Christmas Tales of Terror (9 page)

‘
S-s-s-so cold
,’ he said, with a voice that sounded like wind in a chimney.

Elizabeth screamed and screamed and she opened her mouth to scream again, but this time no sound emerged. Her heart clenched like a fist and she slumped across Theresa, who was screaming now herself as she woke to find herself looking into her cousin’s frozen, staring face.

One day, many years later, Uncle Gregory arrived at his sister’s house to tell Elizabeth’s parents he had received a letter from his lawyer enclosing some rather interesting papers concerning Farthing Lodge.

Uncle Gregory showed them letters and clippings detailing the sorry tragedy of a climbing boy who died at the house in the 1780s.

A cruel and barbarous sweep – a common enough character in those less enlightened times – had tried to force the poor boy higher up the chimney, until the little fellow slipped, breaking his neck on a ledge and becoming jammed as he fell. According to the papers, he was dead by the time they prised him free and dragged him out.

Elizabeth’s parents did not need to ask in which chimney the fatality was reported to have taken place.

Farthing Lodge had been put on the market not long after the incident with Elizabeth – though, many years on, a buyer was still to be found. Theresa had refused to sleep there after that terrifying night.

Elizabeth herself was never told about the sweep or the boy. There seemed little point. She had ceased to speak after that night, and had retreated into a world of her own. She would spend hours making jigsaws alone in her room, living in a self-imposed silence.

Elizabeth was, in fact, a perfect picture of calm and peace. Unless, that is, she saw the smallest speck of soot. Oh, the screams there would be then!

7

The Last Present

Miranda Butler yawned. She had forgotten how tiring the present-giving part of Christmas morning was. It was lovely to receive presents, but frightfully boring to have to wait patiently while other people opened theirs.

‘There’s one last present here that doesn’t have a name on it,’ said her brother, Ralph, as he crawled out from under the Christmas tree.

‘Does anyone recognise it?’ said Miranda’s mother.

The present was poorly wrapped, the cheap paper not quite being held in place by some crudely knotted string. Blank faces greeted the question.

‘I think one of the servants must have put it there, then,’ said Miranda’s mother, putting a hand to her heart and smiling. ‘Gladys, perhaps. How sweet.’

Miranda smiled as she saw her father roll his eyes.

‘Who’s going to open it, then?’ said Ralph.

‘Well, I suppose you should as you’re holding it,’ said his father.

Ralph grinned and pulled the string and paper away and set the present down on the rug. It was a toy drummer boy, standing about a foot high. He wore a shirt with horizontal navy blue and white stripes, a pair of white trousers and a straw boater hat with a red band around it. The costume was grubby and stained, the hat rather battered.

The drum was carried on a strap that looped over the boy’s shoulder and under his arm, and he held a drumstick in each hand. The drum was large and hung at an angle. It had a painting of a sailing ship on the side.

The drummer boy was not at all attractive. His eyes were rather too real, staring in a frozen expression of wildness utterly out of keeping with his gloomy, downturned, red-painted mouth. The rest of his face was white, except for two large dots of red on his cheeks.

‘Well!’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘What an ugly fellow!’

Miranda stared at it in confusion.

‘What is it, dear?’ asked her grandmother. ‘I can’t see.’

‘It’s a toy,’ said Miranda’s mother, grimacing. ‘Some sort of drummer boy.’

Miranda frowned. She had seen that drummer boy before; she was sure of it. Several days earlier, a pedlar had visited their home. She had thought it was a man when she came round the corner of the house with Ginny, their wolfhound. Ginny had barked furiously, making the figure turn at their approach.

The pedlar was horrible and filthy, dressed in a huge overcoat that looked like the kind of thing a pirate might wear in bad weather. On her head – for Miranda realised that, despite the clay pipe and heavy riding boots, the pedlar was indeed a woman – she wore a wide-brimmed hat, her hair gathered into a matted pigtail behind.

She had a cart, pulled by an old nag who looked on the verge of collapse. The cart was loaded down with a pile of disparate items – none of which Miranda could imagine anyone in their right mind would want – and one of these items was this very toy.

When Mrs Harper, the housekeeper, had told the pedlar to be off, the woman had refused and become increasingly agitated, shouting words that Miranda assumed, by Mrs Harper’s expression, must have been swear words of the very worst kind.

Mrs Harper had disappeared inside the house while the pedlar continued her rant. She reappeared with a bucket and, without warning, threw the cold water therein straight at the pedlar, drenching her from head to foot.

The pedlar had stared, open-mouthed, water dripping from her hat and from her extinguished pipe. Miranda hadn’t been able to stop herself. She’d burst into loud laughter as Mrs Harper shouted, ‘Now be off with you!’

The pedlar, Miranda remembered with a shudder, had turned slowly to look at her, with a cold fury burning in her eyes. Mrs Harper bustled Miranda inside and slammed the door. She ran upstairs and watched from her bedroom window as the pedlar drove her cart away. Safely inside, Miranda had laughed again, until the pedlar turned as though hearing her. She’d been happy to see the cart disappear from view.

Later that day, when Miranda had gone for a walk in the garden, she’d seen something in the gravel of the drive and had discovered it to be the drummer boy.

She’d picked him up and, seeing how ugly he was and how he reminded her of the pedlar, she’d thrown him over the wall into the chalk pit on the other side.

The toy was the same one; Miranda was sure of it. How on earth had it got from the chalk pit to being wrapped up and placed under the Christmas tree? Maybe her mother was right. Maybe one of the silly servants had found it. But who was it meant to be for?

‘Mama!’ said Ralph. ‘Can I have it?’

‘Well . . . I suppose so . . .’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘Unless Miranda –’

‘Certainly not,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s horrid. Ralph is more than welcome to it.’

