Santa Claws

by Gabriela Harding

  Covering every bit of the vertical surface was the children’s life, compressed into hundreds of photographs.

  Teddy in his baby walker.

  Honey dressed as the evil queen in the Snow White play.

  Teddy walking down Cuckoo Lane in his school uniform.

  Honey reading a book.

  Teddy sunbathing in Bunny Park.

  Honey and Teddy crouched on the floor of Chess Cottage, opening Christmas gifts.

  The Raymonds gaped at the three walls.

  “Someone’s been stalking us.” Teddy blurted out these words with a loud whoosh of air.

  “This is hers.” Honey picked up an embroidered scarf from the back of a chair. “Mum was making it last year. It was supposed to be a present for me, at Christmas.”

  “So what’s it doing here?”

  Honey shrugged, her eyes glued to the curtain.

  Teddy followed her gaze, crossed the room in one long stride, and pulled it open.

  The Raymonds gasped. A liquid wall was before them, and the children squeezed their eyes shut just as a great wave rippled into the room. Water moved and flowed, making the air itself look fluid.

  “An aquarium.” Honey stepped back, the blue water dancing in her enlarged pupils.

  No seaweed or fish floated in the water behind the screen, nothing but shards of ice and… At first it appeared to be a log drifting away in the current. But then Honey saw the hand and the fingers, and a shred of the blue uniform worn by children at the factory.

  “Nico!” Teddy covered his mouth in horror.

  “She was probably killed to erase the evidence.”

  The hand disappeared and now the grey head of a marine animal stared at them, its snout pressed against the glass.

  Teddy gasped. “A pet shark,” he breathed.

  Honey closed the curtain.

  “There is more to this place than meets the eye,” she said, using, once again, one of her mother’s favourite expressions. “I don’t know what any of this means. But what I do know is we need to use a phone, and that looks like one over here.” She pointed to an old-fashioned telephone.

  “Who do we call?”

  “Let’s think. You said you saw the map of Greenland, so if this is Greenland, we are in the Kingdom of Denmark. I remember reading a book on countries of the world when I was a volunteer at the library.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  Honey sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe we should call 911. In movies everyone calls 911 when they’re in trouble.”

  She dialled the number.

  “Honey, listen.”

  Footsteps creaked on the floor above them.

  “Hurry up!” Teddy whispered.

  “I’m trying. No one’s answering.”

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “Honey, look!” Teddy was pointing to their family photographs.

  There were no photographs of Dad. True, he hated being in photos, but many of the pictures looked like they were snapped by paparazzi. In a particular photo, ripped in half, Dad’s arm curled around Honey’s shoulder.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?” Honey spoke with her hand over her mouth.

  “Hello? Hello? Speak up, I can’t hear you. What’s your emergency?”

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “We’ve been kidnapped! Please help us! Raymond! My name is Honey Raymond, from London. 6 Cuckoo Lane…”

  “I can’t hear you. What’s your location?”

  Thump. The footsteps came to a heart-stopping halt, and the trapdoor opened with a sickening screech. A shaft of light fell at their feet on the dark floor. Honey flicked the light switch off.

  “Grise Fiord!” shouted Teddy.

  “Shhhh…”

  The trembling light moved around the room, making the faces in the photographs flash briefly. The ladder groaned. Someone was climbing down.

  Thump, thump, thump. The footsteps thumped, and so did the children’s hearts. They drummed louder and louder, almost bursting out of their chests.

  “Grise Fiord,” said Honey, mouthing Are you sure? “Greenland! Hurry!”

  “Speak up.” The line crackled. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

  “Greenland!” said Honey in a furious whisper. “Grise Fiord!”

  “I still can’t hear you.”

  Thump, thump, thump, thump…

  The steps were now level with the ground. A gloved hand held a phone to a hairy, smiling face. The lights were switched off, and in the dazzling glow, Santa Claws’ teeth glinted horribly and his cackling laughter echoed off the walls.

  “Well, well, well.”

