Post by Witcher Wolf on Dec 11, 2006 8:07:49 GMT -5
Thanks to Libby, since she masterminded this project I present to you this little EC-10 Christmas tale that's set prior to Ashes II in many ways...
Enjoy!
Tinsel Dreams, Bauble Nightmares
It is said that the spirit of humanity cannot truly be broken; it can be battered and trodden upon, crushed into the grit and soil. It can be tied up in rope and bound with laws and harsh realities, but it cannot truly be broken. Once upon a year in the past, before the world turned to fire, ash and smoke, there was a festival that mankind knew – it was rendered in many forms throughout the world but they had several threads in common.
Libria did not share this festival spirit and all things that came from it, books, films, music and media were sent to the flames by trained servants of the fascist regime of Father. Under a grey sky, in a flat-block world of steel and stone the people of that particular city lived, churning through their lives like the cogs of some massive machine.
But that time had come to an end. Now Libria was rebuilt and society had learned to cope without the amber soul-draining liquid known as Prozium. The zombie-like milling crowds had to undergo withdrawal, a new government and a different police force – the Grammaton Clerics were no longer the steel fist of Father, they were still deadly and highly trained, but they brought justice with an even hand and not the smoking barrel of a hypocrite’s gun.
The New Order maintained the laws and mandates for the masses quite effectively with their agents, there was still the primeval feat from those who had never known the caress of Prozium (who still lived) but that was a small price to pay for the golden apple that was freedom, people were willing to adapt if it meant they did not die for a tear.
So then we turn the calendar forth a little on this Christmas tale: for it is indeed the Season to be jolly. Save that Libria knew nothing of Santa Claus, gifts and celebrations. Nor did many of them care, for that in of itself was a great sadness and the catalyst for this particular snapshot in John Preston’s life.
Darkness fell across the city of Libria on this bleak December, for some unexplained reason the power across the city had decided to fail. The turbines ceased their irritated whine and rhythmic whirr; the fires burned low and then out. Technicians attempted to fix this particular problem.
Finally after hours of painstaking technical investigation the fault was found. One of the older substations still connected to the central grid had ceased to function, like a beating heart that pushes too far, it had stopped and there was no more life within the steel and wires.
“And it’s coming from the Nethers?” Preston stood with his black gloved hands folded behind his back, his dark searching eyes fastened to the technician’s readouts as the light from a panel reflected in his gaze.
“Yes sir,” the man answered somewhat nervously. “Substation 2b has caused an overload on the grid, a part burned out I think and caused a strain on the system. It shouldn’t have happened and I’m sorry that it did.”
Preston’s low and almost emotionless voice sounded hollow; “sorry?” he questioned and cocked his head to one side. The question caused the man to shiver.
“Yes?”
“Why, it’s not your fault. I could say that I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter since I didn’t cause the power failure. I’ll get someone out there,” he corrected himself then. “No, I’ll go myself.”
“What’s the problem John?”
Preston turned in a machine-like precision and rested his hand on the technician’s shoulder. He fixed his gaze onto Tara Night and smiled a little. “I wondered when you’d break from your training schedule and come to check the power station out.”
“You know me all too well John,” she gave a breezy bright smile and adjusted her coat. “Do you want me to come with you to the Nethers, its dark outside and you might get lost without my senses to guide you?”
Preston frowned a moment, the technician tensed but all John did was laugh. “It’s not up to me to decide, but I would /like/ it if you did,” even now that word was new to John but he had accepted her as part of his life, come to rely on her even after the events that robbed him of his family.
“The car’s out back,” she chuckled and turned to walk away. “Wrap up warm John, the wind’s chill tonight.”
They left the technician (who breathed a sigh of relief) and stepped out of the room. A short walk down a corridor led them to the outside car park. They required the use of a flashlight to navigate in the pitch black.
John stopped suddenly and he blinked, something bitterly cold touched his cheek and he snapped off his glove. His hand went up and a single finger traced the skin.
“What?” Tara stopped as dead as Preston and peered at the man, “what’s wrong?”
