A Yuletide Universe Read online

“Never heard of him,” Dr. Ahmet said with a shake of the head. “Sorry.”

  Kris sighed again.

  “That’s the problem,” Kris confessed. “But maybe I should start at the beginning. Bear with me for a few minutes. This might sound kind of strange.”

  Dr. Ahmet looked at his watch and replied, “You have forty minutes left of our fifty-minute hour. You talk, I’ll listen.”

  The formerly jolly old elf began his tale.

  * * *

  It was an unseasonably warm November first, and Santa was really beginning to feel the year-end holiday pressures.

  Let me digress for a moment.

  Santa Claus, who also goes by such monikers as Saint Nick, Father Christmas, and even Kris Kringle, was up to a while ago the most beloved figure on the face of the earth. He lived at the North Pole at his enchanted toyshop where elves worked all year round to make toys for all of the world’s good little girls and boys. Then on Christmas Eve, that was December 24th, he would load up his sleigh and hitch up his flying reindeer and take to the heavens to deliver them to deserving darlings all over the world.

  Don’t interrupt just yet.

  Anything that defied logic worked by magic.

  Humor me.

  I had just taken my morning post-breakfast break. Mrs. Claus’s bacon was a little greasier than usual and I decided to give the newspapers a quick scan while waiting for nature to take its course.

  I quickly became depressed.

  Seventy-five percent of the papers were devoted to advertising that made the crass commercialism of Return of the Jedi look like a Sunday sermon by Mother Teresa, and if that wasn’t bad enough—

  SALEMART TRADEMARKS SANTA CLAUS

  Walt Saleton III announced yesterday that he and his organization—the number-one retail chain in the U.S.A.—had just signed an exclusive license with the heirs of famed illustrator/political cartoonist Thomas Nast for all rights—for a period of not less than seventy-five years—to the image/ likeness/character/persona of Santa Claus for an undisclosed sum thought to be well into seven figures.

  Saleton has assured all concerned that he has no desire to restrict the presence of the jolly old elf from the public but hastened to add that adequate legal notice of permission will be required.

  Such legal notice will read: Used by permission of Salemart the nation’s number-one retail chain—When you want to shop smart, shop Salemart!

  To say that I became more depressed was an understatement tantamount to saying that Rudolph’s nose was a bit shiny or that in general elves might not be very tall.

  But I had been depressed before.

  (Who can forget the downer of having David Huddleston playing you in an eponymous bomb where Lithgow and Moore got top billing?)

  This time was different.

  I was also angry.

  I spoke without thinking.

  “Dammit they can have their Santa Circle C Claus TM,” I swore, and then with a vehemence wished, “And to quote George Bailey, ‘I wish I had never been born at all.’ That would show them. No real Santa at all, just a two-bit caricature by a political cartoonist turned into everyone’s favorite commercial holiday buffoon! Merry Christmas and shop again.”

  I had not even finished my rant when I noticed the strange stares I was receiving from unknown faces, and that I was standing in front of a huge discount department store on Thirty-fourth Street in Manhattan.

  * * *

  Dr. Ahmet looked at his watch, and observed, “So you, Kris Kringle, are really Santa Claus.”

  The jolly old elf became defensive for a moment.

  “Now let me continue for a bit more. Everything will become clear shortly.”

  “Just proceed,” Ahmet replied, making a mental note that this was the first Santa for his golf circle. Drs. Levin and Shapiro had already told him about two Ronald McDonald’s and a Colonel Sanders, while Dr. Martin seemed to specialize in rockstar wannabes and a five-time-a-weeker who thought he was on alternate weeks Orson Welles and Ethel Merman.

  His would be the first Santa.

  * * *

  It doesn’t take a genius to understand what had happened.

  The North Pole, the flying reindeer, the magic toyshop, the whole shebang runs on the energy of magic as fueled by the power of wishes, and as Father Christmas—Santa by another name—I was the custodian of that power, all of which fueled my foolish wish, which thus changed the world.

  * * *

  “And?”

  “And?”

  “You still have twenty minutes.”

  “Oh. Well, the first thing I did was to find my place in this world and, as you might have guessed, it wasn’t much of a surprise.”

  “You are a holiday greeter at . . .”

  “Yes, but I digress, and I know time is running out.”

  “For this session.”

  “This session?”

  “Yes,” Ahmet explained, “you’re covered for a maximum of twenty sessions a year under your policy. More if you’re incarcerated.”

  “Incarcerated?”

  “Committed.”

  * * *

  Now being a greeter at the Thirty-fourth Street Salesmart wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t the same as life at the North Pole, and besides the world still needed a “real Santa Claus.”

  I had to do something to make things right.

  I remembered my short list.

  * * *

  “Short list?”

  “Those children who offered to return my kindness with like kindness. You know, if there was ever anything they could do for me, if you’re ever in the Bronx look me up, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “Unfortunately, most of them seemed to have gotten off on the wrong track and had gotten jobs as lobbyists in Washington . . . not exactly the gift giving I had in mind. There were a few, though, who had not succumbed to such political diversions.”

