“Please,” her mother’s lips muttered from a face that was nothing like the face Honey had known and loved. Behind her, in the sudden silence, while the blown electrics hissed and spluttered, human bodies were lying motionless on the shell of the ravaged floor.
Honey turned her head to the door, her eyes heavy with tears, and screamed as it burst from its hinges and flew across the desert of snow like a flying comet. She saw that her own hands had blood on them; she watched them paw the ground before her mechanically, without the command of her will.
Outside, the air was so cold it stung. No, that wasn’t the cold…Honey began to choke: swirls of smoke drifted into the starlit sky. It was hard to breathe, like on those nights when Mum fried fresh chillies in the kitchen.
Tears were streaming down her face. It was all over. She looked at the kind, old face of her grandfather, lying in the snow beside her. Why hadn’t she ever bothered to get to know him? She always thought there would be more time…and yet, here he was, half buried in a pile of rubble, a large shard stuck in his neck, frozen doughnuts scattered around him. Just when Honey thought she was the only one left alive, she heard a scuttle and a squeak. She turned to see Blanche nibbling at her face.
Then a familiar voice spoke behind her.
“Alons-y, Teddy, help me liff your sister up, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Her face felt hot. It was as if she had a hot potato in her left socket.
“Grandma, where’s Honey’s eye?” Teddy said.
Honey fell into a sound, dreamless sleep, her grandmother’s harrowing scream ringing in her ears.
43. A Wet Christmas
Cannibals Get Life In Jail
Arsonist Pleads Guilty To Kidnapping Twenty-Two Children
‘Santa Claws’ Toy Factory Burnt To A Crisp
Polar Explorers Drowned By Evil Trio
Fifteen Deaths In Greenland’s Illegal Factory Explosion
Honey folded the paper over Kitty, asleep on her lap. She was snuggling down on the settee when the doorbell rung.
“Dad!” she yelled. “Door!”
“I’ll get it!” Anaconda yelled back.
Footsteps shuffled in the corridor, and the door opened with a blast of cold air. Honey pulled the soft wool blanket over her. She never seemed to get warm enough these days.
“Oh, hello, Mrs Whirlwood.” Anaconda’s voice floated in from the doorway.
“Hello, dear. This is from Miss Boggs. You know her, don’t you? At the end of Robin Way in the thatched house. Carrot, chocolate icing, funny, eh? She wanted to come herself, but she has a bad back. You remember…”
“Thank you, Mrs Whirlwood. How thoughtful of poor Miss Boggs. Would you thank her for me? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have Christmas dinner to tend to. We’re having people over and, Goodness gracious, it’s past eleven already.”
“Of course, dear, don’t let me keep you. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Mrs Whirlwood.”
Honey smiled. In the year since she had settled herself in Chess Cottage, Anaconda had gracefully assumed her role as stepmother par excellence. The job fitted her like a glove on a foot. Still, a few times she produced some excellent desserts. A soufflé praline and some French gateaux were amongst the best, but her finest had been by far the profiteroles she made for Teddy’s birthday. Now Teddy was her most loyal convert. At first, Honey tried to persuade him to help her play tricks on their stepmother, but the traitor refused. “Really, Honey, why don’t you just grow up,” he said. And she did. Now Honey was taller than Dad, which made it easier to glare at him when it suited her. Dad was rather short, and her mother wasn’t tall, either. Sometimes, she weirdly passed for Anaconda’s biological daughter, and this sent them both into fits of rage. Anaconda considered herself too young to be the mother of a teenager, and Honey didn’t want people to think she had a mother who dressed like the Antichrist. And yet, the confusion was convenient: it helped her pretend her other life, and all the people in it, hadn’t happened…
They had been there, in the witness stand, watching Mum walk with the prison wardens. Her hair was like a bright flame moving through the rows of seats, and Honey had thought of the fire spreading through the toy factory all those months back.