He looked at the small spot of water on his finger, it was cold and as he turned his head to the sky a white shower greeted him. John Preston’s mind flashed back to the Nethers, to Mary and to a secret room where he first truly felt overwhelmed without his amber dirge.
His hand flicked in reflex to the memory and he shook his head. “Old memories, ghosts of the past – nothing more,” he lied. “Shall we go?”
He was curiously silent as the car left the parking lot and raced out into the dark. The white flakes continued to fall and they created a blanket of sorts against the driving vehicle. The lights cut through the curtain of white and illuminated it, like Errol’s shroud.
“Do you dream Preston?”
He turned his head to Tara and made a questioning face. “What did you say?”
“Nothing?” she replied and gave him an equally strange look back. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
John steeled himself and blinked a couple of times, he carefully pulled the car into the Nethers and steered it towards the edge of a familiar church. The substation was close to that place and a broken-down old house stood forlornly like a wasted dream to the right, a single point of illumination drew Preston’s gaze.
He stopped the car and opened the doors. Tara and he stepped from the vehicle and looked around, the Nethers had been transformed by this white powder and it reminded him so much of the odd ball he broke before Libria tasted freedom.
He began to walk towards the illumination, perhaps there was a stranded soul out here that got caught in the weather? Perhaps they might need help?
As he got closer to the ruined house he began to hear the sounds of laughter, two children’s voices were raised in high-toned appreciation of something amusing.
Tara looked at him, looked at the light and followed with a quick step. She moved past John Preston and stood at the window. What she saw sent a chill down her spine but at the same time she felt oddly at peace.
Preston stepped up and words failed him. Inside the broken home there was a table, laden with all kinds of food. Four figures sat around it and they were laughing. It was as though Preston had been smacked in the face, he recoiled back at the sight of those four people and landed in the snow, his face was a mask of shock and awe.
The laughter increased for a moment and then silenced, a small figure appeared at the window and looked out.
“Are you Ok dad?”
Tara was frozen still in the same kind of shock; her conscious mind was seeing something her subconscious could not rationalise. Her sanity hung with a tiny thread before her Grammaton training asserted itself and she took a breath.
“Robbie?”
“Hello Tara,” he said with a business-like tone. “Can you help my dad out of the snow?”
“Yes, it must be awfully cold out there at the moment. He’s never seen snow either, you need to both come in now or you’ll freeze,” the demanding tones belonged to Preston’s daughter – but how, they were dead, weren’t they? She’d been there when that whole mess had happened. “Oh, please.”
Before Tara could react or even move to Preston, the door opened and out stepped a tall man. He no longer wore the uniform of a Grammaton Cleric, he looked rather like the photo that Preston had stolen and kept. With easy steps he made his way over to John Preston and extended his hand.
“Only once on this night Preston,” Errol said with a dry tone. “Miracles can truly happen. I wish I had of been there to see you end it all for us, no hard feelings eh?”
John’s mind reeled but his own Grammaton training snapped to the front and he took Errol’s hand. It was solid, it wasn’t mist, he had no idea why or how this had happened but he was hauled to his feet.
“I shot you,” he said and closed his eyes, when he opened them again Errol was still there. “I saw you die.”
“Yes John,” Errol smiled sadly. “It couldn’t be helped. Think of me as part of the catalyst that turned you into a deliverer and not a devourer.”
“I’m sorry,” he had wanted to say those words and the tears that fell from his eyes couldn’t be stemmed. “I am so, so sorry.”
“I know,” Errol embraced his friend until Preston’s sobs grew into softer whimpers and then he let him go. “On this night Preston, old wounds can be healed, old friends can be reunited – but by morning we’ll be memories again.”
Tara was the one to ask as Robbie and Lisa looked on, “how?”
“I can’t answer that,” Errol gave a lopsided shrug. “It’s not up to me to tell you these things, but I do have something I’d like to share with you. Come on in?”
She looked to Preston and then as he moved towards the door with Errol, she followed. The snow began to drive down from the sky again and the white blanket tore across the landscape, in a few hours they’d be lucky to find the car.
