Claus: The Trilogy

by Tony Bertauski

  His wide feet crush the dormant pasture as he slowly slogs toward the house, using the peaceful surroundings to process all these feelings, these difficult emotions that wrestle inside like baboons.

  He hears a distant cheer, feels it beneath his feet. He’s standing over the toy factory. The helpers must’ve accomplished quite a goal, all of them cheering at the same time.

  Freeda? he thinks.

  She hasn’t responded for hours. Perhaps she’s not pretending anymore.

  A thick mug awaits him on the porch. Mr. Frost takes a sip of frothy fish oil, a blend of something exotic. Eel extract, his favorite. A light sensation passes from his taste buds into his head, lifting the worried thoughts. Suddenly, he finds Christmas cheer as accessible as an afternoon nap.

  He walks around to the back of the house while downing the drink. He enters the basement doors, sliding down a slick ramp and unzipping the coolsuit before throwing open the toy factory doors.

  The raucous noise is deafening.

  Mr. Frost smiles, the exuberance contagious. He even feels his feet begin to shift, tiny little taps in time to the music. Someone is butchering the piano, but how can he not celebrate? Everyone is wildly dancing, standing on each other’s shoulders, slinging mugs of drink, and rolling on the floor… where a blue elven pounds on an electric keyboard.

  Mr. Frost’s feet stop.

  Jack throws his arms out and the music halts. A wide, toothy grin expands.

  “PAWN!”

  The helpers repeat after Jack. Pawn! Pawn! Pawn!

  It’s a name Mr. Frost hasn’t heard for hundreds of years. A name Jack gave him when they were young. A name Mr. Frost secretly hoped never to hear again.

  The dancing continues as Jack stutter-steps his way to the entrance, taking the time to do-si-do with helpers along the way. He pushes up the ramp and circles around Mr. Frost with his arms up. The helpers cheer madly.

  “Hey there, old buddy, old pal,” Jack whispers.

  The helpers surge up the ramp, clinging to Jack’s baggy pant legs, begging him not to leave, like they’ve been waiting a lifetime for him.

  Which they have.

  “Let me introduce you to a few friends.” Jack slaps his arm over Mr. Frost’s shoulders, biting cold sinking through the fabric. “They all look, well, pretty much the same, but the hats give them away. That’s Crayman, that’s Char, that’s Gabbit, that’s Farty… that’s, um, Dummy… oh, I ain’t got all day.”

  Jack raises his fist.

  “To the tower!”

  The cheers rattle Mr. Frost’s eardrums.

  “Not you!” Jack swings his hands, shooing them away. “Get back to work; make those toys, all of you. Christmas needs its workers and you’re it.”

  They scramble like programmed slaves. Which they are.

  The machines fire up, the production lines move along, and a song lifts into the air, a merry little number that keeps their spirits strong and productive.

  “I love those handsome little devils,” Jack says. “Now what do you say you and me do some catching up?”

  The elevator takes longer than usual to begin moving. The floor is crackling with veins of frost. Mr. Frost studies Jack’s reflection in the shiny doors before a layer of frost creeps over it.

  The smooth face and hairless scalp. The square chin and longish nose. Even the fingernails are bruised-purple as he picks his blocky, white teeth.

  Jack is back.

  Mr. Frost feels a chill creep inside him. His thoughts are tumbling into a pile of nonsense, tipping him off balance. He braces himself against the wall, the frosty surface numbing his hand.

  “This is super awkward,” Jack says. “You really need elevator music.”

  Mr. Frost doesn’t face him.

  “But it’s your elevator, so whatever,” Jack says.

  Jack drums the wall with his fingernails. Debris showers the floor like an artisan carving a wall of marble. Maybe Mr. Frost is imagining the cold, that the hardening of his organs, the shrinking of his stomach, is just the result of his runaway thoughts and paralyzing fear.

  Or maybe it’s Jack’s ability to freeze anything and everything.

  Mr. Frost tries to muster the words, attempts to say anything that will make him seem less fearful. All these centuries and, in seconds, he’s transformed back into that meek elven that followed Jack, doing as he pleased, whatever he said. Now he’s standing next to Jack’s incarnated body in a slow-moving elevator that’s quickly turning into a death locker of ice. All his carefully laid plans seem like poorly constructed scaffolding.

