Claus: The Trilogy

by Tony Bertauski

  “He cannot sleep all morning.”

  “Mother, he’s been working ever since we got here. Let him rest.”

  “He’s a diabetic, Debra.”

  “Yes, and let him manage it.”

  It had been three days since Oliver discovered the garage.

  Every night, a few inches of snow would fall, and he would take the shovel out for another workout. Strangely, the road leading to the roundabout was always cleared, as if Grandmother paid someone to leave the roundabout for Oliver.

  “Olivah should be on a schedule.”

  “He’s not an infant.” Mom’s voice echoes.

  “Don’t raise your voice to me, Debra.”

  “Don’t raise my son.”

  “He needs structure to shape his life.”

  “Structure worked wonders on me.”

  Footsteps come heavily toward the bedroom. Oliver doesn’t hear his Grandmother’s descent. His mom looks into the room. Her headband is around her neck, her brown locks falling over her eyes and ears, hiding her golden line of earrings.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Take your time.”

  “I need to shovel?”

  She grimaces. “Yes, sorry. Your cousins are coming in a few days.”

  “Henry and Helen?”

  “Remember them?”

  Barely. They came down to Texas when he was seven. He doesn’t remember that being fun.

  “Grandmother wants to get the house ready. Once you get your chores done, you can do whatever you’ve been doing outside.” She squeezes the lump at the end of the bed that happens to be his foot. “What have you been doing?”

  “Exploring, that’s all.” He yawns to cover his lie. Grandmother and Mom have been around the backyard or calling for him too often to make another trip to the garage. “I’ve been, you know, just walking to the trees and stuff.”

  “Don’t go too far. I don’t want you stuck out there or lost.”

  “What happens when the sun goes down?”

  “You know, the usual—monsters and trolls, things with teeth.” She laughs, but not in the way she does when she’s hiding something. It’s not trolls she’s worried about. It’s her diabetic kid lost in the forest on a cold night.

  “It’s not so bad here, Mom.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “No, seriously. I mean, not the chores so much. Or the tea. But I don’t mind having the third floor to myself and thousands of acres to explore.”

  “You’re a good kid.” She squeezes his foot again.

  “What if I was bad?”

  “I’d still love you, just not as much.” She winks. “Now get your naked butt out of bed and get dressed.”

  “I’m not…you heard that?”

  She swats his knee. “That was good thinking.”

  Oliver stays beneath the warm comforter, listening to his mom’s large steps grow more confident. She’s hardly the little girl that drove up to the house.

  And they have a Christmas tree.

  “Thanks for the tree!”

  “You’re welcome!” Mom’s voice echoes throughout the house.

  ***

  He shovels after lunch.

  The afternoon is sunny. The icicles drip from the gutters, and despite the ache in his back, Oliver hikes past the slow-churning windmill and out to the clearing. His kit is in one pocket, the orb in the other. Once out of sight, he enters the trees.

  There’s no path, but soon he finds the broken branches from his panicked escape. It’s still dark in the deepest part of the forest, but nothing moves or snaps—it’s just the calm, wintry silence that follows him to the garage.

  Despite layers of sweaters and thermals, he’s shivering. He’s not made for the cold. “You’re a skinny lad,” a teacher once told him, “with not an ounce of meat.”

  The snow around the garage is undisturbed. He stops short, wondering where his footprints are from the other day. He pulls off his glove and wraps his fingers around the metal knob. It feels like a block of ice. He’s afraid to turn it, to feel it refuse to open. He closes his eyes…

  Pop.

  Warm air heaves out.

  Oliver jumps inside. He kicks the snow off his boots and opens his coat. The garage feels like the beach in July. If only the sun were overhead and the sand between his toes.

  His distorted reflection follows him around the car, stretching his long face even thinner, turning his arms into noodles. The triangular blocks are still wedged under the wheels, although they seem to be slightly askew this time.

  The afternoon sunlight beams through the only window, making the chrome gleam and black side panels shine. The seats are still worn. He always pictured Grandmother driving something more sensible.

  Like a tank.

  The wooden orb feels warm in his pocket. He places it on one of the little shelves above the workbench, next to a metal oil dispenser, and then turns his attention to the filing cabinet, careful to stay clear of the window.

  He starts with the top drawer.

  Most of the contents are handwritten. Portions have a large X over failures or wrong equations. Many of the folders are loaded with statistical calculations and circuit schematics. Occasionally, there are illustrations of gadgets that look more like large animals or flying wagons than anything practical: the daydreams of a fantasy world. None of it seems to jibe with his grandfather.

  He was a mechanic.

  It takes an hour to finish the top drawer. He starts on the next one and, after plowing halfway through it, finds himself bored with the tedium of details and indecipherable equations.

  But then he strikes gold.

  It’s a folder with sketches, mostly; nothing out of the ordinary but this time he recognizes the object. Oliver rolls the wooden orb over the notes.

  The designs match.

  It’s a schematic of weights and dimensions. The details of the lines illustrate exactly where they should be cut and how deep. There’s also a cutaway of the internal mechanisms that shows circuits and finely manufactured components.