The final figure waited for them both in the candle-lit interior of the room, there, Mary sat with a small glass of sherry before her. She looked to the side of John Preston and gave Tara a warm smile.
“Hello to you both, you finally came then?” she still had that scent and John touched his pocket but the ribbon was elsewhere.
“Mary?”
“Yes John,” she answered. “Mary, Robbie, Lisa and Errol – you have to be a little scared don’t you?”
“More than a little,” John admitted and closed the door. “I, I never expected this.”
“We didn’t either dad, but you’re just in time for Christmas Dinner!” Lisa bounded over and sat at her place. “Robbie, come on!”
Robbie took his place and Errol pulled out chairs for both Tara and Preston, then he took his own place at the head of the table.
“So then, Christmas, I think you’re wondering what that is?” he began to carve the turkey with a sharp knife and a slight grin on his lips. “
John Preston took a deep breath and drew in the smell of the food, it was incredible and he touched the table with his gloved hand – then he once more took of those gloves and folded them away. He touched the table and stroked it.
“What is Christmas?” Tara followed John’s example almost too methodically and gave an apologetic smile.
For the first part of the meal John and Tara were given a turkey dinner fit for several kings. They feasted upon the food and Errol explained to them the concept of Christmas, he gave them a sad smile as he told the story and then continued to eat and drink.
It was a lot of information for the pair to assimilate and they did, they tried their best to rationalise this event but there was nothing that gave them grounding in reality. The whole scene unfolded with a semi-tense but completely surreal nature as if it were some kind of shared dream.
It was an astounding experience for both Tara and John as the ghosts (for that in truth is what they were) of this snowy night gave them the explanation of Christmas, something that was ripped out of the heart of Libria early on as humanity fumbled around in the shadow of a new world’s construction.
“It was felt, Preston, that even though you were the biggest exponent of the Grammaton way of life. Of Father’s hypocritical laws – that you would be the perfect person to understand the concept once it was explained to you,” now Errol sounded as though he flirted with his old Grammaton speech but the warm smile on his lips was enough to assure Tara this wasn’t the case.
John frowned again but the whole feeling of such a sumptuous banquet, the intoxicating effect of the mysterious dark liquid that Robbie had called Sherry and the vague hypnotic dance of the candle light took him completely off guard and for the first time in a while, Preston relaxed.
He listened intently to everything that Errol, Mary, Robbie and Lisa said about the festival and he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a small grey handkerchief.
“It’s a lot to take in,” he admitted and looked to Tara. “I can’t believe what’s going on, my logical mind tells me that it’s something else, but I can’t deny that my belly feels full and my hands are warm. You’re all dead, but somehow you’ve come back to share with us…this…moment?”
“That’s about right dad,” Robbie gave a lopsided grin before he looked again at Errol. “Errol has been good to us since we joined him and Mary, he said we’re ghosts and pretty soon we’ll just move on to other things. But it’s been fun dad, don’t be sad about what happened – it shouldn’t have happened, but it did and you can’t change it.”
Preston’s lips twitched and his jaw tightened, he wanted to pull Robbie close to him and share something that had been denied by Father’s liquid shackles, but he chose not to – in years from now he’d come to ask himself why, but find no answer or comfort.
This would be the first and last time that he’d see these kinds of ghosts.
Tara was lucky in one way. She had been raised with the new order in mind, her training, whilst just as strict and rigorous as that of Preston’s was somewhat more fluid in the mindset and she always did have this hope that ghosts and mysterious events like this were real.
If you’d have asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she’d have probably answered: a miracle.
And what a miracle the spirit of Christmas personified in this odd happening was. Errol, Mary, Robbie and Lisa were as real as they possibly could be on this one cold night in a bleak and snow-laden December.
Even the old Christmas tree festooned with glowing red, white, blue and yellow lights, decorated with care and love seemed to be as solid as the meal and table before them. Tara was swept into this fantastic world deeper and deeper by the second.
It was a pity then as the snow and ice lay all about outside and time marched on with a relentless sharp-step marked by the rapidly lightening sky. This wonderful night had to come to an end.
