Billy Christmas

by Mark A. Pritchard

  There was a fierce banging above him. The severed stone hand had not made it out of the water tank and was doing all it could to give their position away. Billy dragged the key out of his pocket and shot it home into the black lock. Behind him, those dreadful broken steps were sounding again, chasing him down. He spun the key in the lock and pulled the door open. The vestry was pitch black, but Saul leapt in, and Billy followed, slamming the dark oak door behind them. The key! He’d left it on the other side of the door. In horror, he opened it just enough for his hand and arm and grabbed at the key, fighting to turn it so it would come loose. The key turned and the lock clicked closed, with the door still open, meaning he wouldn’t be able even to shut it, let alone lock it from the inside. How could he be so clumsy?

  He steadied himself and turned the key back as calmly as he could. The lock retracted, and finally the key came away in his hand, but pain suddenly shot through that arm, almost making him drop the key. Something had grabbed hold of his wrist with such incredible strength that Billy fell to his knees in shock. He screamed in pain, causing Saul to start barking, his huge voice booming about the room despite the muffling cassocks. He fought to pull his hand through the crack left ajar without losing the key. The grip was too strong, and with the door as it was he couldn’t hit out with the knuckleduster.

  “Billy, let me in!”

  Agnes’s voice, but the grip was too strong, surely?

  “Please Billy!”

  The note of fear in her voice made him falter. More fingers came around the edge of the door—human—enough proof to let him release his grip on the door. It flew back, revealing a terrified Agnes wide-eyed under her green hat. She slammed the door shut, and the room went pitch black.

  “The lock, the key,” said Agnes, pulling her weight against the door handle. “Hurry!”

  Billy’s left wrist was still screaming from her grip. He scrabbled in the dark for the keyhole. Suddenly Saul stopped barking. A huge impact on the door sent Billy sprawling back, dropping the key. Ancient dust from between the huge oak planks flew up, making his eyes stream.

  Agnes screamed, but her colossal grip managed to hold the door in its frame. “The key, you must lock the door!”

  With his eyes now hampered by the dust in addition to the lack of light, Billy simply shut them and sent his arms out fanning across the floor. The big key was easy to find, and hadn’t fallen far. Finding the hem of Agnes’s skirt, he moved closer and followed along one of her arms to the handle of the door.

  Agnes was concerned at his interest in her skirt. “What are you doing?”

  Billy tried to get the key at the lock, but she was blocking his way. “Let go!”

  “Are you mad?”

  “You have to, I can’t reach it.”

  Agnes let go of the door with one hand, and Billy ducked underneath her. The key went home, but he couldn’t turn it unless she let go with her other.

  “Let go!”

  “He’ll get in! OW!”

  She flew backwards, and the key spun the lock home. Again the door was rammed. The force knocked Billy back onto Agnes, and they fell on the floor in a heap. Another less enthusiastic thud followed, then silence. A full minute passed before Agnes broke the quiet in the room.

  “Your bloody dog bit me on the bum.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Billy had lit the room and pulled the canvas settee in front of the wood burner, the way the vicar had done before. Looking around, Billy had found some small bits of kindling and was trying to relight those logs which hadn’t burned through. Agnes and Saul appeared to have made peace. Billy thought it was amazing that Saul had managed to get his teeth through the mass of layers that Agnes employed, let alone have the strength in his jaws to close them.

  “Told you we’d meet again,” said Agnes. “Sorry about the police, dear, they can make my life very tricky.”

  “Didn’t exactly help mine either,” said Billy remembering the faces of the schoolchildren pressed up against the glass. A finger of flame pushed his shadow against the wall.

  “Ooh, well done, you,” said Agnes.

  He sat back on the canvas chair. This was his chance to square his nagging conscience. “Have you still got the pie?”

  Agnes looked at him with a touch of fear. “You can’t have it back, youngster.”

  “But you haven’t eaten it?”

