Santa Claws

by Gabriela Harding

  40. More Secrets

  Mum drank from her goblet with thirst, slamming it down on the table for more when she finished. “For years I had no news of your father. Then he wrote to me. He got hold of our address somehow.”

  “Jails are the right places to make connections.” Fridrik smiled.

  “Mum, should you be drinking with your medication?” The words Honey had said many times before slipped from her lips.

  “She’s not on medication anymore, Snædis. Those pills make her nice. Too nice. A nice lady warms no man’s heart.”

  Mum beamed up at him, batting her eyelashes. “You signed the letters with a woman’s name so Greg couldn’t guess who you were.”

  “Why didn’t you email? Or find Mum on Facebook?” Teddy asked.

  “Technology isn’t strong link of Neanderthal, Teddy,” chuckled Grandma.

  Mum got up and paced around the room. “I fell in love with him all over again. How could I forget?” Her voice broke. “Taken away from us, tied up like an animal, made to pay for a crime we were all guilty of?”

  Honey blinked away tears. And then, with sudden clarity, the bathroom door in her dream creaked open. She was on the landing again, surrounded by smoke. From somewhere nearby, she heard the voices in the factory – distorted, faraway. Dad vanished and Mum stood in the doorway in a neat house dress.

  “Fancy some escallops for dinner, darling?”

  There was blood on her apron. The glint in her eye was like the shine of dead water at the bottom of a well. Honey stepped back.

  She remembered everything.

  …how Mum locked herself in the bathroom for days. How Dad had a cat flap cut in the bathroom door, and slid trays of food inside. Honey and Teddy pretended it was a mail box and wrote her get well soon cards.

  It always ended – the bathroom phase.

  Honey would wake up again to the smell of pancakes, and to Jingle Bells purring from Mum’s iPod. In the kitchen, moving over from the sink to the table and back again, wearing a bandana or a new wig, was Mum. Honey knew that upstairs, along with days’ worth of uneaten, mouldy food and unopened cards, tufts of Mum’s beautiful hair littered the bathtub. Honey swallowed hard and, for the first time, thought it out loud:

  Mum hurt herself, and she hurt them, too. Beautiful Mum, with glossy ginger hair, jet black eyebrows, and a heart-shaped mouth.

  Then, Mum’s features changed. Her eyes narrowed to shiny slits; her eyebrows twitched like worms under her skin; her lips curled back from her teeth. Honey was transported to the day when Dad had gone to spend the week-end in Côte d’Azur, where Grandma Florence and Grandfather Flaubert shared a lovely villa by the sea. The house had seven bedrooms, a garden with strange plants (including a carnivorous dahlia that caught butterflies in mid-flight and pumpkin stalks that strangled kittens), and a painted front door. The real entrance was through a brick wall on the side of the house. But, the strangest thing of all, Grandma Florence’s and Grandfather Flaubert’s tombstones were in the front garden, two large slabs of stone. Their names and years of their death were carved on them, even though they were still alive. Honey had grown up spending her summers in this creepy mansion, with squeaky staircases and dusty loft rooms full of useless antiques.

  Honey squeezed her eyes shut. The memory hurt.

  Mum was walking on the landing, a bundle of keys in her hands, breathing. Her breath was loud, like the snorting of a dragon. Her face appeared briefly in the faint lamplight, a smile on her lips as she yanked the door shut and turned the key in the lock. Click. At first, they thought it was a joke. By mid-morning the following day, they pummelled on the door with their fists, crying. They were stuck in the room for two days.

  “Nine years.” Fridrik’s voice came to her like a whisper from a dream. “Nine years for manslaughter, just because I was hungry.”

  “He emailed me when he could.” Mum smiled. “He didn’t always have access to a computer in jail…”

  “Computers? In jail?”

  “They have everything in jail these days, Teddy. Even gyms.”

  “And fat old farts who should be on the death roll,” Mum snarled. “Where’s your partner in crime, Florence? I can’t smell him tonight.”

  Honey gasped. “Grandpa was the man we visited in jail that time, wasn’t he, Grandma? That’s why his moustache was so wobbly.”