  * * *

  Mickey Darden Rivera was always looking for the big break. He had missed out on being part of O.J.’s dream team because of a Springer appearance, which had yet to yield him his own Fox show, and I think he knew that my case would do it for him.

  This was a case that Court TV just wouldn’t be able to pass on . . . or at least that was what Mickey said.

  I really didn’t care about going to trial, I told him, all I wanted was to get things back the way they should be. I then explained about the North Pole and the wish thing and . . .

  He put up his hand and told me to stop talking.

  It might damage our case.

  He told me he didn’t care about the facts.

  If I said that I wasn’t just some Salesmart greeter and that I was the real Santa Claus that was good enough for him.

  The problem was that the copyright and trademarks were all very legal and really rather difficult to challenge at this point (I assume that getting control of the copyrights and trademarks was the first step in getting back my original identity), and that the old post office ploy that had worked in the Macy’s case was a bit too risky at the present time.

  But then he came up with what he called a Dickens of an idea.

  * * *

  “Which was . . . ?” Ahmet inquired, getting ready to close off the session.

  * * *

  We snuck into the house of Walt Saleton III and convinced him that we were the ghosts of Christmas and that he would have to sign over . . .

  * * *

  “Wait, “ Ahmet interrupted. “Snuck in?”

  “Well, since going down the chimney was no longer an option given my loss of magic powers . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “We jimmied the lock at the back door, and . . .”

  “Enough,” Dr. Ahmet said, standing up. “I’m afraid our session is over for this week. I think that we have made some progress, but things are going to take some time, so how about next week at the same time? We can finish up this story and maybe start to talk about your childhood.�
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  Kris got to his feet and shook the doctor’s hand.

  “You know,” the jolly elf said, “being a greeter at Salesmart really isn’t so bad. The employee benefits are great and they have already guaranteed me a post-holiday position, and there still is a Christmas, and the children don’t seem to mind, and . . .”

  “Next week,” Dr. Ahmet assured.

  “Next week,” Kris agreed, and left the office.

  * * *

  “So did you have him committed?”

  * * *

  “Thought about it . . . but then I got a call from Walt Saleton III. Seems that he was being troubled by bad dreams and hallucinations and was willing to pay triple the rates for some holiday season counseling. So how could I commit that old loon after such a lovely Christmas present with year-end taxes and all.”

  * * *

  “You want to sub for me twice a week on Orson/Ethel?”

  * * *

  “Just hit the ball, or the gynecologists behind us are going to want to play through.”

  * * *

  . . . at least that’s the way I heard it.

  Variations on the Holiday Theme

  When you think about Christmas what comes to mind?

  * The debate over best Christmas film (Miracle on 34th Street versus It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story)

  * The favorite version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (and the argument over whether Scrooged and Mister Magoo have to be excluded)

  * A memory of a Christmas past or perhaps a past Christmas present

  Whether your tastes lie post-modern or Dickensian Victorian, have we got a holiday tale for you.

  * * *

  The Yattering and Jack

  Clive Barker

  * * *

  Why the powers (long may they hold court; long may they shit light on the heads of the damned) had sent it out from Hell to stalk Jack Polo, the Yattering couldn’t discover. Whenever he passed a tentative inquiry along the system to his master, just asking the simple question, “What am I doing here?” it was answered with a swift rebuke for its curiosity. None of its business, came the reply, its business was to do. Or die trying. And after six months of pursuing Polo, the Yattering was beginning to see extinction as an easy option. This endless game of hide and seek was to nobody’s benefit, and the Yattering’s immense frustration. It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to), worst of all it feared losing its temper completely and killing the man outright in an uncontrollable fit of pique.

  What was Jack Polo anyway?

  A gherkin importer; by the balls of Leviticus, he was simply a gherkin importer. His life was worn out, his family was dull, his politics were simple-minded and his theology non-existent. The man was a no-account, one of nature’s blanket little numbers—why bother with the likes of him? This wasn’t a Faust: a pact-maker, a soul-seller. This one wouldn’t look twice at the chance of divine inspiration: he’d sniff, shrug and get on with his gherkin importing.

  Yet the Yattering was bound to that house, long night and longer day, until he had the man a lunatic, or as good as. It was going to be a lengthy job, if not interminable. Yes, there were times when even psychosomatic leprosy would be bearable if it meant being invalided off this impossible mission.

  For his part, Jack J. Polo continued to be the most unknowing of men. He had always been that way; indeed his history was littered with the victims of his naïveté. When his late, lamented wife had cheated on him (he’d been in the house on at least two of the occasions, watching the television) he was the last one to find out. And the clues they’d left behind them! A blind, deaf and dumb man would have become suspicious. Not Jack. He pottered about his dull business and never noticed the tang of the adulterer’s cologne, nor the abnormal regularity with which his wife changed the bed-linen.

  He was no less disinterested in events when his younger daughter Amanda confessed her lesbianism to him. His response was a sigh and a puzzled look.

  “Well, as long as you don’t get pregnant, darling,” he replied, and sauntered off into the garden, blithe as ever.

  What chance did a fury have with a man like that?