  The elevator stops.

  The tower, dark and cluttered, is revealed.

  Jack doesn’t move. Mr. Frost is stuck in place, waiting to be told what to do. He feels a tickle on his ear, a huff of frigid air. Mr. Frost locks his knees.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” Jack says.

  Jack slides around the desks and chairs, the monitors and tables. The fish tank. Max hides behind a pillow.

  “It’s so full of stuff, Pawn. So lived-in, so homey. It screams… WARMBLOOD!”

  Jack displays a rainbow of jazz hands.

  His pale blue jacket flutters behind him as he glides along. He studies the room, sniffing like a dog. He holds his fat foot out like a blunt joust and starts shoving furniture. A desk grinds against the wall. A monitor crashes on the floor. He races around the room, occasionally stopping to size up a vision or mutter an idea to no one. He even begins an argument with himself, eventually telling himself to shut up.

  “Great job with the body, by the way,” he shouts at Mr. Frost. “Freeda had some doubts about you, but clearly you knew what you were doing.” Jack licks his finger and touches his butt. “Tsssssssss.”

  Mr. Frost is still locked in place, his thoughts like squares of ice all stuck together.

  “The green hair thing… have to admit, that was a little sketchy. I mean, I can’t argue with the results, but do you know what I went through to get here?” Jack cruises behind Mr. Frost. “I was laughed at by warmbloods, Pawn. I got to tell you, it hurt. It’s kind of like being the stupid one in a class of morons.”

  Jack slides past with his head tipped back.

  “Oh, look. You did stars.” He studies the constellations.

  “Freeda!” he shouts. “Keep the stars, ditch the rest. I need to start over, the layout is horrible. No offense, Pawn. We just have different… tastes.”

  The floor quakes.

  Jack skates along, biting his nails, while the furnishings melt away like sandcastles. Max scurries around the room.

  “What’s that?” Jack points.

  Mr. Frost still can’t get a word out.

  “Here, boy.” Jack pats his knees. “Come to me, now. I said now. Come to me now or else.”

  Max hides behind Mr. Frost. Jack’s expression is placid, slightly annoyed. Fortunately, the room’s transformation distracts him. The floor shimmers, reconfiguring the microscopic biocells that follow a magnetic matrix to construct objects and electronics at will.

  An oversized desk, translucent and cold, spans one end of the room, with an extremely large chair. Various sculptures emerge like serpents, odes to the olden days of the Cold One, as Jack was known by those that feared him and those that… well, that’s all there was. Just fear.

  The room, once again, is crowded with icy, slick furnishings, the stuff that once inhabited Jack’s room deep beneath the Arctic ice hundreds of years ago when he was king, as if the memory was plucked from his mind and made real.

  The last vestige of the Cold One, the single most garish, most self-centered tribute to the reign of Jack’s terror, formed in front of Mr. Frost: a round fountain with a life-sized carving of Yours Truly spitting in the center.

  Jack takes his place at the desk, groaning with satisfaction. He looks down his pointed nose. “You don’t talk much, Pawn.”

  “I…” Mr. Frost clears his throat, thawing the words. “I’m just… surprised, that’s al
l. I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “All you, buddy.” He smacks his belly, waves coursing from the impact. “Wait, it was all me. I put the plans in the root and put the root in your head so, if you think about it, I did this. But I’ll give you some credit, Pawn. You hung in there, persevered. Kept your chin up when the chips were down. You did that for me.”

  Jack says, in the most sincere tone, “I won’t forget that, buddy. Now scoop out a fishy, I’m feeling a little woozy over here. Hypoglycemia acting up.”

  Mr. Frost bites his lip, refusing to let his thoughts out. There was no perseverance, no fight to bring him back; there was just the drudgery of being driven by the root and Freeda’s daily voice. He slides to the fountain, the centerpiece reaching up like an icy dagger stabbing the heavens. The fish seem to be real, not manufactured by the room. Freeda was prepared. He swipes at the school of minnows, snagging a pair between his fingers, and tosses them on the desk.

