"Oh, so you're up at last!"
Ellis said with a laugh as his brother staggered into the living room,
bleary-eyed, yet eager, despite his teenage lack of energy. "I was beginning to think we'd have to
have Christmas without you!"
"Not a chance."
Their mother was sitting on the sofa, nursing a cup of coffee - the
aroma of something alcoholic permeating the fresh brewed scent. She didn't drink much, but she allowed
herself this treat on Christmas morning and now she smiled to see both her sons
up and eager to open their presents.
This was what Christmas was to her - this was what she looked forward
to.
"Happy Christmas," she said as her boys came and sat down in
front of the tree.
"Happy Christmas, mum," they replied. It was dutiful, but it was just as much
heartfelt, even if Dylan's season’s greetings all came out sounding like a
grunt.
"Well," she said, "who's going to open their present
first?"
And that's when the scramble began.
[It was cold. Snow was falling on his face and he could
feel his hands already covered by it, the cold stabbing and yet already
beginning to numb. I have to get up, he thought, I have to-]
The party was going well. His aunt and uncle were smiling at him over
their festive cocktails and his cousins were cheekily stealing a few extra
pfeffernüssen from the table before running back to their fortified position
behind the sofa, where all the toys were kept safe from adult meddling. In truth, he really wanted to join them, but
he was sixteen now and it seemed wrong somehow.
He was supposed to be with the grown-ups now, laughing at the jokes he
didn't always get in old stand-up shows and talking about the year gone by.
"I can't believe how you've grown," his Granny had told him
for the umpteenth year in a row, but there was a note of sadness in it this
time which he had never noticed before.
Is this what growing up feels like? he wondered, in the midst of the
buzzing family crowd. Is this what it's
like to be old?
He passed his Mum on the way in to the kitchen and she stole a quick,
cheeky kiss in the hall.
"You'll always be my little boy," she
said, even as he wiped at the wet spot on his cheek, "always."
[He could hear voices, distant -
muffled by snow, or by unconsciousness, he couldn't tell. They were familiar. They sounded concerned. Are they worried about me? Someone screamed. It was like something out of a half-remembered
nightmare. It wasn't real, wasn't really
his problem, and yet it disturbed him, made him feel unsettled in a way he
couldn't quite place as the numbness continued to set in.]
"Thank god for that," Sarah panted into the cold night air,
"I didn't think we'd ever escape."
"I know, right? They can be
so insufferable sometimes..."
"But that's what family's for, right? My Mum is just the same."
"I suppose so. Still, it's
better to get a bit of time out."
He glanced upwards at a clear sky with a moon so bright that even the
few stars that were visible this close to the centre of Larksborough were lost
in the comparative blackness.
"It's beautiful isn't it?" Sarah said.
"Yeah. A perfect Christmas
night. Or it would be... if it were
snowing."
"Is that what it would take?"
He looked a question at her.
"To make it perfect, I mean.
Would it have to snow?"
"Well... I suppose so... to complete the... Christmas card look, I
guess..."
"I can think of something else that might work."
"Something like-?"
Her kiss was as long-awaited as it was unexpected, as comfortable and
warm as it was thrilling and nerve-shredding.
Yeah, he thought as he sank into it, this
is the perfect Christmas afterall.
[Wake up.]
He pulled back, gazed at Sarah.
Had she just said something? But
they had been kissing. He looked over
his shoulder. No one was there.
[Ellis, you 'ave to shake out of
this and wake up.]
"Did you hear...?"
[Ellis, there isn't time! We 'ave to run, so please... wake up!]
Sarah was staring at him in confusion.
He was about to say something else when he felt his body shaking, first
as if there was an earthquake that only he could feel, and then, suddenly, he
was shivering. He suddenly felt very,
very cold. His teeth were chattering,
his hands were numb and all the while Sarah was just staring at him blankly, as
if she had nothing to say, as if she couldn't see what was happening at
all. As if she were on pause.
"I said, wake up!"
Sarah was gone. Gulliver was in
her place, looking down at him as he lay, freezing, in the snow. He was pulling at his arms, lifting him out
of the drift he had been lying in and, as he tilted upwards, he could see
Annabella as well, tugging at his other arm.
Behind them... Behind them the
world had gone mad.
