Forever After

Part Four

1

Michael loved Christmas growing up. He loved the festive joy on the faces of even the sourest of citizens. He adored the wonder and joy in the eyes and antics of every school-free child. He amused at the zealously religious who patrolled the church, the streets and the fetes with an expression that said: ‘I’ve loved God all year, where have you been.’ He liked the Christmas music, the repetitious monotony of the annual playlists that were typically terrible but sound fantastic during the holidays.

Every town in every Christian country geared up for the festivities. Every smile on every face was festooned with the joys of the season. Carefree adults threw joyful snowballs at the mischievous children frolicking in their driveways or on the streets. The tone deaf took to the streets in numbers to blast out high pitched anthems for receipt of a handful of coins. Sly flirts seized a year’s worth of missed opportunities to pinch a kiss under the mistletoe; lovers took to the comfort of their homes, with their warm fires and their candlelit memories; families gathered around a feast on the dinner table, with Christmas crackers and talk of presents, whilst uncles and grandparents fell into drunken comas on the sofa.

Everything about the season had inspired joy into the living Michael, even as an adult he had loved it, but the dead Michael hated it. He hated the souls he had fished from drunken bodies decomposing in their own piss on the iced streets. He hated the drug addicts who celebrated the festive season by blowing their veins with an overdose of their drug of choice. He hated, and struggled to forget, the bodies of the kids he had seen in the gutters -- struck down by drunk drivers -- before escorting their souls to an afterlife that came far too soon. He hated the suicides; the murders from moments of drunken domestic violence; the aged and lonely who froze to death trying to save a few pennies on their heating bills.

Christmas was for spoilt kids and carefree idiots, he knew that now. For everyone else, especially those who had to face the mistakes of others, it was a living hell.

Brittleside buzzed just like every other small town during the festive season. As Michael strode sullenly down the streets he ducked under a dozen lampposts strewn with tinsel. He passed beneath shop windows that were splattered with multi-coloured, dangling lights. He heard Christmas songs from shops, houses and cars that motored steadily by on a sheet of ice that covered the town like a beige film.

He groaned at every note; grimaced at every light; rolled his eyes at every holiday greeting. The big day was two weeks away and already he was losing his patience with the season.

He had picked up a body that morning, his first official death of the holidays. The death was unrelated to the season -- an ageing body finally succumbing to the rigours of prostate cancer -- but the spirit of the dead man swam with all the joys of Christmas.

He had asked if he would get to meet Jesus and if it snowed in heaven, before relying the story of his boyhood Christmases and then humming an infuriating seventies seasonal classic in the waiting room.

Michael needed a drink after that. He cut through the streets on instinct, not looking up for fear of what festive atrocity he would see, and then headed for the Dying Seamstress.

The dead hated Christmas just as much as he did. The interior of the pub didn’t change for the season. It was still just as dank, dark and gloomy as it always was. There wasn’t a happy humming soul in sight. When Michael approached the bar to find Scrub glaring at him like he was a fly floating in his cocktail, he felt the urge to jump over the bar and plant a sloppy kiss on the midget’s head.

The urge didn’t last long.

Scrub cleared his throat with a hermetic warble. “Afternoon, Michael,” he said with a nod.

“How’s business?”

“Slow.”

“Ah well.”

“I like it slow.”

“Oh, then, well done.”

Michael saw Naff looking forlorn and agitated at the corner table. He was staring miserably into a pint of ale, his leg tapping a nervous rhythm on the floor, his mouth chomping the fingernails of his right hand down to the knuckles.

“Give me a pint of cider Scrub,” he fished out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them onto the bar. “Chip been in today?”

“Short guy, looks like the back end of an ugly horse?” Scrub said as he dropped down from his stool and patted over to pull a pint.

Scrub was a good foot and a half shorter than Chip, but what his psychical stature lacked, his intimidation and ego made up for. He felt like a giant and he looked like one to whoever was unlucky enough to be on the end of one of his beatings.

“That’s the one.”

“Haven’t seen him all day.”

He reached up and plonked a pint on the bar. A third of it sloshed out onto the table top. Scrub glanced at it nonchalantly and then quickly scooped up the money in case Michael changed his mind and demanded a refill.

“Thanks,” Michael said meekly.

He carried the drink over to his nervous friend who was rubbing his temples with a rapidity that suggested it was about to explode.

He was seated for less than thirty-seconds -- enough time to take one short sip, which, thanks to Scrub’s heavy handedness, meant that only half a pint remained -- before Naff gave him a desperate, appealing stare.

“I need your help,” he spluttered, the tension evident in his voice. He tapped his fingers on the table top, ran a stray thumb over a mysterious crust that had infested the wood. “I have a problem,” he said with a lowered voice.

“I told you, I can’t help you with that, you need to see a doctor.”

“No,” Naff said, lifting his eyes up and checking to see if anyone else had heard. “It’s not that, and that’s fine. I mean it hasn’t cleared -- look, that’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“Santa Claus,” he answered simply.

Michael nearly choked on his drink. He lowered his glass to the table, slowly wiped a bead of beer from his chin and then parroted: “Santa Claus.”

“He’s going into people’s houses, leaving presents for the kids, eating mince pies--”

“I know who Santa Claus is,” Michael stated.

“This is not the real Santa Claus though,” Naff stressed.

