Solstice Day by David Misialowski
“What’s wrong, Mrs. Jackson? You seem out of sorts. Holiday stress?”
“How’d you know, Judd? Mind-reading again?”
“This time of year is always stressful, but particularly when you have a boy like . . . ” He clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Go ahead and say it, Judd.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jackson. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How’d you mean it, then, Judd?”
“Look, it’s not just you and your kin, it’s everyone. Stress! The gifts, the parties, the relatives, the kids— especially the kids!—the church services, The Mist, all the rigmarole . . . eh! You can keep it, for all I care.”
“It wasn’t that way when I was little, Judd. When I was little, all I could think about was Santa bringing me toys.”
Judd nodded sympathetically.
“But now . . . ” She shrugged. “The magic is gone.” She laid some greeting cards on the counter.
Someone pushed open the door to leave Judd’s General Store. It banged shut, and the loud noise made the segmented cardboard Santa above the door wave. The Santa had crinkly blue eyes, and red, apple-like cheeks that were pushed outward by a jolly toothsome grin.
As Judd worked the cash register, he glanced out the window at the rain and gloom. Although it was midday, it was as dark as dusk. Desperate to change the subject, he observed, “Old Man Winter’s coming, and with it . . . ”
“With it, The Mist,” Mrs. Jackson supplied desolately. They both looked out the window at The Mist. It was closing in. It was at least ten feet closer to the store today than yesterday: “Mommy, Daddy! I can’t see! Where am I? Help me! Mom-MEEEEE! Help MEEEEE!”
“Well, not to worry, Mrs. Jackson. After the Solstice it’ll go back, like every year.”
“I suppose.”
“Anything else today, Mrs. Jackson?”
“Pencils, Judd.”
“No. 2?”
“As always.”
Judd laid a package of No. 2 pencils on the counter and said, “You sure go through a lot of pencils, Mrs. Jackson.”
“Not me, Judd. Billy. Billy goes through them.”
“Aye,” Judd said, with an ironical smile and a quick wink. “Of course he does.”
* * *
When Mrs. Jackson got home, she sharpened the pencils while dinner simmered on the stove. She had found that sharpening pencils with an old-fashioned, hand-cranked sharpener relieved her stress. The grinding noises were strangely soothing.
The front door flew open, and stress flew in.
Billy tossed his school bag onto the couch.
“Billy, wipe your feet!”
“Why?”
“Because you walked through mud. Oh, look! You’ve tracked mud on the carpet. How awful!”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Mom.”
“Excuse me? What did you say to me, young man?”
“I said, ‘Why’s it awful?’” Billy strolled into the kitchen, and his mother followed him.
“Why’s what awful? . . . Oh, Billy, don’t eat that apple! You’ll spoil your dinner!” Billy bit into the apple with a loud crunch.
“Mud, Mom. Why’s mud awful?”
“Why? Because it is!”
“That’s a tautology.”
“What?”
“Circular reasoning. You told me something is, just because it is. I’m asking why it is.”
“Oh, Billy, for goodness sake, it’s because mud is dirty, and now you’ve brought dirt into our home. Doesn’t that make you feel bad, Billy?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why should it?”
“Because dirt is bad!”
“Why? Because it’s dirty?”
Mrs. Jackson was speechless.
“Sorry, Mom, that makes no sense. Bzzt! You lose! But thanks for playing.”
“Well, I’ll tell you not why but what, young man. If you don’t stop asking ‘Why’ and start doing as you’re told instead, you’re going to get the coal this year. Yes, you! How’d you like that, hmm?”
"There ain’t no Santa!”
“Billy!”
“It’s true. He’s just a big hoax dreamed up by adults.”
“Billy, you know perfectly well that each and every year . . . ”
“I don’t care. I’m not afraid.”
Billy started taking off his jacket, but then his mother stopped him and said: “Wait, Billy. Show me your pencils, please.”
The boy rolled his eyes, dug into his jacket pocket and handed over a couple of gnawed nubs.
“Oh, Billy, why do you treat your pencils so roughly? Don’t you know that pencils are valuable?”
“Sure they are, Mom.”
“Your teacher, Mrs. Martin, says that you are a pencil abuser, Billy. You gnaw on them and break them and work them down to nubs and fail to keep them sharp.”
“Mrs. Martin’s crazy. She doesn’t let us use Hand-Helds or laptops or Ipods or nothing. She makes us recite the multiplication tables over and over and then sharpen our pencils. If you ask her a question, she goes batshit.”
Mrs. Jackson tossed Billy’s battered pencils into a waste basket, and then handed Billy one of the pencils that she had sharpened. “This is your pencil, Billy. Sharp points spell sharp minds. That is what your teacher, Mrs. Martin, says. Get the point?” She waggled the pencil at Billy.
Billy snatched it from her hand, and broke it in two.
“Billy!”
* * *
A little later, Mr. Jackson got home from work, and they sat down to dinner. Billy grimaced at the food. His mother asked him, “Why the sour expression?”
“Now you’re the one asking Why,” the boy protested.
“Billy, answer your mother,” Mr. Jackson said in a distracted and perfunctory way.
“This stuff doesn’t look too good, Mom. You’re not the greatest cook, though you sharpen pencils and nag like hell on wheels. I’ll give you that.”
“Billy!”
