It's been years since I went to Midnight Worship, but with never-ending headlines of war and refugee crisis in the East, teenage bloodbaths and other dismal events, I felt increasingly that Christmas was becoming just another day in the calendar. So this year I went, seeking something, some reminder of how special it used to be.
We gave my mother-in-law a lift, and since as usual, she wasn't ready, we were late. Everywhere we go, regardless of how late we are, Stella's never ready.
It didn't matter as people were still filing into the church at twenty to midnight. The place was full of kids, which boosted the numbers, but I managed not to swat any of the little sods around the ear. With the vicar droning on about the 'true meaning of Christmas' even longer than usual, and the extra-strong sacramental wine they handed out in industrial quantities, things seemed normal enough.
By the time we wished Stella goodnight, drove home, thrown the dog out into the garden for five minutes while I avoided the lobster on the work-surface and turned out the lights, it was two o'clock before I turned in. I hate lobsters, even dead ones in a cool-box. Ugh. Horrible things, waving those huge claws and antennae about. I'm the one who has melon balls in port every Boxing Day while the rest of the family eat crustacean.
I drank several glasses of water, but could still taste the wine, before drifting off to sleep.
I dreamt:
In the darkness, to our left, a cough.
"What was that?" I sat upright in my saddle.
"Leopard." The man in front grunted, without turning round. "Thought you'd heard 'em at Ein Gedi. You bleat enough about 'em." He hawked, imitating his camel, and spat. "When ye're not complaining about the cold, or --"
"Enough!" The man behind me commanded. "We're getting closer, and we don't want to be bickering like children when we find Him." I could hear the capital H.
Silence descended, apart from the sounds of the Dead Sea lapping gently, the cold wind blowing off the water, the scrape of the camels hooves over the scree, and an occasional grumble from one of the beasts, though they were subdued by travelling in the dark. The salt tang at least covered the smell of unwashed bodies, and flatulent camels. My backside was sore from so much time in the saddle, for it was a brutal pace we set, and my stomach rumbled with hunger. I ignored them both. I had no idea who or where I was, but such was the curious logic of the dreamworld, it didn't bother me. What did bother me were the nightmares I suffered when I fell asleep within the dream, ill-remembered, but still worrying.
Eventually the path turned inland and upwards. As we climbed so did the temperature until the rocks shimmered in the heat-haze, and when one of us spat it sizzled like meat frying. We dismounted where a rock shelf provided shelter from the fierce sun.
The third rider, who dominated our party by sheer presence although he was shorter and slighter than the rest of us, patted my shoulder. "Rest." He said, voice rasping. "We'll continue tonight, when it's dark."
In the shelter of the rock, I studied my colleagues.
These were not the robed, smiling noblemen of children's stories. These were dirty, hairy, smelly ruffians, driven by a purpose over which they had no insight and even less control.
When they slept they cried out, as if they also suffered nightmares. When we resumed at dusk, they looked as haggard as I felt.
We rode for hours and hours, sometimes sleeping in our saddles, swaying in time to the rhythmic strides of our mounts. Sometimes the others moaned as if their dreams were again disturbed.
We neared Jerusalem, little more than an oversized fortress, and met Herod. There was little to indicate he was the genocidal monster of history apart from a certain restlessness, an inability to sit still at any time. Still, we pressed on quickly.
Our journey finally ended, at a village nestling in the hillside. "It's a stable." Muttered Balthazar, in a voice in which incredulity just about won over scorn. The door opened, and a stocky, bearded man looked us over, and nodded.
"Where is this place?" Melchior asked.
"Bethlehem." The man's voice was deep, almost a rumble. "I am Joseph, and this is my woman, Mary. We were expecting you. Welcome to our humble abode." It was impossible to tell whether his comment was ironic, or absolutely sincere.
"We bring gifts--" Balthazar began, then stopped, stunned.
Mary smiled. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't think why. "Thank you. We'll share them out so they won't squabble, when they're older. That's the problem with twins." She said. "Aren't they lovely? We'll call the boy Jesus, but we aren't really sure what to call the girl."
Even in my dream-state, I knew something was wrong, but couldn't identify quite what it was. We presented our gifts, and made small talk with the devoted parents, whose smiles were just a little too broad, their eyes fever-bright.
Then we withdrew slightly, and the shepherds made room for us. Exhausted, we fell asleep on straw matting that made my skin itch.
In my dream I dreamt --
Of a winter's sky illuminated by a comet that lit up the night sky like a giant's lamp.
Of the Dead Sea at night, with waves lapping against the lowest shoreline on earth, and bathers bobbing in the water like corks.
Of Masada, rising from the surrounding plain to almost a thousand feet, a sheer spire of rock with a fortress at the summit, with less than seventy years until the last stand before the Diaspora. It was occupied now, not ruined as it was when I saw it in real life, seventeen years ago.
And of three camels striding along, ridden by men in robes, one with a reddish-ginger beard, one tall and gaunt with criss-cross scars hatched across one cheek, and finally me. I looked down at my hands, as black as night, and somehow knew I was missing an eye. Through my mind the refrain ran, 'in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king'.
