Christmas Tales of Terror (4 page)

Immediately the little dancer inside, who was as fire-scorched and damaged as the box, began to rotate slowly to an oddly hypnotic, lilting melody that sounded as though it was being played on a broken harpsichord.

The dancing figure revolved jerkily round to the strange music as it echoed about the room. Georgia was mesmerised and stood engrossed until the music died away and the dancing figure came to a halt.

She was about to see if she could get it going again, when she sensed someone behind her and looked round to find a girl – the girl from the lane – standing on the other side of the room with her back to her.

Georgia dropped the box in shock, and the music started up again; but this time it seemed impossibly loud. She could feel the rhythm pulsing through her whole body.

The girl turned in one swift movement, rushed forward, took Georgia by the hands and began to spin her round to the music, a wide smile on her terrible, burned and peeling face. Georgia screamed as they twirled inexorably towards the fire, her lovely dress stroking the hearth and bursting into flames.

There was much talk in the village when they heard the tragic news, especially among the older folk, some of whom could remember that poor Mr Gilbey’s sister had died the very same way, in that very same room, many years before.

Georgia’s father had only been eight at the time, but he had burned his hands quite badly trying to save his sister, whose dancing to the tune of a musical box had taken her perilously close to the fire. He’d arrived too late and had to be pulled away before he too was consumed by the fire.

When he inherited the house, he put a stop to all dancing there, and swore that his daughter would never go to a ball until she had grown into a woman in the hope that the horrible memory of his poor sister engulfed by flames might be forgotten.

3

The Snowman

The snow started to fall on the 22nd of December and by Christmas Eve it was a good few inches deep and made a satisfying crunch as John stepped out of the front door. The drive, the lawn, the whole garden were covered in a heavy white fleece, and John felt compelled to stop and listen to the new hushed world around him.

The only sound was his own breathing and the distant noise of the servants inside the house putting up the last of the decorations. It was a dreamscape of muted sound, muted colour.

John took a deep breath and the cold air filled his lungs. It made him gasp with the shock of it and he panted it out in little clouds of mist.

He smiled to himself. He was sure that the snow must be too deep for his uncle to travel, and if there was to be no Uncle, that meant no Charles either. No Cousin Charles! What a Christmas present that would be, he thought.

John picked up two handfuls of snow and crushed them together, letting a cascade of snow dust fall to the ground, glittering like tiny diamonds as it did so. He grinned.

It was the perfect consistency.

John leaned back and hurled the snowball with all his might up into the tall pine at the corner of the drive. It dislodged a shower of sparkling, sugary snow.

John’s demeanour changed now. Snowballing was enjoyable enough in its way, but it was frivolous. There was work to be done. He picked up a heaped handful of snow and started to make another snowball. But this time he did so with special intensity and care, for this snowball would be the core – the heart – of his snowman.

It had snowed every year since John was old enough to remember, and every year he had built a snowman, no matter how measly the snowfall had been, or however short-lived.

But never had the snow been so thick, so deep, so perfect as this. This year he would make the best snowman ever.

John held the snowball to his chest, turning it, compressing it, working it with all the skill he had gleaned over his years of snowman-making. So intent was he, in fact, that it was a while before he noticed the sound of the carriage arriving behind him.

‘John, my boy!’ shouted his Uncle Henry as he reined in the horses and jumped down.

John turned and saw his uncle striding towards him across the pristine snow, ruining it. Behind him, the hateful Charles scowled.

Uncle Henry clapped him on both arms, almost knocking the snowball from his hands.

‘Snowballs, eh?’ said his uncle with a grin. ‘Good, good. Won’t throw one at your poor old uncle, though, will you?’

‘No, sir,’ said John.

Uncle Henry bellowed with laughter and clapped him on the arms again. Uncle Henry was always letting out these arbitrary volleys of laughter. John found them intensely unnerving.

‘Better pop in and say hello to your parents, eh?’ he said. ‘You boys can play out here. Charles! Come and say hello to your cousin, you scamp!’

Charles ambled through the snow and smiled at John. It was a smile that even John found hard to believe could conceal such a monster. John smiled back, involuntarily.

‘Good, good,’ said Uncle Henry. ‘Time for a hot cup of something, I think. Have fun. Play nicely.’

And off went Uncle Henry, ruining more pristine snow by heading towards the french windows instead of the front door. The boys watched him go, neither one moving a muscle until Uncle Henry had waved a final farewell before being let into the house by John’s mother. As soon as he’d gone, Charles’s dimpled smile disappeared as well.

‘So, Worm,’ said Charles. ‘Another Christmas together. What larks.’

‘Worm’ was Charles’s name for John. He refused to call him anything else unless there were adults in earshot, and John had long since given up on trying to persuade him otherwise.

Charles was two years older than John and a foot taller and a foot broader. Older, taller, heavier and nastier, he was a bully who was as adept at concealing his true nature to his elders as he was at humiliating his victims.

‘What are you doing out here anyway, Worm?’ he said with a sigh. ‘Snowball fight? On your own? What an idiot you are, Worm.’

John tried not to make eye contact and hoped Charles would get bored soon and follow his father into the house.

‘Did you hear me?’ said Charles. ‘You’re an idiot, Worm.’

He laughed and shook his head.

‘Like being called an idiot, do you, idiot?’ he said.

John saw no point in replying, so said nothing. He just turned the snowball over and over in his hands, smoothing it, squeezing it, until it felt as hard as stone.