  Jack licks his lips, poking at the flipping fish gasping to breathe. They freeze into curled, fishy chips when he touches them, rocking on the hard surface.

  “You know,” he says, biting one in half, “you can’t imagine what it’s like out there. Warmblood food is like eating a pillow. The only thing worse is the smell. I’m tempted to punch you in the face for letting me escape before I had memories, but I’ll hand it to you, Pawn.”

  Jack inhales sharply.

  “The Claus myth is firmly in place. Christmas greed infects them all. I’m back and beautiful. You did a… great… JOB!”

  Jack presses his face on the desk and pulls the other fish between his lips like a serpent. He sits back and savors the snack, gazing at the stars.

  “Anywho,” he finally says, “I’m back, so you got to move out. I got you set up in the basement with some sweet digs. The view sucks, but it beats living in this heat, right? It’s the humidity that’ll kill you.”

  The elevator walls slide up.

  Jack flicks his fingers. “Off you go. I got some thinking to do, some planning to plan, that sort of thing. Christmas is in two days and there’s still a lot to do.”

  He drifts into thought, as if Mr. Frost would merely disappear, like nothing existed if he didn’t recognize it.

  “What are you going to do?” Mr. Frost asks.

  “What?”

  “About Christmas. What are you going to do?”

  A smile creeps across his darkening face. “First, I’m going to relax. Coming back to life after being dead a few hundred years takes a lot out of you. Second, I’m going to wipe out the warmbloods. But not necessarily in that order.”

  He hikes his feet on the desk.

  “And then I’m going to celebrate Christmas. I’m not a heathen, you know.”

  “The eyeTablets just shipped. It’ll take some time before they’re integrated into society. My estimate before we—I mean, you can do anything is eight years, probably ten. However, if you wait—”

  “I know, I know. Freeda told me. Listen, in case you haven’t noticed, I like things now. Not later, but now. So I’m weighing my options.”

  “What options?”

  “Just shut up, will you?”

  The elevator hums.

  Mr. Frost has pushed his luck as far as it’ll give. But he had to know what Jack was thinking. He knows there are many options to achieve the master plan, and Mr. Frost has planned a way to counter all of them. However, he knows one will undoubtedly work.

  Mr. Frost knows Jack. Not later, but now.

  “Jack,” Mr. Frost states.

  “Hmm?”

  “My name isn’t Pawn. It’s Jack.”

  Jack opens his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You stole my elven name when we were little, Janack.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “My mother and father named me Jack. You’re the one that called me Pawn.”

  “You are what I call you.”

  The elevator closes on Mr. Frost. He waits for Jack to open it in a rage, maybe stick a finger up his nose until his brain crackles with ice crystals because that was a rash and stupid thing to do. He didn’t plan on it, never had thought about it, not once. But suddenly it was there and he was saying it.

  When Jack didn’t come for him, Mr. Frost smiled.

  My real name is Jack.

  -------------------------

  Jack’s brain feels like a bowl of hot noodles.

  Freeda said he would just feel a little pressure and that was the lie of the century.

  But he remembers almost everything.

  He doesn’t remember dying, but Freeda gave him the blow-by-blow, how he blubbered on his mother’s shoulder before drowning with his brother. She told him they all died.

  But who’s alive now? Who’s the winner?

  Jack orchestrated the resurrection of all eternity. He always felt like a dummy—he hates to admit it, but compared to his brother, Claus, he was a little dim—but what he did with the root was brilliant. The scientists helped a little, but it was his idea, his genius.

  Pawn couldn’t deny what the root wanted him to do, but Jack gave him enough freedom to adapt creatively. Jack may have been green and grouchy when he woke up, but if that’s what it took to bring him back, he won’t complain.

  Much.

  He burps fish-scented fumes, thumps his chest, but it’s not indigestion. It feels more like a halo of anger just below the sternum—two inches to the right where his tiny heart pumps antifreeze.

  Jack.

  Pawn just wanted to ruin his day. Jack attempts to soothe his heavy heart with cold thoughts, only to feel them melt.