Your daughter is a just spirit and an example of human courage that moved me more than anything I have seen in this court in my long career, the translator, a woman with glasses, repeated the judges’ words in eloquent English. Her face testifies for this better than a thousand words, another judge had said. Hers is the face of a pure soul. Yours, Alfrid Helgarsson, is the face of evil, the third judge, so old and crooked his head seemed to be growing out of his chest, finished. For a moment she’d wondered why they didn’t talk about Teddy and his bravery, too. Then she realised the cruel truth: she was the toddler fed human flesh from a man her father had killed, whereas Teddy lived his whole life in London. He was Dad’s child entirely, more than Honey would ever be.
The image of her parents holding their handcuffed hands over their twin stands stayed with her. Were they in love? After all, only love could make people do something so crazy. Honey never, ever wanted to fall in love.
Maybe her parents were possessed by the tuurngait, the evil spirit roaming the Arctic wilderness. She would never know.
Kitty leapt from her lap at the sound of the china bowls and cutlery and shot down the hallway chased by Blanche. Teddy’s pet had turned out to be extremely mischievous, and on more than one occasion Honey had to separate ermine and cat from the black and white ball of fur rolling around the house, claws embedded in each other’s flesh.
Honey stretched and yawned. She knew she had to give a hand with setting up the table, but not just yet. Her eyes swept around the room. Up on the mantelpiece, the family photographs smashed by Dad’s poker the previous year had reappeared in new frames. The people in them had either grown or aged, all apart from Mum, who had entirely vanished, as if she never existed. In her place, an arm draped casually over Dad’s shoulder, was another woman. Dad and Anaconda’s wedding photo hung in the place of Mum’s old painting, placed strategically over the hole made long ago by a flying knife.
Anaconda didn’t make a pretty bride, and that was partly Honey’s merit. Her upper lip kept swelling from the cranberry jam toast she’d had the previous day thinking it was strawberry (Honey had taken only seconds to come up with the idea of switching jars). If anything, the bruised lip made her pale face stand out, and Dad didn’t look as if he was alone against the white wall behind him. White didn’t suit her stepmother as it suited her mother. “I wear white to remind myself of who I am,” Mum used to say, something that didn’t make a great deal of sense until the truth about her troubled childhood in Iceland came out.
On the other hand, she was strangely grateful that her new mother had replaced all the paintings in the house. Honey would rather look at pictures of haunted castles in Scotland than see a winter landscape again.
The dining room looked festive: the windows were tastefully decorated and the tree twinkled with hundreds of fairy lights, the rich branches powdered with silver dust. Mounds of presents, in their sparkly wraps and ribbons, covered the floor. A year ago, the same room had been the scene of the awful candlelit dinner, with Anaconda’s monstrous shadow stretching grotesquely on the dark walls. That was the night when the news of her father’s engagement had changed their lives forever.
Glancing through the French windows, Honey was pleased to see that the garden was entirely snow free: most shrubs were green, and birds skittered on the thorny branches, drinking in the sunlight. The grass was still moist with the previous night’s rain. This was going to be a wet Christmas.
The room was in turmoil. Dad, wearing the red jumper with the knitted reindeer nose and antlers, his wife with the ridiculous holly tiara bobbing on her head, Teddy, in a hooded an
orak and Grandma Florence with a tight white and red scarf at her throat like a bloodstained bandage, all busied themselves around the table, arranging the cutlery, plates and crystal glasses. The only person in the room who didn’t trip over himself doing something was Grandfather Flaubert. He sat peacefully in the only comfortable chair doing crosswords, glasses perched on the end of his nose.
Honey felt grateful every time she saw her grandfather alive. His neck wound, the doctors agreed, would have been fatal but for the layers of fat surrounding his carotid. “Doughnuts saved my life once more,” he chuckled, in a new spooky voice.
All around the room, covering every available space, even the bookshelves and the glass cabinet, were the cakes. Grandma Florence and Grandfather Flaubert had used all their influence to try and steer the media interest away from them, and so the story had only made the neighbourhood rounds a couple of days ago. It was then that the wave of attention hit them, and cakes and cards inundated Chess Cottage. In a record time, the Raymonds had become the target of neighbourhood pity.
