Christmas Tales of Terror

by Chris Priestley

  When Mrs Harper, the housekeeper, had told the pedlar to be off, the woman had refused and become increasingly agitated, shouting words that Miranda assumed, by Mrs Harper’s expression, must have been swear words of the very worst kind.

  Mrs Harper had disappeared inside the house while the pedlar continued her rant. She reappeared with a bucket and, without warning, threw the cold water therein straight at the pedlar, drenching her from head to foot.

  The pedlar had stared, open-mouthed, water dripping from her hat and from her extinguished pipe. Miranda hadn’t been able to stop herself. She’d burst into loud laughter as Mrs Harper shouted, ‘Now be off with you!’

  The pedlar, Miranda remembered with a shudder, had turned slowly to look at her, with a cold fury burning in her eyes. Mrs Harper bustled Miranda inside and slammed the door. She ran upstairs and watched from her bedroom window as the pedlar drove her cart away. Safely inside, Miranda had laughed again, until the pedlar turned as though hearing her. She’d been happy to see the cart disappear from view.

  Later that day, when Miranda had gone for a walk in the garden, she’d seen something in the gravel of the drive and had discovered it to be the drummer boy.

  She’d picked him up and, seeing how ugly he was and how he reminded her of the pedlar, she’d thrown him over the wall into the chalk pit on the other side.

  The toy was the same one; Miranda was sure of it. How on earth had it got from the chalk pit to being wrapped up and placed under the Christmas tree? Maybe her mother was right. Maybe one of the silly servants had found it. But who was it meant to be for?

  ‘Mama!’ said Ralph. ‘Can I have it?’

  ‘Well . . . I suppose so . . .’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘Unless Miranda –’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s horrid. Ralph is more than welcome to it.’

  Ralph picked the drummer boy up eagerly and then gave a little cry of pain.

  ‘Ow!’ he said, sucking his finger. ‘He bit me!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ said his mother.

  ‘But, Mama . . .’ said Ralph.

  Everyone chuckled and Ralph joined in.

  ‘It really did feel like he bit me,’ he said.

  His father leaned forward and tousled his hair.

  ‘Look, Papa,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s meant to have a key. Oh – I wish it did have a key. It’d make a real din, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Miranda noticed her parents exchange a look that made it clear they did not regard that ‘din’ with the same enthusiasm and were not especially upset that it might not be forthcoming.

  Miranda worried about whether or not she ought to tell someone about the pedlar and the drummer boy, but she quite liked the idea that Ralph was playing with a flea-bitten present from an old tramp. Why should she say anything?

  Ralph had grated on her nerves all morning. Not only had he taken the job of handing out presents from her, but he seemed to have taken her share of family affection and interest too.

  She might as well have been invisible. Everything Ralph did was cooed over and applauded, while Miranda’s piano playing had received a decidedly lukewarm response. And she’d played the piece perfectly.

  It was also very clear to Miranda that Ralph had been given presents that were far more expensive than those she had received. It was all very vexing. Miranda could feel her cheeks going red and she hated how she looked when that happened.

  Eventually, the whole family sat down to Christmas lunch. Miranda was sitting next to Aunt Viola, who kept up a stream of inane questions about school, which Miranda swatted away with as much politeness as she could muster.

  The pudding arrived to great cheers, blue flames dancing across it. Every year, Miranda’s mother would have a silver sixpence placed in the pudding, and Miranda was always very keen to be the one to find it. Not only was it considered very lucky, she was also saving up for a new hat.

  But to Miranda’s dismay, it was Aunt Viola who found the sixpence on her plate, and, worse still, she held it out across the table for Ralph to take.

  ‘Put it in your money box, Ralph, dear,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Aunt!’ said Ralph excitedly, before stuffing the pudding-coated sixpence in his pocket.

  Miranda’s self-control finally snapped. She put her spoon down noisily. Everyone turned to face her and she was about to launch into a long and heartfelt tirade when she found that her voice would not work.

