Christmas Tales of Terror Page 4

  ‘And tomorrow I’m going to smash that thing to little pieces. We have to keep these family traditions alive, eh?’

  Just at that moment, the door opened and they both turned to see his mother standing in the doorway. Charles, with practised ease, had released John even as the door handle was being turned.

  ‘Charles?’ she said. ‘What are you doing in John’s room?’

  ‘I was just telling him there were no hard feelings,’ he replied.

  ‘John?’ said his mother.

  John nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Charles has been very decent about it.’

  John’s mother eyed the boys suspiciously.

  ‘Very well, then,’ she said. ‘That’s good. Though it still doesn’t excuse your outburst, John. But back to your own room now, Charles.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt,’ said Charles, walking towards her. He turned as he reached the door. ‘Goodnight, John.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ mumbled John.

  John’s mother moved out of the way to let Charles past, and then looked at her son, but he would not meet her gaze and she left the room.

  John felt numb. He got undressed in a trance and looked out at the snowman one last time before closing his curtains and getting into bed. He could not sleep and was still awake when, two hours later, his father appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the landing light.

  ‘I am very disappointed in you, John,’ he said. His voice was slurred slightly and a little hoarse. ‘Very . . . very disappointed.

  ‘Not content with disgracing yourself earlier, I also find out that you struck your cousin in the nose this morning. Your uncle tells me that Charles has already spoken to you, which says a lot for the boy’s character, I must say. You, on the other hand, have failed to show any sort of remorse for your behaviour.

  ‘I ought to thrash you, John, but you know that is not my way . . . and so I’m afraid that I’m going to confine you to your room until I decide that you have learned your lesson.’

  John’s father fumbled with a set of keys, dropping them on to the carpet and stooping down to pick them up. He sounded out of breath when he spoke again.

  ‘You have a chamber pot in here for your needs and I shall send Mary up with a sandwich tomorrow. Goodnight.’

  With that, he shut the door and locked it behind him.

  John wished his father had thrashed him. Anything would have been better than the terrible disappointment he could hear in his father’s voice. It chilled him to the bone.

  John climbed out of bed and went to the window. It was dark outside. All the house lights were out now on this side of the house, but the snow gave off a spectral glow.

  He looked forlornly down at the snowman, who now seemed less to be looking up at his room, but at the room next door – Charles’s room.

  Charles would go out tomorrow and set about destroying it. This would be the last time John saw it intact and he burned with anger at the thought. Charles seemed to be systematically poisoning every part of his life. He was a disease.

  ‘No!’ said John quietly – bitterly – to himself.

  John woke after a disturbed sleep and, looking at his watch, he saw it was already gone eight o’clock. He jumped out of bed and went to the window. The snowman was still there. But standing beside it was Charles. He was leaning on a spade he must have found in the gardener’s shed.

  John wondered how long his cousin had stood there in the freezing cold, waiting for John to open his curtains. His face was red and he was blowing into his hands for warmth.

  Grinning, Charles lifted the spade and swung it at the snowman’s head. He had clearly intended to knock the head off but mistimed his swing and only caught it a glancing blow.

  John had closed his eyes as soon as the spade was swung, unable to watch, but when he opened them, he was puzzled to see no more than a small chunk removed from the top of the snowman’s head and Charles doubled up, holding his own head with both hands.

  John wondered what had happened. Had Charles somehow hit himself with the spade? John grinned. Served him right! Charles looked up, rubbing his head, and saw John smiling. Furious, he took up the spade again and rammed the blade into the snowman’s body.

  As soon as he did so, he let out a great groan that seemed to echo round the stillness of the snow-covered garden, and then he fell backwards into the snow, staring up at the grey sky above.

  John watched in amazement as Uncle Henry burst out through the french windows.

  ‘Charles!’ he yelled, picking his son up and shaking him. ‘Charles, my boy!’

  But even from his vantage point, John could see that Charles was dead.

