Dead of Winter (3 page)

But who
, he wondered,
will rescue
me?

Ultimately he realized that he was,
despite the centuries of dedication, little more than a commercial
himself, an ancient billboard with an unchanging message. He
represented expense, often exacerbating the pressure on people ill
prepared to handle it. Inadvertently, he had sent more people to
their deaths than he had saved. Like those commercials, he reminded
parents of their obligations and children of their entitlements,
then watched from afar as it all came apart. He never entered the
houses, and this was a good thing, particularly in the current
climate, for he would no doubt be arrested, or shot at. Contrary to
the myth, he did not ride a sleigh laden with enough presents for
every child in the world. He had no presents at all, for that was
not his job. He rode a sleigh empty but for intangible
promises.

In the old days, he had yearned to
live up to the world's interpretation of him, even going so far as
to sell most of the belongings from his mortal life, now classified
as priceless antiques, so that he could afford to buy presents for
at least a thousand children. Even then, even after his overjoyed
wife fashioned a large red sack from old bed sheets, he was faced
with the problem of distribution. Remarkable flying reindeer or no,
there were still laws, and he could not just insinuate his way into
people's houses. So he left them in the mailboxes of the
impoverished, only to have a third of them destroyed or stolen.
Another third had been lost after he failed to consider the impact
the weight of so many presents would have on the sleigh, and the
poor beasts tasked with pulling it. Consequently, on Christmas Eve
in 1965, roughly three hundred packages rained down on the Sahara
desert, where they lay broken and useless until the sand erased
them forever. Even the presents that made it to their intended
recipients left him feeling curiously apathetic. He supposed it was
because, unlike the iconic figure he'd inspired, he could not see
the reactions of the children who received them, could not see
their elation, or disappointment. He suspected despite their
poverty, there were more of the latter than the former. After all,
it would be sheer coincidence if any of the gifts he gave them were
the things they had asked for.

Despite the enthusiasm that marked his
departure from home that year, sleigh loaded with presents, it was
the last time he attempted to fit the world's image of him. There
were simply too many variables, too many obstacles, with no way of
knowing at the end of it all if it had been worth it. And unlike
the jolly fat man in the red suit, he was an emaciated figure,
drained of spirit. His suit was tattered and torn and more mottled
maroon than red. His boots had holes in the soles, and his jolly
red hat had long since blown away, exposing a bald head threaded by
the scars earned in those first clumsy days when he'd had to learn
quickly how to fly a vehicle designed to travel on the
ground.

So every year, he inspected his
sleigh, promising he would give it a much-needed lick of paint, or
repair the buckled running boards, knowing he would not. He would
ease himself into the seat with its ineffective threadbare cushion,
and let the reindeer take him on yet another tour of the
nightworld. All the while thoughts of the children in those houses
beneath the chipped and splintered wood of his sleigh plagued him.
He could not help but picture the starving children down there, the
dirt-smeared faces of the suffering, the young ones hiding behind
the rubble as shells exploded mere feet away, the dying, the
diseased, the kids locked in cellars by parents or perverts... It
made him feel like a cold-hearted observer flying over
hell.

This, he feared, was closer to the
truth than he cared to admit.

And though his wife stridently
objected to such theories, she was never able to convince him that
it wasn't what she herself believed.

The horrible reality of it was this:
He existed to turn the minds of children away from the true meaning
of Christmas, away from God, by appealing to their greed. To
appease the greed, the parents suffered. And yet no one ever
thought of the old man as anything but benevolent. How shocked they
would be if they knew he thought himself closer to an emissary of
the devil.

He had flown through wars, concealed
by smoke, dodging artillery not meant for him, coughing through
muddy fields occupied by shifting specters of mustard gas and
littered with bodies. He had watched cities burn and drown and
crumble. He had watched and wept from afar as children were led to
gas chambers. He had seen them murdered by the hundred at the hands
of monsters.

And he, their alleged patron saint,
had done nothing.

Disgusted, he whipped the reins,
ignoring the caustic look from Dasher as the reindeer ceased their
feeding and tugged the sleigh along the hill, headed for the edge
and the air beyond.

People had seen him, he
knew. If there was one joy he could claim, it was that. Over the
years there had been people on the street, young and old alike, who
had glanced up and caught sight of him sailing through the air. The
children had screamed and pointed and danced with delight. The
adults had stared, stricken, unable to reconcile what they were
seeing with the remembered devastation at the hands of their own
parents, who had told them in earnest, that there was no such
thing. And on such occasions, the old man had grinned and waved and
yelled "Merrrrrry Christmaaaaas!" at the top of his lungs. It had
excited him, however briefly, had restored for a while the
jubilation he'd once felt knowing that, for some, it didn't matter
that he wasn't the Santa Claus they grew up believing in, or had
been
programmed
to
believe in. For some, he simply represented hope, and dreams made
real. Proof that there was sometimes more to life than the grind,
the pressure, the struggle. Proof of magic.

It had been a long time since he'd
been seen, but tonight, that would change.