  Oliver holds the orb up, examining the rough-hewn lines that don’t exactly match the plan’s precision. It’s close, though. The plans, however, call for the shell to be constructed of aluminum, copper and an iron-nickel alloy. Maybe those metals are inside, but the outer portion is definitely wood.

  Also, the sphere in the plans is thirty centimeters in circumference, about the size of a softball. The wooden one must be a prototype, but what are they for? Some kind of a game?

  It doesn’t feel like a game.

  Oliver checks the time.

  He puts the plans away before crawling under the workbench. He found the wooden orb in the footlocker; maybe there’s a quick answer inside it. He leans deep into the dark recess beneath the bench and powers up his phone’s flashlight.

  He pulls the jacket out and places it across his lap. It delivers a one-two punch of mold and old and brings about a violent sneeze. Next, he takes out all six journals. He puts them in chronological order based on the date found on each of the first pages, ranging from 1881 to 1883.

  With his phone perched near his chin, he opens the first one. The script is shaky and faded, as if penned with the opposite hand.

  September 10, 1881.

  My name is Malcolm Toye. And I am a dead man.

  Oliver fumbles his light.

  The garage, once warm and empty, feels crowded with ghosts. Malcolm Toye was his great-grandfather. His mom once mentioned there were relatives in the navy, but there were no pictures to prove it. And rarely did they visit family.

  When his heart rate nears normal, he turns on the light.

  I have somehow found myself separated from my party. We reached a chain of Siberian islands. This, we suspect, being Bennett Island. The men are weak and frostbitten. Soon, we plan to take the boats in search of the mainland, in hopes of finding a native settlement.

  And, somehow, I find myself alone.

  There is no feeling in my toes and most of
my legs after having fallen into an open lead. If I survive, which is doubtful, frostbite has already claimed these parts of my body. My nose, as well.

  I write only with the hope that my love will know that, in these final hours, I am thinking of her. I was a fool to attempt this journey into the Arctic. No man will see the North Pole without perishing, this I am certain. Why would I think this expedition would be any different?

  As I lay here, it is your love, my bride, which offers me the warmth and knowledge that I will pass through the gates of heaven with a smile.

  There are several unintelligible passages that follow as his fingers appeared to stiffen on the water-stained pages. It ends with scribbles, like a man attempting to record his dreams long after he’s fallen asleep.

  There are several blank pages.

  But then the entries resume, this time with sharp lines and fluent script, not the handwriting of frozen fingers. And oddly similar to the plans in the filing cabinets.

  December 10, 1881

  Is heaven a warm room? Is it a full belly and the comfort of a bed? If it is, my love, then I rest peacefully in the afterlife.

  I can only guess the date at the time of this entry. It feels like months have passed since I last wrote, but I cannot be sure. I can only report what I see before me.

  I write to you with not a quill and ink but an instrument much smoother. My belongings are heaped into the corner of this very small room, whose walls appear to be fashioned from blue ice, yet when I touch them, they feel no more frigid than a ship’s deck. The floor, too, is ice, yet when I step on it, I do not slip.

  What is more remarkable, if that is even possible, is that my fingers and toes are fully functioning. There is a slight discoloration on the smallest of my digits, but it appears that I have made a full recovery.

  How is this possible?

  My memories are scattered. I recall, with the help of this journal, wandering the frozen tundra and becoming separated from the party. I remember lying in wait of death, yet here I am, writing to you.

  I have slept much. When I wake, there is little energy in my body, but I find food next to the bed. When I slumber, I hear voices that are never here when, once again, I wake. It is strange and impossible that I am still in the Arctic, but I have no other explanation.

  I hesitate to record what is next, but feel certain you will understand if somehow you find these journals. I recall, in my final moments before waking in this room, there was someone with me. Or, perhaps I should say, something. When I was dying in the snow, I felt its shadow fall over me as my breath leaked from me. It was a large thing, an angel of sorts, that whisked me out of Death’s clutches. Its body was massive, and its arms thick. My love, there is no other way to say it.

  It was made of snow.

  I am very aware of how this sounds, that these ramblings are the sort from a madman, that perhaps I damaged some part of the brain and tell you my dreams instead of reality. Perhaps I am still on the ice and dying after all, and these ramblings are a dream.

  But I think not.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The phone tumbles into Oliver’s lap.

  He finds it in the coat and scurries away from the noise. It wasn’t a mouse or a branch. That was someone knocking. Something weird is about to happen. This is a different weird than low blood sugar weird. This is out there. He starts to climb out when the doorknob rattles.

  Oliver slams into the footlocker and hides beneath the old, musty coat, fumbling to turn off the light.

  A key slides into the lock.

  The door opens, and someone kicks their boots on the doorjamb before coming inside. Oliver is as solid as granite. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathing as slowly as possible. Footsteps quietly cross the garage. Oliver dares a peek through the fuzzy slots of his eyelids. Grandmother’s padded boots stand at the storage rack next to the filing cabinet.

  She’s humming.

  It could be Mom wearing Grandmother’s boots, but Mom shuffles. And she doesn’t have an old, spotted left hand. Grandmother’s right hand is clad in a strange metallic glove, something made of metal links and silver plates.

