Billy Christmas Read online

  A predator. The thought hung in his mind and then dropped with awful realisation. He started pumping the pedals, spinning his legs as hard as he could through each gear.

  The Gargoyle had told him he would not succeed. Then it had said, “She is mine,” not “He is mine.” It wasn’t after his father. He forced the terror out of his mind and concentrated on taking the straightest line possible. The streets were abandoned, so Billy used every inch of both sides of the road, taking the apex of each corner at increasingly steep angles, closing his mind to the icy patches waiting to grab him. A sliver of hope pierced his mind: perhaps Saul could hold it at bay. The Tree would be inert by now, would it wake and defend the house? Would his mother have taken her sleeping pills? An image flashed before him, of her being carried away, limp, over the one-armed shoulder of the Gargoyle. He sped through Marlow Bottom with his head low, pounding knees almost meeting his jaw on the undersized bike. Reaching High Heavens Wood, Billy turned at his house, rode to the back, dived off his bike and burst through the door into the kitchen.

  Inside, the only sound was Billy’s exhausted breathing. He fought to silence it. He took a quick look at the still Tree, before turning and making his way up the stairs, fast and silent. He passed his own room and continued along the landing, past his parents’ bedroom and on to the spare. Almost not wanting to look, Billy forced himself to push open the door. As he did so, he first saw Saul, sleeping, then his mother breathing evenly, quite asleep. The deerhound’s eyes flashed open, and he raised his huge head from his paws. Billy threw him a small smile of relief. Turning back down the landing, then down the stairs, Billy went to have a word with the Tree.

  “Wake up.” Despite everything, he hated speaking to the Tree when it was still. It made him feel like he was crazy. He shook the branches. “We have to talk.”

  Apparently the Tree didn’t agree. It would not be roused.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He turned and headed back up the stairs and into his room. After he undressed, he put the knuckleduster back on, and then put the axe across his bed under his pillow. He was no longer wary of keeping these tools in the house; in a fight where he would be taking on mythic beasts, he thought this fair. For the first time in a year, before getting into bed, Billy made sure his bedroom door was left open. He didn’t want to be the last person to answer the front door if it was smashed off its hinges. Lying back in bed, he let the tiredness take him. A small voice spoke up inside his mind, the same voice that had told him to survive the Gargoyle no matter what happened. The only difference was that this time the tones were of quiet pride. He had made it through what had to be one of the toughest days of his life, and he was still in the fight to bring his father home.

  * * *

  The room was bright when he woke up, the low winter sun bounced off the walls, making him blink as he opened his eyes and checked the time. Noon, how had he slept through his alarm? By not setting it, of course. He had to be more careful now, even though he suspected the Gargoyle didn’t operate during waking hours. He listened for sounds in the house.

  “Mum? Mum…”

  No reply. He hopped out of bed, bashing his toe on the knuckleduster. It must have slipped off during the night. Billy made a mental note to keep it under his pillow in future, though for the time being it remained on the floor. He slung on his dressing gown and ran downstairs. There was a note on the hall table. His mother and Saul were off, out for the afternoon. Well, that was probably for the best. He went into the kitchen and started making a bacon sandwich, realising he hadn’t eaten since before his fight with Robert, only a day before, though it seemed much longer. It would be getting dark at around four o’clock. He needed to go and visit Katherine in hospital and be back before the evening drew in.

  * * *

  Cycling out of his drive and turning left, Billy passed the corner and headed out along the bridle-way which led to Lane End. Once in the village he crossed the motorway flyover, and went past the Chequers, a pub where his father used to take them for a Sunday treat. Up and down another two steep hills, where his light bike was a real advantage. As always the dogs from the farm bellowed their ferocious warning, while wagging their tails, knowing as well as Billy that it was expected of them. He got off his bike and walked to the hedgerow, where he placed his bike and climbed the public stile.