It was the shade of Errol that noticed the first rays of the pre-dawn light touch the horizon and he gave a wistful sigh. He looked at Mary, Robbie and Lisa with a sad expression and then finally to Preston and Tara he gave a singular nod.
“No!” John was out of his chair and his hand stopped frozen as it passed through Lisa’s arm, he recoiled in shock as the scene before them unravelled as if it were a kitten-wrecked ball of yarn.
A whisper passed through the air it sounded as if it might have been a ‘Merry Christmas’ but it left a yawning valley of loss in John’s heart for a moment before he looked around. They were in a cold and ruined building, there was nothing here now, no candles and no sign that there’d ever been a strange meeting.
Tara left his side and began to sift through the decimated rubble, through the snow and ice until she found something. A metal ring in the floor stood out against the starkness of the snow. She took it and pulled hard, the snow fell away and a small hatch revealed a ladder down into the ground below.
“John, come and look at this?”
Preston snapped out of his miasma of thought and walked over; he knelt at the edge of the hole and flicked on his flashlight. There was something illuminated in the darkness and he cracked a smile when he caught a glint of a bauble. It was only a short drop but he took the ladder and crouched in the gloom.
“You’re not going to believe this Tara,” he said as he looked up. “But you should come down and see for yourself.”
Tara followed him down the ladder and onto the floor where she knelt down and examined the object he’d found. “It’s,” she began to shiver a little but not from the cold. “It looks just like that tree last night?”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know how though…”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to know how, Errol said that Christmas was a time for all kinds of celebration. I think this old tree here was part of an EC-10 cache that Errol couldn’t bring himself to destroy when Father still lived.”
“You mean that this house was connected to Errol and Mary?”
“I have a feeling that it was somewhere they’d meet out of the sight of the Sweepers and the rest of Libria, me included.” Preston smiled a little more and picked up the shiny bauble, “a little place of Christmas magic where they kept all sorts of dreams alive.” He put it down again. “I wonder if that’s what the message was…”
“What message?”
“Last night’s event was meant to teach us something. I mean it’s true, it happened and we can’t deny that. I don’t know how it happened but I know that I feel full, a little, intoxicated from that drink as well as upset and happy from the meeting.”
“I do as well,” Tara gave a tiny nod and she picked up the discarded bauble amongst the ruin of the old tree. “So what do we do now?”
“We repair the sub-station and keep the weather shield off, we’re going to set a big tree in the old hall and re-ignite the spirit of Christmas. That’s what Errol, Mary, Robbie and Lisa would have wanted – that’s what they want.”
With such conviction in the man’s voice it was hard not to smile so Tara did again. She patted him on the face. “Do you think the people will be able to take the name seriously?”
“What name?”
“Well Errol did say that Santa Claus was called Father Christmas!”
Preston’s lips twitched for a moment and then he laughed for a while. “I’m not sure; we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now we’ve got to get back on track, Libria’s been without power for a night and people are probably freezing even with backup generators.”
They left the cellar and the ruined tree but Preston had a singular mission on his mind now. First the substation and then the great hall, his plan was simple and by the end of this Librian week he was going to re-introduce people to the concept of Christmas, not so much as a religious festival but as something to bring a new hope, light and life to the post-Father era of his world.
Or at least that’s what he hoped.
It took him that much time to order the constriction of the massive tree, the creation of the ribbons, garlands, lights and other festival equipment. He even managed to dig out an old recording from a cache of EC-10 that was saved by the Resistance fighters, Jurgan included.
At the end of the week he stood with Tara and many of Libria’s citizens in the great hall. It had been transformed by the orders of New Libria’s government into a strange wonderland of baubles, rope lights and garlands. A large Christmas tree stood in dominance and as Preston pulled the switch a cheer went up from the assembled crowd.
Light flooded the darkness and each light gleamed brightly, they became at once a wishing star or a tiny shred of hope in each person’s heart. It was something that the neither government nor John Preston ever expected to see.
It would take Libria a long time to learn the truth behind the magical display of lights, but that was another story for another time. As the strains of ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’ wavered through the hall John swore he caught a glimpse of Errol Partridge’s ghost smiling off to one side.