We travelled by night, resting in the day, finding shade where we could, for even at this dead end of the year the temperatures soared during daylight hours. Throughout the dream, I could taste the heady mix of spices, smell the shrubs blown on the wind, and the stench of the camels.
In my dream within a dream, I fell asleep in the saddle, then straightened while dreaming again. "No!" I shouted. "Not the children!"
Melchior quickly caught me and seized my arm, earning him a cuff.
Balthazar hovered uncertainly. "Leave him you fool, he's asleep," he said to Melchior. "Can't you see he dreams?"
"No, he wakes". Melchior argued.
I panted. "I dreamt of Herod," I gasped "he slaughtered all the male children."
A long silence followed my outburst, broken by Melchior's voice, slow and thoughtful. "I think we shouldn't visit Herod. Even if it was just a dream, and had no meaning, we do no real harm avoiding him. If it were a vision, then maybe it actually does some good."
"Or maybe by avoiding him, we bring it about," Balthazar said.
"I agree with Melchior's plan," I said at last. "We should avoid Jerusalem."
"It's agreed, then." Melchior cut short Balthazar's protests. "Let's get on."
We rode on in silence, for day after weary day. With the first faint lightening to the east, we came to a small town, hardly bigger than a village, lit by the star, which had dropped noticeably closer, and now shone like a miniature lantern in the sky. When day broke, the sky was much more overcast than on previous days. The feeling of dread that had gripped me for days grew inexorably.
Following Melchior's lead, we forced our grumbling mounts to their knees, and dismounted. We led the beasts through the streets, with the star dropping ever lower, until we reached the building over which it hovered. Animal noises and smells drifted out.
We followed the sound of voices to a small out-building some way from the larger ones, and pushed past a burly shepherd who leaned listlessly against a post.
In a semi-darkness broken only by a couple of flickering tapers that looked almost ready to topple and turn the byre into a pyre, a woman who was clearly Mary placed an infant into his crib.
Around her shepherds knelt, whilst her husband held her arm loosely at the elbow. Her breast hung loose.
Scarface nudged me. "They seem more frightened than joyous. Look at the marks on her breast. They look like scars. And isn't that blood?"
We hushed him and proffering our gifts, we advanced, bowing low as we did so. The feeling of dread, which had built and built and built to a crescendo, threatened to overwhelm me.
The baby gurgled, and waved his podgy fists. Redbeard gasped, as, clearly visible, blood dribbled down his chin. He smiled, showing stained, wicked little canines.
He began to grow darker, until he was black. He gurgled, and from the shadows Bing Crosby's voice began to sing:
"I'm dreaming of a Gothic Christmas,
Just like those Christmases we used to know
With children screaming
And Demons dreaming
Of bloodshed in the snow"
Unable to look away, I heard Mary say in a dull monotone. "Look into his eyes. Aren't they gorgeous?"
I looked into eyes like whirling embers, and as my eyelids grew heavy, I heard Mary murmur. "Go to sleep, good men."
Then I dreamt again, in the deepest sleep yet:
There was snow underfoot, and I shivered in the cold night air. There was a full moon in the sky, and it was so bright it was like daylight. I stood in a forest, in a clearing, while in the distance, wolves howled. I heard tinny little voices singing.
"Shang-a-lang-a-lang-a-ding-dong-ding!
Shang-a-lang-a-lang-a-ding-dong-ding!
Oh, yes it's lovely weather
For a slay-ride together
To hell!"
My hackles rose, and I was off and running, but in the deep-dream, my feet lifted with agonising slowness, before plunging back into the drift. I was aware of shapes running beside me, and glanced to my left. Wolves, their tongues lolling, sleek shapes bounding gracefully, effortlessly, through the snow.
My heart felt like it would burst, and my vision blurred. Then I felt a sharp pain in my leg, and crashed to the floor.
It was a trap, black steel jaws that looked as if they should have sheared through flesh; my leg was somehow still attached, but the pain was excruciating.
I expected the sharp canines of the wolves to tear into my flesh at any moment, but nothing happened. I lifted my head and looked around. They sat surrounding me, their eyes glowing in the moonlight. The forest was silent, except for their panting, and the sound of my own laboured breathing.
There was a thud, and a sleigh landed nearby. Instead of reindeer pulling it, there was a team of lobsters; it was them I'd heard singing. My arms goose-bumped, rippling in revulsion.
"Yo, ho, ho!" A very deep voice said. It sounded as if it came from the bowels of the earth, rather than his boots. "Have you been good, little man?"
He towered over me. He must have been at least seven feet tall, and was built like a quarterback. His eyes were rheumy and a fishy odour hung round him. Where his hands should have been were long claws, like a lobster's.
I nodded, stricken dumb with terror.
"Hop aboard." He said jovially. I lay where I was, and he leapt from the sleigh, and prising the jaws of the trap apart with one claw, picked me up with his other. I nearly passed out, so intense is my lobster-phobia. "I said, hop aboard." He boomed, as he threw me in. We set off and he proceeded to munch on what looked like an oversized drumstick.
