Candy Canes and Buckets of Blood Page 7

  “God bless the old yuletide traditions,” said Duncan. He raised his glass and drained it. He looked at the near empty bottle on the table. “Will I have to go to hell to get another drink round here, eh?” He laughed at his own joke. “Course, my grandpa used to say he saw piskies when he’d had a pint or two. Or three or four.”

  Guin didn’t know about piskies but she’d seen the illustrations in the book and the elves there didn’t look much like the woodland pixies in her story books at home. Storybook elves and pixies wore flouncy see-through dresses and lived in mushroom houses, and they all had wings and looked like they were on starvation diets (probably because they couldn’t achieve take-off with those little wings if they were a single gram overweight). The elves and pixies in Little Folk in Folkore were equally thin, but not because they were on a diet. Those ragged fairies looked like they had to kill and steal for every scrap of food they got and would do so willingly.

  Guin glanced at the corners of the room and thought about the whispering voices she’d heard under the trees earlier in the day. She wished she had the elf-cross in her hand and hadn’t left it in the room upstairs.

  ***

  26

  At some point, the distant Bing Crosby Christmas album was replaced by a distant Elvis Presley Christmas album.

  The main course was dry, Dave thought. The turkey was wood dust shaped into turkey-shaped lumps. The vegetables had been so thoroughly boiled that even water hadn’t survived the process. Even the gravy, through some arcane process that defied science, left a dry and dusty taste in the mouth. Dave piled cranberry sauce on his pre-Christmas Christmas dinner but that was tart and did not help. The temptation to wash it all down with copious amounts of wine was strong but, despite what his darling daughter might tell him, he was not a devotee of the gods of wine and drunkenness. If there was still a chance they could drive out of there tonight, he wanted to be sober enough to take the wheel.

  He suspected it was already too late, and the snow far too thick but, as Mrs Scruples cleared away the plates in preparation for pudding, he excused himself from the table and went out into the hallway to try the telephone again.

  He picked up the receiver and dialled the emergency services. Instead of the dead tone as before, there was some sound on the line. It crackled and swirled as though the snow had got inside the telephone system itself.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Khhorrrzzxx…” hissed the line. “Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? xeeeeek-k-k.”

  “I’d like report a crime. Someone’s broken into my car.”

  “Broken… car… khhoorroo.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m in Alvestowe. We’re currently staying at … damn, I don’t know its name.”

  “Eeeeeff. Damn.”

  “At this number anyway. I’m sure you’d be able to look it up. Will someone be able to come out and help us? We’ll need a mechanic for the car.”

  “Mechanic… wwwweeee… car?”

  “Will someone be able to come out tonight?”

  “Zzhhhh… come out.”

  “Will it be tonight?” He had raised his voice to be heard over the awful static.

  “Tonight.”

  The line hissed and howled.

  “Okay, then,” said Dave eventually and hung up, not a hundred percent sure what he had actually achieved.

  Thoughtful, he went back into the dining room. Mrs Scruples had brought in two desserts. An cut glass bowl filled with the red, yellow and white layers of a rich trifle, and a plate bearing a huge domed Christmas pudding with a traditional spring of holly jammed in the top.

  “Any luck?” Esther asked him as he sat.

  “I think so. Hard to tell with that line.”

  “No one will be travelling in that weather,” said Mrs Scruples.

  “Is your husband not coming back soon?” said Esther.

  Mrs Scruples faltered. “Oh. Oh, yes. He will. I’m sure. They said.”

  “Sorry? Who?”

  Dave could see Mrs Scruples’ expression had driven down a dead end street and with tremendous awkwardness and restraint she was trying to back it out again.

  “Christmas pudding or sherry trifle?” she said, attempting a decent enough smile.

  “Is there lots of sherry in the sherry trifle?” asked Dave.

  “Lots.”

  “Christmas pudding for me and Guin then.” He gave his daughter a playful look. “Don’t want to turn Guin into an alcoholic too.”

  “Too?” said Mrs Scruples.

