Dark Companions (36 page)

My mother touched my forehead. “But you’re burning,” she said.

“No, I’m cold! I want a fire! Please!” So she made one, tired as she was. I saw my father’s disgust as he watched me use her worry against her to get what I wanted, his disgust with her for letting herself be used.

I didn’t care. My mother’s halting words had overgrown my mind. What had she been unable to tell me? Had it to do with the sounds I’d heard in the chimney? The room lolled around me; nothing was sure. But the fire would make sure for me. Nothing in the chimney could survive it.

I made my mother stay until the fire was blazing. Suppose a huge shape burst forth from the hearth, dripping fire? When at last I let her go I lay lapped by the firelight and meshy shadows, which seemed lulling now, in my warm room.

I felt feverish, but not unpleasantly. I was content to voyage on my rocking bed; the ceiling swayed past above me. While I slept the fire went out. My fever kept me warm; I slid out of bed and, pulling away the fireguard, reached up the chimney. At the length of my arms I touched something heavy, hanging down in the dark; it yielded, then soft fat fingers groped down and closed on my wrist. My mother was holding my wrist as she washed my hands. “You mustn’t get out of bed,” she said when she realised I was awake.

I stared stupidly at her. “You’d got out of bed. You were sleepwalking,” she explained. “You had your hands right up the chimney.” I saw now that she was washing caked soot from my hands; tracks of ash led towards the bed.

It had been only a dream. One moment the fat hand had been gripping my wrist, the next it was my mother’s cool slim fingers. My mother played word games and timid chess with me while I stayed in bed, that day and the next.

The third night I felt better. The fire fluttered gently; I felt comfortably warm. Tomorrow I’d get up. I should have to go back to school soon, but I didn’t mind that unduly. I lay and listened to the breathing of the wind in the chimney.

When I awoke the fire had gone out. The room was full of darkness. The wind still breathed, but it seemed somehow closer. It was above me. Someone was standing over me. It couldn’t be either of my parents, not in the sightless darkness.

I lay rigid. Most of all I wished that I hadn’t let Nigel’s imagined contempt persuade me to do without a nightlight. The breathing was slow, irregular; it sounded clogged and feeble. As I tried to inch silently towards the far side of the bed, the source of the breathing stooped towards me. I felt its breath waver on my face, and the breath sprinkled me with something like dry rain.

When I had lain paralysed for what felt like blind hours, the breathing went away. It was in the chimney, dislodging soot; it might be the wind. But I knew it had come out to let me know that whatever the fire had done to it, it hadn’t been killed. It had emerged to tell me it would come for me on Christmas Eve. I began to scream.

I wouldn’t tell my mother why. She washed my face, which was freckled with soot. “You’ve been sleepwalking again,” she tried to reassure me, but I wouldn’t let her leave me until daylight. When she’d gone I saw the ashy tracks leading from the chimney to the bed.

Perhaps I had been sleepwalking and dreaming. I searched vainly for my nightlight. I would have been ashamed to ask for a new one, and that helped me to feel I could do without. At dinner I felt secure enough to say I didn’t know why I had screamed.

“But you must remember. You sounded so frightened. You upset me.”

My father was folding the evening paper into a thick wad the size of a pocketbook, which he could read beside his plate. “Leave the boy alone,” he said. “You imagine all sorts of things when you’re feverish. I did when I was his age.”

It was the first time he’d admitted anything like weakness to me. If he’d managed to survive his nightmares, why should mine disturb me more? Tired out by the demands of my fever, I slept soundly that night. The chimney was silent except for the flapping of flames.

But my father didn’t help me again. One November afternoon I was standing behind the counter, hoping for customers. My father pottered, grumpily fingering packets of nylons, tins of pet food, Dinky toys, baby’s rattles, cards, searching for signs of theft. Suddenly he snatched a Christmas card and strode to the counter. “Sit down,” he said grimly.

He was waving the card at me, like evidence. I sat down on a shelf, but then a lady came into the shop; the bell thumped. I stood up to sell her nylons. When she’d gone I gazed at my father, anxious to hear the worst. “Just sit down,” he said.

He couldn’t stand my being taller than he was. His size embarrassed him, but he wouldn’t let me see that; he pretended I had to sit down out of respect. “Your mother says she tried to tell you about Father Christmas,” he said.