  He started counting kites. It was a good day with enough heat from the weak winter sun to coax up a few light thermals. The red kites had held his fascination since they had been reintroduced into the area. A huge wingspan and split V-shaped tail feathers made them look closer to small dragons than birds. It had been terrific news to Billy that his imagination had been backed up by science, with birds the likely evolutionary route that the dinosaurs had disappeared into.

  On his most successful day, Billy had counted no fewer than thirty birds. Below the birds was the main road, followed by the steep hill forming the other side of the valley. It was impossible not to notice the huge golden egg, which topped a collection of stone buildings on the top of this hill. Once, after reaching this spot while walking off the Sunday roast from the Chequers, Billy had asked his father why they built it.

  “To distract people from what was going on in the caves underneath,” said Tom Christmas.

  Billy’s mother rolled her eyes, knowing where this was going.

  “Going on in the caves?” asked Billy, his eyes widening.

  “Don’t you dare tell him,” said his mother, smiling despite her disapproval.

  “What happened in the caves?”

  “Tom. No!”

  “What, the Hellfire Club? A great deal of, er, snogging. With nuns too,” said his father, avoiding a substantial punch from his wife.

  “Oh gross,” said Billy, holding his father still, so his mother could land her attack.

  “Well, you asked!”

  The punches rained from both Billy and his mother. Tom crouched low on the ground.

  “Would’ve been a bit cold for me,” he said, with a terrible grin. “Bloody chilly in those caves.”

  Thoroughly disgusted, Billy toppled him onto his side and walked his mother away in mock horror.

  Smiling at the memory, Billy turned and fished his bike from the hedge. He got enough speed from the hill to get him all the way to the main road, and back on his way to see Katherine in the hospital.

  * * *

  Billy and Katherine moved out of the ward to a quiet corridor, and sat on spongy chairs which looked out through huge windows over High Wycombe. Katherine was still quite wobbly, and Billy had had to steady her as she sat. Once down, she was straight out onto the thin ice.

  “No excuses. I want to hear about this magical quest.”

  He’d forgotten that a rejuvenated Katherine would be picking over the bones of what he had said and what he had done. He wondered what could he tell her without appearing like a complete lunatic?

  “If you’re having a breakdown, that’s fine,” said Katherine. “Dad had one when Mum died. Talked complete gibberish for days, poetry almost. Very un-Army-like. But great fun in a strange way.”

  He’d also forgotten how blunt she could be when in possession of a large amount of energy and a few facts to run with. At these times there was a side of her that reminded him of the persistent journalists who had followed him in the weeks after his father’s disappearance. They had offered him birthday presents for his mother in early January, with cameras running to ensure any clip they caught could make it out onto the evening news. Unlike them, Katherine was decent, but in the way a well-placed punch could be decent.

  “How did those tests go?

  “Fine. One more to go, and then I should get out this afternoon. Don’t change the subject.”

  “Say I am having a breakdown.”

  Katherine sat up eagerly. “Oh good, go on.”

  “And in my madness I had found a way to bring back my dad.”

  “Nice. Delusional, and timely too.”

 
“This madness made me attempt many difficult things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like having a bad fight, like having to meet people when I should be in school, and like, well, like trying to kiss you.”

  “That wasn’t your own idea?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh. Well, these tasks don’t sound too bad.”

  Billy pulled his knees up to his chest. “Then there was the fence that I had to chop down.”

  “Well I’m glad you did that! What do these voices sound like? The ones that ask you to do these things.”

  For a second Billy thought Katherine was being sarcastic, but looking over he could tell she was just concerned. He smiled.

  “I don’t hear voices in my head. Well, no more than you do, I suspect,” he said, looking back out over the rooftops of High Wycombe. “But the stakes keep being raised.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. The sky was beginning to grey over and, though he had other things on his mind, Billy began to wish for the long summer days to arrive. The nights were becoming inhospitable.

  “I get out tonight. Let me come and help you,” said Katherine. “It must be miserable having to do all this on your own.”

  “You can’t even stand up without a hand at the moment.”

  “I could help you plan what you have to do. It sounds like so much fun.”

