“Anyway, this particular year, Laura’s kids were all over the place. My mother burned at least three pans of cookies and cooked a loaf of banana bread so hard it could double as a paving stone. I tried to help out as much as I could, but I kind of had my hands full too, since I had to do all my shopping and wrapping as well—and shopping and wrapping for my dad, since he won’t venture near a retail place in the month of December. Or just about any other month either, unless the place sells electric trains.
“Trains are his hobby, his passion, and December is when he really puts it on display. Remember when it was all the rage to set up a train set under the Christmas tree?”
Michael shrugged. “Not really.”
“Well it was,” Carol said. “In the fifties or sixties, I think. My dad never quit. In fact, his under-the-tree layouts have gotten bigger and more elaborate each year. It now takes up almost a third of the living room. So, anyway, the day before Christmas I go out to do some last-minute shopping, with a pretty long list for both my dad and myself, plus a couple of requests from my sister. I’m gone most of the day and get back right at supper time. I don’t know how to explain to you what it’s like to go shopping the day before Christmas. Trying to find a parking place, the crowds, people pushing and shoving to get things, empty shelves, long, long lines at the checkouts… Anyway, I was pretty frazzled by the time I got finished.”
A tight smile curled his lips. “I’ve seen movies. I have some idea.”
“By the time I got back to the house, I wasn’t in a great mood, but the chaos at the shopping center didn’t begin to prepare me for what I found at home. I got there right in time for the show.”
Chapter 5
Carol smelled cookies baking the moment she struggled in the door, trying to hold onto three plastic bags in each hand. The noise hit her at about the same time. Yells, cries from the adults, screeches from the kids and a sound that explained some things and mystified her even more at the same time. A series of barks.
She glanced into the living room where her father leaned over the tracks of his train layout with a bemused look on his face. Everyone else was down the hall, attempting to squeeze into the guest bedroom. Three-year-old Matthew toddled on his own toward them. Squeals, shouts and several voices yelling directions continued back there, along with more sharp barks. The baby bawled her own demand for attention.
“Who got the dog?” Carol asked.
“Laura decided Matt was ready for a puppy.” Her father’s dry tone told her exactly what he though about Matt’s readiness.
“She’s kind of lonely without Mark. Maybe she wanted the company.”
Her father shook his head. “Can’t keep up with her own kids. Don’t see how she’s going to manage a dog too.”
“Maybe it’ll help her learn a bit more responsibility.”
“You think a dog will, when the—“
The action down the hall took a sudden, dramatic turn, when a small, fast-moving mop of brown fur rushed out of the guest room door, neatly dodging several hands stretched out to grab him, and raced toward them on four short, madly pumping legs. He nearly knocked down poor Matthew as he barreled along, but the child just giggled, recovered his balance and turned around to follow.
The dog hopped up onto the raised platform her dad used for his trains and raced across it, scattering pieces of track not yet tacked down, train cars, plastic buildings, light poles and even a few unfortunate miniature people as he scampered across. By a major miracle, he missed the Christmas tree that sat in the center of the train layout. It shook a bit, dropping a few strands of tinsel across the tracks, but remained upright. The barrel roller gizmo her father had bought the previous year was less fortunate. It tumbled completely off the wooden support onto the rug under the dog’s feet.
Her father shot to his feet, using a word he almost never used in the presence of his family.
“Daniel Prescott!” Her mother might forget to take the cookies out of the oven, but she had great hearing, especially for those words. “The children!”
“Sorry, Jan,” he said to her mother, who was rushing back toward them along the hall. Matthew had already toddled past, chasing the puppy, but at least he went around the train platform rather than across it. The dog charged into the dining room and on through to the kitchen, tongue hanging out and eyes bright. Carol could almost swear he was smiling. Her mother, her brother and Laura raced that way, passing Matthew again. They were halfway through the dining room when the dog charged back out of the kitchen, running as fast as his stubby little legs could manage, ears flapping and tail wagging. He went through the dining room on the other side of the table to avoid his pursuers.
Once again he almost bowled over Matthew as he ran back into the living room. Far from being bothered, the child turned and followed, giggling loudly.
Her father had just begun to put the track back together and right the overturned buildings when the dog hopped up onto the platform again and charged across it. “Oh, he—” He bit off the curse, but swatted at the dog, who veered around him.
The swat was a bad idea. In swerving to avoid it, the dog crashed into the trunk of the Christmas tree right where the lowest, thickest branch joined it. He bounced off and, undaunted, chugged across the platform, jumped off the other side and raced down the hall toward the bedrooms.
In his wake, the tree stand tipped and the whole Douglas Fir wobbled. Carol and her father both grabbed at it. Each got hold of a branch and managed to keep it upright.
Until Matthew, following the dog more precisely this time, climbed up onto the platform and toddled through already scattered train cars, miniature buildings and people. He almost stepped on one of the engines, missed it and began to teeter himself. Carol and her father both reached out to prevent him from taking a nasty fall, letting go of the tree.
