Remember Why You Fear Me

by Robert Shearman

  The spider’s back at its own meal now. The beetle is a husk. And as the spider sucks away one remaining surprised eye pops inwards, and that’s the last trace that the feast had ever been a living creature.

  When you get up off the bed, the spider doesn’t mind.

  You walk to the door, quietly, carefully. You’ve been playing with the key in your hand for so long now it feels odd to put it in the lock, for a moment you feel a little lost without its teeth sharp against your skin. You turn the key. It doesn’t move, it’s stiff, and you start to panic—and you shoot a look back at the spider, and it’s watching your antics quite cheerfully now, you’re pals, you can do what you like. So you take a deep breath, force the panic back down. You put the key in again, try it calmly, calmly. This time the tumblers move, the door gives.

  And you suppose you could leave just like that.

  The spider is surprised. So are you. But it looks up perfectly amiably as you approach it. And even now, you think you are maybe saying goodbye. And you’re wondering why you’re wanting to do that, and the brain, your poor brain that has tried so hard to keep you safe and sane, it’s sending you frantic warning messages—you’re free, Steve, you’re free, get out now, get out now whilst you can . . . !

  You don’t want to touch the spider. You don’t want any contact with that creature. You can cope with the small ones, you always could. Catch them in a glass, flush them down the toilet. But the big ones, you’ve discovered, they can really make your flesh crawl.

  You don’t want to touch the spider. But still. You punch it in the eye.

  It squawks. You didn’t know a spider can squawk. It feels good to make a spider squawk.

  It feels good that it’s making a noise at last. You hate being given the silent treatment. You always told Sheila that. She could shout at you all she wanted, but what drove you mad was when she sulked.

  You punch it again, harder this time, harder now you know the eye isn’t hard like glass. It grazes your knuckles, but that feels good, doesn’t it, it always feels good. You punch it—no, not an it, it’s a her, you punch her, you don’t want to hurt her, but she’s had this coming. And on the third punch something gives way, something breaks inside, there’s that nice crunching sound like car wheels over gravel. And there’s wetness, and the smell of something bad, and what’s sprayed against your skin is thin and brown like weak tea.

  The spider falls off the wall. And you want to give her a kick for good measure, you even swing back your foot to do so. But you really don’t want to touch those hairy legs, there’s something about them even in your rage that just revolts you.

  You walk back to the door, and every instinct is telling you not to look back, don’t look back, you’ve had your revenge, given her little punishment—now get out, get out whilst you have the chance. But you do look back, and you half expect the spider to be springing out at you, enraged. And do you know, you’d have so much more respect for her if she did? But they never do. She’s still in the corner of the room, her surviving eyes streaming with tears, and looking all oh-so confused, but-what-did-I-do, Steve? Oh, how you hate all those but-what-did-I-do’s, and you resist the impulse to go right back and give her one more slap. Her squawking now sounds less like pain, it’s disappointment, it’s betrayal. Or so you think, but how are you supposed to know? How do you know what a spider looks like when it’s confused, what are you meant to be now, some sort of spider expert? It’s not your fault.

  But, “I’m sorry,” you say anyway, and the spider reacts the same way Sheila always does, she ignores you, she doesn’t even dare acknowledge you, and if only they’d acknowledge you, can’t they see you’re just wanting to make things better? It’s not nice to be ignored. And you know you won’t ever hurt them again, you won’t, you promise yourself you won’t. You’ve never wanted to hurt anything in the first place, you’re the one who’d even scoop up bugs gently so their legs stay on.

  It’s not your fault.

  You open the door.

  You’ve escaped.

  You take one step out.

  There are spiders everywhere. On the walls, and crawling over the ceiling. So many of them they’re stepping over each other, they’re knocking each other off and on to the floor. Further down you can see a mass of them blocking the corridor, that there are hundreds of spiders all jammed fast, as if they all got stuck trying to go through a revolving door at the same time, legs and abdomens and eyes all higgledy-piggledy with no room to budge, legs and eyes and sharp white fangs.

  And you feel a certain relief. Because whatever has happened, this looks apocalyptic. This has nothing to do with you.