  She then discovered that her lack of voice was entirely due to the fact that she was quite unable to breathe. She began to choke, jerking forward in her seat and emitting strange snorting and gulping noises. She put her hands to her throat, her mouth and eyes wide open. Everyone around the table froze in alarm.

  All except Aunt Viola, who had served as a nurse with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea many years before and was fond of telling inappropriately gory anecdotes during dinner, invariably involving amputations or grotesque sabre wounds.

  Viola was a formidable woman, in physique and character, and she got up from her seat and gave Miranda a mighty slap on the back, right between her shoulder blades.

  Miranda lurched forward, almost going face first into her pudding bowl, and as she did so a small silver object was ejected from her open mouth and pinged against the glass in front of her, landing in her lap.

  ‘How many times have I told you not to put these things in the pudding, my dear?’ said Miranda’s father. ‘I nearly broke my tooth last year, dash it all.’

  ‘Language, dear!’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘I don’t understand. There really ought to have been only one sixpence in there and that was already found. There has to be a sixpence in the pudding. It’s lucky.’

  ‘Lucky!’ said Miranda’s father. ‘You almost killed the girl!’

  Miranda stared at her lap. It was not a sixpence at all lying there. She closed her hand around it.

  ‘Are you all right, Miranda?’ said her mother.

  ‘I think so,’ she replied.

  ‘You both have a sixpence now,’ she said. ‘So at least that’s lucky, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ said Miranda, glancing at Ralph. ‘May I be excused?’

  ‘You’re feeling unwell?’ asked her father.

  ‘I think it was the shock,’ said Miranda, rather enjoying being the centre of attention for the first time that day.

  Her mother nodded and patted her arm. Miranda got up from the table and left the room, just as Aunt Viola began a story about a young cavalryman going into shock after having his foot blasted off by a cannon.

  ‘My dears,’ said Aunt Viola, ‘if you can imagine a chicken leg after the thigh has been twisted off – but many times larger, of course – well, that will give you some idea of the . . .’

  Aunt Viola’s voice trailed away as Miranda climbed the stairs to Ralph’s room. She tiptoed in so as not to be heard downstairs and, picking up the drummer boy with one hand, she opened her clenched fist to reveal the object that had been stuck in her throat: a small silver key.

  As soon as she’d seen it in her lap, Miranda had somehow known that it was for the drummer boy. Her astonishment at finding it there was outweighed by her determination to discover whether it would work.

  She inserted the key and, sure enough, it fitted perfectly. Miranda smiled. Ralph could have the stupid thing, but she would not give him the satisfaction of being the first to set it going.

  Miranda wound the toy. The drummer boy turned his head and his wild eyes to look at her, and pulled his red mouth into a broad grin. Then, to her astonishment, he opened his mouth wide to reveal a row of rusting, pointed metal teeth.

  He laughed a loud, throaty, bellowing laugh and raised the drumsticks high above his head. Miranda screamed, but the sound of it was smothered completely by the enormous boom of the drum.

  The noise was particularly startling, coming as it did in the midst of Aunt Viola’s anecdote about Russian cannon fire, but the laughter that followed it was mor
e terrifying still, and sent Miranda’s father rushing, two steps at a time, up the staircase to Ralph’s room.

  The scene that greeted him was one that would be forever imprinted on his mind. Miranda lay on the carpet, her eyes wide open and trickles of blood coming from her ears. The window was shattered and the casement hung limply on its hinges. Mr Butler ran to look out, but there was nothing to see.

  Mrs Butler arrived seconds later at the open door and fell to the floor in a faint. Aunt Violet followed, checked for Miranda’s pulse and solemnly shook her head. Ralph stared at his sister and burst into tears.

  Of the drummer boy, there was no sign.

  THE DEAD OF WINTER

  Turn the page for a taster of another spine-chilling story

  from Chris Priestley, if you dare ...