She must have told him that weeks earlier. He’d put off talking to me—because we’d never been close, and now we were growing further apart. “I don’t know why she couldn’t tell you,” he said.

But he wasn’t telling me either. He was looking at me as if I were a stranger he had to chat to. I felt uneasy, unsure now that I wanted to hear what he had to say. A man was approaching the shop. I stood up, hoping he’d interrupt.

He did, and I served him. Then, to delay my father’s revelation, I adjusted stacks of tins. My father stared at me in disgust. “If you don’t watch out you’ll be as bad as your mother.”

I found the idea of being like my mother strange, indefinably disturbing. But he wouldn’t let me be like him, wouldn’t let me near. All right, I’d be brave, I’d listen to what he had to say. But he said “Oh, it’s not worth me trying to tell you. You’ll find out.”

He meant I must find out for myself that Father Christmas was a childish fantasy. He didn’t mean he wanted the thing from the chimney to come for me, the disgust in his eyes didn’t mean that, it didn’t. He meant that I had to behave like a man.

And I could. I’d show him. The chimney was silent. I needn’t worry until Christmas Eve. Nor then. There was nothing to come out.

One evening as I walked home I saw Dr Flynn in his front room. He was standing before a mirror, gazing at his red fur-trimmed hooded suit; he stooped to pick up his beard. My mother told me that he was going to act Father Christmas at the children’s hospital. She seemed on the whole glad that I’d seen. So was I: it proved the pretence was only for children.

Except that the glimpse reminded me how near Christmas was. As the nights closed on the days, and the days rushed by—the end-of-term party, the turkey, decorations in the house—I grew tense, trying to prepare myself. For what? For nothing, nothing at all. Well, I would know soon—for suddenly it was Christmas Eve.

I was busy all day. I washed up as my mother prepared Christmas dinner. I brought her ingredients, and hurried to buy some she’d used up. I stuck the day’s cards to tapes above the mantelpiece. I carried home a tinsel tree which nobody had bought. But being busy only made the day move faster. Before I knew it the windows were full of night.

Christmas Eve. Well, it didn’t worry me. I was too old for that sort of thing. The tinsel tree rustled when anyone passed it, light rolled in tinsel globes, streamers flinched back when doors opened. Swinging restlessly on tapes above the mantelpiece were half a dozen red-cheeked smiling bearded faces.

The night piled against the windows. I chattered to my mother about her shouting father, her elder sisters, the time her sisters had locked her in a cellar. My father grunted occasionally—even when I’d run out of subjects to discuss with my mother, and tried to talk to him about the shop. At least he hadn’t noticed how late I was staying up. But he had. “It’s about time everyone was in bed,” he said with a kind of suppressed fury.

“Can I have some more coal?” My mother would never let me have a coal scuttle in the bedroom—she didn’t want me going near the fire. “To put on now,” I said. Surely she must say yes. “It’ll be cold in the morning,” I said.

“Yes, you take some. You don’t want to be cold when you’re looking at what Father—at your presents.”

I hurried upstairs with the scuttle. Over its clatter I heard my father say “Are you still at that? Can’t you let him grow up?”

I almost emptied the scuttle into the fire, which rose roaring and crackling. My father’s voice was an angry mumble, seeping through the floor. When I carried the scuttle down my mother’s eyes were red, my father looked furiously, determined. I’d always found their arguments frightening; I was glad to hurry to my room.

It seemed welcoming. The fire was bright within the mesh. I heard my mother come upstairs. That was comforting too: she was nearer now. I heard my father go next door—to wish the doctor Happy Christmas, I supposed. I didn’t mind the reminder. There was nothing of Christmas Eve in my room, except the pillowcase waiting to be filled with presents on the floor at the foot of the bed. I pushed it aside with one foot, the better to ignore it.

I slid into bed. My father came upstairs; I heard further mumblings of argument through the bedroom wall. At last they stopped, and I tried to relax. I lay, glad of the silence.

A wind was rushing the house. It puffed down the chimney; smoke trickled through the fireguard. Now the wind was breathing brokenly. It was only the wind. It didn’t bother me.

Perhaps I’d put too much coal on the fire. The room was hot; I was sweating. I felt almost feverish. The huge mesh flicked over the wall repeatedly, nervously, like a rapid net. Within the mirror the dimmer room danced.