Ralph picked the drummer boy up eagerly and then gave a little cry of pain.

‘Ow!’ he said, sucking his finger. ‘He bit me!’

‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ said his mother.

‘But, Mama . . .’ said Ralph.

Everyone chuckled and Ralph joined in.

‘It really did feel like he bit me,’ he said.

His father leaned forward and tousled his hair.

‘Look, Papa,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s meant to have a key. Oh – I wish it did have a key. It’d make a real din, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Miranda noticed her parents exchange a look that made it clear they did not regard that ‘din’ with the same enthusiasm and were not especially upset that it might not be forthcoming.

Miranda worried about whether or not she ought to tell someone about the pedlar and the drummer boy, but she quite liked the idea that Ralph was playing with a flea-bitten present from an old tramp. Why should she say anything?

Ralph had grated on her nerves all morning. Not only had he taken the job of handing out presents from her, but he seemed to have taken her share of family affection and interest too.

She might as well have been invisible. Everything Ralph did was cooed over and applauded, while Miranda’s piano playing had received a decidedly lukewarm response. And she’d played the piece perfectly.

It was also very clear to Miranda that Ralph had been given presents that were far more expensive than those she had received. It was all very vexing. Miranda could feel her cheeks going red and she hated how she looked when that happened.

Eventually, the whole family sat down to Christmas lunch. Miranda was sitting next to Aunt Viola, who kept up a stream of inane questions about school, which Miranda swatted away with as much politeness as she could muster.

The pudding arrived to great cheers, blue flames dancing across it. Every year, Miranda’s mother would have a silver sixpence placed in the pudding, and Miranda was always very keen to be the one to find it. Not only was it considered very lucky, she was also saving up for a new hat.

But to Miranda’s dismay, it was Aunt Viola who found the sixpence on her plate, and, worse still, she held it out across the table for Ralph to take.

‘Put it in your money box, Ralph, dear,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Aunt!’ said Ralph excitedly, before stuffing the pudding-coated sixpence in his pocket.

Miranda’s self-control finally snapped. She put her spoon down noisily. Everyone turned to face her and she was about to launch into a long and heartfelt tirade when she found that her voice would not work.

She then discovered that her lack of voice was entirely due to the fact that she was quite unable to breathe. She began to choke, jerking forward in her seat and emitting strange snorting and gulping noises. She put her hands to her throat, her mouth and eyes wide open. Everyone around the table froze in alarm.

All except Aunt Viola, who had served as a nurse with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea many years before and was fond of telling inappropriately gory anecdotes during dinner, invariably involving amputations or grotesque sabre wounds.

Viola was a formidable woman, in physique and character, and she got up from her seat and gave Miranda a mighty slap on the back, right between her shoulder blades.

Miranda lurched forward, almost going face first into her pudding bowl, and as she did so a small silver object was ejected from her open mouth and pinged against the glass in front of her, landing in her lap.

‘How many times have I told you not to put these things in the pudding, my dear?’ said Miranda’s father. ‘I nearly broke my tooth last year, dash it all.’

‘Language, dear!’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘I don’t understand. There really ought to have been only one sixpence in there and that was already found. There has to be a sixpence in the pudding. It’s lucky.’

‘Lucky!’ said Miranda’s father. ‘You almost killed the girl!’

Miranda stared at her lap. It was not a sixpence at all lying there. She closed her hand around it.

‘Are you all right, Miranda?’ said her mother.

‘I think so,’ she replied.

‘You both have a sixpence now,’ she said. ‘So at least that’s lucky, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ said Miranda, glancing at Ralph. ‘May I be excused?’

‘You’re feeling unwell?’ asked her father.

‘I think it was the shock,’ said Miranda, rather enjoying being the centre of attention for the first time that day.

Her mother nodded and patted her arm. Miranda got up from the table and left the room, just as Aunt Viola began a story about a young cavalryman going into shock after having his foot blasted off by a cannon.

‘My dears,’ said Aunt Viola, ‘if you can imagine a chicken leg after the thigh has been twisted off – but many times larger, of course – well, that will give you some idea of the . . .’

Aunt Viola’s voice trailed away as Miranda climbed the stairs to Ralph’s room. She tiptoed in so as not to be heard downstairs and, picking up the drummer boy with one hand, she opened her clenched fist to reveal the object that had been stuck in her throat: a small silver key.

As soon as she’d seen it in her lap, Miranda had somehow known that it was for the drummer boy. Her astonishment at finding it there was outweighed by her determination to discover whether it would work.

She inserted the key and, sure enough, it fitted perfectly. Miranda smiled. Ralph could have the stupid thing, but she would not give him the satisfaction of being the first to set it going.

Miranda wound the toy. The drummer boy turned his head and his wild eyes to look at her, and pulled his red mouth into a broad grin. Then, to her astonishment, he opened his mouth wide to reveal a row of rusting, pointed metal teeth.

He laughed a loud, throaty, bellowing laugh and raised the drumsticks high above his head. Miranda screamed, but the sound of it was smothered completely by the enormous boom of the drum.

The noise was particularly startling, coming as it did in the midst of Aunt Viola’s anecdote about Russian cannon fire, but the laughter that followed it was more terrifying still, and sent Miranda’s father rushing, two steps at a time, up the staircase to Ralph’s room.

The scene that greeted him was one that would be forever imprinted on his mind. Miranda lay on the carpet, her eyes wide open and trickles of blood coming from her ears. The window was shattered and the casement hung limply on its hinges. Mr Butler ran to look out, but there was nothing to see.

Mrs Butler arrived seconds later at the open door and fell to the floor in a faint. Aunt Violet followed, checked for Miranda’s pulse and solemnly shook her head. Ralph stared at his sister and burst into tears.