They each got a hand on one of the toddler’s arms and steadied him. Bereft of support, though, the tree wobbled and fell over on top of them. She heard Matthew laughing, so presumably he’d wasn’t hurt.
A large branch hit her back and knocked her to her knees. A corner of one of the freight cars poked into her hand and something else bit into her shin. Prickly branches sat on her shoulders, her head and one large one rested against her left elbow. Pine needles tickled her nose. Plastic icicles dripped down her face and clung to her clothes. Colored glass balls rolled down the tree and plopped on her before continuing their death plunge onto the wood platform. A candy cane slid down the front of her sweater. The smell of pine surrounded her.
“Damnation.” Pine needles dropped into her mouth as if to punish her for the profanity. She spat them out again.
“Carol, not in front of the kids,” her mother shouted, followed by, “Oh no! Oh my goodness, what happened?”
“Laura,” Carol yelled, “Come get your son before he does any more damage.” Which was a little unfair, but not much. “Jason, Mom, get this blinking tree off us.”
Her father was equally entangled in the fragrant greenery. When he wriggled, trying to get the needles out of his eyes, it shook the tree even more. A few more ornaments fell off and plopped against the wood. Amazingly, some of them landed intact and rolled off the platform onto the floor.
Jason and her mother heaved the tree up and off them. Carol turned and lent a hand to getting it set upright and making sure it was stable in the stand. More pine needles dripped out of her hair each time she moved her head. A few had caught in her sweater and poked her through it.
Laura picked up her rambunctious son and managed to snag the equally enthusiastic puppy in her other arm as it ran back by. She disappeared into the guest bedroom with her giggling child tucked in one arm and the yipping puppy in the other, leaving behind the destruction they’d wrought.
Carol, Jason and their father gathered up the undamaged ornaments and returned them to the tree while her mother got a broom and dustpan to sweep up the shards of those that hadn’t survived.
They hadn’t quite
finished cleaning that up when the smoke detector outside the kitchen began to scream a warning. Carol looked up, startled. She’d been so involved in the chase and the tree that she hadn’t really noticed the smell of smoke. Besides, they were all used to her mother burning things, so it didn’t always register.
“My pie!” her mother screamed and headed for the kitchen. The smell had grown stronger as tendrils of dark smoke floated into the living room.
“Wait,” she called as her mother reached for the oven door. “Don’t open it. Just turn it off.” Carol followed her into the kitchen. A look through the oven’s window confirmed her suspicion. Little tongues of flame lit the area inside. Her mother glanced at her, nodded and reached carefully for the switch to flip it off.
Carol dug in the pantry closet and found the fire extinguisher. After pulling out the pin, she waited. It took a few minutes, but without the heat feeding them, the flames finally died down. She continued to watch it while her mother went around opening windows and propping doors ajar to let in fresh, cold December air.
Two pots sitting on the stove-top were emitting suspicious aromas as well. Gingerly, keeping the fire extinguisher handy, she raised lids. One pot held a thick orangey-red sludge that smelled like very burnt tomato sauce. The other one still had half an inch of water in the bottom, with a large gooey lump of badly overcooked pasta sitting in the middle. She turned the heat off under both.
From back in the guest room, she heard the dog yip and whine. She hoped it meant Laura had him contained somehow. Then Matthew started whining as well.
Carol carefully opened the oven door. Nothing flamed up again, but the oven was a disaster, with semi-carbonized blobs of goo all over the place and a pile of it at the bottom. What was supposed to be an apple pie looked like a charred cardboard disc surrounding sticky black lumps.
She put both pots to soak in the sink, but the pie pan was a goner. It went into a trash bag along with its contents and the contents of both pots. Carol trotted the bag right out to the trash bin outside. By the time she got back, her mother stood in the kitchen, considering the mess with a bemused expression.
“I guess we’ll have to open some cans for dinner,” she said.
Carol nodded.
They ate canned spaghetti and wieners, canned green beans and canned fruit for dinner. Afterward they hung stockings, Laura disappeared to put Matt to bed and her mom broke out the eggnog. Her father added a dollop of bourbon to everyone’s cup but Jason’s. She noticed he put a second, larger dash in his own cup. Someone had swept up the glass and rearranged the ornaments on the tree to reduce the gaps left by the missing and broken decorations.
Normally she loved sitting around with her family in front of the fire on Christmas Eve, but the day had been too long. Besides, she still had wrapping to do. After just half an hour of the usual reminiscing about Christmases past and the year getting close to its finish, Carol retired to her room and raced through the wrapping so she could get to bed.
The next day started shaky and got worse. The baby woke them all at four-thirty, howling at the top of her lungs. Matthew got up then too, and was ready to tear into the pile of presents stacked around the barely rescued train set under the barely rescued tree.
The gift-opening actually went pretty smoothly once Matthew had shredded the wrappings of all his toys and been convinced that the packages weren’t all for him. He sat and cuddled the puppy, for which Laura had created a makeshift leash from an old belt and some rope, while the adults exclaimed over their gifts.
Carol got some wonderful things from her family, including a lovely sweater from her mother, a nice stationery set and diary from Laura and even a cute poster from Jason. Christmas, it appeared, was back on track.