  Honey realised the phone was no longer in her hand when she heard it hit the floor. The operator at the other end of the line had stopped talking.

  The line went dead just as Santa clicked his phone shut.

  “No,” said Honey.

  “No.” Teddy shook his head.

  “No, what?” Santa snarled. “Did you think you could escape? After all the cash I paid for you? Knowing what you know? If you weren’t so young and healthy, your fate would be my brother’s. It was decided that he will be executed through hanging. He will be hanged until his neck is broken, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The execution will be the main entertainment at the Reindeer Barbecue tomorrow afternoon.”

  “An execution is not entertaining,” said Honey, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Maybe not where you come from, but there are quite a few places on the planet who would disagree with you. Stoning, for instance, entertains millions worldwide each year. There are market squares in the world where special sewers are built to drain all the blood from decapitations and amputations.”

  “You’ll go to jail!” Through the corner of her eye, Honey saw the foggy outline of a door.

  Santa Claws laughed. “Been there, done that. Best school of life, if you ask me. Better even that my Academy of Fake Eskimos.” He chuckled. “One day, you’ll thank me for this. You’ll skin a seal to perfection by the time your friends in London learn to peel a potato.”

  “I’m sure we will!” cried Honey as Teddy crawled between the man’s legs and scrambled up the ladder. Quickly, she opened the door. “But just not know!” she screeched, and dashed out of the room.

  Santa Claws roared in frustration. He grabbed Teddy’s legs, but the boy kicked him in the face hard with the heel of his boot. His foot sunk into something slippery; it was as if the man’s face was sliding sideways…

  “Sorry!” cried Teddy, kicking again.

  He pulled himself out, snapped the trapdoor shut and dragged a heavy crate over it. The aisles slithered around him, opening in all directions, like a deserted labyrinth. Teddy took a left, then a right, and left again, his eyes scanning the shelves. He had to find something, anything that might help them.

  And then he saw it. Beautiful and bold, it made every other weapon in its vicinity seem harmless.

  In the other side of the building, one level beneath the ground, Honey held her breath, keeping close to the wall. This wasn’t a room, it was a corridor. A wedge of light shone through a half-opened door. The sound of water running. Above the cascading noise of the shower, she thought she heard humming.

  A woman’s voice. As she tiptoed closer, the hum exploded into words:

  Row, row, row your boat

  Gently down the stream

  Merrily, merrily, merrily

  Life is but a dream.

  Honey knew the song. She closed her eyes: in the cupboard behind the glass was her Moo-Moo cup.

  She swallowed. What nonsense. She didn’t have a Moo-Moo cup. Hand trembling, she pushed the door open. Her own frightened face looked back at her from a
n oval mirror, framed by intricate silver snowflakes. Behind a white curtain, water splashed on the tiles.

  Merrily, merrily, merrily

  Gently up the creek…

  The woman sang as he gutted the seal. She covered the baby’s eyes, but the baby peeked through her fingers. With warm blood, he drew a heart on her cheek.

  A dream she hadn’t thought of in years.

  Row, row, row your boat

  Gently to the shore

  If you see a lion

  Don’t forget to roar.

  Down on the cement floor, Honey saw the iPhone. She touched the screen, and the music stopped.

  Was it relief or disappointment? What had she been hoping? The scarf, the photos, her favourite nursery rhyme…someone was playing with her mind.

  A door slammed shut. Honey knew it was the trapdoor, and hoped Teddy had managed to hide, although where would he go? He wouldn’t survive a day if he ran away.

  There was a presence in the corridor. She leant into the wall, and it opened with a grunt. She found herself in a bedroom sprinkled with fairy lights. Through the twinkling lights, she saw a bed, a floor, a wardrobe. Something hissed in her ear: the whisper of a tree branch, one of many lining the walls. A skull lamp glowed on a bedside table. Looming over the bed, a pair of majestic reindeer antlers projected their scary shadows on the walls.

  A notebook with a stripy cover lay on the bed. It looked just like Dad’s diary, Honey thought.

