But Mouse was quiet, still, and cold.
Sherby put her under the sofa cushion.
Christmas was funny, Sherby thought, snuggling underneath the coats. Christmas was happy and sad, green and red, real and fake, all mixed together. “I don’t like it,” he muttered to himself, but as soon as he had said it, he knew it was not true. He wished—somehow—that he had been nicer to Santa Claus, even if Santa Claus was not real.
AFTERWORD
Do you know how M. R. James came to write all those great old ghost stories? He wrote one a year, no less and no more, to read to his family at Christmas. We associate ghost stories with Halloween now—see Neil Gaiman’s marvelous “October in the Chair”—but ghosts at Christmas are far older. The three seen by Ebenezer Scrooge are not the beginning but almost the end of a lengthy tradition. If you were to return as a ghost, wouldn’t you rather revisit your family at Christmas?
So I hope you noticed the ghosts, and that you noticed (as only a few readers do) that there is an anti-Santa, too. Poor Sherby rejects Santa Claus and gets someone much worse.
BED AND BREAKFAST
I
know an old couple who live near Hell. They have a small farm, and to supplement the meager income it provides (and to use up its bounty of chickens, ducks, and geese, of beefsteak tomatoes, bull-nose peppers, and roastin’ ears) open their spare bedrooms to paying guests. From time to time, I am one of those guests.
Dinner comes with the room if one arrives before five, and leftovers, of which there are generally enough to feed two or three more persons, will be cheerfully warmed up afterward—provided that one gets there before nine, at which hour the old woman goes to bed. After nine (and I arrived long after nine last week) guests are free to forage in the kitchen and prepare whatever they choose for themselves.
My own choices were modest: coleslaw, cold chicken, fresh bread, country butter, and buttermilk. I was just sitting down to this light repast when I heard the doorbell ring. I got up, thinking to answer it and save the old man the trouble, and heard his limping gait in the hallway. There was a murmur of voices, the old man’s and someone else’s; the second sounded like a deep-voiced woman’s, so I remained standing.
Their conversation lasted longer than I had expected, and although I could not distinguish a single word, it seemed to me that the old man was saying, “No, no, no,” and the woman proposing various alternatives.
At length he showed her into the kitchen, tall and tawny haired, with a figure rather too voluptuous to be categorized as athletic, and one of those interesting faces that one calls beautiful only after at least half an hour of study; I guessed her age near thirty. The old man introduced us with rustic courtesy, told her to make herself at home, and went back to his book.
“He’s very kind, isn’t he?” she said. Her name was Eira something.
I concurred, calling him a very good soul indeed.
“Are you going to eat all that?” She was looking hungrily at the chicken. I assured her I would have only a piece or two. (I never sleep well after a heavy meal.) She opened the refrigerator, found the milk, and poured herself a glass that she pressed against her cheek. “I haven’t any money. I might as well tell you.”
That was not my affair, and I said so.
“I don’t. I saw the sign, and I thought there must be a lot of work to do around such a big house, washing windows and making beds, and I’d offer to do it for food and a place to sleep.”
“He agreed?” I was rather surprised.
“No.” She sat down and drank half her milk, seeming to pour it down her throat with no need of swallowing. “He said I could eat and stay in the empty room—they’ve got an empty room tonight—if nobody else comes. But if somebody does, I’ll have to leave.” She found a drumstick and nipped it with strong white teeth. “I’ll pay them when I get the money, but naturally he didn’t believe me. I don’t blame him. How much is it?”
I told her, and she said it was very cheap.
“Yes,” I said, “but you have to consider the situation. They’re off the highway, with no way of letting people know they’re here. They get a few people on their way to Hell, and a few demons going out on assignments or returning. Regulars, as they call them. Other than that”—I shrugged—“eccentrics like me and passersby like you.”
“Did you say Hell?” She put down her chicken leg.
“Yes. Certainly.”
“Is there a town around here called Hell?”
I shook my head. “It has been called a city, but it’s a region, actually. The Infernal Empire. Hades. Gehenna, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. You know.”
She laughed, the delighted crow of a large, bored child who has been entertained at last.
I buttered a second slice of bread. The bread is always very good, but this seemed better than usual.
“ ‘Abandon hope, you who enter here.’ Isn’t that supposed to be the sign over the door?”
“More or less,” I said. “Over the gate Dante used, at any rate. It wasn’t this one, so the inscription here may be quite different, if there’s an inscription at all.”
“You haven’t been there.”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“But you’re going”—she laughed again, a deep, throaty, very feminine chuckle this time—“and it’s not very far.”
“Three miles, I’m told, by the old county road. A little less, two perhaps, if you were to cut across the fields, which almost no one does.”
“I’m not going,” she said.
“Oh, but you are. So am I. Do you know what they do in Heaven?”