  John’s father ran out and joined Uncle Henry in bringing Charles inside. He could hear his mother crying and servants running this way and that.

  John was about to turn away from the window when he noticed the spade lying in the snow next to the wounded snowman. Torn and hanging from the edge of its shining blade was Charles’s blood-soaked handkerchief.

  The doctor said that Charles’s heart had given out, but could offer no explanation as to why. Some hearts were simply weaker than others, he said. Perhaps standing in the cold for so long had been the trigger.

  Charles’s attack on the snowman had been witnessed by a servant from an upstairs room and Uncle Henry admitted that this spiteful behaviour had not been completely out of character for his son. He told them tearfully that he had been forced to move Charles from his previous school because of his appalling conduct.

  John’s confinement was forgotten and he was free to leave his room once more. He repaired the snowman and it stood sentinel right up until the day of Charles’s funeral, when the weather turned unseasonably mild and it melted away entirely, leaving only a few pieces of coal to mark its passing.

  It was a sad day, but John bore it bravely.

  4

  Frost

  Aubrey Baxter walked briskly along the road, taking care not to slip on the frosted cobbles. The air was damp and malodorous in the gloom beneath the railway arch. He was trying to keep up with his father, Reverend Baxter, who had insisted that he accompany him on a visit to one of his parishioners. On Christmas Day!

  ‘Come now, Aubrey,’ his father had said when the boy protested. ‘Surely there can be no better way to celebrate Christmas Day than by visiting those less fortunate than ourselves.’

  Aubrey could think of a dozen ways without effort. Less fortunate, they might be, thought Aubrey, but at least they would not have to trail across town in the freezing cold. Even the wretched quarry workers were allowed to do as they wished on Christmas Day.

  Aubrey stepped into the relative brightness of the open street beyond the arch, squinting through his wire-rimmed spectacles. He sniffed twice and, pulling out a handkerchief, wiped his nose. He wondered if he was getting a cold. There had been so much coughing and sneezing in the church at the morning service, it could only be a matter of time.

  Looking down the rows of terraced houses, he marvelled, as he always did, at the incredible change there was between this side of the railway tracks and his own.

  They lived in the old heart of the sleepy market town of Deeping Bradbury, or what had been its heart before the railway had arrived and the quarry had opened. That part of town could have been a different place altogether, a different country.

  Aubrey knew his father felt troubled by how comfortable their lives were, when so much of his real work was here, on the other side of the tracks, among the quarry workers and their families. He was keen for his son to understand how lucky they were. But Aubrey did understand. Unlike his father, though, he was content to enjoy that luck without guilt.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Reverend.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Jim,’ Reverend Baxter replied, acknowledging an old man’s tip of the hat with a nod and a brief tug at the brim of his own.

  ‘Not too cold,’ said the old man.

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Reverend Baxter, as they passed
each other on the pavement.

  Bad enough, thought Aubrey to himself with a shiver. Even the coldness seemed to be different here. It was damper. It seemed to slip into your lungs and cool you from the inside.

  To make things worse, Reverend Baxter and his son had been invited to have Christmas dinner later with Major and Lady Harcourt. This was the third such invitation and he was dreading it. Had they really been in this awful town for three years? Had it really been that long since his mother had died?

  Aubrey’s father stopped in front of one in a long row of small, near-identical houses and rapped at the door with his gloved knuckle.

  ‘Reverend Baxter!’ said the large, red-faced woman who opened the door. ‘How lovely of you to visit. Today of all days. And this must be your son. Ain’t he the spit of you? Come in, come in.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Barker,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘It is frightfully cold out there.’

  ‘Ain’t much warmer in here, Reverend,’ said Mrs Barker, showing them through to the tiny front room. ‘What with the price of coal and such.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Aubrey’s father. ‘Indeed.’

  This turned out to be no idle warning, for Aubrey was sure that it might actually be slightly colder in the house than it was outside, given how dark and damp it was.

  A small boy, younger than Aubrey, skinny and in short trousers despite the time of year, sat at a table, ignoring them as they walked in.

