pile of wood. She’d finally succumbed to the blood loss and passed out again.

Damn it!

Iktra picked up the stick she’d been working on and began rubbing it himself. The fire might just help. It might. He had to try.

He rubbed and rolled the stick between his hands, barely noticing the pain in his burnt fingers. The sound from outside had completely stopped. He focused on the stick.

Make the fire.

Make the fire.

Was Kaoli still breathing? He couldn’t tell. Couldn’t stop to check.

Make the fire.

The door burst in. The first Ashkari – was it the one from earlier? – clambered over the pile of furniture and bounded towards him. He stood and brought Nightsbane sweeping up from the floor, slicing open its chest. It screeched furiously and retreated to the corner, trembling. He grabbed the sword hilt with both hands, feeling his injured palm scream in pain and knowing it didn’t matter.

Another three Ashkari climbed in, more carefully. Sizing him up. They understood he was a threat now. Iktra bellowed a battlecry.

They paused; curious, but not afraid.

This was it. He was going to die here. Kaoli was going to die here. And it was his fault. The stupid vigil. His sentimental attachment to an old children’s story was going to get them both killed. What an idiot he was.

The anger and frustration boiled up in him, and he launched himself at the nearest Ashkari. It jerked backwards, away from his blade. But as it did, the one to its right swiped at Iktra, tearing the shoulder of his coat – Kaoli’s coat. The fact it was hers made him even angrier, and this time he swiped at the pile the three were perched on, knocking them all off balance.

One landed at his feet and he immediately speared it through the chest.

Two down.

One of the others had fallen back out the door, meaning there was a single target for him to fight. He could do that. He screamed again and ran at the off-balance thing. It chattered at him, in anger or fear, he couldn’t tell. But suddenly, it didn’t matter. Something knocked the wind out of him from behind; something hot and wet. His head spun and the cabin lurched.

As Iktra turned and fell to his knees, he realised his fatal error. The biggest Ashkari he’d ever seen loomed over him, framed by the stars he could clearly see through the gaping hole in the roof.

He hadn’t looked up.

The huge Ashkari chattered at him, almost spitting. These things were supposed to be simple. Natural hunters, yes, but basically just eating machines. There was something… sentient about this one. Was it giving orders?

Iktra tried to lift his sword, but he had no strength left in his right arm. The wound from, he presumed, the Ashkari’s claws was just above his right hip. Breathing was hard. The Ashkari grabbed his hair and lifted his head, stretching his neck. It gurgled excitedly.

“Kaoli,” he whispered, closing his eyes, “I’m sorry.”

The Ashkari released its grip on his hair as its head dropped to the floor. Kaoli’s blade had severed it clean. Its body crumpled. The only Ashkari left in the room was behind him now. He rolled away, towards Kaoli. Towards the fire.

Wait. Was that a spark? Was it smouldering? He was struggling to stay conscious. Blackness crept in around the edges of his vision.

Kaoli and the Ashkari leapt at each other. They landed hard, in a tangled mess, clawing and punching and scratching at each other. Gods, where did she find the strength?

Iktra needed something to clear his head – now. So he did the only thing he could from his position. His burned hand seared as he shoved it into the barely flickering embers of another fire – but the pain was enough to give him the jolt of adrenaline he needed. His head cleared. Kaoli rolled around with the Ashkari only a few feet from him. He lifted his sword and swiped at them, but he was as much in danger of hitting her as the monster.

He looked up when he realised there was more chattering. The last two had come in the roof, and were clinging to the rafters, waiting to drop, like carrion beasts.

Iktra dragged himself to his feet just as Kaoli despatched her Ashkari with a knife in its throat. He could barely stand, and she was struggling to get to her knees. Only two left. Only two. But he couldn’t even focus on them. When he looked up, the room spun.

The front door ripped off its hinges.

A hulking shape barrelled through the pile of furniture as if it were straw. Iktra turned to face it, raising his sword in his weak left hand. If nothing else, he would not let this thing touch Kaoli while he was alive.

But as his eyes focused, he realised the thing coming towards him wasn’t black.

It was red.

Red armour glistening in the glow of a flaming broadsword.

The warrior brought down the first Ashkari with one great swipe, nearly splitting it in two. It dropped to the ground with a wet thump. The last one screeched in fear and scrambled back through the hole in the roof.

“That’ll be right,” the man growled. He turned and lurched back out the door.

Iktra dropped to his knees, panting. He crawled to Kaoli, who was still on all fours, struggling to stay up. She had several new wounds.

“It’s OK,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s him. He came. Santick came.”

*

Iktra woke on the cold, hard floor. He must have passed out. It was getting light outside. A fire crackled in the hearth. As he began to focus, he heard a deep, resonant voice.

“It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid,” he said. “There are many, many worlds. The portal sends me where I’m needed most. Sometimes they need a warrior; sometimes a healer. Sometimes, they just need hope. I do what I can.”

“But who decides that?” Kaoli asked.

“That, I can’t say,” Santick answered. “I’ve never known. And I don’t need to know.”

Kaoli looked at Iktra and smiled.

“He’s awake,” she said.

Santick turned and walked to him. His bushy white beard and long, braided white hair made him look like a benevolent old grandfather. Had Iktra not seen him in battle, he’d never have believed it.

“Hello, son,” said the man. “Nice sword.”

Iktra reached for the sword, next to him, and winced as pain stabbed his side. Santick crouched down and lifted it, himself. He turned it over in his hands, appraising it, gave an approving hmm, and handed it to Iktra.

“Kaoli says you’ve been waiting a long time for me,” he said.

For no reason he could begin to explain, tears streamed down Iktra’s face again.

“Father told me you’d come when we needed you.”

Santick smiled. He seemed to radiate light.

“He was right, Iktra,” he said. “You’re all coming home. But rest, for now. I’ve dressed your wounds. We’ll get you both fit to move, and then make plans.”

“No,” said Iktra, “we can’t stay here. We have to get back to the caves. What if the Ashkari come back in numbers? You’re only one man.”

Santick smiled. Kaoli stood, grunting slightly with the effort.

“You big idiot,” she said. “I thought you had faith.”

She took his good hand and, with Santick’s help, pulled him to his feet.

“Where are we going?” Iktra asked.

“You’ll see,” she said, pulling him to the door.

Outside, standing in the morning snow, were at least a dozen tall figures in dark green armour.

“I didn’t come alone,” said Santick, placing a huge hand on his shoulder.

“Iktra, meet the Elfic,” said Kaoli.

The warriors raised their weapons in salute, silhouetted against the rising sun.

Iktra pulled Kaoli to him, grinning like a fool.

It was Midwinter morn.

Santick had come.

And everything was going to change.

About the author

Born in Edinburgh, Justin spent a decade of his childhood bouncing around the US, following his dad’s professional football (soccer) career. He returned to the Scottish capital in his teens and, after a few brief sojourns to Dundee (for an English degree) and the South of France (for his family), settled back in the city that’s always been home.

In over 15 years of writing and editing for a living, he’s done everything from restaurant, theatre and comedy reviews to training manuals and magazines, including four years as the writer, editor and photographer for an Edinburgh guidebook. Currently working as a Content Editor, he lives with his Brady Bunch family in a permanent state of happy chaos.