  “Ah,” said Duncan, leaning over conspiratorially and nodding towards Esther. “Is m’lady here fond of the sauce?”

  “No. I was joking and—”

  “Cos I also wondered if the princess’s real mum was a bit of a—” He gave a cuckoo whistle and swill of his glass.

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Wasn’t?”

  Dave set his lips and lowered his voice. “It was ovarian cancer. Guin was just a baby. Long time ago.”

  “Ah,” said Duncan as though he just been told a heart-warming tale. He looked at Esther. “And did your…? The boy’s father…?”

  “No, Mr Catheter,” she said coldly. “He didn’t die of ovarian cancer. He’s still alive, somewhere.”

  “My daughter thinks I’m an alcoholic because I enjoy a drink,” Dave explained. “That’s all.”

  Duncan laughed. “How do doctors diagnose alcoholics? It’s anyone who drinks more than they do. Fortunately, my doctor’s an old soak. Trifle, Mrs Scruples! A big dollop. Let’s see how much sherry there is.”

  Desserts were doled out. Dave poured a healthy splurge of semi-solid custard onto his Christmas pudding and dug in. He coughed on the first mouthful.

  “Does – kof! kof! – does this have alcohol in it?”

  “A sprinkling of brandy,” said Mrs Scruples.

  “A sprinkling?” It tasted as if the pudding had spent the last decade at the bottom of a cask of brandy. He could get drunk just breathing in the fumes.

  He poured a thick layer of custard over Guin’s pudding.

  “Stick to the custard,” he told her.

  He ate round the pudding, only nibbling the edges of the spirit-soaked lump of dark Christmas cheer. As he ate, he looked at the ‘joke’ he had pulled from his cracker. He scratched again at the red splodge that partially obliterated the words held prisoner in a Christmas cracker factory! It looked like a thumbprint. It looked like blood.

  ***

  27

  Newton barely touched his Christmas pudding and was not encouraged when Mrs Scruples told him that there might be a shiny sixpence waiting for him at its centre. Nonetheless, he was born to please and was prepared to choke down the chemical mess when he saw that, with the exception of the loud and unashamed Duncan Catheter (who had wolfed down two and half bowls of trifle), the others had hardly eaten theirs either. He might have been born to please but he wasn’t about to show everyone else up in front of Mrs Scruples.

  “You’re full then, I take it,” said Mrs Scruples accusingly as she cleared away four uneaten puddings and Duncan’s cleaned out bowl.

  “Quite full,” said Newton.

  “Couldn’t eat another bite,” added his mum.

  “Then I shall leave you to your own devices. And your devices,” she added as Newton tried to covertly take out his phone. He felt instantly guilty.

  She paused at the doorway with a stack of custardy bowls in her hands. “The guest lounge is at your disposal but I will retire to my rooms at the back of the hotel if it’s all the same to you. The door is marked private but knock if you must. But, fair warning, I do crank up the gramophone volume to mask the noises, so knock loudly.”

  “Mask what noises?” Newton said to Guin.

  The girl shrugged and went back to reading her book.

  Duncan stood. “Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, Damen und Herren. I need to stretch my legs.” He gave a shake of his fo
ot, let out a fart and then departed.

  Esther and Dave looked at each other.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” she said.

  “I don’t think we’re going to see a police car or a repair truck tonight.”

  “No.”

  “So, we’re staying here,” he said. It wasn’t a question as such and it wasn’t really a statement. It was a hopelessly resigned comment, one that begged to be contradicted.

  “Looks like it,” she said wearily.

  “Then I’m going to bed,” said Guin.

  “I might go see if the TV works,” said Newton.

  In the hallway, Newton pointed out the dumbwaiter to Guin.

  “Know what that is?” he said.

  “A little old fashioned lift thing,” she said.

  “It’s a dumbwaiter. And do you know what were they used for?” he asked.

  “Well, if films have taught me anything, it’s to enable smart and resourceful kids to escape stupid villains.”

  “Um, yeah. Pretty much it,” he said.

  Guin went upstairs. Newton went into the guest lounge.

