ventriloquist
01-04-2007, 07:07 AM
Grandmother’s old phonograph record of Christmas hymns had locked into a dead-end groove, all static pops and background hum now. Grandfather was in no hurry to rise from his rocking chair, which had adjusted so well to his bones over the years (or was it the other way around?) Being the only other presence in the parlor, the child eventually took it upon himself to remove the needle from the record and return the tone arm to its rest, although he left the turntable spinning, knowing there were limits to what he could touch.
The child could not be sure whether it was Grandfather’s chair or his bones that creaked as the old man bobbed back and forth like a worn-out metronome, keeping an imaginary offbeat with the click-clack of false teeth against the pipe bit. The scent of cherry tobacco permeated the parlor, more so than the other rooms in the house. The hearth fire, which had been going all Christmas crackers at dinnertime’s outset, was now a scattering of embers playing half-hearted shadows upon nearby surfaces. The cheap trinkets dangling from the Christmas Tree cast the hearth’s diminishing glow in gaudy tints of red and gold. The child’s eyes, too, gleamed with the reflected light of a fire about to give up the ghost. A genetic fluke had given the boy Christmas eyes: one green and one red.
With a final swig from his brandy snifter, Grandfather produced a golden watch from his vest pocket, squinting and tapping a fat finger against the face, then holding the object close to his ear. Perhaps the time was illegible between the cataracts and long shadows, or perhaps the device’s clockwork heart had seized up altogether, but the old man soon returned the watch to its proper place, hanging by a chain upon his prodigious gut. He cleared his throat with a mighty cough, then said, “It seems it’s time for another of your Grandfather’s stories.” He did not sound as if he were directing these words to the child; his voice was thin and absent, as if he were thinking aloud, or perhaps addressing the physical space of the shadowy parlor.
Other voices could be heard, too. They were muffled tones coming from elsewhere in the house. There was a man’s voice, and a woman’s voice that sounded at times as if she were laughing or crying. Whether there were two voices or more than two voices could not be discerned from the parlor, where these sounds registered as a distant, unintelligible drone, like one of Grandmother’s somber old holiday hymns bled dry.
“But first,” Grandfather said, “is there anything you wish to tell me?”
The child fixed his eyes (both of them) on the floor and shook his head. Each of them, young and old, frowned. The shadows made erratic caricatures of their faces, while the Christmas Tree baubles flickered like dying stars.
“Very well, then,” sighed Grandfather, chewing on the end of his pipe. “I’m afraid there can be no ghost story this Christmas Eve. It isn’t my decision. But, you are getting older, and you will understand these things in time.”
The old man struck a match, flaring the flame with a short series of pipe puffs. “Now that you are older,” he said through a cherry-and-sulphur haze, “I think it’s time you heard the truth about Santa Claus.”
Indeed, the child was getting to the age when belief in Santa Claus would no longer do him any good. He still believed, or at least held onto some shade of belief, if only because he was afraid of receiving a lump of coal in his stocking.
“There is more than one Santa Claus, you know,” Grandfather said. “There are hundreds of Santas, in fact, maybe even thousands. I’m not referring to those Santas with whom you get your picture taken at the shopping mall, either. There are other Santas, secret Santas, who do very different things.”
The old man flashed a strange smile, his false teeth shining in the fading firelight. “And do you know what really happens to all the naughty little girls and boys?” The child again shook his head, but Grandfather was already continuing: “Lumps of coal are the least of their worries. The children who are really rotten – the ones who seem to be marked by their rottenness – those are the children the other Santas take away. They’re whisked up the chimney and taken to Santas’ Workshop, where they are involved in the assembly line production of nightmares. It is a substantial business, with delivery service to all the children of the world. There is little helping those who have been chosen for this enterprise. Sometimes, mindful parents may attempt to keep Santa Claus at bay with bizarre rituals, but I fear much of the magical intent has been lost in translation.”
With his thumb, the old man flicked a tiny golden bell hanging from the Christmas Tree by a thin red strand of ribbon, eliciting an icy jingle. “But you shouldn’t worry about that,” he told the child. “After all, if you’ve been good, then the Christmas spirit cannot harm you.” The boy stared at Grandfather with a pair of curious eyes, one green and one albino. “I’m not telling you these things to scare you,” the old man frowned. He grunted and sighed his way apart from the chair. “I think it’s time for both of us to go to bed,” he said. “Presents will be waiting for us under the tree come morning.”