  What’s weirder is that she’s humming.

  He assumed she disapproved of all things fun and expressive, like music and dancing and laughing.

  Rule #534: No joy.

  She’s tearing plastic wrapping, maybe opening paper towels. If she turns around and leaves, she’ll never see him from that angle. But whatever she’s got, she brings to the workbench.

  Close enough he could grab her knee.

  Oliver’s fingernails dig into his palms. His head is getting light. He forces himself to breathe, trying to remember if he left anything open. Did he leave any papers out? Did he close the filing cabinet?

  The wooden orb!

  He stops breathing.

  Hiding in the garage with great-grandfather’s belongings on his lap, he’s pretty sure will be breaking a rule, written or not.

  Grandmother goes back to the shelves, humming a little louder, and then heads for the door, but not before unloading a three-step fart.

  A moment later, she closes the door.

  He takes a long breath just before things dim. He holds completely still, though, muffling his breathing with the coat. He stays that way for several minutes, just in case Sing-along Grandmother comes back with another dose of walking farts.

  When he finally moves, it’s in full-blown panic mode.

  His legs are weak, but there’s no time to check sugar. He shoves the items back in the footlocker. The wooden orb had rolled against the wall and wedged, luckily, behind a tin can of rusty nails. He grabs it and heads for the door.

  He stops.

  He might not come back for a while. He might not come back ever. He checks the window and sees Grandmother’s tracks heading back to the house. Quickly, he digs into the footlocker and tucks three journals inside his coat.

  He runs through the forest, sprinting out to the clearing as the long shadows begin to fade. He takes a moment to rub snow on his cheeks and forehead, pulling his gloves off to chill his fingers so that, when he returns, he’s sure to look and feel like he’s been exploring the property.

  Just as he climbs onto the front porch, he realizes two things.

  One, Grandmother had to unlock the door to get inside the garage, but he never locked it. But it’s the second realization that sends chills down his neck.

  Grandmother didn’t notice his tracks leading into the garage.

  Because they had been erased.

  F L U R Y

  six

  Oliver stands at the pantry door, stunned. Maybe he’s asleep or Grandmother’s alarm didn’t go off. Like she has an alarm.

  Like she sleeps.

  But two weeks until Christmas and there it is, a blank chore list. Christmas came early.

  Oliver grabs a quick breakfast and returns to his bedroom. He listens at the door for a few minutes. When silence remains, he creeps to the dresser and leans into it, tilting it towards the wall and reaching underneath, where three leather-bound books are stashed. They barely fit. He’s not going back to the garage anytime soon.

  He should’ve grabbed all six of them.

  He flops his backpack on the bed and shoves the journals inside, covering them with Snowboarder Magazine, something Mom picked up at a gas station. He’ll need more magazines and books, just to make it look good. But what if Grandmother inspects the backpack?

  Grandmother? What if Mom looks inside? How am I going to explain that?

  This horrible plan worsens when footsteps come toward his room. He slams into the dresser like a linebacker. It thumps the wall just as a light knocking raps the door.

  “Just a sec.”

  He can’t fuss with the journals; it’ll sound like he’s up to something. Instead, he throws the backpack on the other side of the bed and takes several deep breaths before opening the door.

  “Where’ve you been?” Mom’s in a robe with a towel on he
r head.

  “There are no chores. I was just, you know, relaxing.”

  A look crosses her face. She knows he’s hiding something. He’s as transparent as a glass of water. Then again, his lies are generally about how many bowls of cereal he ate or whether he checked his sugar, not hiding antiquated journals.

  “Sorry, kiddo, no relaxing today. Your Aunt Rhonnie and cousins are coming today.”

  She slings a suit bag on the bed and pulls the zipper down the center, exposing a dark blue jacket and striped tie. A little handkerchief tufts out of the breast pocket.

  “No, Mom. Please, no.”

  “It’s not going to kill you.”

  “Yes, it will.”

  “I went to boarding school when I was ten and wore a uniform every day. It didn’t kill me.”

  Yes, it did.

  She holds the suit to his shoulders. He’s heard her talk about boarding school, heard her say it did kill a part of her. She laughs when she says it, but it’s only half a joke. Oliver feels like a part of her died before that.

  “You’ve got two hours,” she says. “Get a shower, get dressed, and you’ll have time to sneak a few games on your phone.”

  “I don’t know how to do the tie.”

  “Lucky you.” She holds up a clip-on.

  His friends back in Texas had dads that wore suits. Oliver was convinced it sucked out their souls. Oliver’s dad never wore a tie. He made money with investments, but he was pretty sure his dad already sold his soul.

  Oliver didn’t want his soul sucked out by a suit or boarding school.

  “Your chores for today are entertaining your cousins. Grandmother lives for this stuff, darling.” She lathers the last word with stuffy English entitlement. “Be on your best behavior.”

  She turns at the door and, in bare feet, curtsies as if her robe were a ballroom gown.

  ***

  His shiny shoes are stark against the dull grain of the staircase.

  Each step sends a hard-soled clack through the house, biting into his heels as he descends to the first floor, where Grandmother, dressed in pearls and dead animal fur, is waiting.