He has the same initials as the Justice League of America, and his favourite writers are Neil Gaiman, Aaron Sorkin, Joe Abercrombie and Joss Whedon, in no particular order.

He misses Firefly.

His debut novel, the comedy fantasy Carpet Diem, was released in 2015.

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Justin-Lee-Anderson/e/B00XZE8SYS

Going South for Christmas by Suzanna Stanbury

It was a spoon that got me living on a garbage site. I was travelling when a glint of sunlight caught off something shiny, and I sure do like shiny. I veered off the highway, almost falling in my haste to get to whatever was glinting so brightly. Shouldered my pack so I could push through the undergrowth, I came out in a strange place. A flat land that had been cleared to make space for towering heaps of garbage. Far as I could see, like a landscape of junk mountains – heck one of them mountains was so tall it almost blotted out the sun. For a second I was worried I’d lost sight of the prize. But no, there it was again. A flash as the sunbeam caught whatever it was. High up on another stack of trash, right in the middle. I dropped my pack and started climbing, clambering up the side of the heap, stopping every so often to check I could still see the glint. It was my glint, that glint was waiting for me, I climbed right up to where it was and pulled it out. The spoon, not that I’d known it was a spoon until that moment. But a spoon it was – a shiny gleaming bowl of a spoon. It was a heck of a spoon. My spoon. Triumphant, I held it aloft. Filled with joy I let out a mighty cry that echoed off the trash piles. The others that lived in Trashland thought I was hilarious, standing on top of a junk mountain holding a spoon, baying like a timber wolf. They laughed until the tears ran down their cheeks. That’s why they let me stay. “You’re funny,” they told me. And that is why they called me Spoon.

In Trash Central, there were four of us. There were once two others but they went south of the river. “The Trash Guys,” Charleston called us. Good old Charleston – with a name like that I can tell what you’re thinking, but no, he wasn’t a famous dancer, or a crazed nightclub boogie-boy. No, that’s not how he got his name. Charleston liked to dance when drunk. Charleston danced all day long, and all night too, ’till he fell headlong, zonked by the ashes of the fire, steaming more than the fire itself. That was our cue to sleep, when Charleston zonked.

Yeah… There were no exciting past lives for us. We were concerned with mundane living, and day-to-day boredom. Alongside me (Spoon), and Charleston there was “Garterbelt” – called that, not because she was a hooker (a whore, a lady of the night). No, Garterbelt found a red-lace garter-belt tucked under a trash bag, and wore it over her jeans. She loved that belt, most likely still does. Last of all comes “Beardy-boy”, bottom of our little list ‘cos he was the youngest of us dump dwellers. Beardy-boy was quiet most times, occasionally he may have drunk a drop too much hooch and sung real loud at the top of his lungs, high and squeaky like a schoolgirl on crack. Beardy-boy drew his beard on with a Sharpie, neat little strokes where he liked to think his beard should grow in, he drew in his eyebrows too. He got alopecia when he was six, saw his momma killed, never got over it, poor little guy.

Christmastime on the dump we never minded the cold. Had a 24-hour fire on the burn and hooch, always lots of hooch. People throw it away. Good stuff too. Bottles of fine wine with no labels. Garterbelt, she had a theory that it’s folk who move into houses and find bottles in damp basements, the labels have long since peeled off so they throw the bottles away in case it’s poison in there… or worse. We found beer too, lots of beer. Yes, there was always hooch on the dump.

I liked to sit by the fire looking at the night sky, pretty little stars twinkling overhead. When a breeze got up, I’d position myself so it was blowing the smell of trash bags away from me. I got used to the stench quite quickly. If something in a bag was too pungent for us we’d set fire to it. That cured the problem. One time, old Charleston, he found a bag of innards that were pretty high on the smell-o-meter, set a match to them and stood back proud of his work as they caught fire, the flames licking away hungrily, taking hold of the sack of nasties. Inside the bag the innards' fermenting gases combusted with an explosion loud enough to blow your ears off. That big old boomer sent Charleston flying over two trash heaps. It sure was funny. On occasion, Beardy-boy would creep up on old Charleston and shout “boom!” That always made us laugh.

Christmas is a special time – real cheery. In Trashland we sat round the fire and told stories on Christmas Eve – made-up tales, as we were dead boring. Life in Trashland was never a hoot – one day was much like the last, and the next. But we told good stories. Garterbelt had the best tales – how she made them up, heck I don’t know, but she always had a good yarn to spin. Last Christmas she puffed on her thin clay pipe, sending spirals of smoke into the navy-blue night sky and she began.

“Hey…” she said. “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Norway for Christmas? They have this thing in Norway called Julebordet, Christmas party lore I called it. What it means is: what happens at the Christmas party stays at the Christmas party and if anyone mentions the bad, bad thing you did, just like a disappearing trick,” she paused to snap her fingers with a loud snap. “There you are… everyone from Norway has forgotten it. And that year, in Norway, I did a bad, bad thing at the Christmas party and couldn’t believe my luck when they forgot it – everything! Like it never happened. And do you know the magic of Julebordet? It wasn’t long before I’d forgotten what I’d done too. Powerful thing is Julebordet.” Garterbelt sucked on her pipe. It was stuffed full of some kind of sweet tobacco plant she grew on the back of one of the heaps. She dried the leaves out in the Fall and saved it for Christmas-time.

“And let me tell you something else about Norway,” Garterbelt carried on with her tale. “They prepare themselves for Christmas long before it starts. In their minds, I mean – not planning their festive shopping. They do this thing called Koselig…” Garterbelt took another long puff. “I’d better start by explaining Norwegian winters to you – they have endless months of endless nights and they are dark nights too. Man, oh man, those nights are dark. Boy, are they dark! Black as hell-holes. And cold, Norwegian nights are cold like you never knew cold before. Cold that seeps into your bones, freezing you from the inside out. Norway is colder than Connecticut – and I lived there, so I know. Norway is ice central. Like I was telling you, in Norway they do Koselig: cozy, snug and warm is Koselig. They make a little mind-set of the cuddly-warms. The people I stayed with – Floki and Dis, that was them – they did good Koselig. Whenever I got down, shivering and gloomy, despairing I’d ever see sunshine bursting out from behind the clouds again, wondering if I’d ever see actual daylight, rather than musky dusk. Hell! I was longing to wake up to blue skies and puffy white clouds racing across the horizon. Floki and Dis knew I was down – it was easy to tell as I was so blue and not just from the cold, you understand that?” She waved her pipe at us and we nodded ascent. “They’d start yacking away about tasty food,” she said, “and delicious alcohol, soft warm rugs, candles, snuffling fluffy dogs curled up by the fire, reindeer farts being sweet smelling as hot buttered rum so good ol’ St Nick didn’t get any noxious backdraft on his sleigh. Things like that, that’s Koselig. That’s what they’d tell me, and I’d cheer right up. Hell, it was like magic.” And all the time Garterbelt was talking, telling us her story, Charleston was dancing behind her back, taking it all in, the tale she was wagging. I made a bet with myself she’d never been to Norway, heck as far as I know, Garterbelt hadn’t even been to Connecticut. But that’s the power of a good tale, you believe in it, totally and utterly fall for it. It draws you in, like a weasel dance of death. Have you ever seen a weasel dance of death? I have and let me tell you it’s hypnotic. I saw it when I was young. They call it the dance of death because it sure is something to watch, and whatever creature Mr Weasel has his eye on, its days are numbered. Mr Weasel sees a tasty treat – perhaps a plump, juicy rabbit – but old Bugs is some distance away. Mr Weasel starts dancing, jumping and twirling, for all the world like he’s breakdancing his ass off. Bugs is transfixed, he can’t stop staring at the bucking, boogieing weasel, and he doesn’t notice Mr Weasel is dancing closer and closer until… pow! No more Bugs. Dead Bugs. And that’s why a good story is like a weasel dance of death. It gets you every time.