  “Because it was fake,” said Teddy.

  Grandma Florence sniffed loudly, throwing her revolver in the air like a bouncy ball and catching it.

  Hinrik’s eyes rolled up and down and left to right, following it. “You want to be careful with that, sweetie. You don’t want it unloading by mistake…”

  “Let’s hear the rest of the story,” urged Grandma Florence. The only light left in the factory buzzed and crackled, and the factory shuddered in the fierce wind. “I’ll correct you when you go wrong.”

  “I told him you both took after him. You loved adventure. Your father had this obsession with hunting and exploring the High Arctic. He couldn’t adjust to the civilised world. I knew that when I married him. He had this idea of bringing you here with us. I told him it would be a massive change. You were Londoners, after all. That’s when he proposed we introduced the Arctic to you in a different way.” She paused. “I didn’t like it at first. See, I loved him, but his plans weren’t always the safest. Sometimes things went wrong…I knew he was right. It would take years to be reunited with him legally. Remember, you were now adopted by Greg. Together, we wrote the book.” Mum held out the stripy notebook. We named it Santa Claws. Brilliant idea, right?”

  “Illegal idea.” Grandma shook her head.

  “Oh, and you’ve never done anything illegal, have you, Florence?”

  “Nothing like eating people and stealing children. Why, I’m impressed. Kidnapping all thiz kids just for a game. And…and…just look at this place! You’re mad az hatters! You made the doll and train tracks here, oui?”

  “I designed the kitchen and the bunk beds, and came up with the hair pin idea – you know, the pin you found, pumpkin. Hinrik was the project manager. His associates from the circus gave the nasty presents around. It was easy. They left them on each doorstep with a card signed Santa Claus. We even made it to the national papers – there was an article about our Crushing Bear in The Sun. We wanted a world for our children. A Disney World… Only a bit scary – Honey is so fond of horror novels.”

  “The Crushing Bear broke a child’s ribs, and her mother could go to jail,” said Honey. “Was that your idea of a joke? I wouldn’t call this a Disney adventure.” Grandma pointed the revolver at Mum. “This is premeditated and sick. You shall rot in jail, Alfrid Helgarsson, and so will you.” She pushed her gun in Fridrik’s belly.

  “Ah, that tickles!” he giggled.

  “If someone doezn’t take zat pistolette from her,” Hinrik barked, mimicking Grandma’s accent, “I zwear I will make her eat it.”

  Mum, Fridrik and the dwarves laughed.

  “Don’t worry, it’s probably not even loaded. The old hag is losing her marbles.”

  “So who left our toys, Mum? Was it you? Or did you give this unpleasant task to one of your… associates?” Honey couldn’t stop shaking.

  Mum giggled. “I’d forgotten about that.”

  “The doll gave me nightmares for months.”

  “And I had to have stitches on my finger.” Teddy showed everyone his scar.

  “You’ll have more scars, son, when you go bear hunting.”

  “I don’t want to hunt bears! I want to go home!”

  “Home is where your family is, pumpkin.”

  “Home is where your heart is,” Honey said through her tears. “And my heart is with Dad in London. We weren’t sold, were we? That was a lie, too. Just let everyone go home to their parents.”

 
Excited whispers zigzagged around the room.

  “What?!”

  “We were tricked?”

  “What happens now?”

  “Can we phone home?”

  “We are your parents. Take a look at this.” Fridrik lifted his jumper to reveal an enormous scar. “Polar bear bite. Now, this is a scar.” He gripped Teddy’s jaws in his hand and lifted up his chin to face him. “Forget that idea about returning home,” he spat. “After I kill your crazy nanny, and send all these children away, we can live here as a family again.”

  “Away? Away where?” Erasmus stuttered. “You told us that our parents sold us and…we’ll grow up here and have a house…”

  Fridrik grinned.

  “Everything you hear is an opinion, not a fact,” Mum said dreamily. “Everything you see is a perspective, not the truth. Marcus Aurelius.”