  King Leopold of Belgium eyed him beadily from his cage.

  “Evening, your majesty,” said Newton. The parrot said nothing.

  Newton crouched in front of the TV. It was an old television with actual buttons on the front. He turned it on and static washed across the screen. Newton could not recall ever seeing static on a television in real life. Modern screens had the decency to put up a black screen and a polite No Signal notice.

  He tried all the channels. Static howled at different pitches and swirled with different rhythms. Something like a human figure appeared to stagger through the electric blizzard for a moment but then it was gone.

  “Come on,” he said. “Show me something.”

  “Y’ll nnt gtnuttin, ye dffft prkk,” squawked King Leopold darkly.

  ***

  28

  Guin eyed the elf on the shelf as she climbed the stairs. Its stripy legs dangled over the edge, curly-toed boots swaying ever so slightly. In the stairs’ stark upward light, its face was heavily shadowed and looked down on her with what felt like stern judgement.

  Back in the room, alone, she thought about changing for bed. She had no change of clothes with her but there was a white robe hanging from the bathroom door. She stripped down to her underwear and put the bathrobe on. It was the only one in the room, but it was first come first served as far as she was concerned. No one had told her they’d be staying the night. No one had the intelligence to foresee it and tell her than bedclothes might be needed. As she saw it, the bathrobe was her right, given how shoddily she’d been treated. (And, yes, she knew she was being grumpy and selfish and inwardly reprimanded herself for it but kept the bathrobe anyway).

  She went into the en suite bathroom. Esther had put out her toiletries bag before going down to dinner. Guin looked through it for toothpaste. She found the toothpaste and also a tub of cotton bud sticks which she put on the side of the sink.

  Guin cleaned her teeth with toothpaste and her finger and read the signs taped to the wall between the sink and the toilet.

  THE SINK IS FOR HANDS ONLY.

  THE WATER HERE IS NOT FOR DRINKING. NOT SANITARY.

  SANITARY PRODUCTS IN HERE.

  TO SAVE WATER, PRESS SMALL BUTTON FOR SMALL FLUSH. PRESS LARGE BUTTON FOR SOLIDS.

  DO NOT FLUSH SOLIDS DOWN THE TOILET. VERY HOT.

  THE TOILET IS FOR TOILET PAPER ONLY, NOTHING ELSE.

  NOW WASH YOUR HANDS.

  Guin re-read the signs and concluded she wasn’t sure what she was meant to do if she needed the toilet. The toilet and the surrounding plumbing looked like they were a relic of Victorian times and she didn’t want to break it by flushing the wrong thing. She needed the toilet but decided to hold on until later.

  She took the cotton buds and Little Folk in Folkore to her top bunk.

  Wiry Harrison, Tinfoil Tavistock and the others were where she had left them along the guard rail. She silently told them about the rubbish dinner and the family decision to stay for the night. She then showed them the elf-crosses in the book and told them they were going to make some more. Tinfoil Tavistock asked why and Guin explained it was the season for the Wild Hunt and ‘little folk’ – and the Krampus too! she added, remembering – to come riding through and kidnap children, and she didn’t like the look of the snow and the darkness outside. What she didn’t say was that if there were dangerous creatures out and about, the elf-cross had done little to protect Elsa Frinton B.A. Hons. Whatever had happened to her.

  With the bendy cotton bud sticks and short lengths of cotton thread, Guin constructed several five-pointed elf-crosses. She hung them from the sash window latches, two in the bedroom, one in the bathroom. There was a loft hatch in the centre of the room, a slatted panel of painted white. If she could have hung one there she would have done but it was too far away to reach and there was nothing to hang it on. Instead, she hung one on the back of the bedroom door and, for good measure, tucked one under the double bed where her dad and Esther were going to sleep.

  “There,” she said, climbed back up onto her bunk and, with her homemade friends around her, continued reading the book.