We had weasels on the dump piles, rats a plenty, cats, dogs, all kinds of fauna came by – and birds too, whirling masses of birds. Gulls mostly. I told the seasons by the gulls, still do – for the most part, nothing changes. Like I said, there’s always lots of gulls on the heap. Heaps of gulls you might say. There’s big ones – great black-backed gulls, then little gulls… smaller, daintier, if a gull can be dainty, that is. Bonaparte’s gull, he’s a fine feathery fellow. I like the black-headed gulls best of all, because when the Fall arrives at the dump, the black-headed-gulls’ head feathers fade from dark to pale, until eventually the black-headed gulls look more like common gulls, and that’s how I know what season it is.

In wintertime, the trash changes too, white wine bottles become red wine bottles, bottles of beer are thrown out… unopened! I guess they got overlooked, party foods too, boxes of the stuff – we liked eating party chow. It’s the additives in party food, chock full of preservatives. Yep, party foods are great. Even when they’re pitched out as trash they’re still as fresh as a daisy. There were lots of real good clothes thrown out around Christmas time, everyone likes something new to wear for the great day. So… I guess they start thinking about Christmas and what fancy gear they want to wear and none of it fits them any longer. We didn’t have that problem, ‘specially Garterbelt. She was thin as a bulrush waving in the wind down by the railroad tracks. Beardy-boy said our trash piles were like mountains, snow-topped with gulls, pecking and picking out the quality trash to eat. He could be real poetic, could Beardy-boy.

I love the festive season, always did. It’s the sparkliness of Christmas. We had no fancy Christmas trees, ‘cept for the year we found a tree someone rejected – one of the fake trees you slot together, fluff all the plastic branches out to make it look real. Poor old tree – it was patchy, bald in places, still retained remnants of shattered glass baubles stuck to its branches. We got to work on it – fixed it right up. We called that old tree Chester Pine. Charleston went through all the new trash that had come in, found some shiny strings of tinsel, moth-eaten but still-good. When we’d finished, Chester Pine looked real smart. We set him up by the fire, back a bit, out of the way of the flames. The firelight reflected from the tinsel, set it twinkling, moving gently as the breeze came off the fire. It was beautiful to watch, crackling flames that seemed to dance in time with Chester’s waving branches. Yeah, usually we just had the stars to twinkle at us at Christmas, but that year we had Chester Pine. Until, that is, Charleston danced up a storm, tripped on a log and knocked old Chester flying. We watched in horror as Chester javelined straight into the fire. Whoosh! Up went Chester, fire licking around him, flames consuming him whole, fraying tinsel popping and crackling as it melted. Poor old Chester Pine.

“Just like proper New Year fireworks.” Beardy-boy said, warming his hands against the blaze. I can see him now, grinning as a length of tinsel fired over his head.

A few years ago us dump dwellers had a real good Christmas! Thanks to the gulls we had us a glut of luck. It started when the gulls were circling overhead, making a heck of a din. We had another girl with us then, Nectarine. When the gulls began screeching, she looked up, spotted a freight train had stopped on the tracks – that almost never happened. The trains raced by the trash heaps, vast, fast locomotives, horns blaring as the locos rounded the curve on the line, deep resonant sounds that echoed around the landscape. It was the oddest thing that happened then. Nectarine ran out, tore across the field at the far side of the dump. We watched her get smaller and smaller until she reached an open wagon. She leaped up into it, the horn sounded, the loco started up again and away it went. No more Nectarine. I heard she got a job in a Nevada casino. But I reckon that was just one of Garterbelt’s stories. Garterbelt was Nectarine’s replacement on the dump. She arrived the night Nectarine caught the train. We were all asleep by the fire, Beardy-boy let out a yell when he spied her. She was standing over him, looking down at him – like the gulls do. Gulls stare at you, put their heads on one side, yellow eyes boring straight into you. Garterbelt had green eyes – pretty eyes. Sad eyes. She’d seen stuff, I could tell. But her stories weren’t true, I knew that. Heck we never did find out where Garterbelt came from.

One morning the week before that same Christmas, Charleston woke-up from his hooch-drenched sleep and stalked off to the nearest trash heap. “Where you going, Charl?” I shouted at his fast-retreating back. “I had a dream,” he shouted, just like he was Martin Luther King, ‘cept he wasn’t like Martin Luther King at all. Old Charleston had dreamed there was something in the nearest heap and, heck what do you know, there was a boy in there. In a box. A cardboard box. Silly little critter had crawled in during a game of hide and seek. The box had been picked up by junk collectors, put on the wagon along with all the other old crapola left out for them to take. He had been dropped on the trash-pile while we slept by the fire. The boy was awake when we found him, and terrified. His beady eyes gazed out at Charleston when he opened the lid of the box. Poor frightened little kid wound his arms round old Charleston’s neck and that little boy sobbed for his momma.

I don’t like no fuss so I went for help. There’s a farm just over the railroad tracks. The folk there called the sheriff’s department. They came and fetched the boy. The farmer, Tom Creedy was good enough to come and tell us the boy was safe back with his momma in Wringerville. Us dump dwellers did good, the papers said – we did real good. People sent us stuff care of the Creedy’s Farm – bulging Christmas parcels packed with food… good stuff. The parcels stopped after a day or two, when folk forgot about us again. But it was mighty fine while it lasted.

And then on Christmas Eve itself, my favorite night of the year, Beardy-boy found a kitten. Tiny little mewing thing it was, stuffed into an old school bag. A poor ragged tabby. Beardy-boy hugged it to him, kissed its furry head. Beardy-boy loved that kitten straight off like it was his own lost pet, called it Wilma. Wilma followed Beardy-boy everywhere. He sure did love that cat.

Yeah… there must be something about Christmas, because it was around midnight last Christmas Eve I was dozing by the fire when a gull flew overhead, darned thing crapped on my face! Up I jumped, yelling and hollering fit to rouse a corpse. There was a bunch of gulls on top of the biggest trash heap – a “squabble” of gulls they call them, if you are into collective nouns – I once knew a guy who collected collective nouns. He knew hundreds of them. His favorite was a “shrewdness” of apes. Those gulls up there had something in their sights, I knew it. Before I knew what was happening I’d climbed the side of the heap to find out what the heck was going on – what had fired up those gulls. In amongst the trash bags, boxes and bits of old broken furniture were some ripped-open garbage bags full of pizza boxes – so that’s what the gulls had been after! Left-over pizza – gulls sure do love pizza. Alongside the oozing crusts, out of the ripped bag had tumbled a lot of ladies purses. Leather. Real swish leather, with shiny buckles and gleaming studs. Pretty, pretty purses. And all of them were full. Purse snatchers busy doing their worst in the nearest city, I guessed. But I was wrong. Those pretty purses came from New York. The Big Apple, no less. All kinds of things were in those purses and when I had a proper look I knew something was up. I just knew it. Those weren’t spoils of the street, there were jewels, money, watches, all manner of expensive trinkets. When I saw them, I knew for sure anyone who had taken those purses full of the spangly trappings of wealth wouldn’t have just thrown them out with the trash. No, those purses had come to our land of junk by mistake. But what to do with them? Just as I was scratching my head, wondering and pondering on my next move, God damn if one of those purses didn’t start to ring. Fast as anything I picked my way through until I found the cell phone responsible for playing “Strangers in the Night”.