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Michael: Michael Vyner. I’m going to tell you something of my life and of the strange events that have brought me to where I now sit, pen in hand, my heartbeat hastening at their recollection.

  I hope that in the writing down of these things I will grow to understand my own story a little better and perhaps bring some comforting light to the still-dark, whispering recesses of my memory.

  Horrors loom out of those shadows and my mind recoils at their approach. My God, I can still see that face – that terrible face. Those eyes! My hand clenches my pen with such strength I fear it will snap under the strain. It will take every ounce of willpower I possess to tell this tale. But tell it I must.

  I had already known much hardship in my early years, but I had never before seen the horrible blackness of a soul purged of all that is good, shaped by resentment and hatred into something utterly vile and loveless. I had never known evil.

  The story I am to recount may seem like the product of some fevered imagination, but the truth is the truth and all I can do is set it down as best I can, within the limits of my ability, and ask that you read it with an open mind.

  If, after that, you turn away in disbelief, then I can do naught but smile and wish you well – and wish, too, that I could as easily free myself of the terrifying spectres that haunt the events I am about to relate.

  So come with me now. We will walk back through time, and as the fog of the passing years rolls away we will find ourselves among the chill and weathered headstones of a large and well-stocked cemetery.

  All about us are stone angels, granite obelisks and marble urns. A sleeping stone lion guards the grave of an old soldier, a praying angel that of a beloved child. Everywhere there are the inscriptions of remembrance, of love curdled into grief.

  Grand tombs and mausoleums line a curving cobbled roadway, shaded beneath tall cypress trees. A hearse stands nearby, its black-plumed horses growing impatient. It is December and the air is as damp and cold as the graves beneath our feet. The morning mist is yet to clear. Fallen leaves still litter the cobbles.

  A blackbird sings gaily, oblivious to the macabre surroundings, the sound ringing round the silent cemetery, sharp and sweet in the misty vagueness. Jackdaws fly overhead and seem to call back in answer. Some way off, a new grave coldly gapes and the tiny group of mourners are walking away, leaving a boy standing alone.

  The boy has cried so much over the last few days that he thinks his tears must surely have dried up for ever. Yet, as he stares down at that awful wooden box in its frightful pit, the tears come again.

  There are fewer things sadder than a poorly attended funeral. When that funeral is in honour of a dear and beloved mother, then that sadness is all the more sharply felt and bitter-tasting.

  As I am certain by now you have guessed, the lonesome boy by that open grave is none other than the narrator of this story.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I looked into that grave with as much sense of dread and despair as if I had been staring into my own. Everything I loved was in that hateful wooden box below me. I was alone now: utterly alone.

  I had never known my father. He was killed when I was but a baby, one of many whose lives were ended fighting for the British Empire in the bitter dust of Afghanistan. I had no extended family. My mother and I had been everything to each other.

  But my mother had never been strong, though she had borne her hardships with great courage. She endured her illness with the same fortitude. But courage is not always enough.

  These thoughts and many others taunted me beside that grave. I half considered leaping in and joining her. It seemed preferable to the dark and thorny path that lay ahead of me.

  As I stood poised at the pit’s edge, I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see my mother’s lawyer, Mr Bentley, walking towards me accompanied by a tall, smart and expensively-dressed man. I had, of course, noticed him during the funeral and wondered who he might be. His face was long and pale, his nose large but sharply sculpted. It was a face made for the serious and mournful expression it now wore.

  ‘Michael,’ said Bentley, ‘this is Mr Jerwood.’

  ‘Master Vyner,’ said the man, touching the brim of his hat. ‘If I might have a quiet word.’

  Bentley left us alone, endeavouring to walk backwards and stumbling over a tombstone as he rejoined his wife, who had been standing at a respectful distance. Looking at Jerwood again, I thought I recognised him.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, gulping back sobs and hastily brushing the tears from my cheeks. ‘But do I know you?’