  ***

  29

  Through the door with Private written on it came the muffled sounds of Christmas crooning. If pressed, Esther would have said it was Michael Bublé, but it was possible Michael Bublé was her default guess when presented with any kind of crooning lounge-singer. It was more likely to be Dean Martin, or Frank Sinatra, or any one of those crooners through the ages who were indistinguishable to her ears.

  Esther popped her head round the lounge door. Newton crouched in front of the television, redundantly flicking between stations.

  “No joy?” she said.

  “It’s not picking up anything.”

  “That’s one of them old analogue TVs. You know, wotsit ray tubes. I think they turned the signal off for them years ago.”

  “Bggroff ‘n’ lvvvimalone,” screeched the parrot in a cage in the corner.

  “My, that’s a big bird,” said Esther.

  “That’s King Leopold,” said Newton.

  “Course it is.”

  Newton sighed irritably at the television and turned it off. “No TV. No wi-fi.”

  “Oh, it’s like the dark ages round here.” Esther smiled sympathetically. “You’ll have to engage us in conversation.”

  “While we’re all tucked up in our beds. Ugh.”

  “It’ll be like The Waltons,” she said. “‘Night, John Boy. Night, gran’ma.’”

  “What’s The Waltons?” said Newton.

  Esther rolled her eyes. “It’s a different world these days, huh?”

  A score of stuffed cats watched them as they climbed the stairs to their room.

  “What did you do to you hand, mum?” Newton asked.

  She looked at it and felt the itchy tension in the injury. “Stuck my nose in where I shouldn’t have,” she said.

  “But it was your hand.”

  “Ha, ha. No, I surprised someone … something…”

  “Something?”

  She shook her head. “Someone.”

  Newton nodded at the elf on the shelf. “Who treats elves when they’re injured?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The National Elf Service.”

  “That’s a good one, son.”

  ***

  30

  Guin flicked through Little Folk in European Folklore after everyone had finally gone to bed. They had made a big show of being quiet and unobtrusive, even though it was clear Guin was still awake and very publicly ignoring them as they took turns in the bathroom to dress for bed. Her dad turned up ten minutes later, belching and wheezing and making whispered complaints to no one that he had eaten too much of that Christmas pudding and he was (to used his own vulgar phrase) “Pissed on brandy fumes.”

  Half an hour later
she was the only one awake and reading about elf-bolts by the light cast from a lamp which had been left on. The lamp featured a jaunty cartoon squirrel leaning against the centre post of the lamp stand. Guin kept reminding herself that it was a squirrel, because she’d seen it earlier in better light. Right now it looked like a malevolent, buck-toothed troll, cast in shadow. Guin was mildly unnerved by the sight, but the sighs, snores and occasional farts from the others in the room was somehow reassuring. Guin glanced up at Wiry Harrison perched on the guard rail of the bed and shared a few thoughts about the squirrel lamp with him.

  The light was just about enough to read the book, but there was an occasional distracting flicker, just discernible from the corner of her eye. Guin looked up as it happened again. The wiring was probably ancient, but the tiny disturbances were accompanied by a small, stealthy sound – definitely a non-electrical sound. She put the book down and watched. A few minutes later she saw something fly from the open doorway and collide with one of the elf crosses hanging on the back of a chair. Wasn’t the door closed when they all went to bed? The elf cross swung briefly on its paperclip hanger. Guin couldn’t see what had hit it, but there was a scattering of tiny objects – wads of paper, fragments of wood - on the carpet to indicate the elf cross was definitely the target. She lay perfectly still and watched as another three tiny projectiles shot from the doorway. The last of them succeeded in dislodging the elf cross, and it fell to the floor.

  Moments later, Guin saw the door open a little further. She held her breath, wondering who was there. She watched as a head came around the door, but it was much lower down than she’d expected. It was the height of a toddler, but with an air of subtle cunning that was something else altogether. The head turned from one side of the room to the other and Guin realised it was wearing a hat with a tiny bell, the tinkling almost too faint to hear. The face had sharp features and eyes that shone in the lamplight. The rest of the figure slunk around the door. It was skinny in a very familiar way. Guin realised she had seen a picture of it in the book.