  “I’m still here, ain’t I?”

  “You know that it’s poisoned?”

  Agnes let out a shrill laugh, making Saul start. “Poisoned indeed. What a notion. It’s a ticket, is what it is. Ticket to see my family. Bit like the Tree is a ticket to see your family. That is, if you’re using it for that, and not some damned fool selfish…” She tussled the deerhound’s massive head and blinked back a tear or two.

  “I’m using it to get my dad back.”

  Agnes shot him a proud smile. “’Course you are. Was awful that, last year, at Christmas too. You were in my prayers.”

  “Are your family…dead then?”

  “They are. But I’d put most of them in the ground before I took the Tree’s juice. The ’lixier. I was born before the beginning of the last century, and I met my husband Frank the year after the Tree came to me. At Christmas too. We had two boys. Jack and John, but they both lost their dad to the First World War. I thought I was smart you see, but if I’d been smart I would of had enough ’lixier for other people. Germans might as well have shot me for the holes they put in me.”

  The wood burner began to crackle as the flames woke the sap in the half-burnt logs.

  “Well, Jack and John grew up determined to be like their father. Army took them both, dressed them, married them, and when the time came, buried them too. The Second World War left Jack’s wife a widow, but orphaned John’s twin girls. Orphaned ’cause a house fell down during a raid in London. Fire brigade had thought it was safe, a house two doors down had been hit, and then theirs tumbled. But the twins, Jill and Jenny, survived.”

  Billy shifted uncomfortably. He thought that if that lot had happened to him, he’d be tempted to eat the damn pie. He was at the end of his tether after holding together a house for a year.

  “Well then I had to take the ’lixier, even though I knew it would mean I was likely to see both the girls die eventually.”

  “Couldn’t Jack’s wife have helped?”

  “She thought I was cursed. Seen the rate I was burying them, and even tried to take the girls. What Jack saw in her I never did understand, but such is the way of course.”

  Saul laid his head on Agnes’s knee.

  “War took them all, Billy. I held on as hard as I could. Jenny went into the Army, trying to prove me wrong, trying to prove her dad right. Trying to make a difference. She was in Kuwait almost a century after I was born. Nobody would say exactly what happened because it was to do with…intelligence.” Agnes was not ashamed of spitting the word out. “Intelligence and another fallen house. They should have had Jill there too. She knew at once, and well, she wasn’t really there without her twin. Was all but gone with Jenny not there. Her heart took pity.”

  Agnes got up and grabbed another log, turning it over and examining the concentric rings. “So you needn’t think you’re poisoning me, young man. I’d say knowing too little of some things, and too much of others has done that, and I’m grateful that my reward for trying hard to love a few people a lot is that my time of passing is at least in my own hands.”

  With a last look at the log, Agnes pushed it slowly into the embers, and watched them take the wood over. Then she sat and put an arm around Billy. “Don’t confuse my tale of woe with yours. Measuring misery is the errand of fools, and we are not fools.” Agnes looked over her shoulder to the empty room, ensuring the cassocks were still empty. “Has the Tree told you about our gift?”

  “He’s told me that it’s a good thing to daydream.”

  “Is that all? But there’s such little time!”

  Agnes took one of Billy
’s hands in her own; it felt soft, but still so strong. He hoped she wasn’t planning to squeeze it; his wrist was bruised already, matching the welts on his back. “Have you ever wondered if it was normal that you were able to be in two places at once?” said Agnes.

  “I talked about this with the Tree, but it’s just imagining things.”

  “Just imagining, is it? You think that is so easily done?” said Agnes. “Why, it’s imagining that drives hope, it’s imagining that gets problems solved. Take me. Took imagination to get me to believe I could bring up two girls at this age, and I’ve been this age longer than most.”

  He looked at her in confusion. “It already helps me with hope, I don’t’ see what else it can…”

  “But we ain’t just talking about hope now, Billy. If you learn how to use it properly, well, it can take you places—and I mean take you. Your body won’t even need to breathe.”