Was it a trick of the light or a true Christmas miracle?
You decide.
Merry Christmas!
Enjoy!
Tinsel Dreams, Bauble Nightmares
It is said that the spirit of humanity cannot truly be broken; it can be battered and trodden upon, crushed into the grit and soil. It can be tied up in rope and bound with laws and harsh realities, but it cannot truly be broken. Once upon a year in the past, before the world turned to fire, ash and smoke, there was a festival that mankind knew – it was rendered in many forms throughout the world but they had several threads in common.
Libria did not share this festival spirit and all things that came from it, books, films, music and media were sent to the flames by trained servants of the fascist regime of Father. Under a grey sky, in a flat-block world of steel and stone the people of that particular city lived, churning through their lives like the cogs of some massive machine.
But that time had come to an end. Now Libria was rebuilt and society had learned to cope without the amber soul-draining liquid known as Prozium. The zombie-like milling crowds had to undergo withdrawal, a new government and a different police force – the Grammaton Clerics were no longer the steel fist of Father, they were still deadly and highly trained, but they brought justice with an even hand and not the smoking barrel of a hypocrite’s gun.
The New Order maintained the laws and mandates for the masses quite effectively with their agents, there was still the primeval feat from those who had never known the caress of Prozium (who still lived) but that was a small price to pay for the golden apple that was freedom, people were willing to adapt if it meant they did not die for a tear.
So then we turn the calendar forth a little on this Christmas tale: for it is indeed the Season to be jolly. Save that Libria knew nothing of Santa Claus, gifts and celebrations. Nor did many of them care, for that in of itself was a great sadness and the catalyst for this particular snapshot in John Preston’s life.
Darkness fell across the city of Libria on this bleak December, for some unexplained reason the power across the city had decided to fail. The turbines ceased their irritated whine and rhythmic whirr; the fires burned low and then out. Technicians attempted to fix this particular problem.
Finally after hours of painstaking technical investigation the fault was found. One of the older substations still connected to the central grid had ceased to function, like a beating heart that pushes too far, it had stopped and there was no more life within the steel and wires.
“And it’s coming from the Nethers?” Preston stood with his black gloved hands folded behind his back, his dark searching eyes fastened to the technician’s readouts as the light from a panel reflected in his gaze.
“Yes sir,” the man answered somewhat nervously. “Substation 2b has caused an overload on the grid, a part burned out I think and caused a strain on the system. It shouldn’t have happened and I’m sorry that it did.”
Preston’s low and almost emotionless voice sounded hollow; “sorry?” he questioned and cocked his head to one side. The question caused the man to shiver.
“Yes?”
“Why, it’s not your fault. I could say that I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter since I didn’t cause the power failure. I’ll get someone out there,” he corrected himself then. “No, I’ll go myself.”
“What’s the problem John?”
Preston turned in a machine-like precision and rested his hand on the technician’s shoulder. He fixed his gaze onto Tara Night and smiled a little. “I wondered when you’d break from your training schedule and come to check the power station out.”
“You know me all too well John,” she gave a breezy bright smile and adjusted her coat. “Do you want me to come with you to the Nethers, its dark outside and you might get lost without my senses to guide you?”
Preston frowned a moment, the technician tensed but all John did was laugh. “It’s not up to me to decide, but I would /like/ it if you did,” even now that word was new to John but he had accepted her as part of his life, come to rely on her even after the events that robbed him of his family.
“The car’s out back,” she chuckled and turned to walk away. “Wrap up warm John, the wind’s chill tonight.”
They left the technician (who breathed a sigh of relief) and stepped out of the room. A short walk down a corridor led them to the outside car park. They required the use of a flashlight to navigate in the pitch black.
John stopped suddenly and he blinked, something bitterly cold touched his cheek and he snapped off his glove. His hand went up and a single finger traced the skin.
“What?” Tara stopped as dead as Preston and peered at the man, “what’s wrong?”
He looked at the small spot of water on his finger, it was cold and as he turned his head to the sky a white shower greeted him. John Preston’s mind flashed back to the Nethers, to Mary and to a secret room where he first truly felt overwhelmed without his amber dirge.