  The hall stand moved. Honey crawled under the bed, taking the book with her.

  The floorboards squeaked.

  “One, two, three, I’m coming to get you!” Santa’s voice.

  Honey opened the book.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” The boots were under the lacy bed covers, like the black, beady eyes of an insect. Boots. Snow marks. Boat…A new memory took shape in Honey’s mind. In the red glow, she traced the neat handwriting with her fingers, the U, the Ns, the A, the M, the E, the D… Mum’s novel: Unnamed.

  “Peekaboo!”

  The boots had vanished, replaced by a pair of furry knees. Someone had lifted the bedcover, and there, in the narrow gap…

  “Fridrik!”

  Honey was too relieved to scream. Holding the book close, she allowed herself to be pulled from under the bed and held close to the man’s broad chest. His long hair fell over her face like a silk-woven cage, mopping her tears.

  24. The Reception

  Greg Raymond had started the day in an odious mood. First, he was hung-over, and in the pit of his stomach the realisation that he’d spent his monthly wages on champagne gnawed horribly. When the chambermaid arrived, bringing two enamelled chamber pots, Greg exploded.

  “We already have a working toilet,” he snapped. “No one has been using these since the nineteenth century.”

  The girl bowed. “Certainly, sir. Some guests prefer to use them, to get a proper taste of the Victorian lifestyle.”

  Greg slammed the door in her face, not before she slipped a couple of gold-leaf embossed menus in his hands. In the corridor, he heard the chamber pots smashing on the tiled floor, and the girl swearing loudly.

  “Tarnation!”

  Damn, he thought. The staff were so well trained they even swore in Victorian slang.

  “What’s this?” Anaconda’s arm emerged from under a shawl and grabbed one of the menus. “Mmm, swan brain pate. I’ll have a swan brain toastie, please.”

  Greg flipped angrily through the menu. “No, I don’t want seafood for breakfast, or turtle croquettes, or lettuce with my scrambled eggs, I’m not a bleedin’ rabbit, you nutters!” he muttered under his breath.

  Hours later, Greg Raymond and Anaconda White took their seats around a sumptuous table in the Great Hall. It was the Mayor’s birthday, and the reception organised by the Mighty Mermaid was included in the holiday price. An all-you-can-eat fancy dress party, which Greg suspected had everything to do with the upcoming election. Posters featuring the rotund Mayor decorated the walls, with slogans such as ‘DON’T LET A GOOD MAYOR BE A GHOST OF THE PAST’, or ‘IMPROVEMENT DOESN’T COME WITH NOVELTY’, and ‘SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, EVERYTHING IS UP TO YOU’ in full sight of the diners.

  “Breaded brains is a Romanian delicacy,” explained Anaconda to a stiff gentleman, who looked as if he had swallowed an umbrella with a hooked handle that poked through his face in the shape of a nose.

  Greg, with extraordinary precision, dissected his rosé beef steak. The man raised his eyebrows, glancing politely at the contents of Anaconda’s plate. The table was long and narrow, so long that someone with poor eyesight wouldn’t be able to see where it ended. The food was arranged with great gusto: loaves of bread, still warm from the oven, wrapped in elegant lace napkins, jugs of wine with chopped fruit swimming in it, legs of lamb, potato cubes, glazed chickens, whole-roasted pigs with boiled apples in their mouths, and bowls of what looked like black-shelled cockroaches. The immaculate cutlery reflected the light in a very pleasant way, and the thick crystal glasses could have been borrowed from a window display in an antique shop.

  The umbrella-nosed man was just adjusting his monocle to study the pattern on his soup bowl – a turtle shell imitation, where the Victorian delicacy, turtle soup, looked more like a mud puddle than an edible dish, when Greg spoke.

  “You know turtles are extinct in England, don’t you?” he said, pointing to the soup with his knight-topped pen. “That’s probably just regular frog.”

  The man gave Greg a look of pure distaste before slurping defiantly from his bowl.