  “How can you be my dad?” whimpered Teddy. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  “Look at me closely.” Fridrik strode into the light. “We have met before. Last year.” Coughing purposefully, he glanced around at the silent audience. “I was the messenger who left a leaflet with your stepfather last November. You tumbled down the stairs – sorry, son, but you were round as a ball in those days, before the Arctic diet – and asked Who is it, Dad, and the muppet said No one, son, just some junk mail. Junk mail! I wanted to punch the idiot in his square, dark, ugly face. To be honest, until that moment I had this crazy hope that you were his biological son, not mine, that somehow your mother made a mistake. But when I looked at you that day I knew without a shadow of a doubt that you were mine. If you didn’t have that belly hanging out over your jeans, I might have even been pleased. You’re the spitting image of me as a boy, see.”

  “You’re the man we saw at the circus,” Honey murmured.

  Teddy gasped. “Yes! You threw knives at the girl! On the spinning wheel!”

  “No, Teddy. He was with Mum. I saw him. He hid behind a tree when you and Dad came. Hinrik was throwing the knives.”

  “Oh, we couldn’t see his face because of the mask, but he had long hair, long blonde hair…”

  “Suppose you had seen his face, you still couldn’t have told him apart from Fridrik. Not everyone can,” Mum explained.

  “Hem hem.” Grandma was twisting the silver revolver in her gloved hand, demanding attention.

  “You want to be careful with that,” Hinrik growled.

  Grandma took no notice of him. “Talking of telling apart, why don’t you share with us the story of how you learned, the hard way, Alfrid dear?”

  Mum’s face reddened.

  “You slug,” she hissed.

  Hinrik chuckled.

  “Start from the beginning.”

  Mum gave Grandma a hateful look, then her eyes focused on a distant spot in the dark.

  “It was the week before Christmas, eighteen years ago,” she began.

  41. Alfrid’s Story

  “I was home from school, exhausted and frozen from the two-hour ride in the village sledge. Back then, the village of Nörgarsveit didn’t have a school, and those of us who were enrolled in the neighbouring village of Olafsfjord had to embark on the communal sledge before dawn. My God, those husky dogs were the finest I’ve ever seen. Huge as calves, and they whimpered like puppies when they saw the sledge-man’s whip. Vik whipped them mercilessly. I can still see him. He had a messy grey beard and his hands were covered in scars where the frost had split his skin open. He always kept a bag of reindeer meat under his seat, and he fed it to the dogs before a ride, for strength. The meat was frozen, but the dogs wolfed it down. Children said there must have been something in it – some sort of chemical fertiliser, like the sort farmers use for plants – that made the dogs grow to unbelievable proportions.”

  “The Somatropin Operation,” Grandma Florence muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Somatropin iz a growth hormone. It stimulates cell reproduction and regeneration in humans and animals. Another one of government’s failed operations intercepted by I Spy. We found a colony of giant bats in a cave in Scotland, mutants, you see. I zink these dogs were exactly the same – tell me, did they eat each other in the end?”

  “They ate the sledge-man,” said Mum. “But on that particular day, he was swigging Brennivín that his wife packed for him, and he munched on salted fish and buried bread…”

  “Buried bread? Mon Dieu!”

  “People in the village used to put baked bread in the ground overnight,” Mum explained. “They said the dead air underground gave it a better taste.”

  “Yuck!” Teddy gagged.

  “I was hungry and looked forward to Mother’s usual dinner of fish and potatoes. We kept potatoes fresh over winter in our barn. Everything there – the barrels and sacks, even the stone floor was covered in ice. It was a human-sized freezer.”

  Grandma Florence gulped and rubbed her left hand.