His hand flicked in reflex to the memory and he shook his head. “Old memories, ghosts of the past – nothing more,” he lied. “Shall we go?”
He was curiously silent as the car left the parking lot and raced out into the dark. The white flakes continued to fall and they created a blanket of sorts against the driving vehicle. The lights cut through the curtain of white and illuminated it, like Errol’s shroud.
“Do you dream Preston?”
He turned his head to Tara and made a questioning face. “What did you say?”
“Nothing?” she replied and gave him an equally strange look back. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
John steeled himself and blinked a couple of times, he carefully pulled the car into the Nethers and steered it towards the edge of a familiar church. The substation was close to that place and a broken-down old house stood forlornly like a wasted dream to the right, a single point of illumination drew Preston’s gaze.
He stopped the car and opened the doors. Tara and he stepped from the vehicle and looked around, the Nethers had been transformed by this white powder and it reminded him so much of the odd ball he broke before Libria tasted freedom.
He began to walk towards the illumination, perhaps there was a stranded soul out here that got caught in the weather? Perhaps they might need help?
As he got closer to the ruined house he began to hear the sounds of laughter, two children’s voices were raised in high-toned appreciation of something amusing.
Tara looked at him, looked at the light and followed with a quick step. She moved past John Preston and stood at the window. What she saw sent a chill down her spine but at the same time she felt oddly at peace.
Preston stepped up and words failed him. Inside the broken home there was a table, laden with all kinds of food. Four figures sat around it and they were laughing. It was as though Preston had been smacked in the face, he recoiled back at the sight of those four people and landed in the snow, his face was a mask of shock and awe.
The laughter increased for a moment and then silenced, a small figure appeared at the window and looked out.
“Are you Ok dad?”
Tara was frozen still in the same kind of shock; her conscious mind was seeing something her subconscious could not rationalise. Her sanity hung with a tiny thread before her Grammaton training asserted itself and she took a breath.
“Robbie?”
“Hello Tara,” he said with a business-like tone. “Can you help my dad out of the snow?”
“Yes, it must be awfully cold out there at the moment. He’s never seen snow either, you need to both come in now or you’ll freeze,” the demanding tones belonged to Preston’s daughter – but how, they were dead, weren’t they? She’d been there when that whole mess had happened. “Oh, please.”
Before Tara could react or even move to Preston, the door opened and out stepped a tall man. He no longer wore the uniform of a Grammaton Cleric, he looked rather like the photo that Preston had stolen and kept. With easy steps he made his way over to John Preston and extended his hand.
“Only once on this night Preston,” Errol said with a dry tone. “Miracles can truly happen. I wish I had of been there to see you end it all for us, no hard feelings eh?”
John’s mind reeled but his own Grammaton training snapped to the front and he took Errol’s hand. It was solid, it wasn’t mist, he had no idea why or how this had happened but he was hauled to his feet.
“I shot you,” he said and closed his eyes, when he opened them again Errol was still there. “I saw you die.”
“Yes John,” Errol smiled sadly. “It couldn’t be helped. Think of me as part of the catalyst that turned you into a deliverer and not a devourer.”
“I’m sorry,” he had wanted to say those words and the tears that fell from his eyes couldn’t be stemmed. “I am so, so sorry.”
“I know,” Errol embraced his friend until Preston’s sobs grew into softer whimpers and then he let him go. “On this night Preston, old wounds can be healed, old friends can be reunited – but by morning we’ll be memories again.”
Tara was the one to ask as Robbie and Lisa looked on, “how?”
“I can’t answer that,” Errol gave a lopsided shrug. “It’s not up to me to tell you these things, but I do have something I’d like to share with you. Come on in?”
She looked to Preston and then as he moved towards the door with Errol, she followed. The snow began to drive down from the sky again and the white blanket tore across the landscape, in a few hours they’d be lucky to find the car.
The final figure waited for them both in the candle-lit interior of the room, there, Mary sat with a small glass of sherry before her. She looked to the side of John Preston and gave Tara a warm smile.
