Tales of Sin and Madness (32 page)

Still holding onto the hat, and with legs kicking, I was dragged fully into the darkness.

And play we did.

* * *

“Hey kiddo, wanna help me…?”

Darrin Thornton frowned at the sight of his son’s empty room. Usually on weekends Ben spent the entire day in his bedroom, reading, watching DVDs, or surfing the ‘net.

“Wonder where he could be?” Darrin muttered. He left his son’s room and headed into the kitchen, where his wife was busy unpacking the shopping from the green environmentally friendly bags.

“There are more bags out in the car,” his wife said in her typically playful, almost girlish voice.

“Ben’s not in his room,” Darrin said. “I was going to ask him if he wanted to help me with the mowing today.”

His wife paused, a packet of pasta in her hand. “I think I hear him outside. He must be playing.”

Darrin listened, heard the distant sounds of playful shouting.

“He’s too old to be playing,” Darrin huffed.

“He is not,” his wife said as she put away the pasta. “He’s only thirteen. He’s still just a baby.”

“He may be a baby in your eyes, but he’s growing up, Jayne. Our baby’s becoming a young man. And I want our young man to help with the mowing. I know he’s wanted to help ever since he was little.”

As Darrin headed for the back door, the unmistakable sounds of a boy trapped in that weird and scary place between childhood and adulthood coming from somewhere out in the backyard, his wife said, “Just make sure he’s careful. I don’t want him poking out an eye from a flying twig.”

Darrin nodded, adjusted his Magpies hat, opened the back door and went out to find his son.

NOTES:

This story is almost completely autobiographical (I say almost, because naturally, I was never pulled under the garage by a troll). In the house where I grew up, there was a narrow area between the bungalow and garage and the neighbour’s fence. I was forever scared of that area. I’m not exactly sure why; perhaps it was simply out of fear of getting bitten by a spider or even a snake. But I think there was something else that frightened me about that narrow alley. I think it was a fear of the unknown, as most of the time it was populated with tall weeds and so in my mind anything could have been lurking within the grass. I hated venturing into that area, as I sometimes had to do whenever a ball was hit or tossed down there by accident. But, I did it, and I did it as quickly as I could, running out of that narrow space fast and always expecting to either feel the sharp pinch of fangs at my ankles, or for something evil to grab me around the legs and drag me down. Sometimes, usually whenever my cousin would come to visit, I would be goaded into seeing how far I could walk down the narrow space before I got too scared and ran away. I don’t ever remember making it more than halfway to the far wall. It wasn’t until years later, when I was a teenager and had to help cut the weeds, that I finally made it all the way down the alley that lay between the garage and the fence. And even then, my childhood fears were never far away.

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

Doreen was in the kitchen when Lucas awoke.

She was slumped in one of two bar stools that were parked side-by-side at the bench, a Peter Jackson angled between her right index and middle fingers, listening to the radio. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was in almost total darkness; the only illumination came from the lounge, and the multicoloured lights wrapped around the Christmas tree.

“Mummy, look, I can see Santa!”

Doreen flinched at the sound of her six-year-old, muttered something unpleasant under her breath, then reached over and flicked off the radio (“...the fires that are ravaging the Victorian bushland are spreading...”). She drained what was left of the Jim Beam, took a deep drag of her cigarette and, with an even deeper sigh, slithered off the stool and headed into the lounge room.

Lucas, her darling baby-boy (
not a baby anymore, kid’s growing up
– and that thought was like a sledgehammer to her chest) was sitting up straight on the couch by the front window. He was wearing only his red briefs and the sweat on his slightly chubby body glistened with blue, red, green and yellow. Like his mum, his blond hair was plastered on his head, looking like he had just stepped out of the shower. The fan, perched in the middle of the room, turning like a watchful eye, blades spinning, didn’t do much to cool anything – damn thing just ate up energy.

Doreen, slumped against the lounge room arch, took another drag and, blowing out smoke, said, “What was that darling?”