  ‘And here’s my nephew, Arthur. Ain’t you going to wish the vicar merry Christmas, you little tyke?’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Arthur? Arthur?’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ mumbled the boy without looking up.

  Aubrey could see now that he was drawing.

  ‘Sit down, Reverend,’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Sit down, er . . .’

  ‘Aubrey,’ said Reverend Baxter.

  ‘Sit down, Audrey,’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Ain’t never heard that for a boy.’

  Aubrey was about to correct her when his father spoke instead.

  ‘What are you drawing so intently, Arthur?’ said the vicar, looking over the boy’s shoulder.

  Arthur shrugged. He was clearly annoyed at being interrupted but said, after a pause, ‘Just drawing.’

  ‘Just drawing?’ said the vicar with a chuckle. ‘Well, now. May I have a look?’

  Aubrey squirmed a little. He hated watching his father try to ingratiate himself with his parishioners. It was embarrassing. Arthur gripped his pencil tightly and pursed his lips. Lips and knuckles turned white.

  ‘Come along, Arthur,’ said his aunt. ‘Show the vicar what you’re up to.’

  Arthur did not move.

  ‘Show him!’ she snapped. ‘Or so help me I’ll . . .’

  Aubrey moved a little further away from Mrs Barker. Reverend Baxter held his hand in a plea for calm.

  ‘Mrs Barker, please,’ said the vicar. ‘There is no need for that. It is Christmas Day, after all. Peace and goodwill and so on.’

  Mrs Barker’s face skittered uneasily between scowl and smile as she looked from vicar to nephew.

  ‘If Arthur does not want to show me his drawing of a ship, that’s absolutely fine.’

  ‘’T ain’t a ship,’ muttered Arthur. ‘’T ain’t nothing like a ship.’

  Aubrey’s father leaned forward to ward off the slap that he could see Mrs Barker preparing to launch.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, dear boy,’ he said. ‘I thought it was a ship. I didn’t have much of a view. I can see now that it’s a railway engine. It’s rather good, isn’t it, Aubrey?’

  ‘A railway engine?’ said Arthur with genuine outrage. ‘A railway engine! Do you think that’s a railway engine?’

  Arthur slid the paper across the table towards the vicar. Reverend Baxter turned the crumpled page round to look at it while, snake-like, Mrs Barker’s arm shot out behind him.

  ‘Ow!’ cried Arthur as her hand connected with his ear. ‘That hurt, that did!’

  ‘You’ll be getting a few more of those before –’

  ‘Mrs Barker, Mrs Barker,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘I must insist.’

  ‘You don’t know what he’s like, Reverend,’ she said. ‘He’s a proper devil, he is.’

  Aubrey was surprised to see his father staring at the boy’s drawing, speechless.

  ‘Reverend?’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Are you all right? What have you done to the vicar, Arthur? What have you drawn there? It better not be something –’

  ‘This is The Grange, isn’t it, Arthur?’ said Reverend Baxter.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Arthur. ‘Course it is.’

  ‘Take a look, Aubrey,’ he said, passing the drawing to his son. ‘We’re on our way there now.’

  ‘You’re going there?’ said Arthur. ‘Don’t. Don’t go there. It . . . It’s not nice there, sir.’

  Aubrey, like his father, found himself utterly fascinated by Arthur’s drawing. For although the paper was creased and crumpled and grubby, and the drawing quite crude in many ways, still there was an astonishing attention to detail about it.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to go,’ his father was saying. ‘I’d much rather stay here with you, Arthur, but there we are . . .’

  There was a hypnotic realism to the work, which the odd quirks of perspective and scale only served to make more intriguing. It was real and yet not real, like a dream. Aubrey considered himself something of an artist, but he could never have achieved anything like that.

  And added to all this was the fact that Arthur had chosen to draw the main hall of The Grange decked out for Christmas and full of local dignitaries, as it presumably would be at that very moment. There were Major and Lady Harcourt, and the Bishop; everyone was instantly recognisable.