  It’s not your fault.

  You think of Sheila. And you know how badly she needs rescuing. She can’t survive in a world like this. And you feel something cold and fresh in your head—Good. But Laura too, you think, your own daughter, what about Laura, how will she . . . Good, it says again. Good, good, good.

  You know what? You know what? You just don’t love them anymore.

  You step back into the bedroom.

  The spider looks at you balefully. She’s still crying out the ruins of her shattered eye.

  And then she does something that Sheila always did. She forgives you.

  She extends a leg, seems to beckon. She forgives you. She wants you back.

  You return to the bed. You wipe away the brown gunk off your chest, a little self-consciously. You did the same with Sheila’s blood once, that time you went too far. “Sorry,” you say again, and by God, you mean it. You’ll never hurt anyone again.

  She wraps a leg around you, and your skin revolts to the touch of a spider, and at the same time it delights at the warmth of her fur. You’re cold, you’re so cold. And hungry.

  She fetches you your dinner. And you settle down to eat.

  COLD

  SNAP

  i

  There hadn’t been a specific moment when Ben had stopped believing in Santa Claus. One Christmas he’d thought that a fat man in red travelling the world in a sleigh was credible—the next, he hadn’t. There’d been no trauma that had disillusioned him. Indeed, it had been a good year, that year; his parents were still smiling back then, every day there were so many smiles. “Listen,” said his Daddy, sitting him on his knee, holding him there steady, “listen, it’s okay for you not believing in Santa, okay? But just don’t go spoiling it for anybody else. Let your friends hang on to Santa as long as they can. Once he’s gone, he’s gone forever.” Ben hadn’t thought of it that way before, that he’d never get that innocence back, and it gave him a little pang, and for one awful moment he thought he might even cry—but it was all right, Daddy wasn’t cross with him, Daddy was holding him on his knee, Daddy was holding him safe. “Is it a deal, old chap?” And Ben liked it when Daddy called him ‘old chap’, and he assured him, cub’s honour, he’d keep his scepticism to himself.

  Not that the existence or non-existence of Santa Claus was the sort of topic that was often discussed in the school playground. It was all talk about football and techno battle rangers and whether breathing in close to girls would give you spots. Actually, Ben’s belief in Santa Claus had outlived his belief in God. He could more easily conceive of a man who’d spend his time giving presents to strangers whilst being flown about by reindeer, than he could a being who’d get stuck up on a cross to save those strangers’ sins. The inconvenience to Santa Claus alone must have been immense, and his generosity overwhelming. But Jesus? There had to be limits.

  So, yes, I suppose it’s true—seeing Jesus Christ there, in his bedroom that Christmas Eve, his body cast into strange shadow by the dazzling white of the snow falling outside the window, holding in his hand not a sack of toys but, I don’t know, a cross maybe, a cross on the road to Calvary—yes, I suppose that would have been the greater shock. But seeing Santa Claus there was still quite surprising.

  “Hello, Ben,” said Santa Claus. “Did I wake you?”


  “Yes,” said Ben.

  “Oh, good,” said Santa.

  Ben knew it was Santa right away. He was the perfect synthesis of all the Santas he had ever seen, on Christmas cards, on TV cartoons, on Coca Cola bottles. “Some children sleep very soundly,” Santa went on. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it can be sometimes, to wake up a child that just doesn’t want to be woken. It’s the hardest part of the job.”

  “Really?” asked Ben.

  Santa thought about it for a moment. “No, not really,” he said. “Flying around the world in one night, that’s from the North Pole to the South and back, and zigzagging to all the countries in between, it’s not a straight line, you know—now, that’s hard. To be honest, waking children hardly compares. To be honest, waking children is comparatively a cinch. But, you know.” He smiled at Ben. “I’m glad you were easy to wake, just the same.”

  “Are you real?” said Ben.