Without turning around, Lucas (as he had recently asked to be called; he had just gotten into the
Star Wars
movies) said, in a whisper of awe: “I can see Santa. He’s coming. He’s really coming.”

Doreen remained under the archway separating the dining room from the lounge. She wanted to go over and sit next to her son, wanted to hold him, comfort him. She knew, in time, she would have to. But she also knew that once she did, she would never get back up again.

Luke had fallen asleep some hours ago watching
Candles by Candlelight
on TV. Doreen had only been half-watching; she was more interested in what was on the radio – the updates on the bushfires. Luke had desperately wanted to stay up and wait for Santa, but the six-year-old in him conked out at around nine-thirty, just as the fires reached the Brayshaw property, ten kilometres away. That’s when Doreen had switched off the television and turned off all the lights. She had settled in the kitchen, the radio on low, the bottle of Jim Beam still half full, and waited, in the dark, praying Luke would stay asleep.

“Come and look, Mummy. I see him, in the distance. His sleigh. It’s red.”

Doreen wiped her stinging eyes and stepped into the lounge, a trail of cigarette smoke following like a white cloud of doom.

Doreen took a seat next to her son. She stubbed the cigarette out in the glass ashtray, adding the butt to the ever-increasing mountain, and then turned to her son. She brushed damp strings of hair from his forehead. Sniffling back tears, she looked out the window.

“See?” Luke said, pointing. “That small red light in the window. It’s him, isn’t it? It’s really him.”

Doreen looked. Saw the reflection of one of the Christmas lights that wound around the mangy old plastic tree. She managed a brief smile. She tousled his hair. “I reckon it is,” she told him. “Santa’s on his way.”

“Bringing lots and lots of presents?”

It wasn’t so much a question as a statement; after all, Luke had always received presents in the past. Every year her bedroom closet had been filled with stuffed toys, action figures, computer games, DVDs, and of course the perennial favourite: new clothes and underwear.

Not this year.

This year all that clogged up her closet were clothes that were already in danger of becoming out of fashion; worn-out shoes; boxes of photo albums – things that would burn easily.

Half of their belongings were now in boxes, ready to be taken to nowhere. Ever since losing her job at the bank two months ago, they had been placing their lives into boxes.

Doreen turned her eyes to the imitation pine tree. She had bought it twenty years ago, when she and George were first married. They didn’t have the money to buy a real tree. It didn’t matter. There had been presents under it – as there had been for the next eighteen years after that. Only then the presents sat under a real tree, with real pine smell. Even when George left, five years ago, taking with him his Porsche and her faith in love, there were presents under the tree. The fake plastic tree remained in the closet, while real ones were brought in, decorated, watered, and then discarded once New Year’s Day rolled around, left to brown and die outside, until eventually it was taken away.

Nineteen long years the plastic tree had waited. And just over twenty days ago, with Luke sulking and Doreen spitting angry, resentful remarks at her six-year-old (“We can’t afford a real one this year”; “Stop your whining and be happy with what you’ve got”; “A real one is too much effort to take care of anyway, and besides, with the water restrictions...”), the plastic tree had finally been given its second showing.

I’ve come full circle
, Doreen thought with bitter humour, eyes hard on the empty space under the tree.

When she turned back to the window, she saw another light. This one was farther in the distance, and a lot bigger. At the moment it was an orange hue, like the sun was setting. Only this was no sun; similar in many ways, but different in one very important fact – it was edging closer.

As tears stained her ruddy cheeks, Doreen cleared her throat to speak. Though her voice still cracked and popped like an old vinyl record. “Do you want to take a cold bath, Luke?”

Eyes fixed on the hovering red light in the window, Luke barely shook his head.

“Aren’t you hot? Wouldn’t a nice cool bath feel good?”

“I don’t want to miss Santa.”

“You won’t, honey. I’ll come and get you when he arrives.”