“Yo!” I said. “Who’s this?” A lady screamed at me that I’d stolen her purse. “Whoa there…” I said. But, more swears came down the line. I never knew a lady that could curse like that, she fired them out hard and fast. I held the cell phone away until it went quiet. “You still there?” I asked, and she was, “listen, lady…” I told her. Then I recounted on how I’d happened upon her purse and a whole lot of other purses on top of a garbage heap. That upset her even more, made me smile to hear her shriek of dismay.

“That purse cost six thousand dollars!” she squealed. Heck, what purse is worth six big ones? Were those buckles made of gold and diamonds? I thought not. Anyway… as it turned out there’d been a robbery at a fancy club in Manhattan. The thieves had made all the ladies take off their jewelry, pack it into their purses, along with the rich dudes’ watches, wallets and money clips – and whatever else rich guys carry. All the spoils from the robbery were crammed into garbage sacks and the thieving butt-wipes made their getaway. Back at the hideout, those robbers celebrated in fine style by ordering-in pizza, they got so drunk on bottles of whiskey one of them picked up the wrong trash bag and threw it out with the pizza boxes. The garbage truck had long gone by the time the robbers discovered what had happened. Once again, it was me that went to Creedy’s Farm to call the sheriff. Most of the rich folk from the club in Manhattan were mighty grateful and gave us dump-dwellers a whole lot of money as reward – heck, they couldn’t do much else with the amount of coverage the story got on TV. We were heroes of the state. Saviors. “The Honest Hobos” the news stations called us.

Now… we might have lived on a trash site but we weren’t stupid. We knew those bad guys would hear the news, those no-good robbers would come gunning for us, wanting to pay us back big time for our good fortune – a generous dose of knuckles – or worse.

“What’re we gonna do, Spoon?” Charleston asked. “It’s only a matter of time and we’re done for.”

Beardy-boy raised his gaze. “Listen,” he said, cocking his head like a gull. “Train’s stopped.”

All of us ran across Creedy’s field to the railroad track, jumped onto an open wagon, and three hobos, a trash lady and a cat went south for Christmas.

About the author

Suzanna has been writing since childhood. Having never grown up, she now writes children’s books – and occasionally, novels and short stories for non-children.

She publishes online for Kindle, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords, churning out paperbacks from Lulu.com.

Suzanna is the administrator and an active member of The Bristol Fiction Writers’ Group. Fostering a love of dressing-up and doing silly voices, she performs at spoken word events, schools and children’s groups.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SuzannaStanbury

Twitter: @suzannastanbury

Website: www.snubtry.weebly.com

Author central: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Suzanna-Stanbury/e/B005IWOATW

Christmas on Mercury by A. Stuart Williams

Captain Dan Johnson snapped the last switch to “idle” and lay back on his acceleration couch. Slowly, his breath returned, and as he floated imperceptibly within the webbing that held him down, he could hear the pulse pounding in his head, and the blood rushing through his veins like the sea in a conch shell, something he certainly could not have done during the past ten minutes of thunderous acceleration.

“One small step…” he whispered underneath his breath.

A deafening silence now echoed round the inside of his plexiglas helmet which, having checked the oxygen readouts in front of him, he twisted free with a click, nodding to the rest of the command crew to do likewise.

As he did so, the lipstick-pink foam figure of a hippopotamus flew past his head and careened off the opposite cabin wall, now tumbling end-over-end to just within reach, and he grabbed it. Stranger still, it was wearing a Santa hat…

Half-inclined to be annoyed, but with a barely suppressed smile flickering around his hard lips, he tossed the festive river-horse back across the cabin to the Flight Engineer, Dr David Horne, noting as he did so the printing on the side of the creature which read “Merry Christmas from Walsall”. He could expect nothing else of the clever but cheeky yam-yam. The hippo – “Hoppy” by name and apparently a symbol of his home town – was, Horne had said when he brought it on board, “a mascot, something for good luck, yow know!” Well, certainly you needed all the luck you could get if you were a space explorer.

Back to business.

Dan busied himself aligning the ship with her destination, gingerly adjusting giros and gently applying bursts of invisible gas from the manoeuvring thrusters, until the readouts and star sights matched the flight plan on the control panel before him. He keyed the final co-ordinates into the astrogation computer and hit the “engage” button.

“Main course locked in. Activate the ion drive, Dr Horne. We’ve still a long way to go yet.”

“Indeed,” interjected Mission Astronomer Professor Phil Burgess from his couch at the rear of the cabin, “Some 48 million miles in a straight line, as Earth and Mercury are almost at opposition. Just as well we won’t be making a bee-line there though, it would take too much fuel.”

They would instead be playing catch-up around the solar system, using gravity slingshots to eventually line up with the tiny but fascinating world. Only then would the powerful atomic pulse motors come into play once more, to bring them safely into orbit, and thence to a safe landing – they hoped.

“A pity no one has yet managed to invent a viable FTL drive, but at least we’ll be there in time for Christmas!” Burgess smiled an aside to the young lady on the couch opposite, who was busily putting her hair to rights.

She looked back at him and rolled her eyes, nodding. Lucy Laroche of the Commonwealth Times, late of Toronto, Canada, sometime journalist and photographer, now astronaut, was not looking forward to a month squashed together like spam in a can with crazy rocket-jocks and crazier scientists in what some had already said was the craziest space mission ever.

Perhaps the thought of celebrating the festive season millions of miles away from friends and family, on the hottest planet in the solar system was no crazier; in fact the Mission Geologist, Linda Evans, had gleefully informed Miss Laroche during an interview that where they were going, they could expect lakes of rock-solid ice, and it might even be possible to skate, had it been remotely feasible to attach blades to the thick, insulated boots of their armoured excursion suits…

Anyway, she was here to do a job as well, and now instinctively reached for her camera, but it was floating high “above” her; though of course there is no up or down in space, it’s all relative. Unable to reach the device, she unfastened her harness and, pushing away with one hand, floated “upward” and, suspended in mid-air just below the “ceiling” of the cabin, managed to catch hold of the strap.

Out of a corner of her eye she could see a grinning Dave Horne busily flipping switches and adjusting dials. He pushed a group of four thrust levers forward. Far more subtle pumps than those thunderous organs feeding the rockets which had lifted the sleek, winged shape of the N53 Daedalus from the spaceport at Woomera through the thin layer of air and into interplanetary space, now began to whirr.

In the rear viewplate that monitored the stern of the ship, a faint blue glow, almost imperceptible against the deep royal blue of the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, began to slowly extend outwards.

“Cycling nicely, skipper!” Horne glanced excitedly at Captain Johnson.