  “Shut up, Greg. You’re ruining everyone’s appetite,” Anaconda hissed.

  “I didn’t say anything about breaded brains,” he shot back.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the dance of the Mighty Mermaid!”

  The diners applauded as an army of waiters wheeled in a gigantic butter dish with a golden handle. Greg pressed a tissue to his face, coughing to hide his guffaws. Odourless fumes spread around the room.

  The waiters wiped their sweaty brows with handkerchiefs they pulled from the inside pockets of their vests. Their eyebrows knotted together in annoyance, as if wheeling heavy things into a reception room wasn’t part of their job description. From a corner of the festively dressed hall, an old-fashioned gramophone, probably worth a fortune, started playing an even more old-fashioned piece of music:

  Happy Birthday, Mr President

  Happy Birthday to you!

  “Not now, you idiot!” A man, in a white tunic and apron that fell down to the tips of his lacquered shoes, gestured violently towards the younger and clearly inferior-in-rank waiter. The boy standing by the gramophone froze like a mouse in a trap. For a moment all everyone heard was the scratch of the needle on the vinyl disk.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this was a 1920’s fancy dress party?” Greg whispered, taking a black-shelled mussel from the bowl in front of him, and picking at the pink meat inside. “I could have brought a fake Charlie Chaplin moustache.”

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you,” retorted Anaconda, fanning herself with a grandiose feather fan. Greg noticed her cheeks were caked in make-up. The bruise on the side of her face looked like a ripe plum, and not even the copious amounts of foundation she had applied over it could hide the fact that her skin was purple.

  “And since when was that a 1920’s feature?” he asked, pointing to the fan with his glass of wine. “It looks more like the headdress of an Indian chief.”

  “You’re daft,” smiled Anaconda, slapping his cheek playfully with the fan.

  “And what on earth is that thing? My word, it’s huge. Have they got enough butter in there?”

  “It’s not a butter dish, darling. This is a reconstruction of a scene from a famous 1920’s movie, ‘The Bayou Dancer’, but you probably
don’t know it, unlike everyone else in the room.”

  Greg sipped his wine. “Well, I didn’t think it was a reconstruction of ‘Star Wars’, although that would have been more like my kind of thing,” he said.

  Anaconda used a toothpick to put a pomegranate seed in her mouth.

  Greg wondered how anyone could possibly lift the lid off the giant dish. It

  appeared to weigh at least a ton, and was attached to a rope that disappeared into the ceiling. There had to be someone on the other side ready to pull it at just the right moment.

  When the applause subsided, the hall fell quiet as the coughs and murmurs faded to a perfect silence. A frisson of suspense crossed the room from the first feathered hat to the last waistcoat. Still, nothing happened. A lady, whose enormous necklace glinted on her cleavage like an armoured breastplate, shouted:

  “It’s stuck! The lid is stuck!”

  The silence burst into sound, as if touched by a magic wand. People whispered excitedly. Someone screamed. Desperate bangs and muffled cries could be heard from inside the dish. Three waiters started the impossible mission of lifting it while a fourth ran for help.

  “Excuse me!” Greg handed a bowl of mussel shells to a waiter. “Can you take this over to the kitchen? I want to make sure they’re safely recycled.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Oh, for Goodness’ sake, Greg, there was no recycling in the 1920’s! You’re spoiling the mood! And besides, who cares about your recycling? There’s a ghost trapped in there – a real ghost – just look at that steam, I‘ve seen it before in a Spanish chalet, oh my, how exciting…”

  A frocked gentleman who’d had a copious amount of champagne climbed on the table and, ignoring his wife’s pleas, bent over the huge dish. He made an attempt to push the lid sideways, but slipped over and remained suspended on the steely surface like a man-shaped sticker. The waiters were having a go at prying the lid open with bread knives.

  “What’s going on?” a man in an old-fashioned suit asked, popping his head around the fancy reception desk. From a pocket in his vest he retrieved a small container and sprayed his mouth.