“Aren’t you looking nice?” smiled Anaconda, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Yes, Honey, you look lovely.” Dad raised his head for a moment from the important mission of dissecting the turkey. “The skin graft was very successful.”
The adults in the room nodded and her brother smiled. Honey’s hand felt her cheek. Even after all this time, she still felt she had to cover her scars as if they were something to be ashamed of. She caught a glimpse of herself in the gold-framed mirror, an item Anaconda purchased from The Little Shop of Items from Haunted Homes, a place she often dragged Dad to in a rather dingy area of London, and which she’d paid a fortune for after the shop assistant swore he saw a message from his dead mother in there. Then the doorbell rang again.
“I’ll get it.” Grandma Florence took off her elf-printed apron and threw it playfully at her husband.
Honey was busy pouring orange juice and wine in the glasses laid out on the immaculate tablecloth. One of Mum’s, she thought, her heart aching.
“What is it this time?” Dad moaned, his carving knife so close to Honey she could see her reflection in the wide blade. “Pickle cake? It’s the only one we haven’t got,” he chuckled.
Moments later, Grandma Florence appeared in the doorframe holding some papers in her hand.
“What is it, Florence?” said Dad.
“Honey, Teddy, I believe you got mail,” Grandma answered cheerily. She selected a few postcards and handed them to Honey. “That waz Mr Devril, they were delivered to him by mistake…lass week, I mean, but he waz away.” She put the rest of the postcards in Teddy’s lap.
Anaconda walked in, a tray of steaming dauphinoise potatoes in her hands.
“Look at this, darling. Looks great!”
“Teddy peeled the potatoes. He’s the fastest peeler in the world!” Anaconda said with a wink.
Teddy puffed up. “I’m the assistant chef.”
The newly-weds rubbed noses over the Christmas table, but Honey was too distracted to notice.
Her heart was drumming. For a moment she thought…it didn’t matter what she thought. She flicked through the postcards, her mind racing back to the events of last year. Sadly, most of the children from Santaville had been killed in the factory explosion. She’d never had a chance to apologise to Fern for threatening her with a knife. And she would never see Rong again.
Honey touched her eye patch, feeling the glitter and sequins Anaconda had sewn there especially for the occasion. Teddy and Grandma were lucky: they got away with only a few bruises and scratches. But she had been too close to the heavy door when the blast blew it to smithereens. A small metal shard cut her right eye, causing an infection. The surgeons had no choice but to remove the entire eyeball. Another metal shard was removed from Grandfather Flaubert’s neck. Hinrik and the dwarves had frozen to death by the time the rescue troops arrived. They’d crossed paths with the rescue team whilst on the way back to the heliport, awkwardly saddled on the snowmobile and towing a sledge where unconscious Grandfather Flaubert was wrapped in thermal blankets. Fridrik was captured a couple of days later. Her mother had miraculously survived the cold and forgave her father for leaving her behind because he thought she was dead. The truth was, he didn’t even bother to check. A shiver of disgust ran through her.
“Who wrote to you?” Teddy asked his sister.
Honey cleared her throat. “Erasmus. He’s back in the village. His mother had another baby. Her eighth.” She grinned. “Dmitri is with his family, too.” She picked up a postcard with an urban landscape, not as pretty as Erasmus’ rustic picture of a snow-filled valley. “And so is Clementine, remember, the girl who almost cut Oskar…I mean Hinrik’s…” She swallowed. In the year since their safe return home, they hadn’t spoken of any of the horrors they went through. The days, weeks and months passed in a daze, and everyone walked on eggshells around one another.
Honey flipped over yet another card on her lap. “Rong’s family wrote to me… they’re holding a memorial for her at her father’s restaurant. We’re invited. Free Chinese food all around.”