Charles lurched forward and gave John’s hands a great slap from below, making the snowball shoot up into the air and land a few feet away in the snow. Charles chortled.

John stared at his empty hands and at his cousin’s laughing face, and then shoved Charles as hard as he could, making him stagger back, a look of confusion on his face, as though he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

John regretted this momentary loss of control almost before his hands had reached his cousin’s chest, but it was too late. Charles stared back at him, wide-eyed, and then grabbed him, twisting his arm painfully. John struggled and flailed his other arm, which connected accidentally with Charles’s nose.

Charles let him go and backed away, cursing and holding his nose. John saw that it was bleeding as Charles took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his face.

‘You are dead!’ said Charles. ‘
Dead!
’

He spoke without any great anger in his voice. The threat was made with the quiet reverence of an oath. John saw that Charles was smiling as he took the bloodstained handkerchief away. It was not a pleasant smile.

John braced himself for the inevitable attack, but, just as Charles began to walk towards him, Uncle Henry’s voice sounded out in the quiet of the garden.

‘Charles! Come and say hello to your aunt and uncle, boy!’

The two boys turned to see Uncle Henry standing in the doorway. Charles gave his nose another wipe, sniffed and shouted, ‘Coming!’ before stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket.

He gave John a look of stony coldness.

‘There’ll be plenty of time to deal with you, Worm,’ he said. ‘Plenty of time. You’ll see.’

With a smug, self-satisfied grin, Charles turned and set off towards the house. As he walked away, he accidentally dropped his handkerchief in the snow, and it lay there, a single dash of colour in the white of the garden.

After a few moments, John walked over to where his snowball had landed and picked it up. It was so hard that it hadn’t been damaged at all. John brushed the loose snow away.

He looked back towards the house and thought about Charles and wondered what kind of revenge was being planned in that nasty mind of his. John’s eyes welled up and a single warm tear trickled down his cold face.

He looked at the handkerchief, crimson against the snow, walked over and picked it up. Then, still staring at the house, he wrapped the snowball in it, enjoying the fact that Charles’s precious blood would end up inside his snowman.

John bent down, put the wrapped snowball on to the snow and slowly and carefully began to roll it. Soon the blood was consumed by the layers of snow as he rolled it this way and that, always ensuring that the growing ball was perfectly smooth.

He worked the giant snowball round and round the lawn, gathering new layers and leaving a trail of uncovered grass as he went. And as he rolled he chanted his hatred of Charles.

‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,’ he said. ‘One day I’ll get, one day I’ll get you, one day I’ll get you . . .’

And when the body of the snowman was big enough, John repeated the whole process for the head, lifting it on to the flattened top of the body. The head was so big, he wondered if he would be able to lift it, but with one great effort he managed.

As he set it in place, he saw Charles staring at him through the window with a horrible grin on his face. John knew what it meant – it would not be the first snowman Charles had destroyed.

But John did not let that spoil the pleasure of making it. He shut that thought away and got on with finding sticks for the arms and pieces of coal for the eyes and nose and mouth.

Four more pieces of coal for the buttons on his chest and the snowman was finished. John smiled, satisfied. It was by far and away the best snowman he had ever built. It was also the biggest.

Snow began to fall as his mother called him in. He was cold and hungry and happy to go inside. The light was already beginning to fade. He gave the snowman one last pat and headed into the house.

Dinner dragged on as expected. John’s father was as intimidated by Uncle Henry as John was by Charles, while John’s mother, Henry’s sister, hung on her brother’s every word.

Uncle Henry dominated proceedings, telling anecdote after anecdote, most of which John had heard several times before. Every now and then, this performance would be punctuated by one of his uncle’s unnerving laughs.

John found himself constantly looking towards the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, only to discover that it was never as late as he hoped it would be. He just wanted to get to bed and go to sleep and get Christmas Day over and done with. Uncle Henry and Charles only stayed until Boxing Day. For this reason, Boxing Day had become John’s favourite day of the season.

There was some compensation in the fact that Uncle Henry was very generous with his gifts and – rather surprisingly, John felt – clearly put quite a lot of thought into their purchase. His presents were nearly always more considered than the ones from John’s own parents.

But this small bonus was nevertheless cancelled out by the fact that John was expected to pay from his own allowance for a present for Charles. Were he left to his own devices, he might have been brave enough to try to find some way of insulting Charles through this choice of present, but his mother always insisted on accompanying him on such shopping expeditions, so a perfectly sensible (and usually expensive) gift was always bought.

He assumed that Charles faced the same difficulty, because the presents he gave John were never the cheap and cheerless things John was sure he would have bought him otherwise. Uncle Henry was clearly involved.

The boys would ceremoniously swap presents every Christmas, feigning enthusiasm both in the giving and the receiving. It had the effect of curdling any Christmas spirit John was feeling and he would spend the rest of the day trying to avoid any contact with Charles at all. This year was to be no exception.

On Christmas Day, John’s parents insisted that the family presents must wait until after the meal had been eaten and the servants had received their gifts. The light was already fading outside by the time the unwrapping finally began. John caught a glimpse of his snowman, lit by the glow from the windows, just as the curtains were being closed. It seemed nearer to the house than he remembered.

He found the hours after the presents had been opened a torture. They had been the ones that John used to enjoy the most, when the fire was built up until it was roaring and the Christmas candles were lit and games were played and songs sung. That was until his Aunt Margaret had died and his parents thought it would be a kindness to invite Uncle Henry to spend Christmas with them. He had been coming every year since. And so had Charles.