The Toys at Midnight

Tim unwrapped the presents he had got from Santa with a sigh of disappointment.

“Oh”, he said, placing them down on the carpet in front of him, “A teddy bear, a toy soldier and a stuffed clown”.

They weren’t the things he had asked Santa Clause for in his letter.

Before Christmas he had written a letter to Santa telling him all about the monsters in his room; the ogre things that always came out from under his bed and his closet at the stroke of midnight and ran riot, making a terrible mess and eating things like his colouring crayons.

He had hoped that Santa might send him something to drive away the ogres "But maybe Santa doesn’t do things like that", he thought as he picked up his presents and took them, sadly, to his room "Or maybe the kids at school are right when they say that Santa doesn’t exist".

The rest of that Christmas day was sad as well.

Although his parents did their best to make him smile, he just couldn’t because he kept thinking about the ogres in his room and he frowned and didn’t say more than a few words all through Christmas dinner and couldn’t really tell his parents why because grown-ups didn’t believe in things like ogres.

Then came bedtime and his mother tucked him in and brushed his cheek; told him to cheer up and not be so gloomy but, again, he couldn’t tell her about the ogres.

Then she turned off the light and he lay in the dark hugging the teddy bear and the toy wooden soldier and the clown close to his chest and praying that something different might happen this night.

But then came the sound of chimes from the grandfather clock in the hallway downstairs; the chimes of midnight and then, the same as every night, he heard the closet door creak open and the sound of the creatures scurrying out, rapidly panting and giggling.

“No, no”, he said to himself, weeping a small tear, “Not again”.

But just then he heard another sound; the sound of voices; friendly voices, close to his ear.

“Grrr”, growled the bear, “Don’t cry Tim. We’ll sort out those ogres for you”.

“That’s why Santa Clause sent us. To help you”, said the clown, chuckling.

“Sergeant Steadfast, reporting for duty, sir”, said the soldier briskly, saluting.

Then, to Timmy’s amazement, he saw the three toys leap up off of his bed and onto the floor and, in a flash the little teddy bear suddenly transformed itself into a big growling grizzly bear and the toy soldier became a real soldier and drew his sabre from its scabbard and the clown became a real clown and pelted the ogres with juggling balls.

“Giants!”, he heard one of the ogres cry, “Run! Run!”.

And then suddenly there was a big stampede of Ogres all fleeing in terror back to their hiding places in his closet and under his bed.

“Timmy?”, asked his Mum, opening his door and switching on the light, a worried and bewildered look on her face “Is everything okay in here? I thought I heard a noise..like a bear growling or something”.

Timmy smiled, hugging the bear, the soldier and the clown, who had returned to their doll forms, tightly.

“Yes, mum” he said, happily, “Everything’s just fine now”.