  “The barn was like a cave, too – a magical cave of frozen goodies. Mother kept them in perfect order. The barrels of butter and Brennivín stood side by side, salted bacon and fish hung out to smoke, and piles of sheep and dog furs padded the walls. If I close my eyes, I can still smell them – that odour of smoked meat and dung. That night, Mother promised to make one of her specialities, a pie with anchovies, potatoes and milk, and just thinking of the golden, bubbling crust, my mouth watered. The journey seemed to take forever. At last we took the final curve, and our cottage, that slanted roof and stone walls, came into view – between window-high mounds of snow. It was late afternoon, the cottage was there, unmoved, but something was missing.” She sighed. “I loved that cottage. It was, as you call it, my oasis of peace. Each day, when I pushed the heavy fir tree door and walked in, it was as if it hugged me. Nothing was ever going to change, I thought. But things do change, nothing stays the same, good things rarely last.” Mum sipped her wine. “So when the sledge-man stilled the dogs with a lash of his whip, and the runners screeched in the snow, bringing the sledge to a halt before our gate, I knew what was missing. That evening, no smoke was coming out of Mother’s chimney.” Mum took a sharp breath. “When I walked in, I noticed it. The smell. Nothing particularly disturbing, just, somehow… unnatural. A foreign smell. Mother wasn’t there. And it was dark. I switched on the lights, took off my coat and hat, my gloves and my boots. It was freezing. Nobody had made the fire. The dinner dish was not on the table, covered by that rough kitchen towel of Mother’s, and it wasn’t on the fire pit, either. But worse than anything, it was quiet. Then I saw her. I saw Mother. A wooden ladder linked the kitchen to our loft bedroom, and that’s where she sat, on the first step, shivering.”

  Mum swallowed. “Where are they?” I blurted out, and she looked at me as if she didn’t know what I meant. My teeth were chattering. Words came out slurred, as if I was drunk. I tried to make my way around her, but she grabbed my foot.’

  ‘“Don’t go upstairs,” she pleaded.

  ‘And then I saw it. The bloody handprint Mother left on my ankle. It was then the glint of metal caught my eye. The knife we kept for butchering rams was in her lap. She’d cleaned the blade on her apron, but ruby-red blood still shimmered on the blade. The steel reflected Mother’s face – distorted, hideous, with a smile where there wasn’t one; a lying double. I willed my hand not to shake, curled my fingers around the handle. I picked up the knife…and Mother looked up, tightening her own hand around the blade. Fresh blood seeped from her closed fist. She looked at me, not wincing, showing no signs that she was in pain. Her eyes had no pupils, like shark eyes.” Mum gave an involuntary shiver. “It was like looking at the devil.”

  The goblet smashed on the glass floor. In the aquarium, the fish swarmed about; only the dead bodies, grotesque with their missing body parts, didn’t stir.

  “Brennivín,” she orde
red, and a dwarf tripped over herself to pour her some Black Death from a clear bottle labelled with a skull and two crossbones.

  The drip of a tap made the silence worse. In the weak glow of the last ceiling lamp, and the eerie underwater lights, the place looked like a theatre stage where a strange spectacle was unfolding.

  Grandma Florence’s voice sounded awkwardly out of place. “So you killed her. Your own mother.”

  Some children covered their mouths. Others gasped. Honey and Teddy blinked, their faces empty of any expression.

  “You never told us we had a nana. We always wanted one that isn’t…isn’t…” Teddy’s eyes flicked to Grandma Florence and he swallowed.

  “That might be because she’s dead, Teddy,” Honey said darkly.

  “So bonkers?” Grandma laughed loudly. “Sorry to disappoint you, mon cher. One nana is bonkers, the other one is bonkers plus. No luck for nanas, see.”

  “We fought,” said Mum. “I don’t know how she ended up with the knife in her belly. She must have fallen on it. Or maybe stuck it in herself. Or I might have done it. I don’t know. The smell was growing heavier, it was wild and raw, it was…” She closed her eyes. “…it was blood.”

  Mum sat down, her head in her hands. “In the bedroom, everything was in its place: the oak wood bed that Mother and I shared, the cots that the village carpenter had carved from my late father’s boat. The drawers, the wool rugs, the small stove, all were unmoved. Everything was as it should be, as if this was another ordinary day, as if Mother wasn’t lying at the bottom of the stairs with a knife in her guts. The window, with a view to the snow-covered hills, was cracked.

  ‘There was a chill in the air. I heard the rustle Mother’s dress made on the kitchen floor, the rumble of her belly, the squelching sounds when she tried to pull the knife out. She was muttering a silent prayer – or maybe a curse. I closed the window, and then I followed the trail of fresh blood to the built-in wardrobe.