“Ok, advance the thrust to eighty per cent, let’s get this flying circus on the road to the stars!”

Johnson looked up in amusement as the gentle but persistent propulsion system pulsed, the rapidly growing ion exhaust now almost taking on the aspect of a cometary tail, and as the rear of the cabin came forward to meet Miss Laroche, she and her photographic apparatus were dumped unceremoniously into the short corridor leading from Command to the main crew quarters and the laboratory module beyond. From her now upside-down perspective, Lucy could see Mission Geologist Dr Linda Evans leaving her own couch and moving aft to join fellow scientist and husband, biologist Kenneth Evans.

Slightly dishevelled but unbowed, Laroche righted herself and immediately used her new vantage point to have her revenge, by shooting the first of many candid pictures she had been commissioned to take, all along the high road to Mercury. It would not be long before she was pestering the Communications Officer Andy Lound for time on the IP Fax Transender; presently, though, he was notifying Woomera of their successful orbit and preparations for interplanetary insertion. Meanwhile, she would have to console herself with a snap of the mission commander sticking two fingers up at her lens.

They were on their way. Now, late in the twenty-second century, humanity, represented by these bold adventurers of the Commonwealth Space Force, would soon be setting foot for the first time on that most unlikely world, named for the swift-footed Roman messenger of the gods. Or so they thought.

The millions upon millions of miles would have passed slowly if it were not for the fact that most of the crew were able to busy themselves with the many scientific tasks that such journeys afforded a myriad of opportunities for. Daedalus bristled with radio and optical telescopes, spectrometers, radiometers, magnetometers and sundry instruments that few laymen would have had any clue about. As the ship continued to cut a wake through the streaming solar wind, they travelled onward on their historic journey. And almost a month later, just a few short hours before planetfall, perhaps the most surprising discovery of all was waiting for them. They were not alone.

Crackling across space, distorted by the streams of deadly sleeting particles which coursed through the void so close to father Sol, came unfamiliar words, in a very familiar accent.

“Гагарин вызова Дедала. Гагарина вызова Дедала. Мы просим вашей помощи. Пожалуйста, ответьте. За ...”

The transmission was followed by unmistakable but equally unintelligible arguing in the background, then:

“English, you idiot! Once again…”

“Gagarin calling Daedalus. Gagarin calling Daedalus. We request your assistance. Please respond. Over...”

It was not alien life that called out to them in some incomprehensibly-evolved tongue, but Russians!

It was impossible of course. There was no way the Communist Federation of Russia could have gotten a ship here ahead of the Commonwealth mission – they were too far behind technologically, weren’t they? Weren’t they?

For a moment there was stunned silence aboard the Daedalus, then Captain Johnson took control.

“Patch me through to them, Mr Lound!” he barked at the Communications Officer, who obeyed instantly. “Aye, sir!”

“Captain Dan Johnson of the Commonwealth Spaceship Daedalus here. Who is that, and where are you? Is that a Federation ship? How the hell did you get out here?”

The ether crackled again, and this time it soon became clear how the present situation had come about. Over the next few minutes, the commander of the Gagarin, Captain Alexei Ivanovich Korolev, explained how Federation scientists, cutting corners as they so often did, had discovered the secret of near-light-speed space travel, and, seeing that the Commonwealth was making such a big show of its latest mission, to Mercury, the big hats in the Kremlin had ordered them to put it into practice, for propaganda purposes.

“They threw billions of NeoRoubles at the idea, Comrade Johnson. The result was, how would you say it – the “Blip Drive”. You see, we left orbit three weeks after Daedalus, and we’ve been waiting for you for the best part of a week. We’re delighted to welcome you to Communist Mercury! Especially as, well, we are, for want of a better word, stranded…”

It turns out that the Russian Blip Drive, while very efficient, had drawn so much power that the fuel lines to the spherical ship’s fusion reactor had split wide open, venting the precious heavy water into space, and with the reaction automatically shut down for safety, the crew had been unable to get it started again. One too many cut corners, this time.

They had just been able to limp into Mercury orbit using conventional rockets, and set the ship down in a deep, dark, shadowed crater near the North Pole, hoping to mine and refine enough water ice to refuel their reactor. Sadly, it had turned out to be the “wrong kind of ice” – full of long-chain hydrocarbons and amino acids. Normally this would have made a fascinating discovery; now it was simply like “sugar in a can of gasoline”, as Korolev put it. They were stuckski.

So, it seemed it was the English – or technically at least, the Commonwealth – to the rescue as usual. Just as well there was spare capacity in the lab module.

All this was moot to the crew and passengers aboard the Daedalus as she entered Mercury orbit just before midnight on Christmas Eve, 2186. The shock of hearing from the Gagarin had mostly worn off by the time the ship rotated tail-first and the nuclear motors rumbled into life. Slowly, on a blinding pillar of sunfire, Daedalus descended into the frozen crater, safely shielded from the blistering heat of Mercury’s unshadowed surface just a few dozen miles away.

As the ship touched down, the silently thundering motors blasted hundreds of tons of billion-year-old ice into flash water vapour and, rising high into the freezing cold of the shadow zone, it began to fall, in tiny particles at first then crystallising in huge, swirling flakes, like a veritable Siberian blizzard. Soon the ice between the two ships was deep and crisp and even with snow.

Looking out of the viewports, there were gasps of amazement and Lucy Laroche whispered into Dan’s ear “You do know it’s Christmas Day, don’t you?” She was holding aloft a sprig of plastic mistletoe.

“Sure,” Dan replied. “And the next thing you’ll be telling me is that the Gagarin is a sleigh, and Alexei Ivanovich over there is Father Christmas…”

He gave her a peck on the cheek for form’s sake (he was English, after all), and together they looked out onto the coldest place on the hottest world in the Solar System.

A rather rotund-looking man was making his way across the snow in a bright red armoured vacuum suit, emblazoned with a worn golden hammer and sickle, dragging a sack behind him. He and the men who followed at a distance were carrying traditional festive gifts for their rescuers, including Kutya pudding, caviar and a case of vodka, and it would soon be party time.

About the author

A. Stuart Williams is an English writer, journalist, photographer and historian living in the region which inspired J. R. R. Tolkien’s dark land of Mordor – the “Black Country”.

Fascinated by science fiction, sword and sorcery, weird pulp, alternate history and steampunk since the 1960s, he grew up reading British reprints of classic US pulps and Golden Age science fiction.

Published in a number of anthologies, newspapers, factual magazines (computing, astronomical, photographic, historical), and the author of several local history books, Stuart initially trained as a commercial photographer before working in newspaper publishing, finally becoming a professional historian and journalist.

Today, his writing mainly focuses on science fiction, sword & sorcery, dark fantasy and steampunk as well as computer journalism. His latest story is “The Wizard’s Apprentice”, out now in the Southcart Tales anthology.

Stuart believes that “What if?” is the most amazing question of all.

Website: http://astuartwilliams.com

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00LTZ9MYA

Elf Service by Heide Goody

Jeremy Clovenhoof whistled as he approached the shopping centre, weaving through the Christmas shoppers and knocking the occasional knee with his wheelbarrow. Unseasonal curses followed his shin-whacking passage through the evening crowd but the carol singers drowned them out, not that he would have cared anyway.