  “Yes,” said Santa.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want to touch me? You can touch me if you want.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll come closer,” said Santa, and shifted his bulk towards the bed so that it wobbled in a very real way, and Ben could see that Santa was real perfectly well now, and he didn’t need to touch him, actually, he had proof enough. But, “Go on, touch that,” said Santa, and Ben thought it’d be rude not to, so as Santa offered him his hand, he brushed one of the fingers, just for a second, “no, harder than that, if you want to know if I’m real,” and Ben grasped it, actually grasped it, the finger as fat as a sausage.

  “There we go,” said Santa. “There, you see.” And this close Ben could see that Santa really was very fat, and very red, and very bearded, and his eyes were twinkling.

  “Your finger’s very cold,” said Ben.

  “The snow’s coming down thick out there,” said Santa. “Cold enough to freeze your blood. Do you have anything to eat?”

  Ben thought, tried to remember what his Daddy and Mum used to leave out for Santa back when he’d believed. “We’ve got some mince pies downstairs.”

  “I mean, anything warm?”

  “I could put one in the microwave.”

  Santa considered this. “Okay,” he said.

  So they went down to the kitchen, the little boy in blue pyjamas, the fat man in red following politely behind. “Try and walk where I walk,” said Ben, “walk to the edge of the stairs, they creak in the middle.”

  “Okay,” said Santa, but he was so fat, and his feet were so big, that try as he might he couldn’t avoid the creaks altogether. And Ben winced, thinking that at any moment his Daddy might be woken up. In the kitchen Ben turned on the lights, and saw that Santa’s beard was not all that white, that was just the snow, Santa’s beard looked very grey, and very old.

  “I’ll get you a mince pie,” said Ben, and opened the cupboard, and took out a box of Mr Kipling’s own.

  “Something warm,” said Santa. “Can I have a soup?” And he pointed into the cupboard, and at all the tins of soup. “I’m not allowed to cook things, not with a flame, not without Daddy,” said Ben. “It’s okay,” said Santa, “I’ll do it, I’m old enough.” And he took from the cupboard the first three tins his hand could claw—pea and ham, and minestrone, and chicken noodle, he all but ripped off the lids with the can opener at such ferocious speed, and poured the contents into one saucepan. He put the saucepan on the gas ring, lit it. Santa stood over the meal as it cooked, and Ben could see that Santa was drooling a little, there was spit running out of Santa’s mouth and mixing with the melting snow in his beard, “I’m so hungry,” said Santa, and winked, almost apologetically—and even though the soup couldn’t be warm enough yet, he hadn’t let it stand for long enough, “that’ll have to do,” he said, and took a large wooden spoon from the shelf just beside the spice rack, the spice rack Daddy never even bothered to use, Mum had used spices but not Daddy, Daddy’s cooking was much simpler—and stuck the spoon into the pan, and scooped up the mix of soups, and ate.

  “Would you like to sit down?” asked Ben. He’d even put out a place mat. Santa waved the invitation away, stood over the cooker, and shovelled lukewarm soup into his face. He didn’t come up for breath for a good five minutes. “Thanks,” he said, and smiled at Ben, and wiped bits of noodle and green pea from his beard with the back of his hand, “yeah, I’ll have that mince pie now.” And he took one, and popped it into his mouth whole.

  Ben wrinkled his nose. “If you’re Santa—and you are,” he added hastily, he really didn’t want to go through all that weird finger touching again, “then why have I never seen you before?”

  “I only visit when it snows. London hasn’t had a white Christmas in years.”

  “Oh,” said Ben. An intelligent boy, he wondered why, whether this was to do with needing the right reindeer conditions, something like that. Instead he said, “Do I get a present, then?”

  “What?”

  “A present. I mean, that’s why you’re here, right?”

  “Right,” said Santa. “It’s waiting for you, right now, under the tree. Shall we go and look?” And Santa grinned soup-spattered teeth, and led Ben into the sitting room, as if it were his sitting room, as if this had been his house all along. Ben recognized the tree that he and his father had bought and decorated together a couple of weeks ago—but it looked a bit taller now, as if it were standing up straight, as if it were a soldier on parade saluting the arrival of its commanding officer. And the fairy lights were on, and they were flashing, and what’s more they were flashing different colours, and Ben had been quite sure they hadn’t done that before. And underneath the tree, in front of all the other presents, in front of all the ordinary presents, was the one from Santa. The wrapping paper couldn’t disguise what it was.