The child followed Grandfather out of the parlor, into the main corridor, and up the dark and creaking wooden staircase. The old man ordered the boy to wash up and get into pajamas before tucking him into a bed with which he was unfamiliar. It was a guest room decorated with framed still-life prints and embroidered throw pillows; the old folks’ trappings made the boy feel as if he were sleeping in a hospital or a museum, or something in between. From where he now was in the house, the child found it easier to hear the other voices echoing from the far-off rooms, including the sounds that might have been crying or laughing, but it was still difficult to make out what any of them said. He also heard the floorboards groan as Grandfather shuffled downstairs, perhaps for another nightcap, and back upstairs to his bedroom down the hall. Soon enough, the child stopped paying attention to the generic decorations of the guest room and to the distant echoing voices, and shut his eyes to sleep.
* * *
A nightmare special-ordered for him woke the boy in the middle of the night. Grandfather’s story, or whatever it was, had apparently scared the little one, after all. He had dreamt of a Santa far removed from the Claus his parents’ descriptions and the season’s graven images had taught him. This Santa, coming down the chimney of consciousness and appearing from the shadowy hearth of dreams, was little more than a bag of bones, candy-striped with raw red ribbons of flayed and rotting flesh. His face was gray and sunken beneath a dusty cobweb of beard, which made the eyes all the more striking. Santa had Christmas eyes, one green and one red, and they shone with the spirit of the season.
* * *
Mother and Father descended the staircase in bathrobes, their mouths sour with booze and sleep, though not enough sleep to eliminate the dark circles around their eyes. When they entered the parlor, they saw Grandfather in his usual spot, rocking away in the venerable chair they so often joked had become a part of his body. Grandmother betrayed her presence elsewhere in the house through the familiar sounds of morning milling-about: the opening and closing of drawers, the jangling of silverware and china, the rising and falling whine of the kettle.
The lack of presents under the tree was taken as a matter of course. Father was the first to speak: “Dad, shall I get the fire started?”
“Your mother will be in with the tea in a minute,” replied the old man, puffing on a pipe from which no smoke emerged. “That will keep us plenty warm.”
Indeed, Grandmother entered the parlor a moment later with the tea service. Four cups were poured, cream and sugar added to three of them. When everyone was served, the old woman shuffled over to the phonograph, where a record of Christmas hymns was spinning on the turntable. She cursed her husband for his negligence, then took up the tone arm and placed the needle on the outermost groove.
Soon, the parlor was permeated with the sound of ghostly voices chanting in a dead language, including at least one voice that seemed to be crying instead of singing. The crackling of the dust and imperfections on the old record almost made it sound as if a fire were burning, too, but the hearth was cold this Christmas morning.
The child could not be sure whether it was Grandfather’s chair or his bones that creaked as the old man bobbed back and forth like a worn-out metronome, keeping an imaginary offbeat with the click-clack of false teeth against the pipe bit. The scent of cherry tobacco permeated the parlor, more so than the other rooms in the house. The hearth fire, which had been going all Christmas crackers at dinnertime’s outset, was now a scattering of embers playing half-hearted shadows upon nearby surfaces. The cheap trinkets dangling from the Christmas Tree cast the hearth’s diminishing glow in gaudy tints of red and gold. The child’s eyes, too, gleamed with the reflected light of a fire about to give up the ghost. A genetic fluke had given the boy Christmas eyes: one green and one red.
With a final swig from his brandy snifter, Grandfather produced a golden watch from his vest pocket, squinting and tapping a fat finger against the face, then holding the object close to his ear. Perhaps the time was illegible between the cataracts and long shadows, or perhaps the device’s clockwork heart had seized up altogether, but the old man soon returned the watch to its proper place, hanging by a chain upon his prodigious gut. He cleared his throat with a mighty cough, then said, “It seems it’s time for another of your Grandfather’s stories.” He did not sound as if he were directing these words to the child; his voice was thin and absent, as if he were thinking aloud, or perhaps addressing the physical space of the shadowy parlor.
Other voices could be heard, too. They were muffled tones coming from elsewhere in the house. There was a man’s voice, and a woman’s voice that sounded at times as if she were laughing or crying. Whether there were two voices or more than two voices could not be discerned from the parlor, where these sounds registered as a distant, unintelligible drone, like one of Grandmother’s somber old holiday hymns bled dry.
“But first,” Grandfather said, “is there anything you wish to tell me?”
The child fixed his eyes (both of them) on the floor and shook his head. Each of them, young and old, frowned. The shadows made erratic caricatures of their faces, while the Christmas Tree baubles flickered like dying stars.
“Very well, then,” sighed Grandfather, chewing on the end of his pipe. “I’m afraid there can be no ghost story this Christmas Eve. It isn’t my decision. But, you are getting older, and you will understand these things in time.”