“Hello to you both, you finally came then?” she still had that scent and John touched his pocket but the ribbon was elsewhere.
“Mary?”
“Yes John,” she answered. “Mary, Robbie, Lisa and Errol – you have to be a little scared don’t you?”
“More than a little,” John admitted and closed the door. “I, I never expected this.”
“We didn’t either dad, but you’re just in time for Christmas Dinner!” Lisa bounded over and sat at her place. “Robbie, come on!”
Robbie took his place and Errol pulled out chairs for both Tara and Preston, then he took his own place at the head of the table.
“So then, Christmas, I think you’re wondering what that is?” he began to carve the turkey with a sharp knife and a slight grin on his lips. “
John Preston took a deep breath and drew in the smell of the food, it was incredible and he touched the table with his gloved hand – then he once more took of those gloves and folded them away. He touched the table and stroked it.
“What is Christmas?” Tara followed John’s example almost too methodically and gave an apologetic smile.
For the first part of the meal John and Tara were given a turkey dinner fit for several kings. They feasted upon the food and Errol explained to them the concept of Christmas, he gave them a sad smile as he told the story and then continued to eat and drink.
It was a lot of information for the pair to assimilate and they did, they tried their best to rationalise this event but there was nothing that gave them grounding in reality. The whole scene unfolded with a semi-tense but completely surreal nature as if it were some kind of shared dream.
It was an astounding experience for both Tara and John as the ghosts (for that in truth is what they were) of this snowy night gave them the explanation of Christmas, something that was ripped out of the heart of Libria early on as humanity fumbled around in the shadow of a new world’s construction.
“It was felt, Preston, that even though you were the biggest exponent of the Grammaton way of life. Of Father’s hypocritical laws – that you would be the perfect person to understand the concept once it was explained to you,” now Errol sounded as though he flirted with his old Grammaton speech but the warm smile on his lips was enough to assure Tara this wasn’t the case.
John frowned again but the whole feeling of such a sumptuous banquet, the intoxicating effect of the mysterious dark liquid that Robbie had called Sherry and the vague hypnotic dance of the candle light took him completely off guard and for the first time in a while, Preston relaxed.
He listened intently to everything that Errol, Mary, Robbie and Lisa said about the festival and he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a small grey handkerchief.
“It’s a lot to take in,” he admitted and looked to Tara. “I can’t believe what’s going on, my logical mind tells me that it’s something else, but I can’t deny that my belly feels full and my hands are warm. You’re all dead, but somehow you’ve come back to share with us…this…moment?”
“That’s about right dad,” Robbie gave a lopsided grin before he looked again at Errol. “Errol has been good to us since we joined him and Mary, he said we’re ghosts and pretty soon we’ll just move on to other things. But it’s been fun dad, don’t be sad about what happened – it shouldn’t have happened, but it did and you can’t change it.”
Preston’s lips twitched and his jaw tightened, he wanted to pull Robbie close to him and share something that had been denied by Father’s liquid shackles, but he chose not to – in years from now he’d come to ask himself why, but find no answer or comfort.
This would be the first and last time that he’d see these kinds of ghosts.
Tara was lucky in one way. She had been raised with the new order in mind, her training, whilst just as strict and rigorous as that of Preston’s was somewhat more fluid in the mindset and she always did have this hope that ghosts and mysterious events like this were real.
If you’d have asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she’d have probably answered: a miracle.
And what a miracle the spirit of Christmas personified in this odd happening was. Errol, Mary, Robbie and Lisa were as real as they possibly could be on this one cold night in a bleak and snow-laden December.
Even the old Christmas tree festooned with glowing red, white, blue and yellow lights, decorated with care and love seemed to be as solid as the meal and table before them. Tara was swept into this fantastic world deeper and deeper by the second.
It was a pity then as the snow and ice lay all about outside and time marched on with a relentless sharp-step marked by the rapidly lightening sky. This wonderful night had to come to an end.
It was the shade of Errol that noticed the first rays of the pre-dawn light touch the horizon and he gave a wistful sigh. He looked at Mary, Robbie and Lisa with a sad expression and then finally to Preston and Tara he gave a singular nod.