  ‘We have met, Michael,’ he replied, ‘but you will undoubtedly have been too young to remember. May I call you Michael?’ I made no reply and he smiled a half-smile, taking my silence for assent. ‘Excellent. In short, Michael, you do not know me, but I know you very well.’

  ‘Are you a friend of my mother’s, sir?’ I asked, puzzled at who this stranger could possibly be.

  ‘Alas no,’ he said, glancing quickly towards the grave and then back to me. ‘Though I did meet your mother on several occasions, I could not say we were friends. In fact, I could not say with all honesty that your mother actually liked me. Rather, I should have to confess – if I were pressed by a judge in a court of law – that your mother actively disliked me. Not that I ever let that in any way influence me in my dealings with her, and I would happily state – before the same hypothetical judge – that I held your late mother in the highest esteem.’

  The stranger breathed a long sigh at the end of this speech, as if the effort of it had quite exhausted him.

  ‘But I’m sorry, sir,’ I said. ‘I still do not understand . . .’

  ‘You do not understand who I am,’ he said with a smile, shaking his head. ‘What a fool. Forgive me.’ He removed the glove from his right hand and extended it towards me with a small bow. ‘Tristan Jerwood,’ he said, ‘of Enderby, Pettigrew and Jerwood. I represent the interests of Sir Stephen Clarendon.’

  I made no reply. I had heard this name before, of course. It was Sir Stephen whom my father had died to save in an act of bravery that drew great praise and even made the newspapers.

  But I had never been able to take pride in his sacrifice. I felt angry that my father had thrown his life away to preserve that of a man I did not know. This hostility clearly showed in my face. Mr Jerwood’s expression became cooler by several degrees.

  ‘You have heard that name, I suspect?’ he asked.

  ‘I have, sir,’ I replied. ‘I know that he helped us after my father died. With money and so forth. I had thought that Sir Stephen might be here himself.’

  Jerwood heard – as I had wanted him to hear – the note of reproach in my voice and pursed his lips, sighing a little and looking once again towards the grave.

  ‘Your mother did not like me, Michael, as I have said,’ he explained, without looking back. ‘She took Sir Stephen’s money and help because she had to, for her sake and for yours, but she only ever took the barest minimum of what was offered. She was a very proud woman, Michael. I always respected that. Your mother resented the money – and her need for it – and resented me for being the intermediary. That is why s
he insisted on employing her own lawyer.’

  Here he glanced across at Mr Bentley, who stood waiting for me by the carriage with his wife. I had been staying with the Bentleys in the days leading up to the funeral. I had met him on many occasions before, though only briefly, but they had been kind and generous. My pain was still so raw, however, that even such a tender touch served only to aggravate it.

  ‘She was a fine woman, Michael, and you are a very lucky lad to have had her as a mother.’

  Tears sprang instantly to my eyes.

  ‘I do not feel so very lucky now, sir,’ I said.

  Jerwood put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Now, now,’ he said quietly. ‘Sir Stephen has been through troubled times himself. I do not think this is the right time to speak of them, but I promise you that had they not been of such an extreme nature, he would have been at your side today.’

  A tear rolled down my cheek. I shrugged his hand away.

  ‘I thank you for coming, sir – for coming in his place,’ I said coolly. I was in no mood to be comforted by some stranger whom, by his own admission, my mother did not like.

  Jerwood gave his gloves a little twist as though he were wringing the neck of an imaginary chicken. Then he sighed and gave his own neck a stretch.

  ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘it is my duty to inform you of some matters concerning your immediate future.’

  I had naturally given this much thought myself, with increasingly depressing results. Who was I now? I was some non-person, detached from all family ties, floating free and friendless.

  ‘Sir Stephen is now your legal guardian,’ he said.

  ‘But I thought my mother did not care for Sir Stephen or for you,’ I said, taken aback a little. ‘Why would she have agreed to such a thing?’

  ‘I need not remind you that you have no one else, Michael,’ said Jerwood. ‘But let me assure you that your mother was in full agreement. She loved you and she knew that whatever her feelings about the matter, this was the best option.’