  Jack is Pawn’s real name.

  He slides past the fountain to a full-length mirror. Jack pulls off his clothes, dropping them in a pile. Black shorts are visible just below his doughy belly.

  He’s back. He’s good. Death ain’t got nothing on me.

  And, yet, something’s missing.

  Jack works through the pile of clothes and pulls out a black pair of Oakley sunglasses. He slides them up his nose with one finger. The polarizing vision makes him look slightly rosy.

  Almost tan.

  His childhood dresser is on the far side of the room, the snow duster still in the top drawer. The candy cane press is on the low-rising coffee table, the one where you pour sugar and ice through a straw. The hinge is a bit sticky, but then again, it always was. And there, middle drawer, is the harmonica, still beaten and battered. Jack cups it, blowing all the notes.

  It’s all there. Everything he could remember, all the toys, all the inventions. And all the hatred, coldness, bitterness, and bile to go along with it.

  Why didn’t I erase that?

  Not too late, sir.

  “Quiet.” He doesn’t like her eavesdropping. He likes beating himself up when no one else is around. Fact is, everything is exactly the way it was hundreds of years ago, but something is missing.

  Something.

  A car door thumps. Jack leans on the window, hands pressed on the glass. Veins of ice crawl across the surface. Jonah’s limping around the front of a pickup, dragging a tarp full of clippings from the garden. He goes back for another load, the blue tarp snaking behind him as he winds his way through the maze where a sculpture sparkles.

  “What’s that?” He pokes the glass.

  A tribute to your mother.

  “Mother?”

  Mr. Frost thought it appropriate that she be memorialized for her wisdom.

  “Uh-huh. First of all, no more ‘Mr. Frost’ crap. His name is Pawn, get with it. Second, there better be a big, fat, blue statue somewhere, if you know what I mean.”

  You are the tribute, sir. This entire plantation is in your honor.

  “Uh…” He starts to object. “All right, I’ll give you that one.”

  Pawn loved Jack’s mother. Everyone did. The old lady spouted wisdom like a…

  Fountain.

  Pawn was one of those kid elven that sat at the back of
the class and doodled on the desk, slunk down when the teacher wanted volunteers; one of those elven that never said a word. It had something to do with his parents dying when he was little, but boohoo—Jack didn’t have a father and his mother was busy.

  Jack made friends with him. Actually, no one wanted to be friends with Jack, either. They had that in common. Jack and Pawn became best friends.

  Only Jack’s name was really Janack. And Pawn’s name was really Jack. It’s confusing but not really.

  Pawn did whatever Jack told him to do, so the name Pawn made sense. Besides, Janack was a stupid name and he sort of liked the name Jack. It was tough and sharp. He wanted it and they both couldn’t be named Jack.

  So Jack became Pawn and Janack became Jack.

  Simple as that.

  Jack fogs the glass with his breath and etches a name. JACK.

  Sir, we need to discuss the options I gave you earlier—

  “Oh my God.” Jack clamps the sides of his head. “You can’t tell me I approved your voice. If I have to listen to that for the next hundred years, I’m going to hang myself.”

  Freeda stutters.

  “Make yourself useful and turn the temperature down; I’m sweating BBs over here.”

  The system is running at maximum power, sir. Her reply is terse. Minus eighty is as low as it can go unless you want to remove all the replicated objects in the room.

  He rather doubts that. She’s just making that up. Jack starts getting dressed.

  As I was saying, depending on the option you’d like to initiate, we may have to act very soon, sir.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Within the next hour.

  “Okay.”

  Jack digs through his dresser and finds a black, long-tailed jacket that matches the sunglasses.

  Sir, I don’t understand. What are you doing?

  “I’m going to party with the helpers. You’re going to work.”

  You’ll distract them, sir.

  “Do you always make excuses?”

  Sir, so much has changed from the original master plan. Earlier, you liked the meltdown option. Is that what you want?

  “Uh, yeah. That’s what I said. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  Because initiating meltdown on such short notice is hasty, sir. The meltdown is an alternative to the eyeTablets that Mr. Fro—Pawn has prepared.