  But stranger still was the fact that Arthur had drawn the house as though every window and door had been opened on the coldest day of the year. The roaring fire that always burned on winter days in the great hearth was extinguished and in its place were glowing embers of blue frost.

  Icicles hung from the chandeliers and from the very mantelpiece that ran above the fireplace. Aubrey had taken the stance of the guests in the picture to be stilted drawings, but he saw now that Arthur intended them to look frozen.

  ‘But how do you know the house so well, Arthur?’ said Aubrey’s father.

  ‘I don’t,’ said the boy with a shrug. ‘Only been there twice.’

  Aubrey shook his head in wonder. How could the boy have gleaned so much information in two visits – and remembered every scrap?

  ‘Yes,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘We went there together last year, didn’t we?’

  Aubrey remembered the visit, for he had gone along as well, though he had no recollection of Arthur. The Sunday school had been invited to The Grange by Lady Harcourt during her short-lived enthusiasm for charitable works, following the death of her father the previous winter.

  ‘But when have you been otherwise?’ asked Aubrey’s father.

  Nephew and aunt exchanged glances.

  ‘He’s a disgrace, Reverend,’ said Mrs Barker. ‘Brings me nothing but shame.’

  ‘We was just collecting firewood,’ said Arthur, folding his arms and glowering. ‘It’s not like they ain’t got plenty to spare!’

  ‘Do you see?’ said Mrs Barker, putting a hand to her chest. ‘Do you see how he talks about his betters?’

  ‘What happened, Arthur?’ said Reverend Baxter gently.

  Arthur scowled at his aunt. Aubrey tried to stop himself smiling.

  ‘We went up there,’ said Arthur. ‘Me and George, and Billy with the lip. We went up there, cos we’d seen all that firewood when we went with you and all that. We says to ourselves, “We’ll have some of that, thank you very much.”

  ‘So we went up there on the quiet, like, and we was loading it into George’s barrow – his dad works down the market, you know. He’s got that funny hand what got stuck in a –’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘Let’s hear the story, shall we?’

  ‘Well,’ said Arthu
r. ‘Ain’t much more to tell. We was just about to get off home and then that great big monster of a gardener spots us and comes after us. George and Billy scarper and it’s meself what takes all the blame.

  ‘The gardener, he picks me up with one hand and takes me into the house. The butler was about to give me a clip round the ear when his lordship wanders through. He was a bit the worse for drink –’

  ‘Arthur!’ cried his aunt. ‘Really! As if!’

  Aubrey hoped his smirk had not been seen.

  ‘He was!’ muttered Arthur. ‘I could smell it on his breath. Stank of it, he did.’

  Aubrey did not share Mrs Barker’s incredulity about the Major’s drinking habits. He was a brutish man, and Aubrey did not like him at all.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Arthur. ‘He says if there was any beating to be done, then he’d do it, don’t you know, and so he drags me into this room where there’s a huge fire burning – you know the one, sir. The one that’s as big as the mouth of hell –’

  ‘Arthur!’ shouted his aunt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Reverend Baxter. ‘And he beat you? Put you across his knee and smacked you?’

  Aubrey saw Arthur shake his head bitterly.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said after a pause. ‘He took down a riding crop from the wall and said that when he was in India he used to use it on servants who stole from him. But I ain’t his servant, sir, and I ain’t no Indian neither.’

  ‘And he flogged you with it?’

  Arthur nodded.

  ‘Again and again,’ he said. ‘The butler had to stop him, sir, else he would have carried on for good. He steps in, all polite and everything, and says in that posh voice, “Beg your pardon, sir, but I think the boy has had enough.”

  ‘So the Major, he stops and I take me chance and scrabble over to hide behind the sofa. When I peeped out again, I saw the Major all red in the face and sweating like a pig. The way he was looking at the butler, I thought he was gonna kill him, sir. But then the Major says in this quiet voice, “Very good, Matthews. See to him, then.”’