The old man struck a match, flaring the flame with a short series of pipe puffs. “Now that you are older,” he said through a cherry-and-sulphur haze, “I think it’s time you heard the truth about Santa Claus.”
Indeed, the child was getting to the age when belief in Santa Claus would no longer do him any good. He still believed, or at least held onto some shade of belief, if only because he was afraid of receiving a lump of coal in his stocking.
“There is more than one Santa Claus, you know,” Grandfather said. “There are hundreds of Santas, in fact, maybe even thousands. I’m not referring to those Santas with whom you get your picture taken at the shopping mall, either. There are other Santas, secret Santas, who do very different things.”
The old man flashed a strange smile, his false teeth shining in the fading firelight. “And do you know what really happens to all the naughty little girls and boys?” The child again shook his head, but Grandfather was already continuing: “Lumps of coal are the least of their worries. The children who are really rotten – the ones who seem to be marked by their rottenness – those are the children the other Santas take away. They’re whisked up the chimney and taken to Santas’ Workshop, where they are involved in the assembly line production of nightmares. It is a substantial business, with delivery service to all the children of the world. There is little helping those who have been chosen for this enterprise. Sometimes, mindful parents may attempt to keep Santa Claus at bay with bizarre rituals, but I fear much of the magical intent has been lost in translation.”
With his thumb, the old man flicked a tiny golden bell hanging from the Christmas Tree by a thin red strand of ribbon, eliciting an icy jingle. “But you shouldn’t worry about that,” he told the child. “After all, if you’ve been good, then the Christmas spirit cannot harm you.” The boy stared at Grandfather with a pair of curious eyes, one green and one albino. “I’m not telling you these things to scare you,” the old man frowned. He grunted and sighed his way apart from the chair. “I think it’s time for both of us to go to bed,” he said. “Presents will be waiting for us under the tree come morning.”
The child followed Grandfather out of the parlor, into the main corridor, and up the dark and creaking wooden staircase. The old man ordered the boy to wash up and get into pajamas before tucking him into a bed with which he was unfamiliar. It was a guest room decorated with framed still-life prints and embroidered throw pillows; the old folks’ trappings made the boy feel as if he were sleeping in a hospital or a museum, or something in between. From where he now was in the house, the child found it easier to hear the other voices echoing from the far-off rooms, including the sounds that might have been crying or laughing, but it was still difficult to make out what any of them said. He also heard the floorboards groan as Grandfather shuffled downstairs, perhaps for another nightcap, and back upstairs to his bedroom down the hall. Soon enough, the child stopped paying attention to the generic decorations of the guest room and to the distant echoing voices, and shut his eyes to sleep.
* * *
A nightmare special-ordered for him woke the boy in the middle of the night. Grandfather’s story, or whatever it was, had apparently scared the little one, after all. He had dreamt of a Santa far removed from the Claus his parents’ descriptions and the season’s graven images had taught him. This Santa, coming down the chimney of consciousness and appearing from the shadowy hearth of dreams, was little more than a bag of bones, candy-striped with raw red ribbons of flayed and rotting flesh. His face was gray and sunken beneath a dusty cobweb of beard, which made the eyes all the more striking. Santa had Christmas eyes, one green and one red, and they shone with the spirit of the season.
* * *
Mother and Father descended the staircase in bathrobes, their mouths sour with booze and sleep, though not enough sleep to eliminate the dark circles around their eyes. When they entered the parlor, they saw Grandfather in his usual spot, rocking away in the venerable chair they so often joked had become a part of his body. Grandmother betrayed her presence elsewhere in the house through the familiar sounds of morning milling-about: the opening and closing of drawers, the jangling of silverware and china, the rising and falling whine of the kettle.
The lack of presents under the tree was taken as a matter of course. Father was the first to speak: “Dad, shall I get the fire started?”
“Your mother will be in with the tea in a minute,” replied the old man, puffing on a pipe from which no smoke emerged. “That will keep us plenty warm.”
Indeed, Grandmother entered the parlor a moment later with the tea service. Four cups were poured, cream and sugar added to three of them. When everyone was served, the old woman shuffled over to the phonograph, where a record of Christmas hymns was spinning on the turntable. She cursed her husband for his negligence, then took up the tone arm and placed the needle on the outermost groove.
Soon, the parlor was permeated with the sound of ghostly voices chanting in a dead language, including at least one voice that seemed to be crying instead of singing. The crackling of the dust and imperfections on the old record almost made it sound as if a fire were burning, too, but the hearth was cold this Christmas morning.