As he angled the sleigh
toward the moon, the reindeer huffing, he did not look down at the
streets sweeping beneath him. There was no need. These days
children did not stay up late watching for him. They did not sneak
out into the cold and stare up at the sky, hoping for a glimpse,
for confirmation that what the other kids were telling them at
school wasn't true. Nowadays, they stayed inside, eyes wide and
glassy as they watched lies on their computer and television
screens, where sincere-sounding reporters stood red-faced and
shivering beside a graphic insert that showed a fictional Santa's
flight-path in real time. No expense was spared on perpetuating the
myth, while elsewhere other children died of exposure or
starvation, or abuse, and still others crumbled as their parents
gave them the truth they'd prayed was not there and therefore dealt
a final, killing blow to the wonderful world of fantasy and
magic.
Santa Claus is not
real
.

To the old man currently
riding upward into the night sky, the cold wind biting his sallow
cheeks, the moon looming large before him, he hated that the truth
those parents so callously shared was the ultimate and indisputable
one.
He
was real.
But Santa Claus was not, and never had been.

Tomorrow, the evidence of the lie
would be laid out for all to see, and perhaps it would instigate a
change for the better, an embracing of magic one last time. Perhaps
it would do the opposite, forcing people who had once believed to
become bitter and critical of anything they could not see for
themselves. Perhaps it would turn them further away from God. Or,
perhaps it would mean nothing at all.

Nick,
don't
, said his wife.
It doesn't have to be over
.

There was, as always, little
conviction in her voice. She knew as well as he did that they had
reached the end of whatever path they'd been instructed to follow.
He had once read a line about every species being able to sense its
own extinction. He thought there might be something to
that.

"Everything has to end eventually," he
said, the wind of his passage whipping the words from his
mouth.

One final
ride
, he thought, cracking the reins. The
reindeer, their hooves pounding nothing but the air, quickened the
pace. Rudolph looked back, the light in his nose brightening the
closer they got to the moon. There was a knowing sadness in his
dark eyes. The old man nodded at him and smiled, an acknowledgement
of their friendship, of their eternity spent together in service to
some unknown force.

As the sleigh crested an invisible
wave, the reindeer dipped its head and twisted sharply around,
turning the sleigh upside down. The other reindeer, forced to
follow its lead, kicked and protested, but it was too
late.

The old man fell from the sleigh,
smiling as he plummeted toward the earth. The wind snapped at his
clothes, tore free his gloves. A boot slid off and was lost to the
night. Overhead, the reindeer carried on, led by a small blue star,
their sleigh bells ringing like the chiming of a clock counting off
the moments before the end. They were headed for the moon and
whatever resting place would have them.

The lights of the city rushed up to
meet the old man, an ugly sulfuric glow that made him think of the
poisonous air ghosting its way across those European
battlefields.

Time marches
on
, he thought, seconds before the
impact.
And we are soon
forgot
.

There were no faces in the windows,
watching.

BLACK
STATIC

"What date is it?" my father asked.
The television was off. On the screen I could see the reflection of
his face, and the snow, as if the world outside our window had lost
reception.

"The 25th," I reminded him,
trying hard to keep the exasperation out of my voice. "Remember?"
It wasn't his fault his mind was going, or that every second
sentence emerged tethered to the end of a ropy cord of
drool.
It'll require a great deal of
patience
, the doctor had said,
And it'll exhaust you, but remember he can't
control what's happening to him. Neither can you.

"It's Christmas."

"Oh," he said.

I looked down at the milk and cookies
I had prepared for him. Such a childish ritual, one I could
scarcely reconcile as a memory from my own turbulent childhood. But
here we were. Roles reversed. He'd lost his mind; I'd lost
everything else.

"It's cold in here. I can see my
breath. Why is it so cold?"

"I'll take care of it."

"Christmas," my father grumbled as I
delivered his treat. Standing there facing him, I saw that he
looked little different from his reflection in the television
screen. Haggard, drawn, eyes sunken. Only the snow was gone, but
all I had to do to see it again was raise my face to the window, to
the dizzying maelstrom of white and the children dashing past the
yard trailing gleeful screams as they pelted each other with hard
orbs of snow and ice and pretended it hurt. "Christmas for
whom?"

Beyond the haze of white, Christmas
lights twinkled feebly like lost memories struggling to
resurface.

"For me, Dad," I replied.

He shifted uncomfortably in his
tattered armchair. Brought his face close to the glass and sniffed.
"There's something in my milk."

The snow was mesmerizing. A temporary
escape. A blanket beneath which forty years of contempt could be
buried and forgotten. A shroud beneath which anything could be
hidden.

I looked at him. At the look of
desperate concentration on his face.

I looked at the milk.

Black specks. Black static. In a
moment he would drink it because he would forget why he ever
thought he shouldn't.

"This year it's just for
me."

THEY
KNOW

The phone rings just as
the weeping stops. He stares at the glass and the amber panacea
within, shutting out the trilling with minimal effort. There is
nothing to hear. Just as there was nothing to hear the last time he
answered the phone. Nothing but damnable winter breathing on the
line and the faintest whisper, whispering the impossible: “They
know.”

Just the wind.

And the ticking from the
walls of the deathwatch winding down.

* * *

Snow.

Jake Dodds was so very tired of
it.

It seemed winter had crept in while he
was sleeping, draping drop cloths over the town of Miriam’s Cove
and hushing itself with guilty whispers while it awaited his
reaction to the desertion of color.

It was everywhere, layered on the
ground, hunched over the hedgerows in the garden, bowing the
branches of the trees in the yard, shotgun blasts of it on the
sides of cars and windows, fired by children driven by manic
excitement. It was on the roofs, the sills, the shoulders of people
ducking to avoid the sharp wind that sent it flurrying into their
grimacing faces.