“No!” John was out of his chair and his hand stopped frozen as it passed through Lisa’s arm, he recoiled in shock as the scene before them unravelled as if it were a kitten-wrecked ball of yarn.
A whisper passed through the air it sounded as if it might have been a ‘Merry Christmas’ but it left a yawning valley of loss in John’s heart for a moment before he looked around. They were in a cold and ruined building, there was nothing here now, no candles and no sign that there’d ever been a strange meeting.
Tara left his side and began to sift through the decimated rubble, through the snow and ice until she found something. A metal ring in the floor stood out against the starkness of the snow. She took it and pulled hard, the snow fell away and a small hatch revealed a ladder down into the ground below.
“John, come and look at this?”
Preston snapped out of his miasma of thought and walked over; he knelt at the edge of the hole and flicked on his flashlight. There was something illuminated in the darkness and he cracked a smile when he caught a glint of a bauble. It was only a short drop but he took the ladder and crouched in the gloom.
“You’re not going to believe this Tara,” he said as he looked up. “But you should come down and see for yourself.”
Tara followed him down the ladder and onto the floor where she knelt down and examined the object he’d found. “It’s,” she began to shiver a little but not from the cold. “It looks just like that tree last night?”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know how though…”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to know how, Errol said that Christmas was a time for all kinds of celebration. I think this old tree here was part of an EC-10 cache that Errol couldn’t bring himself to destroy when Father still lived.”
“You mean that this house was connected to Errol and Mary?”
“I have a feeling that it was somewhere they’d meet out of the sight of the Sweepers and the rest of Libria, me included.” Preston smiled a little more and picked up the shiny bauble, “a little place of Christmas magic where they kept all sorts of dreams alive.” He put it down again. “I wonder if that’s what the message was…”
“What message?”
“Last night’s event was meant to teach us something. I mean it’s true, it happened and we can’t deny that. I don’t know how it happened but I know that I feel full, a little, intoxicated from that drink as well as upset and happy from the meeting.”
“I do as well,” Tara gave a tiny nod and she picked up the discarded bauble amongst the ruin of the old tree. “So what do we do now?”
“We repair the sub-station and keep the weather shield off, we’re going to set a big tree in the old hall and re-ignite the spirit of Christmas. That’s what Errol, Mary, Robbie and Lisa would have wanted – that’s what they want.”
With such conviction in the man’s voice it was hard not to smile so Tara did again. She patted him on the face. “Do you think the people will be able to take the name seriously?”
“What name?”
“Well Errol did say that Santa Claus was called Father Christmas!”
Preston’s lips twitched for a moment and then he laughed for a while. “I’m not sure; we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now we’ve got to get back on track, Libria’s been without power for a night and people are probably freezing even with backup generators.”
They left the cellar and the ruined tree but Preston had a singular mission on his mind now. First the substation and then the great hall, his plan was simple and by the end of this Librian week he was going to re-introduce people to the concept of Christmas, not so much as a religious festival but as something to bring a new hope, light and life to the post-Father era of his world.
Or at least that’s what he hoped.
It took him that much time to order the constriction of the massive tree, the creation of the ribbons, garlands, lights and other festival equipment. He even managed to dig out an old recording from a cache of EC-10 that was saved by the Resistance fighters, Jurgan included.
At the end of the week he stood with Tara and many of Libria’s citizens in the great hall. It had been transformed by the orders of New Libria’s government into a strange wonderland of baubles, rope lights and garlands. A large Christmas tree stood in dominance and as Preston pulled the switch a cheer went up from the assembled crowd.
Light flooded the darkness and each light gleamed brightly, they became at once a wishing star or a tiny shred of hope in each person’s heart. It was something that the neither government nor John Preston ever expected to see.
It would take Libria a long time to learn the truth behind the magical display of lights, but that was another story for another time. As the strains of ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’ wavered through the hall John swore he caught a glimpse of Errol Partridge’s ghost smiling off to one side.
Was it a trick of the light or a true Christmas miracle?
You decide.
Merry Christmas!
]
XXXx
