Part 5

He was up and sat on the edge of his bed in a moment.  All he could hear was the sound of his own blood pumping at speed.  Nothing else stirred in the darkness.

This time he did not try to sleep.  He stood and looked out of the window at the starlight reflecting on the ice, feeling very tired  and disturbed.  The people in the woods were bad enough, but this last dream had involved images of himself, like broken fragments, shards reflecting something...   It made him feel uncomfortable, but he was not sure why.  “This is Christmas,” he said to himself and the Citadel around him, “this is how Christmas looks.   What’s the matter with it?  Nothing, that’s what.  That’s how Christmas is. That’s how Christmas has always been.”  He wiped his brow.  “Isn’t it?”

The clock began to strike twelve.  Nick stopped breathing and waited....nine...ten...eleven...twelve.  The echoes faded leaving only a suggestion of disturbance in the air, and then that too was gone.  He was about to say “Well, come on let’s get it over with,” when the floor vanished.

 “Welllaaaaaaragghgggghhhhh!” he said instead, falling at considerable speed.  There was no light to illuminate his context, and only the rushing of air to let him know he was falling whilst pointing the right way up.

Thump!  He hit the floor, tumbled and landed in something which was dry and crumbling beneath his face and hands.  He did not feel hurt, but that didn’t seem an especially convincing reason to look up and face whatever awfulness lay before him.  So he didn’t and just lay there, taking in data with ears and nose: trees again, and these must be dry needles or small leaves, and a very slight breeze rustling in the boughs of something.  Oh goody, another wood.  

“Maybe I can just sleep here. Maybe it will go away.” Deep inside he knew this was a futile hope, not least because he was already, technically speaking, asleep.  There was a stirring nearby, not the wind but a something.   He looked up.  Okay, this one had obviously read the book.

It was night, but the moon shone brightly enough to lightly silver the dark hood and cloak of the tall figure.  Nick scrambled to his feet, no easy task when one has the proportions of a space-hopper.  He brushed from his beard and hair the dead leaves of the large yew trees which formed a circle around them.  “Right,” thought Nick,  “night-time, Yew trees in a circle, cloaked figure.   Feeling bad, feeling bad...try speaking.”

He cleared his throat. “Christmas future?”

The figure remained silent, and although his face – was there a face in there? – was obscured by shadow, it felt as though  he was staring at Nick.  Nick carried on regardless:  “You will show me shadows of things which have not yet happened, but will happen in the time to come, is that not so, Spirit?”  

It said nothing, but slowly raised its shrouded arm.  Nick’s eyes widened at this gesture, and took a step back from what he feared would be a skeletal hand.  Then noticed at the end of the sleeve was an ordinary hand.  It was holding  a torch, an electric torch.

“You’ll need this!” said a voice from within the hood, which the Guide swiftly pulled down.    “It’s dark!” he said cheerfully, by way of explanation,  “Parky, isn’t it?”

 Nick remained frozen, mouth open, waiting for normal transmission in his brain to resume.  Wasn’t this the bit with open graves and silent terror?  The Guide raised his eyebrows and then shook the torch in Nick’s direction in an encouraging manner. Nick took it  and closed his mouth.

“Long night for you!” said the Guide.  Was he a Cockney?   “Mind you I would have thought you’d be used to that, tearing off ‘round the world in one night.  ‘Ere, how come your reindeer don’t catch fire?”

Nick was staring at the torch as if he hadn’t seen one before and then stared at the man instead.  The head protruding from the dramatic cloak was, in its own way, also dramatic – plentiful black hair and a sharp black beard, with deep, olive  skin and angular features.  The Guide continued, with the chatter of one of life’s individuals who cannot bear a vacuum:

“You’re thinking ‘how can an imposing figure like him  talk like that?” aren’t you?

And why he doesn’t comb his hair, thought Nick.

“ ‘And why doesn’t he comb his hair?’ Well the thing is, I don’t normally look or sound like this. Technically speaking, I don’t look like anything.  I just thought I’d try it out for the night.  It’s been a while, you know.  So I thought: powerful Dickensian exterior, but underneath Merlin-esque imposing looks, with a hint of John the Baptist, plus barrow-boy nuances.  I don’t get to do this kind of thing often these days, so you gotta grab it while its going.  Four for the price of one.”

Nick was not sure whether to feel terrified or just slightly short-changed.  “Where am I?”

“Graveyard.”

He settled for terrified.

“Right, me old ducka,” continued the Guide.

“Mucca.”

“Mucca, that’s what I said. This way.”  He marched off between two of the yews. Nick trailed  behind.  On the other side of the trees was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot more darkness.  Clouds had drifted across the moon and all he could see was the vague outlines of shapes, angular shapes.  Gravestones.  He felt depressed.  Jiggling was  now off the menu.  They walked for a few minutes and then the Guide stopped and said, “This’ll do!”

“For what?” Nick’s mouth was dry and he was desperately wishing he was somewhere else.  He did not deserve this.  He knew he didn’t.  He had brought immense pleasure to billions.  His life was about giving, not taking, about lights and smiles and music.  How could this be happening?

“Turn your torch on then.”

The torch became the weight of granite and the switch touch of poison. He didn’t want to switch it on. “If I turn it on, where should I point it?”

“Errr....over here, this one will do.”

Nick turned to the darker blackness of the headstone and pointed the torch.  He did not want to see or feel what was inscribed there.  As slow as death, he moved the switch and the light flicked on.  He stared in horror at the words before him.  The words took a moment to sink in, and then:  “Never heard of him.”