He was making his way to the pop-up shop, the Elf Service, which had been the subject of much discussion since it opened a few weeks ago. It occupied a large canopied area in a corner of the Gracechurch shopping centre and held special events for various seasonal offers, but the star attraction of the pop-up shop had been the personal shopping service. The advertising claimed that it could solve any gift buying dilemma. All the desperate gift buyer needed to do was fill in a questionnaire, hand over the budgeted amount, and the clever elves would hand back a gift wrapped present that was guaranteed to delight the recipient. Today of all days, Christmas Eve, it was sure to be busy.

Jeremy had considered whether it might be fun to fill in a questionnaire for himself, so he could have a nice surprise on Christmas morning, but decided it was a waste of time. He knew what he wanted and that’s why he was here. With a wheelbarrow.

He was held up momentarily by a couple engaged in a full blown argument. The woman was wearing a hat encircled by dangling pom-poms so, by Jeremy’s reckoning, she’d already lost the moral high ground.

“Seriously, it’s not hard,” she said. “I’m an easy person to buy for. There are loads of things I like. Nice things. Perfume, chocolate, that sort of thing.”

“I’m not good with that sort of thing,” he said.

“Just buy me something nice.”

“Define nice.”

“Here’s a clue. If it looks like a household appliance it’s not a nice thing. Got it?”

The man nodded in a way that said he clearly didn’t, and then they separated so that Jeremy was able to continue on his way.

Jeremy arrived at the Elf Service pop-up shop on the pedestrianised high street. It was, he thought derisively, just a tent backing onto the service doors of a department store. Someone had attempted to festify and Christmatise it by covering it in tinsel, positioning a bunch of polystyrene penguins around it and creating a picket fence corral beside it in which two miserable-looking reindeer munched on a bale of hay. It was sad, tacky and the most Christmassy thing about it was the long queue of shoppers beside it.

Jeremy joined the back of the queue with a grudging sigh.

“Why you got a wheelbarrow?” said a voice behind him. He looked down to see Spartacus Wilson, tweenage terror of Boldmere.

The boy was a menace to society, a rebel without a cause and one of Jeremy’s favourite people.

“The wheelbarrow is to help me carry several cases of the Special Edition Christmas Lambrini that’s being launched this evening,” said Jeremy. “I hadn’t realised that you were coming along or I’d have brought a truck instead.”

“But you can’t drive,” said Spartacus.

“That’s why I would have required a co-pilot, to scream at pedestrians to get out of my way. Why are you here?”

“Come to buy a hoverboard.”

“You know they don’t really hover, don’t you?” said Jeremy. “Don’t get overexcited.”

“You trying to crush my dreams? Course I know they don’t hover.”

“And I’ve heard they can spontaneously catch fire.”

“Ah love a bit of danger, me.”

They shuffled forward in the queue, drawing level with the reindeer.

“Never saw you as the queuing sort,” said Spartacus. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d got the patience.”

“Let me impart some of my wisdom,” said Jeremy. “I have refined my approach to queues, and now consider myself an expert. The following conditions must all be true in order for me to tolerate a queue.” He checked them off on his fingers. “The reward at the end must be considerable. Check. There must be something fun to do while I wait. Check.”

“What, talking to me?”

“No, working out whether these reindeer are boys or girls. The third thing that I always evaluate is the chance of success if I go to the front and make them serve me first. You will see that there is a security guard stationed over there, who might as well be wearing a hi-vis tabard saying “fun police”, so thus my checks are complete and I have decided to queue. If you made that into an app we’d make a fortune, you know that don’t you?”

Spartacus rolled his eyes.

“How you going to know if the reindeer are boys or girls?”

“I’m working on that. Can you see any cushions in their enclosure?”

“What? Cushions?”

“Conclusive proof that a female is present. Fact.”

“You’re a tit,” said Spartacus, as he shuffled to the head of the queue and approached an elf. The elf looked very much like a pale young man with false ears and stick-on eyebrows.

Jeremy watched with interest as Spartacus put a stack of cards on the counter.

“Top of the range hoverboard, please. Take it off the points on those.”

The elf looked up at him and then shuffled through the cards.

“These loyalty cards are all in different names, you can’t spend these.”

“They’re my aunties and uncles, aren’t they?” said Spartacus.

“You have a large family,” said the elf, his stick-on eyebrows coming together with suspicion.

“They said go and buy yourself something nice for Christmas,” said Spartacus. “My family love me.”

The elf inspected the cards critically.

“Mr A J Ramjit? Ms R Mboto? These are family members, are they?”

“I have a wide family,” said Spartacus.

“The women in the family aren’t afraid to spread it about a bit,” Jeremy chipped in. “It’s like the United Nations of promiscuity in their house.”

“I’m sorry but loyalty cards are not transferable,” said the elf. “You’ll need to give these back to your, er, family. Who’s next?”

The elf turned his attention to Jeremy, who trotted forward with his wheelbarrow.

“Fill her up with Special Edition Lambrini and I’ll be sure to toast your elf later on,” he said.

The elf failed to respond to Jeremy’s humour, but placed a token on the counter between them.

“You can only have one. Bring this token back when Santa’s Sleigh comes into the square at ten o’clock and you can collect it then.”

“What do you mean only one?” asked Jeremy. “I was counting on at least thirty. It’s that time of the year when we remember to get well and truly bladdered at every opportunity. Don’t you get trained in the true meaning of Christmas?”

“One. It’s the limit so we don’t run out,” said the elf.

Jeremy slammed the money onto the counter and grabbed the token with a scowl.

“Looks like we’ve both come away disappointed,” he said as he caught up with Spartacus. “Let’s at least check out those reindeer, shall we?”

Jeremy reached across the fence, shoved his hands between the legs of the closest reindeer and gave an exploratory squeeze. He quickly discovered three things: one, they weren’t girl reindeer; two, you probably shouldn’t startle a reindeer from behind and; three, the little picket fence around the reindeer enclosure wasn’t as solid as it looked.

Jeremy spent the following few minutes spreadeagled on the ground, with Spartacus alongside.

“It’s snowing,” said Jeremy, blinking at the night sky. “Either that or I’ve got concussion.”

The two of them had been knocked aside as the bellowing started and the reindeer leapt from their enclosure. Jeremy had a limited view from his prone position, but it was clear from the screams and the crashing sounds that the reindeer weren’t done.

“What did you do?” said Spartacus, as he sat up.

“I think I proved that we’re dealing with a male of the species,” said Jeremy.

He sprang to his feet and looked around.

“Everyone’s gone,” he said. “One way or another.”

The hi-vis jacket sped round the corner, chasing after the escaped reindeer, and a pair of feet stuck out from beneath the Elf Service counter. Jeremy tugged on them and an unconscious elf slid into view.

“Wake up! My Lambrini depends on you sorting out Santa when he gets here on his sleigh,” said Jeremy, shaking the elf’s shoulder.

“Hold on,” said Spartacus. “Let me find my hoverboard while he’s having a nap.”

“You’re right, this is an interesting opportunity,” said Jeremy. He pulled out elf tunics from a box beneath the counter and threw one at Spartacus. “Here, put this on.”

“You’re joking.”

“Get it on, we need to blend in, then we’ll have a look round. I want to see where he keeps the tokens.”

They both pulled elf tunics over their heads.