  Across the room, the lock on the door rattled and then fell, allowing the door to open. Billy could hear voices through the gap.

  “I’m telling you it’s kids, look at that door. That is vandalism.”

  “I have got eyes, you know.”

  Billy stood up and turned to face them: an elderly lady and a man whom he recognised as the verger.

  “They’ve had the wood burner on again and moved the couch.”

  Billy went to speak, but Agnes caught his eye and put a finger to her lips, before pointing to her left. Billy clapped his hands over his mouth to stop himself screaming. He was still on the couch, or someone who looked just like him, all shins and elbows, eyes glassed over, but apparently awake. But still he was standing in front of the wood burner. He took a hand away from his mouth and looked closely at it. The hand appeared quite solid, but the light was passing straight through him, and he no longer cast a shadow. He looked back at Agnes, who smiled and threw him a cheerful wink, and he blinked.

  He was at once back in his body, in one piece. Someone was screaming.

  “Verger, we’ve got squatters!”

  “We’re not squatters,” said Agnes, turning and eyeing the prim choir lady. “Squatters don’t have keys.”

  “They’re the ones that forced the door.”

  “But it was still locked,” said the verger, not wanting to intervene between the two wilful opponents.

  “They let themselves in,” said Mike, entering the vestry from the church door. “I have loaned Billy a key as part of our after-schools programme.”

  “But our last vicar never ran an after-schools programme,” said the lady from the choir, a mite dismayed.

  “I’m sure that is true,” said Mike. “Now Billy, I did tell you Sundays would be busy.”

  Agnes took Saul’s lead, and began to make for the door.

  “Happily, you’re both in time for the evening service,” said the vicar, smiling and opening his arms widely to ensure that Agnes knew she was included. “You may take this door to the church.”

  Agnes looked at Billy, who shrugged; he didn’t relish this any more than she did. The alternative of going back outside and perhaps being ambushed certainly didn’t appeal. Mike spoke to Billy as he crossed the room.

  “I could give you a lift home, after the service?”

  “Yes, please,” said Billy and gave Agnes a slight push towards the door. Saul trailed behind them.

  “The last vicar never let dogs in the church,” said the lady from the choir, in a small voice.

  “Oh,” said Mike. “I’m sure that is true too.”

  * * *

  Billy and Agnes sat in the pews near the back of the church.

  “How did you do that? Get me out of my body, I mean.”

  “I didn’t do nothing, youngster. What you have to understand is that your imagination is the most precious thing you have. The one thing you can always rely on.”

  Billy frowned, not really understanding what she meant. “What will you do about the Gargoyle?”

  “Oh, well. Saul, is it? Saul and I will take care of each other,” said Agnes. “I’m a bit more worried about you, it’s you he has a taste for.”

  “Well, I don’t really know how long it will hang about,” said Billy, watching the choir file in. “Did you have something like the Gargoyle when you had the Tree?”

  “Goodness no, never seen anything like that…”

  A silence fell between them. Mike began the service.

  Agnes shifted uncomfortably on the pew, looking for the exit. “I don’t really belong here, Billy. Cut my ties to it a long time ago.”

  Billy wanted to go with her, but she shook her head and nodded at Mike who was watching them from the altar.

  “Don’t worry about me, I won’t be eating that pie just yet. We may well see each other again. But not, I suspect, until you bring your dad home.”

  With that, Agnes took advantage of the noise of the congregation as they stood for the first hymn, and whisked herself and Saul out of the church. Seeing them go, Billy suddenly felt quite alone, albeit surrounded by about ninety parishioners. His mother would not be in a good way when he went home, school was not even there as a distraction and the only person he could really discuss what was happening with had just walked out the door.

  * * *

  “I take it you didn’t like my sermon?”

