what comes after Christmas 3

The basement smelt damp and faintly of pee. A knot grew in Carl’s gut. He hurried with Naama in his arm. He was a wee man and she was no weight at all, which worried him. Street lights kept night at bay. Car headlights were flying kites with yellow and red switching over as they breasted the hill outside the compound and left the sluggards and stay-in-bedders behind. He kept thinking he’d meet his wife. Just as he was trying to balance his daughter with one knee and pull open the gate at the same time, Choma stood in front of Carl.

‘You can’t take her,’ she said. ‘He won’t let you.’

‘Who? Your fancy man?’    

With her firmly fixed hair and her dark eyeshadow, she stood taller and darker than the deepest shadows. ‘I was scrubbing pots with a Brillo pad and watching the back lane through the rectangular window pane. My thoughts hadn’t stretched to what I’d be making for dinner that night I saw the devil.’

‘I thought you said it was Dr Fleming.’

‘I didn’t. It was Dr Fleming and the devil.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I just knew.’

Carl chuckled. ‘Was this before or after I’d met him?’

‘Before.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She sighed. ‘And have you think I was crazy? ...I wasn’t so sure myself at first.’

 ‘Well, did anyone else see him?’ He corrected himself. ‘Apart from me and anybody else with a lot of cash to pay for cosmetic surgery?’

‘People see him differently from how I see him. Although sometimes they sense him. He usually appears when I’m alone. He never approaches when I’m a crowd, but I might spot him loafing about on the edge of things. Like queuing at a checkout at ASDA behind an old woman carefully counting out her change. Or standing in a doorway with some alkies, a bottle of wine in his hand, laughing. He held the bottle up in salute and all the alkies turned and jeered at me. I hurried home and locked the door. He laughed about that too.’

‘I took a pic of him.’

‘How did that turn out?’

She rubbed the temples on her head. ‘Hmmm.’

‘You should have told me.’

‘He said you’d say that.’

‘You talked about me?’

‘Not really. He liked to gossip. “Poor little Maggie,” he’d say. “Fine girl. Pity what happened to her.” Then he’d tell me in nauseating detail and tiptoe away laughing.’

‘I’d a twin brother that committed suicide, he said he was in hell. He let me speak to him and I heard him pleading with me.’ All the time the devil was grinning at me. ‘You’ve never heard such a thing—and I pray you never will.’

He moved closer to hug or comfort her, but she pushed him away and their daughter whimpered. ‘He was playing with you?’

‘Yeh. But when you told me you’d whipped him. I didn’t know what to think. That gave me hope. I waited and when he didn’t turn up I waited some more. It was like wiggling a back molar until it was slack enough to pull. Then we got the camper van. I was sure he’d turn up then. That’s how I wanted it so much. Cause I knew it was drawing him out into the open. I realised, of course, he wasn’t just playing with me. He was playing with us both. Toying with us all.’

‘I’ve got to go Choma. And you’re not stopping us.’

‘I’m not stopping you, but he will. You’ll get about five yards and your leg will give way and you’ll fall o’er.’ She squeezed shut her eyes and opened them again. ‘Then we got the house—and I really thought we were free of him. I didn’t know what we’d do when he turned up, but I’d a plan that wasn’t a plan. That somehow we’d confront him. And you could whip him again.’  

‘I’m sorry,’ he cried. ‘I was too caught up in myself. I never even noticed.’

‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

‘The devil always makes you think that.’ 

‘“His greatest trick,” he said. “Was to make you he didn’t exist. And his second greatest trick was to make you say, The devil said that too.”’

‘I didn’t know the devil had a sense of humour.’

‘He doesn’t. Just when he tells the truth it seems that way to others. He’s fragile that way. Doesn’t like to be laughed at. That gets him proper mad.’

‘It proper gie’s me the heebie-jeebies.’

‘He’d like that—cause that’s respect.’

Choma stood aside, daring them to leave. ‘It’s not your fault. No any of it.’

‘I’ll be back.’

There was no shame in the way he fled. His elbows out, expecting his knees to go and to keel over dead. When he slid open the van doors and gently lays down his daughter along the back seats, he was out of breath. Not because it was far but because the van seemed to him the leatherette version of Switzerland. A four-wheel neutrality that never took sides until a nation was won or lost. He didn’t expect the engine to start.    

That changed quicker than a game of Buckaroo.

He’d shrunk into himself and prayed all kinds of prayers. Made all kinds of promises to God if He wouldn’t look the other way. As He usually did. He wasn’t getting into an argument with the Supreme Deity, but really, his soul was up for grabs. He wasn’t fussed which way it went. As long as his daughter got well.

Getting to the park and finding his usual parking space was a blessing. He wondered if Naama could walk some of the way. But when he went to check on her she was unconscious and her breathing was shallow. He’d need to rig up some kind of bogey but was lost without wheels. He thought of phoning an ambulance or driving her to Accident and Emergency but she’d been there too many times. On his knees crying he feels for her hand and it floats up to the van roof.

Light flooded into her arteries and veins, warming his hand. Her hand squeezed his and he backed out of the side-doors, lifting her into the starry darkness. He has to hold her to his chest to stop her from floating away. Peace flooded through him.     

A white feather drifted from the tree bent into itself with age offered morning light a cranny to green itself. A crow hopped closer to a piece of matted fur and stabbed at its face where the feather settled. Carl shuffled closer and the crow bent his neck to stare at him with obsidian eyes and weighed his worth. He let him get a couple of steps closer, kicking distance, before it flew off squawking a warning shot and settled its coal black feathers on top of the rusty fence at the golf course. Watching and waiting. 

‘I’m freezing,’ she shivered and hugged herself. Trying to get up.

He had to push and pin her shoulders down. ‘Cold as the earth that met the rain on that first day.’

‘My legs don’t work. I can’t walk.’

Carl didn’t know where the words came from. It was as if he too was possessed.  

‘That’s because you have angel’s wings. Lie back. Let them root you. That way you’ll always be connected to heaven and earth. You’ll grow tall and be the most beautiful of us all. People will follow in your wake. Flowers, which grown unseen, will cradle and crowd your fingers and thumbs. Your love will always be gentle and childlike, but before the day is out the sun will sink and rise in you again. You will become reborn and the devil will flee before your righteousness. Amen.’