  “How did you know?” breathed Ben.

  “It’s what you want, isn’t it? It’s what you most want.”

  “Yes,” said Ben.

  “I got your letter,” said Santa, and chuckled. “And you’ve been a particularly good boy this year.”

  “I didn’t write a letter,” said Ben. “I don’t believe in you anymore.”

  Santa frowned at that. “I certainly got a letter,” he said, a little huffily. “I don’t come to homes where I’m not invited. What do you think I am?”

  “Sorry,” said Ben, and Santa smiled, and opened his arms for a hug. And Ben didn’t really want to hug Santa, but he thought he better had, he didn’t want Santa to be hurt, and the present was just what he wanted, the second thing he most wanted in all the world. Ben couldn’t get his arms around Santa, they barely stretched around the midriff, and there was a peculiar smell to Santa’s coat, something animal, something Ben thought probably was reindeer.

  “Can I open my present now?” said Ben.

  “Just a formality to get out of the way first,” said Santa. And suddenly in one of his hands was a piece of old parchment, so long it unrolled down to his knees, and in the other a pen. “Proof of receipt,” he said, “sign on the dotted line.” And Ben signed, and then went to the present, and now that he got to it he saw that even the wrapping paper was flashing and changing colour, and he looked at Santa in wonder. Santa laughed. “Boys like you don’t care about fancy paper,” he said, “it’s the present underneath that counts. Rip it open, Ben, rip it apart!” And Ben laughed at that, he couldn’t help himself, and he tore into the wrapping paper, and found that there was still more wrapping paper beneath, flashing away. Santa laughed too, “Deeper than that! Come on, Ben, chop chop!” And Ben tore deeper. “I love this bit,” said Santa, “really, this is the best bit, seeing all the kids’ faces light up when they get their toys. I always make sure I stay for this.” And Ben touched spokes, and chains, and handlebars, and tires, and soon enough all the wrapping paper lay upon the carpet, flashing more feebly now, like a dying animal, and then it flashed no more, and then it was dead. And Ben marvelled at his shiny new bicycle.

>   “It’s got eight gears,” said Santa, helpfully. “It’s one of the good ones. Brand new, too, I never deal in second hand goods. And stabilizers, you know, until you get your balance.”

  “Keep away from him,” said Daddy, standing in the doorway.

  He was holding a knife, and Ben’s first thought was that meant Daddy must have been to the kitchen to fetch it, and he’d have seen all the mess caused by the soup, he hadn’t had a chance to clean it up yet—he was in so much trouble.

  “Well, now,” said Santa.

  “Keep away from him,” said Daddy again.

  “I’m nowhere near him,” said Santa, perfectly reasonably. “He’s by the tree.”

  “Don’t sign the contract, Ben, whatever you do.”

  “Put the knife down, Davey,” said Santa.

  “No.”

  “Davey, come on, put the knife down. You’re scaring the boy.” And at that Ben realized that yes, he was scared, he hadn’t had time to think of it ’til now. His Daddy didn’t look like his Daddy, so wild-eyed, shaking. And his name was David, although his friends called him Dave, and his Mum used to call him Day—not all the time, just when she was really happy, I love you, big Day, she’d say, and kiss him—but not for a while now, not a long while, most of the time she called him Dave. No one ever called him Davey.

  Daddy licked his lips.

  “We both know that you’re not going to use the knife,” said Santa.

  “You have no idea what I can do,” said Daddy.

  “I know precisely what you can do,” said Santa. “I’ve got you on my list, remember? I’ve got you on my list.” Santa walked towards Daddy. “Keep back,” said Daddy. “No,” said Santa. “I’m warning you,” said Daddy, but he was the one backing out of the way. “Go on then,” said Santa, opening his arms out wide, just as he had to Ben earlier, as if he wanted a hug. “Go on. Stick me with your knife. It’s not a very big knife. And I have so much fat to cut through, so much flesh, centuries of it. Go on, see if you can slice deep enough to hurt me.” “Keep back,” said Daddy, but Santa didn’t.