  Billy remembered sliding head first off the church roof with a Gargoyle’s paw locked around his throat. It would be nice to have some moral support, but there was no way he wanted to drag Katherine into any danger.

  “I think I have to do this by myself.”

  Katherine looked down, disappointed. “It’s not like there is that much time before I have to leave anyway.”

  Billy had forgotten about that. He was desperate that they should keep in contact after she went away. Perhaps he shouldn’t exclude her from this, but wasn’t it selfish to do that, knowing that there could be real trouble from here on in?

  “Get yourself out of here, and fit, and if there is anything I can bring you in on, I’ll let you know.”

  A huge smile burst over Katherine’s face. “I’ll start packing my bags.”

  “I haven’t promised any…”

  “I meant, I’ll be ready if you need me.”

  December 21st

  BILLY PACED AROUND THE LIVING room. His mother had gone to bed early, looking well after her afternoon out with Saul. On the way home, the wind had started to push him off the cycle path and into the road, whipping up from nowhere, and as he looked now outside the window, the leafless pear tree was being pummelled so much that Billy feared it wouldn’t last the night. As soon as he was confident his mother was asleep, he had brought down the axe, the cricket bat and the knuckleduster, and was patrolling between the front and rear of the house, leaving the lights off so he could see out as far as possible.

  The conversation with Katherine had started to bother him. It had occurred to him that everything that had been happening to him could have been exactly what he had suggested to her: figments of his overactive imagination. He could conceivably have dreamt up the reasons for everything so far. For fighting Robert, for climbing up the church and perhaps hallucinating the Gargoyle, for wanting to kiss Katherine. He knew he was apt to get lost in his daydreams. They were so vivid it was possible he could be spinning this strange tale himself. He stopped and checked himself. Hadn’t the vicar seen the Gargoyle too? Hadn’t Agnes seen the Tree for herself?

  Actually, Agnes had never told him that she had seen the Tree. Perhaps he had imagined her too, but hadn’t he seen her all these years, fighting to feed the ducks? Wasn’t she known in Marlow as the Duck Lady? Another thought struck him. Katherine had seen the sheet music moving. If Katherine had seen that, then all this had to be real, hadn’t it? Billy found himself staring out into the windswept garden at the back of the house.

  “Nasty weather,” said the Tree.

  Turning, Billy glared at the Tree.

  “Why didn’t you warn me about the Gargoyle?”

  “I’m sorry, Billy,” said the Tree. “Had I prepared you for it, you might not have survived at all.”

  “If I hadn’t taken the knuckleduster along, my mother would have been burying me right now.”

  “Oh I doubt that,” said the Tree, holding Billy’s angry look. “Gargoyles don’t tend to leave much to bury.”

  He took a breath. “I’m sure that would be a great comfort to Mum. Why did we have to release it?”

  “The reasons for the tasks are not always clear. It will most likely have some further part to play. But I am glad you prevailed. We should talk a little tonight.”

  Billy followed the Tree back to the embers of the fire. The Tree propped a branch on the mantelpiece, and Billy sat on the footstool.

  “Have you ever wondered if it was normal that you were able to be in two places at once? I mean, that you could be in a classroom taking in the lesson, and also lost in the mountains of your imagination?”

  “You mean, as in daydreams?”

  These had always felt entirely normal to Billy. Often he was able to stay tuned to the waking world at the same time as daydreaming. He assumed it was a similar process to acting, where part of the mind is thinking logically about the words and the cues, and the other is reacting to the world as if this is the first time the scene has played out. Except in his mind there wasn’t a script, and the people he met were so real as to make it hard to believe he was just daydreaming.

  The Tree nodded.

  “But everyone has those, don’t they?”

  He thought about it. Both sides of his consciousness went into his imagination. On these occasions, he would be impossible to rouse. These episodes had so worried his mother that he had been to see a specialist at hospital, and had an MRI scan to check that there was no brain damage from his numerous dismountings: the rocking horse, his bike, the apple trees, and the shed roof.