  To a creature trained to put its meddling fingers into the wounds of the human psyche, Polo offered a surface so glacial, so utterly without distinguishing marks, as to deny malice any hold whatsoever.

  Events seemed to make no dent in his perfect indifference. His life’s disasters seemed not to scar his mind at all. When, eventually, he was confronted with the truth about his wife’s infidelity (he found them screwing in the bath) he couldn’t bring himself to be hurt or humiliated.

  “These things happen,” he said to himself, backing out of the bathroom to let them finish what they’d started.

  “Che sera, sera.”

  Che sera, sera. The man muttered that damn phrase with monotonous regularity. He seemed to live by that philosophy of fatalism, letting attacks on his manhood, ambition and dignity slide off his ego like rainwater from his bald head.

  The Yattering had heard Polo’s wife confess all to her husband (it was hanging upside down from the light-fitting, invisible as ever) and the scene had made it wince. There was the distraught sinner, begging to be accused, bawled at, struck even, and instead of giving her the satisfaction of his hatred, Polo had just shrugged and let her say her piece without a word of interruption, until she had no more to unbosom. She’d left, at length, more out of frustration and sorrow than guilt; the Yattering had heard her tell the bathroom mirror how insulted she was at her husband’s lack of righteous anger. A little while after she’d flung herself off the balcony of the Roxy Cinema.

  Her suicide was in some ways convenient for the fury. With the wife gone, and the daughters away from home, it could plan for more elaborate tricks to unnerve its victim, without ever having to concern itself with revealing its presence to creatures the powers had not marked for attack.

  But the absence of the wife left the house empty during the days, and that soon became a burden of boredom the Yattering found scarcely supportable. The hours from nine to five, alone in the house, often seemed endless. It would mope and wander, planning bizarre and impractical revenges upon the Polo-man, pacing the rooms, heartsick, companioned only by the clicks and whirrs of the house as the radiators cooled, or the refrigerator switched itself on and off. The situation rapidly became so desperate that the arrival of the midday post became the high point of the day, and an unshakeable melancholy would settle on the Yattering if the postman had nothing to deliver and passed by to the next house.

  When Jack returned the games would begin in earnest. The usual warm-up routine: it would meet Jack at the door and prevent his key from turning in the lock. The contest would go on for a minute or two until Jack accidentally found the measure of the Yattering’s resistance, and won the day. Once inside, it would start all the lampshades swinging. The man would usually ignore this performance, however violent the motion. Perhaps he might shrug and murmur: “Subsidence,” under his breath, then, inevitably, “Che sera, sera.”

  In the bathroom, the Yattering would have squeezed toothpaste around the toilet seat and have plugged up the shower-head with soggy toilet paper. It would even share the shower with Jack, hanging unseen from the rail that held up the shower curtain and murmuring obscene suggestions in his ear. That was always successful, the demons were taught at the Academy. The obscenities in the ear routine never failed to distress clients, making them think they were conceiving of these pernicious acts themselves, and driving them to self-disgust, then to self-rejection and finally to madness. Of course, in a few cases the victims would be so inflamed by these whispered suggestions they’d go out on the streets and act upon them. Under such circumstances the victim would often be arrested and incarcerated. Prison would lead to further crimes, and a slow dwindling of moral reserves—and the victory was won by that route. One way or another insanity would win out.

 
Except that for some reason this rule did not apply to Polo; he was unperturbable: a tower of propriety.

  Indeed, the way things were going the Yattering would be the one to break. It was tired; so very tired. Endless days of tormenting the cat, reading the funnies in yesterday’s newspaper, watching the game shows: they drained the fury. Lately, it had developed a passion for the woman who lived across the Street from Polo. She was a young widow, and seemed to spend most of her life parading around the house stark naked. It was almost unbearable sometimes, in the middle of a day when the postman failed to call, watching the woman and knowing it could never cross the threshold of Polo’s house.

  This was the Law. The Yattering was a minor demon, and his soul-catching was strictly confined to the perimeters of his victim’s house. To step outside was to relinquish all powers over the victim: to put itself at the mercy of humanity.

  All June, all July and most of August it sweated in its prison, and all through those bright, hot months Jack Polo maintained complete indifference to the Yattering’s attacks.

  It was deeply embarrassing, and it was gradually destroying the demon’s self-confidence, seeing this bland victim survive every trial and trick attempted upon him.

  The Yattering wept.

  The Yattering screamed.

  In a fit of uncontrollable anguish, it boiled the water in the aquarium, poaching the guppies.

  Polo heard nothing. Saw nothing.

  * * *

  At last, in late September, the Yattering broke one of the first rules of its condition, and appealed directly to its masters.

  Autumn is Hell’s season; and the demons of the higher dominations were feeling benign. They condescended to speak to their creature.

  “What do you want?” asked Beelzebub, his voice blackening the air in the lounge.

  “This man . . .” the Yattering began nervously.

  “Yes?”

  “This Polo . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I am without issue upon him. I can’t get panic upon him, I can’t breed fear or even mild concern upon him. I am sterile, Lord of the Flies, and I wish to be put out of my misery.”