It seemed the unopened presents had taken offence at their rejection and
were now opening themselves, revealing a menagerie of creatures that at first
had the appearance of charred, weathered bone, and yet there was something
about them that also seemed metallic, and sure enough, within their windowed
carapaces could be seen intricate mechanical workings of the same
material. There were clockwork spiders,
steam-powered centipedes, mechanoid scorpions and a host of other bonemetal
crawlers with knife edge limbs and malevolent eyes. They scuttled through the snow towards the
crew, who in turn were running, screaming, fighting or dying, with no pattern,
no coordination, no control. The
creatures were getting around them, blocking the way back to the Absolution, pushing them towards the
trees. It threatened to become a
bloodbath.
"Gulliver," Ellis said quickly, "you need to take
control."
"I... I don't know what to do," the awkward pirate replied and
there was a look in his eyes of such terror and confusion that told Ellis all
he needed to know about how the next few minutes would proceed if Gulliver was
left in command.
"They're forcing us into the trees!" Ellis shouted, stepping past Gulliver to take
control himself, "we don't have any choice, so we might as well make it
ourselves, take shelter in the forest, head towards the smoke trail and try not
to get separated!"
The few crew who were listening looked up, glanced at the dark forest
with its coloured lights, then made a dash for it, narrowly escaping the
clutches of the mechanical beasts. The
others were too embroiled in futile conflict to take notice, so Ellis ran to
join them, pulled them away one by one and sent those that could into the
trees.
"I'll hold them here," bear-like Nikolai shouted as Ellis
tried to get him to leave the fray.
"One of us needs to stay.
Take the others and run!"
Ellis wanted to argue, to tell Nikolai that he couldn't stay, that he
would die and then they would all miss him terribly, but there was no
point. Nikolai knew all that, and, worse
still, he was right. They wouldn't
escape unless someone kept the creatures at
bay.
"Thank you," he called instead, taking Annabella's hand and
punching Gulliver's arm to get him to wake up and run. Then they were stumbling through snow drifts,
through branches like claws, and on into darkness with fairy lights streaking
past like stardust.
"Is everyone okay?" Ellis shouted into the pillared
twilight "Keep running, but try to
stay near to my voice!"
There was no reply and we wasn't sure if anyone could still hear him, or
if it would do any good if they could, but he felt he had to try to hold them
together. I had no choice, he thought, but
I was still the one who sent them in here.
The forest looked the same no matter which
direction he turned: row upon row of sturdy fir trees, all lit with Christmas
lights, all with shapes beneath them that could mean more deadly presents.
"Be careful where you put your feet," he called out again,
"and don't stop!"
He tried to see where everyone could have headed to, to spot the line of
smoke he had seen above the forest, but there was no sign of anyone, the sky
above was blotted out by the thick canopy and all around them was soft hush of
woodland in winter. And then he heard
the rhythmic clicking coming from behind and knew that the creatures from the
presents were pursuing them.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, glancing at Gulliver.
“I’ve been better,” the pirate replied, his face almost as pale as the
snow.
“Can you keep running?”
“If I ‘ave to.”
“And what about you, Annabella?”
She just gazed up at him with big, strange eyes and nodded.
“Then we run!”
The forest was unchanging. It
rushed by in a blur of trunks and branches until, with the snow underneath and
in between, the world was reduced to zoetrope lines, converting all movements
to the same, staccato rhythm as the machines which followed. And how they followed! They scurried between the trees, darting from
pillar to pillar so that, when Ellis looked over, he was never sure if they
were still following or not, and yet, when he did see them it was always with
the sinking realisation that they were gaining.
There would be no escape, he realised, at least, not unless-
“There it is!” he shouted, spotting the cottage he had known would be
waiting for them, its roof padded with snow and rimmed with icicles, its door
decorated with a thick wreath of holly and ivy, and through the iced windows
curtained with lights, the warm glow of a real fire – the source of the smoke
they had seen from the shore.
It was a trap. He knew that. There was no other explanation and yet… there
was nowhere else to go and he needed to know why this was all happening and who
was behind it. It all had to be coming
from his memories, of that he was sure.
There was no Christmas on Shadow, no tradition of trees and presents and
wreaths, so someone had to be using his memories somehow to create this
nightmare and he wanted to know who that was… and to end it.
The door to the cottage was ajar, waiting for them.
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