“Awesome! I mean…I mean, well, we don’t have to go, we weren’t really…friends…” Teddy’s words trailed off and, with a furtive look at Honey’s eye patch, he added breathlessly: “This is from Jerry. You remember Jerry?”
“Yes, I do.” As if she could forget the boy whose photograph had circulated on a carton of milk for a whole year.
“He’s got a Nintendo 5, a new bike and a plasma TV for Christmas.”
Honey nodded. Her eyes wandered to the window, where the twitch of a movement startled her. It was just a tree branch scraping on the glass.
“Crikey. That sounds like a lot. I suppose they’re grateful he’s still alive.” Dad wiped the carving knife on his apron. “See, after all this time…ah, well, what things to talk about at Christmas. Tuck in, everyone.”
They took a short time to eat, swallowing the juicy turkey meat, the glazed sausages, the chestnut salad and the dauphinoise potatoes in silence. As Anaconda was serving the first round of dessert – the Eton mess made by Alexandra Finley on Beech Tree Road – the rain began to pound on the French doors and the sun disappeared behind the clouds. The lights were switched on. Bright light bulbs shone on the arms of the octopus chandelier. Anaconda, having lived alone for most of her life, had proved a masterful caretaker. A flash of lightning broke on the steely sky, followed by a peal of thunder.
“So tell me, dear.” Grandma Florence refilled her glass. “Did you manage to see any dead in that mirror of yourz?”
“Not yet.” Anaconda’s waxy complexion turned pink. “You see, it has to be broken in… to get used to the house first…before it can bring any messages. And even then, they would only be seen by someone who has the gift…”
Everyone burst into laughter.
“Sorry,” Greg snorted.
“Alors, I look forward to seeing the dogs Flaubert killed in the mirror. Fridrik’s dogs. Because, as you said, you can only see thoz whoz death you feel guilty for…or had some blame in…right?”
Grandma’s words were followed by silence. Greg had found some sudden interest in the display of porcelain plates inside the wall cabinet, and Flaubert rubbed his glasses so vigorously on the corner of his cardigan that the lenses were screeching. Honey and Teddy watched the delicate pattern of edible holly on a cake, and Anaconda peered into the smoky surface of her mirror, the mirror staring back at her like the dark mouth of a watery tunnel. Honey noticed the blood red wallpaper, and how it seemed to curl onto itself where it met the skirting boards.
Anaconda screamed as a peal of thunder cracked across the room. “Surely, Florence, you’re not thinking of staying that long…I mean, like I said, it takes a while for the mirror to be broken in…”
“I have nothing to go back to, ch
erie. I retired, as you all well know, and so has Flaubert. We have enough money to last us through this life and the next, and we want to spend some time with our family.”
Greg coughed awkwardly. He still couldn’t believe the extraordinary confession his parents had made last year, behind closed doors and far from the ears of the already traumatized children. Greg had to retell the story to the children in proper English, careful to take out all the gritty details. Greg and his parents hugged and cried, sniffing loudly in the house that seemed awfully empty without Honey, who was recovering in hospital, and Teddy, whom Anaconda had taken there for a visit. The house was awfully empty without Anaconda, too. He’d gotten used to her black-clad silhouette haunting the house in search of a sign of proper haunting. At night, she wandered down hallways holding a candle, claiming that ghosts, especially those who came from a distant past, feared modern light.
And yet, the confession hadn’t been a bombshell. Snippets of his life as a toddler came back to him and he remembered the little puppy he saw dying in the moving sands of Mongolia. Just thinking of the poor animal’s mouth whimpering in agony as it was being sucked into the sand was enough to bring Greg to the verge of a new panic attack. Jeez, he had to make an appointment with the GP as soon as possible. He’d promised Anaconda, and he was now compelled to do it.
“You still haven’t told us how you killed the dogs, Grandpa,” mumbled Teddy, shovelling large amounts of Eton mess into his mouth.
Grandfather Flaubert, who was back in his armchair, folded his newspaper carefully on his lap.
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