In thirty years Michael had never heard those words, but he wasn’t as surprised as he expected. “Is there a real Santa Claus?” he asked slowly, wondering why it hadn’t come up before.

“No,” Naff said, with a face that suggested Michael was an idiot for asking. “Of course not.”

Michael dropped a sigh of relief. Vampires, werewolves, clones, demons and bogeymen he could take. He could even live with the knowledge that tooth fairies existed, but he would have drawn a suicidal line in the sand at the notion of Santa Claus, especially after thirty years.

“So what the f*ck are you talking about?” he asked Naff, who was now absently picking stale, two year old nuts out of a bowl in the centre of the table and popping the glued clusters into his mouth.

“He’s a demon,” Naff said solemnly. “A few sandwiches short of a picnic.”

Michael nodded absently, his eyes on the nuts with something resembling awe. He had always assumed it was potpourri. He had seen Chip eating some a few months back, but he had also seen Chip eating his own earwax.

“He thinks he’s jolly Saint Nick, even has the suit and the beard.”

“Is it real?” Michael wondered, intently watching his friend, waiting for the moment he keeled over clutching his stomach.

“What?”

“The beard, is it real?”

“Does it matter?”

He shrugged his shoulders, “Just curious.”

“Yes,” Naff told him. “It's real.”

“What about the belly?”

A pained look of angst spread over Naff’s face. “Can you take this seriously please?”

Michael grinned. “I don’t see what the problem is,” he stated, sure that he saw something crawling around the bowl after the first layer of glued nuts had been excavated. “Some jolly fat guy wants to give kids presents,” he shrugged passively. “Where’s the harm in that?”

“He’s an emotionally unstable demon.” Naff said firmly.

“And?”

“He has powers and he has problems. He could be dangerous.”

“Could be, but isn’t.”

“Could is enough cause for me to want to stop him. And,” he strained over a thought. “There’s another thing.”

“He didn’t get you the pony you asked for?”

Naff shook his head slowly and glared at his friend, before choosing to ignore the comment. “It’s my fault he’s free,” he said sullenly. “I let him out.”

“Ah.”

“He slips in through a chimney, or, failing that, he gets in through an open window. He leaves the kids’ presents all neatly arranged at the bottom of their bed and then he stuffs his face with mince pies and whatever sherry or wine he can find in the kitchen.”

“You think that’s why my mother always left a mince pie and a glass of sherry on the mantel, to stop him from raiding the fridge?”

“Can you take this seriously please?”

“What about carrots, for his reindeer?”

Naff sighed. “Well...” he prolonged, unwilling to finish. “Actually.”

“Really!” Michael looked both amazed and amused. “He takes carrots as well?”

“Like I said, he’s mad. Maybe--”

“Are you sure he’s not the real deal?” Michael asked dryly.

“Positive,” Naff spat with a great deal of frustration.

A small creature hopped out from the nut bowl with a peanut stuck to its back. It walked a wavy line across the table, like a drunken man trying to find its way home. Naff squashed the peanut beetle and then flicked the dead bug and tainted nut off the table.

“Hey!” a small sharp voice called angrily from behind him. He turned to see Scrub glaring at him, the miniature man had clambered up onto the bar, his feet in the wastage of a hundred pints of cider and beer, and was pointing an angry finger at Naff. “I saw that!” he bellowed. “Stop making a mess in my bar!”

Naff instinctively glanced around the decrepit room. The floor in the immediate vicinity of the bar was littered with the detritus of a dozen drunken nights: crisps, crumbs, food packets. Pieces of food, scraps of torn clothes, shoes, shoelaces and small coins had wedged themselves into the grimy floors around the tables like lost archaeological treasures.

“Pick it up!” Scrub ordered, his patience rapidly fading.

Naff turned to Michael and mouthed the word: “Really?”

Michael gave a shrug that suggested he do what the little mad man said regardless of how hypercritical it was.

He picked up the nut, offered a smile to Scrub -- who dropped down from behind the bar and allowed his burning facade to cool -- and then dropped it back into the bowl. Chip would probably eat it later.

“So,” Michael said, rolling his eyes, thankful that he still had eyes to roll. “How is this our problem?”

Naff slumped, even more dejected now the merry murdering midget had told him off. “He, Jacky Sampson, that’s his name--”-

“Santa Claus?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he was--”

“If you say Saint Nicholas I’ll rip your throat out.”

“Jesus.”

“Sorry, just a little on edge.” He wiped bead of anxious sweat from his forehead, rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand and pressed a finger to his temple. “He was stuck in purgatory. I was his intermediate.”

“Intermediate?”

Naff waved a frustrated hand. “It’s like a Probation officer; I’ve told you this before.”

“In my defence you talk a lot of shite and I drink a lot.”

“Whatever, look, I let him go. I told them he was fit for release. I mean I thought he was,” he explained with great pain. “He seemed fine, but, well, clearly he was just faking it.”

“Can’t be that insane then.”

“He thinks he’s f*cking Santa Claus.”

“Good point.”

“He started this escapade the same night I released him, that was a week ago. We’ve only just found out it was him, turns out one of the homes had a nanny-cam set up, they have stills of him. We were alerted by an insider at the news station, he’s stopping it from going public but now my boss is on my arse.” He sighed and dropped his head into his arms. “What the f*ck am I going to do?”