“I’m not wearing the ears,” said Spartacus.

“Sorry? What was that?” said Jeremy, cupping his hand to his oversized ear. “What? Yes, you’re right, I should be on the stage.”

Spartacus ignored him and started to explore the boxes beneath the counter.

“There’s loads of wrapping paper and bows under here. Where do they keep all the presents?”

Jeremy looked up, his hands full of Lambrini tokens.

“That door there goes into part of the department store.”

Spartacus looked at the locked door at the back of the tent and looked down at the elf who was beginning to stir.

“Well this one’s got a pass, but I think he’s coming round.”

“Right, let’s get him inside,” said Jeremy. “You take his legs.”

The elf’s pass opened the door. And they dragged the unconscious unfortunate inside. There was a large warehouse area, with shelves stretching in every direction. They carried the elf further inside until Jeremy spotted a cage.

“Let’s put him in there.”

“Why have they even got a cage in here?” said Spartacus.

“It’s where they keep the really expensive presents. Electronics and stuff. Our man here has a key to the lock though. Result!”

Jeremy found that he was bearing the entire weight of the elf, as Spartacus dived into the cage, looking for a hoverboard.

“I can’t tell what these things are! The labels just have barcodes on. Which one is a hoverboard?”

“Just grab something that looks the right size and we’ll check it out. Come on!”

Jeremy fastened the lock on the cage just as the elf awoke, leapt to his feet and started to loudly object to his confinement.

“Stop hollering,” said Jeremy. “I just need to make sure I get my fair allocation of Lambrini. By fair allocation I mean all of it.”

The captive elf clawed his fingers round the mesh of the cage.

“If I’m not there to sign for it, they’ll never hand it over,” he snarled.

Jeremy thought for a moment.

“Do you mean that someone wearing an elf suit and false ears must sign for it?”

Jeremy did a little twirl in his elfy costume and Spartacus did likewise.

“Think we’ve got that covered, don’t you?”

The incarcerated elf sulked in the bottom of the cage and Jeremy followed Spartacus as he dragged the large cardboard box through the warehouse.

“Spartacus, my man. You need to help me run this stall for a short while. In return for your efforts, I will demonstrate my advanced IT skills and find you a hoverboard.”

“Or I could just demonstrate my advanced box opening skills and find it myself,” said Spartacus.

“Go on then,” said Jeremy, and watched as Spartacus shredded the box and pulled out a layer of formed polystyrene.

“Here we go!” he said and cracked open the central part. “Oh.”

Spartacus pulled a face as an electronic bathroom scale blinked into life.

They went back outside to the table, where a customer was waiting. Jeremy recognised the partner of the pom-pom hat woman and beamed at him.

“I’ve done the questionnaire,” said the man, handing over a piece of paper.

“Good, you come back later and we’ll have everything sorted,” said Jeremy. “After ten would be best.”

“That’s too late,” said the man. “I need it in the next thirty minutes!”

“Fine,” said Jeremy. “Premium service it is then. Extra ten quid. Cash only.”

The man grumbled loudly and pulled more money from his wallet. Jeremy turned to Spartacus as the man disappeared, waggling the cash along with his eyebrows.

“We could make a tidy profit doing this for a while. Grab those bathroom scales and wrap them up.”

“Aren’t we supposed to use the questionnaire?” Spartacus said. “If they open stuff up before we’ve gone, things might get nasty.”

“Fine,” said Jeremy, picking up the paper. “Let’s see, it’s for a lady and she likes perfume, chocolate and cats. Pretty sure there aren’t going to be any cats in that warehouse and perfume and chocolate is just dull, dull, dull. Zero imagination. Let’s — oh wait, there’s a note here saying that if it looks like a household appliance then it’s no good.”

“Scales are a household appliance,” said Spartacus.

“Ah yes, my boy, but they don’t have to look like a household appliance, do they? Go back in there and find some paints. I think I saw some on the racking. Paint a nice cat’s face on those scales and I think our man’s done really well for himself. A customised gift. Tell you what, if you see any pom-poms, add those too.”

“You are going to find me a hoverboard if I do all the leg work, yeah?”

Jeremy checked his watch as Spartacus disappeared through the door. Everything was coming together. He just needed to hold the fort until the arrival of the Lambrini.

He was dismayed to see that the security guard with the hi-vis jacket was walking towards him. He had the face of someone who didn’t know where the party was, but was determined to spoil it. Florid cheeks and a huge moustache that quivered with self-importance. Jeremy gave him a brazen grin. The man eyed him suspiciously.

“You look... different,” he said.

Jeremy tried to waggle his comedy ears, but caught the flicker of concern on the man’s face.

“You noticed my haircut,” he said. “I’m flattered.”

“Right. Yes,” the man cleared his throat. “We’ve caught the reindeer for you. Local vet’s sedated them and put them in a horse box. We need you to arrange somewhere for us to take them.”

“Sure, yes,” said Jeremy, glancing at his watch. “Come back at ten thirty.”

“Make the call now, these people haven’t got all night,” said the man, twitching his upper lip so that his moustache danced like a rogue hamster.

Jeremy pulled out his phone and dialled a random number.

Jeremy eyed the security guard and said into the phone, “Hello, I’m sending our friends back to you for the night. Yes, they’ve been sedated and they need somewhere to sleep it off. Just make them comfy and you can send them back in the morning. They’re on the way, bye.”

He looked up at hi-vis. “There, all sorted.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said the man. “I need to tell the driver where to take the reindeer.” He put his notepad on the counter. “Write it down on there.”

“Can I please have a moment to serve this lady?” said Jeremy, playing for time. He indicated an elderly lady, hair in a bun, who was waiting to the side.

The security guard was clearly torn between the urge to growl at Jeremy to stop messing about and the urge to defer politely to the sweet little old lady. He stepped away for a moment with a theatrical sigh.

“I need help with a gift for my son,” said the woman. “I know I’m supposed to write this down, but I don’t have my glasses.”

“No problem,” said Jeremy, realising that he recognised the woman. “Tell me all about your gift giving dilemma.”

“Darren, that’s my son, used to be what they call a Satanist. Do you know what one of those is?”

“I’ve got a bit of an idea,” said Jeremy.

“Well I used to knit accessories for him, you know, little skulls, pentagrams, inverted crosses, that sort of thing. I was never stuck for a gift idea in those days. He changed though. Something happened that turned him to God. He painted his walls white and got rid of all the Satanist things. Now he tells me he’s not interested in material goods. Where does that leave me at Christmas?”

Jeremy nodded. “I see your problem.”

“The only thing he’s ever mentioned is something about Christmas charity gifts that help other people. Apparently Oxfam do goats. Have you got anything like that?”

“Have we got anything like a goat? Well, it’s your lucky day! It just so happens that we have something that’s even better than a goat. Tell me your address so I can write it down.”

Jeremy picked up the notepad and pen with a broad smile.

After Jeremy had waved off Darren’s mom and the security guard, Spartacus returned from the warehouse with a large wrapped box.

“Right, all done. Hoverboard time, I think.”

Jeremy slipped back into the warehouse and stabbed at the stock monitoring computer by the door. Spartacus was minding the counter, so he just needed to find the right box. It was important that nothing should get between him and the Lambrini, so keeping the boy on side was crucial. After a few false starts, he managed to find the stock level of hoverboards in the warehouse.