Suddenly I was a little afraid. Not that something would come out of the chimney, that was stupid: afraid that my feeling of fever would make me delirious again. It seemed years since I’d been disturbed by the sight of the room in the mirror, but I was disturbed now. There was something wrong with that dim jerking room.

The wind breathed. Only the wind, I couldn’t hear it changing. A fat billow of smoke squeezed through the mesh. The room seemed more oppressive now, and smelled of smoke. It didn’t smell entirely like coal smoke, but I couldn’t tell what else was burning. I didn’t want to get up to find out.

I must lie still. Otherwise I’d be writhing about trying to clutch at sleep, as I had the second night of my fever, and sometimes in summer. I must sleep before the room grew too hot. I must keep my eyes shut. I mustn’t be distracted by the faint trickling of soot, nor the panting of the wind, nor the shadows and orange light that snatched at my eyes through my eyelids.

I woke in darkness. The fire had gone out. No, it was still there when I opened my eyes: subdued orange crawled on embers, a few weak flames leapt repetitively. The room was moving more slowly now. The dim room in the mirror, the face peering out at me, jerked faintly, as if almost dead.

I couldn’t look at that. I slid farther down the bed, dragging the pillow into my nest. I was too hot, but at least beneath the sheets I felt safe. I began to relax. Then I realised what I’d seen. The light had been dim, but I was almost sure the fireguard was standing away from the hearth.

I must have mistaken that, in the dim light. I wasn’t feverish, I couldn’t have sleepwalked again. There was no need for me to look, I was comfortable. But I was beginning to admit that I had better look when I heard the slithering in the chimney.

Something large was coming down. A fall of soot: I could hear the scattering pats of soot in the grate, thrown down by the harsh halting wind. But the wind was emerging from the fireplace, into the room. It was above me, panting through its obstructed throat.

I lay staring up at the mask of my sheets. I trembled from holding myself immobile. My held breath filled me painfully as lumps of rock. I had only to lie there until whatever was above me went away. It couldn’t touch me.

The clogged breath bent nearer; I could hear its dry rattling. Then something began to fumble at the sheets over my face. It plucked feebly at them, trying to grasp them, as if it had hardly anything to grasp with. My own hands clutched at the sheets from within, but couldn’t hold them down entirely. The sheets were being tugged from me, a fraction at a time. Soon I would be face to face with my visitor.

I was lying there with my eyes squeezed tight when it let go of the sheets and went away. My throbbing lungs had forced me to take shallow breaths; now I breathed silently open-mouthed, though that filled my mouth with fluff. The tolling of my ears subsided, and I realised the thing had not returned to the chimney. It was still in the room.

I couldn’t hear its breathing; it couldn’t be near me. Only that thought allowed me to look—that, and the desperate hope that I might escape, since it moved so slowly. I peeled the sheets down from my face slowly, stealthily, until my eyes were bare. My heartbeats shook me. In the sluggishly shifting light I saw a figure at the foot of the bed.

Its red costume was thickly furred with soot. It had its back to me; its breathing was muffled by the hood. What shocked me most was its size. It occurred to me, somewhere amid my engulfing terror, that burning shrivels things. The figure stood in the mirror as well, in the dim twitching room. A face peered out of the hood in the mirror, like a charred turnip carved with a rigid grin.

The stunted figure was still moving painfully. It edged round the foot of the bed and stooped to my pillowcase. I saw it draw the pillowcase up over itself and sink down. As it sank its hood fell back, and I saw the charred turnip roll about in the hood, as if there were almost nothing left to support it.

I should have had to pass the pillowcase to reach the door. I couldn’t move. The room seemed enormous, and was growing darker; my parents were far away. At last I managed to drag the sheets over my face, and pulled the pillow, like muffs, around my ears.

I had lain sleeplessly for hours when I heard movement at the foot of the bed. The thing had got out of its sack again. It was coming towards me. It was tugging at the sheets, more strongly now. Before I could catch hold of the sheets I glimpsed a red fur-trimmed sleeve, and was screaming.

“Let go, will you,” my father said irritably. “Good God, it’s only me.”

He was wearing Dr Flynn’s disguise, which flapped about him—the jacket, at least; his pyjama cuffs peeked beneath it. I stopped screaming and began to giggle hysterically. I think he would have struck me, but my mother ran in. “It’s all right. All right,” she reassured me, and explained to him “It’s the shock.”