Until she joined her mother in the kitchen later to help with preparations for dinner and discovered that her mother had put the roast in the oven, but forgotten to turn it on.
* * * * *
“We ended up having canned soup and sandwiches for Christmas dinner,” Carol said. “Now, every year, I go in and make sure she’s remembered to turn the oven on.”
“Your family is amaz—”
Michael’s fingers twitched, then the shaking began to spread to his arms and torso. “Don’t— Don’t get close,” he warned. “Stay…away.” The tremors grew worse and he closed his eyes, his body tensing as he struggled for control.
The shaking grew so violent, he fell off the chair onto the floor, where he lay writhing and making odd choking noises. Carol stood and moved toward him to see if she could help, until his eyes opened. They shone with a blood-red glow.
She backed away, praying he wouldn’t follow. She stopped after a few steps. He had so little control of himself just then that he couldn’t threaten her as long as she didn’t get too close. The stake was still in her left hand, so she moved it to her right again, holding it ready should he recover suddenly.
He lay on the floor, writhing uncontrollably, flipping over to roll a few times, then doing an odd swimming motion on the rug. All the while, he continued to shake and his breath became a loud series of pants, broken by the occasional moan. It went on for much longer than any of the previous spells, ten or fifteen minutes at least.
Her heart twisted with pity and fear. No one deserved to suffer like this, no matter what he’d done. And Michael had done nothing. All this had come about because he’d tried to help an unfortunate victim, and now he was struggling not to do something evil.
The clock struck four while she waited. Carol half expected Antoine to materialize again, since he’d shown up the last time right on the hour of two. He didn’t, though.
Michael’s breath puffed in and out on a series of hard pants as he writhed on the floor. She found it nearly unbearable to watch, yet she didn’t dare take her eyes off him. She couldn’t tell how conscious and aware he was, but he was most definitely in pain. A lot of it.
Watching it was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do, but she dared not look away either. It half killed her to just stand there, staring, unable to do a damned thing to help ease him. Not even touch him or hold him or brush hair out of his face.
After ten minutes, she felt sick to her stomach, wondering if he would come out of it again or whether these were his death throes. He twisted harder, body bending double, then straightening into rigid lines. His breath became thready and harsh. The choking sounds that followed the radical tension almost did her in.
But then he began to relax and the shaking calmed to just above a mild tremor. He groaned, but it sounded more deliberate and less desperate. The rhythm of his breathing changed. While still harsh, it lengthened to sound closer to normal. He didn’t move, however, even when the tremors finally settled down to a more gentle quivering.
“Michael?” Carol took a hesitant step toward him and stopped. “Are you…?” She shook her head. “Stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. Is there anything I can do?”
He didn’t answer. He lay still, on his side, curled into a fetal tuck for several long minutes. After a while, he roused and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He shifted back to rest against the side of a chair, still seated on the floor.
Sharp lines incised his lean cheeks and around his eyes, which sank deeper into his head than before. His pale skin had a sickly gray cast. Cheek and jaw-bones stood out in harsh angles. For a few minutes, his head hung forward as though he had no strength to hold it up.
When he did finally look up, she saw flashes of red in his eyes. Not steady, as they had been before, or growing, but coming and going in winks of blood and fire.
“Michael?”
His eyebrows rose.
“If I staked you right now, wouldn’t it put you out of your misery?”
“Yes, but please don’t. I want to die human, so I have to wait for dawn. Do it if I threaten you, but otherwise, no. I want my soul back before I die.”
“All right. Is there…anything I can do? To help?”
He
shook his head, but stopped. “Just talk to me. Tell me more…about yourself. Why aren’t you married? You’re a very attractive woman. Don’t you want to have a husband and a family?”
“Of course I do. But I guess I haven’t met the right man. My sister tells me I’m too picky. She says I’ve read too many fantasy novels and I’m holding out for a hero. Maybe it’s true too. And heroes are hard to come by these days. But most of the men I’ve met… I don’t know. There isn’t any spark there. So I’m still waiting.”
“You want a prince, like in the fairy tales? How many frogs have you kissed?”
“Way too many. And swallowed a poisoned apple or two, pricked my finger a few times, even tolerated a couple of beasts—until I realized they really were just beasts—but still no prince galloping to the rescue. Actually, I don’t really need a prince or a hero. Just the right man.”
“If not a prince or a hero, what do you want in a man?”
“I want a man who’s intelligent, strong—not so much physically, but in character—kind, caring, has a good sense of humor, hard-working and likes kids, science fiction movies and good food. Not so much, really, is it?”
He shrugged and struggled for a pain-filled grin. “Seems like you should find one on every corner.”
“I wish.”
“What do you find on all those corners?”
“A lot of little boys in big boys’ bodies. More than a few who were so self-centered they barely noticed what anyone else was doing. A few so focused on being successful, they forgot to be real people. You get the picture. And I’m not really all that demanding. Some of my terms are negotiable, like the food thing.”
“And you still haven’t found a good one. Shocking.”
A Vampire's Christmas Carol Page 5