“Only one left! Nick of time. Now where –”

“Looking for something?” came a voice.

Jeremy glanced over to the cage, where the captive elf gave him a malevolent grin, and held up the last hoverboard in the warehouse, shredded packaging at his feet.

“Be a terrible shame if it got damaged,” he said. Jeremy was intrigued to see that the elf had mastered the art of actually waggling the false ears for emphasis. He was impressed.

“We don’t need to be hasty now,” said Jeremy. “I’m sure we can sort this all out. Back in a tick.”

He went back out to see Spartacus.

“That man came back for his present,” said Spartacus. “The one you had me decorate with condoms. Where’s my hoverboard?”

“Did you just say condoms?”

“Yeah, condoms. Like you said.”

“I said pom-poms!”

Spartacus shrugged. “Whatever. Where’s my hoverboard?”

“I did find it in the warehouse,” said Jeremy carefully. “You can go and collect it in a minute. Can I hear the sound of sleigh bells?”

They both listened and heard the unmistakeable sound of Wham’s Last Christmas being played at high volume through a speaker that wasn’t keeping up. As the music got louder, a couple strolled past. It was the pom-pom woman and her partner. Jeremy listened to their conversation with interest.

“It’s genius, where did you find it?” she asked.

“It was a special order. Custom made,” said the man.

“A lop sided cartoon cat with light up eyes and condom dreadlocks. It’s playful, artistic, and it will perk up our love life no end. You’ve hit all the right notes, sweetheart, well done!”

She linked her arm through his and nuzzled his neck happily. The man looked dazed, but winked at Jeremy with a small shrug.

“One thing I don’t understand is the numbers that light up in its eyes,” said the woman as they walked away. “But it’s kooky. I like the mystery.”

The sleigh made a stately appearance on the pedestrianised high street. A four-by-four SUV drove at a slow walking pace through the steadily mounting snow, pulling an elaborately pimped trailer behind it. The tinselley curves and the strobing fairy lights were eye catching, but the disembodied plywood reindeer head emerging from the front was the most arresting feature. Jeremy thought that its dead eyes were following him. It was truly a thing of beauty.

“Looks like the front of our house,” said Spartacus proudly. Jeremy looked at him with interest. “My mom loves Christmas.”

“I think you can probably go and get your hoverboard now,” said Jeremy, handing a key to Spartacus. “It’s in the cage. Talk nicely to the elf that’s got it and you’ll be fine.”

Jeremy watched the sleigh approach and danced a little elfish caper in anticipation. He could see the crates of Lambrini stacked up in the back. There was the obligatory Santa sitting there too, waving to shoppers.

“I don’t know what you did, but I want to thank you!” came a voice.

Jeremy had been so fixated on the sleigh that he hadn’t seen the little old lady return. She had a phone at her ear.

“My Darren’s on the phone. He’s saying we’ve had a Christmas miracle. He’s so excited! A Christmas miracle in Sutton!”

Jeremy smiled at her and she moved away, looking uncertain as to what was going on, but chattering excitedly to her son.

The sleigh parked next to the counter and Santa came round to talk to Jeremy.

“Evening,” said Santa gruffly. “There’s supposed to be a queue of people with tokens, where are they all?”

“Oh we had a bit of an incident, you know, people had to evacuate. Leave the Lambrini on the counter with me and I’ll make sure it gets sorted out when they all come back,” said Jeremy.

“Can’t do that. We’ve got a photo booth on the sleigh. Need to capture the smiling faces for social media, don’t we?”

Jeremy considered this for a moment and leaned forward to peer at the sleigh.

“How does a photo booth work then?”

Santa led him round.

“I sit here. The lucky recipient sits here. We smile up at that camera there, holding the bottle nice and high and then I press this button. They all go on Twitter, hashtag partynight.”

“Genius!” breathed Jeremy. “Now, why don’t you take a short break while I gather your adoring public together?”

The driver of the four-by-four got out and walked round to join them.

“What’s going on? This is our fourth town this evening. Everyone else has had the queues all ready for us.”

“I was just saying to Santa here that we had a brief emergency earlier, so it will take me a few minutes to regroup. Can I persuade the two of you to enjoy a drink in one of Sutton’s splendid pubs while I take care of this?”

The driver looked at Santa.

“Last gig of the day, what do you reckon?”

“I don’t like this snow,” said Santa. “We could get stuck here.”

“You’re Santa,” snapped Jeremy. “You’re meant to love snow.”

“He likes whiskey on the rocks more,” said the four-by-four driver.

A look passed between the two of them.

Santa heaved a fat-bellied sigh.

“Fine. You’ve twisted my arm.”

The two of them started to walk away and Jeremy fetched his wheelbarrow out. He was counting the cases of Lambrini on the sleigh when the security guard with the high vis jacket returned.

“I just got a call from the vet. He was concerned that you’ve had us drop the reindeer at a domestic address. A terraced house no less, where the occupant took them into the front room saying something about a nativity scene. What do you know about this?”

Jeremy was trying hard to come up with something good when the tent flaps of the pop-up shop flew out. A fast moving bundle shot towards them, which comprised Spartacus and the elf, wrestling on top of a hoverboard, with snow spraying out violently in their wake. The elf was shrieking at full volume.

“Stop them both. Thieves! They locked me up!”

Jeremy rolled his eyes and stepped forward, plucking the elf off the hoverboard.

“Spartacus,” he said. “We might want to make a hasty exit at this point. Get in there and remember what your role is.”

Spartacus ducked beneath the grip of the security guard and hopped into the sleigh, hoverboard under his arm. Jeremy nipped into the driver’s door of the four-by-four and pushed the stick thing into the position marked ‘drive’. To his surprise, the vehicle pulled away with a sickening kangaroo lurch when he pressed the pedal.

“Out of the way! Out of the way everyone!” yelled Spartacus. He’d discovered the public address system which made it doubly effective.

Jeremy stuck his head out of the window, rear-ending a shop window as he did.

“Get some photos, Spartacus, button by your side. Hashtag partynight. Woohoo!”

It captured each of their pursuers. He wanted to re-live these moments later on. The man in the hi vis jacket managed to clamber briefly onto the sleigh, but was blinded by the flash and fell away.

Jeremy got a little bit lost on the way home, mainly because he wanted to tune the radio. He was certain that he went down some of the roads twice, because he recognised the cars that he’d dented the first time. He also thought he passed Darren’s house. He recognised the silhouettes of the two sets of antlers in the front room. Eventually they made it back to Boldmere, and Jeremy pulled up.

He posed next to Spartacus and they took some more photos before they discarded their elf costumes and parted company.

“Merry Christmas you daft old fart,” said Spartacus, as he walked off with his new hoverboard.

Jeremy checked the time. It was just after midnight. Christmas day.

He started to unload the Lambrini.

“Merry Christmas, Spartacus!”

About the author

Heide lives in North Warwickshire with her family and would love to get Christmas under control, just once. She co-writes comedy books with Iain Grant.

The Clovenhoof series features Satan who is made redundant from Hell and sent to live in Sutton Coldfield.

You can buy the first Clovenhoof book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clovenhoof-Heide-Goody-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG

Webiste: http://www.pigeonparkpress.com/