I looked around me, and saw bloody sacks in the back of the sleigh, while around us the scenery flashed by. "What are those?" I asked, nodding at the sacks.
"Children." He chuckled. The drumstick was a child's leg. "I couldn't eat a whole one," he said "but the kid's portions are quite nice. You must be tired, with all that running," he boomed. "Have a nap."
I was feeling tired, now he mentioned it. My eyelids drooped and I could feel myself growing sleepy.
Sleep. That was all I seemed to have been doing. And dreaming, deeper and deeper. If he wanted me to sleep, the chances were, it wasn't something I wanted to do.
I had one of those intuitive leaps one sometimes has in dreams. I felt as if I was a fly, struggling on the edge of some spider's web of enchantment. And the spider was getting nearer and nearer.
I knew somehow that if I slept and dreamt again it would have me.
Instead, I rolled out of the sleigh, the cold of the snow snapping me wide-awake. I heard a roar of rage behind me as I rolled down the slope, faster and faster. I knew I'd never be able to run this fast, so why not use the slope?
I should have thought it out, of course.
I shot off the edge of the precipice, and was falling, falling, falling. Before I hit, the last words I heard were Santa Claws shouting. "Don't think you've got away! I'll get you yet!"
Just as I hit the bottom, I awoke in the stable in the middle-dream with Joseph, Mary and shepherds huddled around us. The blood fountaining from Balthazar and Melchior's throats smeared their faces.
"Don't struggle." Joseph said in a dreamy voice, holding up the infant. "He gets angry if you struggle."
I leapt to my feet, and looked around for a weapon. I grabbed a length of wood, sharpened at one end, and brandished it in front of me.
"That's no use." Mary said. "Stakes don't work on him."
The child's limbs were lengthening, developing an extra joint, and growing hairy, just like the limbs of a spider.
I felt a stab of pain in my leg, where the jaws of the trap had closed in the deep-dream, and one of the shepherds was biting my leg. I clubbed him with the length of wood, but looking around, saw there was no way out.
I turned the point toward me, and plunged it into my chest.
And awoke, to see the twins watching me, held upright by Mary. I recognised her now: she was Stella.
"We're not ready" She whined. "You're always early!"
"You're not such a kind man, are you?" The boy said and I noticed his eyes were red and his sister's head hung at an unnatural angle.
"It's me you want, isn't it?" I said, panting with fear.
"Oh yes." The boy said. "Sometimes the fly thinks he's got away from the web, but the spider still jumps down after him." Mary carried him toward me.
I started to slap myself. It sounds foolish, but I had to wake up, I'd do anything to wake up, to escape that nightmare.
I felt a pain in my leg. The straw had turned into a nest of snakes, and a huge anaconda coiled around my leg. I beat at it again and again --
-- The light clicked on, as I hopped round the bed, massaging the cramp in my leg. Kath watched me anxiously. I was drenched in sweat, and must have leapt out while half-asleep.
In her basket against the wall, the dog opened one eye blearily, then sat up, hoping it was time for breakfast.
"Are you okay?" Kath's voice was as worried as her face.
I nodded. "Cramp" I gasped. "I think that was the nightmare before Christmas".
"As opposed to the nightmare that is Christmas?" She smiled, but still looked worried. I had never noticed how big her canines were before, which just goes to show how badly the dream had upset me. I shook my head to clear it.
"Yeah, that was a bit of a shocker. What time is it?"
"Ten past five. If you feed the dog, she'll go back to sleep."
I ambled into the kitchen, still shaking from the vividness of the dream. I put meat into her bowl, added bran and biscuits, and some vegetables left over from last night's dinner.
While the dog ate her breakfast, I ran a glass of water from the tap, and opened the back door. The stars shone, and a heavy frost lay over everything.
God, I was glad to be awake!
Perhaps in future I would avoid red wine and newspapers. Feeling suddenly buoyant, maybe with relief that I no longer wandered through nightmare, I raised the glass and murmured. "Happy Christmas, world."
"You'll catch your death of cold." Kath came into the kitchen from the corridor, clutching a parcel.
"No White Christmas this year." I exhaled, and watched the steam. "Just dragons-breath. By the way, you didn't take your lipstick off."
"I never wear lipstick. You know that." She wiped her mouth, looking puzzled, and thrust the package at me. "Happy Christmas."
The dog trotted out into the garden, stopped, thought for a moment, then belched contentedly.
I scratched my neck, and stopped, felt two little bite marks. While I toyed with my present, I leaned against the freezer, fingering the marks. It felt for a moment as if I leaned against a rock warmed by the sun, and I experienced a wave of nausea, and a blast of heat. I thought I saw red eyes in the darkness, and heard a deep voice say. "Don't think it's over."
The moment passed and cold reality returned.
Bio:Colin Harvey appeared in the June issue of Aphelion with
"Bipartisan", and his fiction has appeared in Fragmented
Infinity webzine, while his articles have appeared in This
Way Up webzine. He is still trying to persuade a publisher
to accept his novel.
E-mail: colin_harvey@yahoo.co.uk
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