  “Not everyone has completely vivid excursions…no,” said the Tree.

  “I see other kids sometimes, in the daydreams,” said Billy, speaking slowly. “But it’s not like a dream, we have full conversations. They even give me their e-mail addresses. But I don’t have the internet, so I can never try them out.”

  “I should try stamps next time,” said the Tree. “That system seemed to work perfectly well on my last visit.”

  “But it’s just my imagination,” said Billy. “Daydreams aren’t magic! Not like this, I mean.”

  The Tree leaned in closer. “Not magic, you say? Whoever told you that?”

  “They can’t be. They’re just normal.”

  “It’s normal to be looking forward, eyes quite open, and you quite awake,” said the Tree. “But not seeing the world around you? You can touch the trees, run faster than your form would allow, you can lift your feet off the ground and fly.”

  He’d never thought of this as anything other than normal. Didn’t everyone have moments like this?

  The Tree stood up straighter, making Billy look up. “The point is that you have a very powerful imagination. More powerful than you can know. You use it like an infant might use a fully functioning spaceship. To sit in, pretending to escape the world, but never even throwing an exploratory switch to see what it feels like to fly. Over time, if you choose, you may come to understand and use the controls.”

  Billy was staring into the fire. It was eerie listening to the Tree make sense of his restless mind.

  “We Trees don’t simply pick the most needy child, like some terrible cosmic equation. There are children in the world that would outscore you on that front. We are called. Some part of you that you don’t fully understand pulled me into your world. The tasks are, in part, of your own making.”

  There was nothing for Billy to say. So often when the Tree was awake, his rational mind forgot all the questions he had. Fighting off his stupor, Billy stood up. “So what am I supposed to do with this gift then?”

  “I’d ca
ll it an ability. A potential ability. This only becomes a gift if you are able to hone it,” said the Tree. “In a few more days, I shall be gone. Whether you succeed or fail, this ability will exist; it is yours to explore. But if I have learnt anything about human nature, it is that your memories are short. Patterns repeat themselves throughout history, and lives. With your father back here, will you remember me?”

  A ten-foot talking Tree? There was no way that would fade from his mind, would it?

  Around the Tree, the walls started to reflect the green pulse of light, which indicated that the decoration ritual had begun. Billy took a step backwards as the Tree leant in towards him. The skates, the bike, the iron bar and the mistletoe remained on the branches, and Billy saw each of them pass his eyes before the Tree reached out with a single stem. It was the replica of his bike. He reached out and picked it up.

  “What do I…?”

  “It is a keepsake,” said the Tree. “Do with it what you will. Tomorrow you must give away that which you have come to value. These possessions can no longer offer comfort.”

  Billy didn’t like the sound of this.

  “You must give your bicycle up as reparation to your enemy,” said the Tree.

  “I can’t do that, it was a present!”

  “And you must give the dog to Agnes.”

  “No!” Billy held both hands to the Tree in horror. He hadn’t thought that Saul was anything other than a gift to bring his mother around, never contemplating that he’d have to take him away from her. His bike was a gift from his father, perhaps his last gift from him.

  “The tasks are not to be questioned, Billy.”

  “I don’t understand. I can’t take Saul away from her, she’ll sink back down, be depressed again, I know it.”

  The Tree hopped back to the bucket. “I can only try to navigate a little, Billy,” said the Tree, losing patience. “It is up to you to steer. This is about opportunity and faith. But if you’d prefer a dog and a bike, those are choices available to you.” The Tree fell still and silent.

  “Damn it!” Billy kicked the red chair. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to see Robert again before next term. Now he had to give him his beloved bike. The gift that had been a bit more than his father could afford; which had saved him from countless fights; which had taken him to be with Katherine that afternoon. And Saul. How was he supposed to take away his mother’s closest companion, when in one week he had brought her around more than any love he had offered over the last year had been able to? Why did the cost have to be so high? He collected his weapons and trudged up the stairs, stamping his feet as quietly as possible.