“No?” the Guide peered at the name on the grave, “Oh well.  Try this one.”

Nick swung the beam onto another stone. “Nor him.”

“You’re not very good at this are you, me old miner?”

“China.”

“China.”

“Are you sure you’ve done this before?”

“Course I have!  I’m what you might call a Professional Messenger.”  He drifted off in  the dark a little, “Here’s a likely looking one, I mean look at the size of it!”

Nick followed and played the torch over the impressive tomb.  It was four times the size of the other stones, towering above the two men, with ornate carving down either side, and the words were not carved but inlaid with what looked to Nick like titanium.  He swallowed hard and started to read.

“The whole earth mourns the loss of one we can never replace,” tears started to form in Nick’s eyes, “the strength and security he brought through generations was matched only by his endless generosity – oh that’s nice,” sobbed Nick, “very nice – and we rest our hearts in the knowledge that his sons – my sons!  They take over? It’s what I wanted! – will continue the great work and tradition.  To his detractors – ha! All those whiners about the T-MOC -  we say: you can’t prove anything!  He was nowhere near the betting shop the night Big Jimmy went down...”  Nick’s mental equipment was under a lot of strain, and the air was starting to feel very close and stuffy, but one thing was clear:

“ This isn’t my grave.”

“I never said it was.”

“Well which one is mine?”

“None of them.  You have a timeless existence, you won’t die. Not in the normal sense anyway.”

“Then why am I here?!  All this forbodingness and darkness and graves.  What’s it all about?  If my grave isn’t here, whose graves are they?”

“Everyone else’s.”

“Everyone else? Which particular everyone else? Like who?”

“Like...everyone else’s.”

Nick paused as a number of interpretations suggested themselves.  A particularly dark one was jumping up and down at the back of the queue, but he tried to ignore it.

“Yes, but when you say everyone, specifically who are we talking about.”

The Guide fixed his dark eyes on Nick’s.  “We’re talking about Everyone.  This is Christmas Future.  This is the Last Christmas.”

The air, which had been feeling uncomfortable and odd for a while, suddenly convulsed and a shattering concussion of lightning and thunder hurt Nick’s ears and eyes.  But the shock of sound was nothing compared to the shock of sight.  The percussive flash illuminated ranks of gravestones around him in every direction, for as far as he could see.  In the next flash he looked beyond to the walls of the cemetery: there were no walls, what he had taken for the boundary was yet more lines of graves proceeding far beyond the point where any sensible cemetery would have stopped.  Again the sky arced with electricity, and illuminated the retreating hills that climbed to the distant horizon.  The furthest hill, miles away, was not smoothed in outline by the distance, but serrated with a thousand tiny, angular,  full-stops.  Nick knew in his heart that every tiny point was a grave, and that every hill would be the same. The cemetery was gargantuan; it felt like it was the world.  The lightning ceased, the sound rumbled away and silence returned, a silence Nick now realised that had, until the storm, remained completely unbroken by anything except for himself, the Guide and the wind.

“Everyone?” asked Nick, weakly.

“Everyone.”

“But why bring me here, why show me myself alone in the world?  Did I cause this somehow?”

“No.  This is death at work, this is the curse of the Fall.  I remember it well.”

Something stirred in Nick’s memory, something from the story, the question to the third ghost.  “But is this what certainly will be, or only what might be?”

“Err....both.”  Nick’s slightly reviving hope went limp again.  What did that mean?

“So why bring me here?  What can I do about it? I can’t stop people from dying, I’m Father Christmas – I deliver toy trains and jiggle my belly.”

“But you are powerful. And you are fast. And everyone listens for you. And you won’t die. And, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem to have remembered the what and have forgotten the why.”

“But that won’t make people live forever!  That can’t overturn death.  I can’t bring eternity to a finite universe.  I’m not eternal – I may not die but I had a start, a beginning...sometime...it’s hazy now. But I do know that I’m limited.  I can’t open up a hole into forever and let it flow into the world.  Who can do that?”

“If there’s one thing tonight should do, it’s highlight your memory issues.”

“If someone could do that,” Nick carried on regardless, becoming more agitated, “then they would have done it long ago.”

“Someone can, and someone did.  Think, Nick!  Think!”

There was light from above again, but not from a storm this time.  The sky was clearing, and as the stars appeared once more over the silent world, one star shone more brightly, so brightly that the edges of the graves shone, and he could see the Guide’s features once more. His eyes reflected the light of the great star, at which he gazed with beautiful smile.  “Well, I haven’t seen you in a long time...”

Nick gazed at it too.  “There’s something about it, something long ago...”

“Come on Nick!  Strike a light and push your granny down the stairs, mush!”

“What?!”

“Nick, what are you for?”

“What am I for?”  The star was bothering him. Its light seemed to be inside his eyes, though he was looking at the Guide.  “I...don’t remember...what I’m for...”

“Oh Nick, look, think.”

Nick turned back to look at the star, and in that moment there was a great rustle by his side, and when he looked back to the Guide the cloak was just completing its empty journey to the ground.   In his confusion Nick was aware only of a movement, of a great wing gently brushing his face as it moved upwards. Nick span, but saw nothing, and then looking upwards there was for a moment a lesser light in the sky, approaching the bright star.  It entered the halo of light around the greater brightness, and was gone.  And then the star was gone too. All was darkness.