  In truth Billy hadn’t really been listening to the service. He’d been taking advantage of having to stand up from the pew at various times during the proceedings, each time seeing if he could leave his body behind. He’d thought it was nice of Mike to mention thoughts for those in hospitals, and those lost, but he still wasn’t sure if he was having his buttons pushed.

  “I told you. I don’t believe.”

  “Which makes you an excellent judge of how my sermon came across. Well, what about the marks on the door? Can I take it that it was our one-armed friend?”

  “I think so.”

  “I told the verger it was me.”

  Billy turned to him, smiling. “You did?”

  “Told him I’d hit it with a ladder while inspecting the water tank,” said Mike. “You see I did have things to apologise for, even if they were in the best interests of all.”

  Billy gave a small grin. “Thanks.”

  “Now, are you going to tell me about this,” said Mike, “or am I going to have to wait till our stone friend eats one of my choir?”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to have to be after Christmas,” said Billy, looking out of his window, and beginning to wonder whether Katherine was out of hospital yet.

  A couple of minutes later, they pulled up outside Billy’s home. Mike waved farewell and headed back to town. Billy turned and walked up the path to the front door; bikeless, dogless and wondering what state his mother would be in.

  * * *

  The kitchen door revealed a tableau of the scene in which he had taken Saul away, minus his mother. The door unlocked, he knew she was in the house somewhere and, rather than disturb her, he set about tidying the strewn bags of shopping and half-abandoned cooking. After the twin kicks of giving away his bike and letting his mother descend into herself, he welcomed the routine of tidying the kitchen. This much he could manage. Bags went with other bags to be recycled. Food that could be used again, the fridge. Tins to the cupboard. Surfaces wiped. Pans washed, wiped and away to the drawer. This chaos he could manage, easy effort rewarded by the pleasure of seeing the results, and the hope that it might please. A sound was coming from the hall.

  Billy turned the lock to the kitchen door. He would not be out again tonight, unless the Tree made him go. The sound from the hall was still there, paper on paper? He turned off the kitchen lights, checking once more before doing so that his work there was complete, and followed the source of the sound.

  The door to his father’s study was open; this was clearly where the sound was coming from. He pushed the door open further. His mother was kneeling at the green leather sofa under the window at the front of the room. Spread over the base cushions and arms
of the grand sofa were many pictures, some colour, some black and white. They were photos of his father. The last time they had looked at photos of him together, they had been trying to locate a good likeness for the police. Neither of them had been inclined either to look at, or for that matter to take, any more photos since then. His mother looked up; she had been crying, but didn’t look too sad.

  “See what I found?” she said, holding up an old black and white photo.

  Billy dipped down to take a closer look. It could have been a photo of him, but the picture was of his father. The likeness was staggering, he’d clearly outgrown his clothes, and the unrepentant smile and knee raised on a footstool told the world that he didn’t care a damn if that was the case, or who knew it.

  “He’s got my legs.”

  “You mean you’ve got his,” said his mother, smiling.

  She went back to the shoeboxes of photos, pulling, checking, then discarding them on the sofa, setting herself a feverish pace.

  “What are you looking for? I might be able to find it,” said Billy.

  His mother put one hand over the box, whilst checking another photo in the other. “I’m fine, I’m just sure it’s here.”

  Billy brushed a few of the photos off the nearest arm of the sofa and sat whilst his mother continued to work away. Perhaps she wasn’t just going to sink back now? An older photo came up, and she grasped it with both hands, eyes running over it.

  “Got it.”

  Billy got up and knelt behind her to look over her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Just look.”

  The photograph was one of the oldest they had, and beginning to crack at the edges. It showed a Christmas scene, a family dressing a tree with paper chains; the type his grandfather had once shown him how to make. Two children were at the tree, helping an older man to decorate, but off to one side was what his mother had been searching for. A younger boy was burying his head between the paws of a large Scottish deerhound. The similarity to Saul was striking, and the inference to his father clear; he was the youngest of three children in his family.