“I want to stay and watch the light,” Luke said, pouty.

“Okay,” Doreen sighed, rubbing her temples. “You stay and watch the light.”

Something small bumped into the window. Doreen gasped. Reflected in the Christmas tree lights, she saw a beetle flapping against the window.

“Look Mum, a Christmas Beetle,” Luke said, his attention momentarily diverted from the red light.

“So it is,” Doreen said and watched as the beetle flapped for a bit and then left. It was smart, it knew what was coming. It was leaving the area, leaving for safety. It obviously had somewhere to go.

Unlike them.

They had nowhere to go – no home, no family. Everyone else in the area had evacuated. Some had even stopped off and told Doreen to get away, take Luke and leave now. It wouldn’t be long before the area was awash with flame.

"Do you have somewhere to go?" each of them had asked, breathless, faces sweaty.

"Yes", Doreen had lied. "Yes, we’ve got somewhere to go."

At that, they had left. And Doreen had gone back to sitting on the couch, staring at the TV.

It had been over three hours since the last person came by, telling her to leave.

“I think it’s getting closer,” Luke said, his gaze back on the light in the window.

Doreen turned her bleary eyes to her light. “Yes, I think you’re right, darling.”

Unlike Luke’s imaginary Santa light, her light really was getting closer. Instead of an orange hue in the distance, she could see flames now. And smoke. Thick, curling smoke that turned the clear summer night into something resembling a foggy Christmas Eve in England.

“I smell smoke,” Luke said, sniffing the air.

It was the smell of burnt timber, Eucalyptus and an end to their pain.

Doreen wrapped her arms around her son.

“Maybe it’s Santa’s sleigh,” she said.

“Like an old train?”

“Yeah. Maybe the elves stoke the fire. That’s how come Santa can fly all around the world in one night.”

“Wow,” Luke said, his elbows resting on the arms of the couch, chin digging into his palms. His gaze remained fixed on the red light. “I wonder what Santa will be like when he gets here.”

“Tired, probably,” Doreen said, closing her eyes off from the burning light. “He’ll probably be tired and want something to eat and drink.”

With the smell of smoke, hot and acrid, filling their world, Doreen continued to hug her son and together they waited for the light to arrive.

NOTES:

One night when I was around eight or nine, my family and I went over to a neighbour’s house on Christmas Eve. We were all sitting in the lounge room, the adults chatting and the kids sitting on the floor around the Christmas tree. Then, in the window, I saw a red light. The light seemed to be hovering in mid-air, and when I told the other kids, we all grew excited, sure it was Santa riding in the sky in his sleigh. We told the adults, and, rather than stating the truth and telling us it was simply the reflection of the tree lights, they humoured us and told us that maybe it was Santa riding with his reindeer. Well, it was about the most exciting moment of my young life – an actual Santa Claus sighting! I remember leaving our neighbour’s house that night thrilled beyond words, and it made an already special time of year even more magical.

It was this event that I immediately thought of when I was asked to write a story for Tasmaniac’s inaugural
Festive Fear
anthology. As I began to think more about the story, knowing I had to write more than a kid seeing what he thinks is Santa Claus (and make it dark, as this was a horror anthology), the hot Australian summer and the devastation it can cause to the bush sprang to mind, and ‘Christmas Lights’ was born.

An eerie side-note: a short time after writing the first draft of ‘Christmas Lights’, Victoria suffered its worst-ever bushfire tragedy, resulting in over 170 deaths and the destruction of numerous country towns and over 2000 homes. I considered not submitting the story to the anthology; I didn’t want to be seen as exploiting the tragedy (even though I wrote the story before the bushfires occurred). I spoke with Steve Clark, head honcho at Tasmaniac Publications, about it and we both ultimately agreed that the story wasn’t in bad taste, and that, if anything, the story would be even more resonant and pertinent. And it just goes to show – real life can be infinitely more terrifying than any fiction tale.