They scolded him, and dinner proceeded in fits and starts, Billy picking at his food. But before long he started up again with his questions, pestering them the way that he did Mrs. Martin. His last report card had not been good, and Mrs. Martin had enclosed a note with it outlining Billy’s ongoing problems with pencils, and castigating the boy in almost biblical terms: “He does not look, and so he cannot see.”
She had further written that “William,” as she called Billy, was “an impertinent questioner, and a sayer of oaths.” Mrs. Martin had also enclosed a pinpoint-sharp No. 2 pencil wrapped in a piece of tissue paper on which was a stain: a tiny red dot. The dot, Mrs. Martin had explained in her note, was a blood stain from her own thumb pad, which she had pricked with the pencil to demonstrate how sharp a pencil ought to be kept: “as a tack!” she had scrawled in her note.
Billy suddenly asked about The Mist—again.
“But what’s on the other side of it?”
“Nothing,” his father replied, agitated. “We’ve been down this road before, son. Nothing. No. Thing.”
“Not even ghosts? That’s what people used to say.”
“Not, not even ghosts. Just nothing.”
“Old Mr. King used to say there were things on the other side. Things!” Billy wore a mischievous expression.
“And look what happened to him, eh?”
“You say there is nothing on the other side of it, Dad, but that’s only because you’ve never gone through it and looked for yourself. Maybe the other side has better stuff than here. Ever think of that, old man?”
“Billy, if you’re thinking of walking through The Mist . . . ”
“Oh, bugger The Mist!”
“Billy, go to your room,” both parents blurted out in unison, with exasperated solidarity.
Billy nonchalantly flung done his napkin, pushed his chair back from the table, and then made a sudden, mad dash for the front door, yelling back over his shoulder: “Oh, look at Billy! He’s going to run out the door and then across the fields and off into The Mist! Oh, no, look out!”
“Billy, Billy!” his parents babbled, leaping from their seats and frantically running after him. But he skidded to a stop at the front door, turned around to face them, smiled and said, “Just kidding, Mom and Dad,” and then he sauntered off to his room.
His mother went into an anxiety fugue. She looked out the window at The Mist. It was just about 100 feet away, now, its silver-gray eddies and whorls licking at their property, which was on the outskirts of town near world’s end.
When Billy was five years old, he slipped his leash while his mother shopped at Judd’s store. On a winter day much like the current late autumn ones, he wandered off into a wet, foggy gloom that elided seamlessly over the fields and into The Mist. His mother, lost in her shopping, noticed only too late that her boy was not at the end of his tether. She ran frantically out of the store, screaming his name. A search team was got up, and with high-intensity lights they found him precariously close to the end of the world, past the garish warning signs bristling with their ominous skull-and-crossbones iconography. He was sightless in a cold, clammy fog so thick that visibility was an inch. Above a distant ghoulish howling and cackling, and a repetitive din like the beating of mallets on sheets of tin—the otherworldly sounds of nothingness that were issuing from the abyss that lay beyond the end of the world—the boy could be heard screaming, “Mommy! Daddy! I can’t see! Where am I? Help me! Mom-MEEEEE! Help MEEEEE! ”
Mrs. Jackson plugged her ears with her fingers to blot out her little boy’s shrieks, which seemed to be happening even now. She spent the rest of the evening sharpening pencils. The grinding of the pencil sharpener competed with the keening of the wind.
* * *
The big day was a week away, and Mr. and Mrs. Jackson were enduring yet another excruciating dinner with Billy.
“How does Santa see me when I’m sleeping, and how does he know when I’m awake?”
“Billy,” Mrs. Jackson pleaded, “he’s—well—Santa!”
“And how does he know when I’ve been bad, or good?”
“In your case, son, I’m pretty sure anyone could figure it out,” his father said, his expression sardonic over the rim of the coffee cup that he had lifted to his lips.
“Is Santa omniscient?”
They studied their son.
“Billy, where did you pick up a big word like that?” Mr. Jackson wanted to know.
“At the local Words M Us outlet,” the boy said, but his clueless folks did not get the grammar joke, looking mystified, so he pressed on: “Because if he is omniscient, that must mean he has infallible foreknowledge of all propositions that are truth apt: capable of having truth values (You know, being either true or false: Principle of Bivalence, and all that). In that case, I have no free will, because if Santa knows ahead of time that on, say, November 17, I’m going to pull Jill McGowan’s pigtails in class (which I actually did do on November 17, by the way) then I’m going to pull her pigtails in class whether she likes it or not, but more important, whether I like it or not. If Santa is omniscient, then I have no free will, so why should I be blamed when I do bad?”
His father was incredulous.
“Did you really pull Jill McGowan’s pigtails?” He was thinking of old Farmer McGowan, a mean man who was fiercely protective of his family and not to be trifled with.
“Sure, I did!”
“Why?”
“Because she’s stupid, and deserved it, that’s why! And besides, she looks like a retard, at her age, wearing pigtails. Pigtails are for first graders.”
“That’s enough, son.”
“Why?”
His father flung his napkin down on the table.
“Billy, go to your room, right this minute, or, so help me, I’ll, I’ll . . . ”
“Or you’ll what?”
Mr. Jackson spluttered, speechless.
Billy rolled his eyes and said: “Or you’ll nothing. Thought so.” But he went to his room anyway, glad to be by himself.
* * *
Three days before Solstice Day, Mrs. Jackson strolled to the general store. She could see, beyond the fields that were lightly dusted by snow, the moist, low-lying, silver-gray Mist. It girdled the whole world, and it was closing in. She stopped, and her breath hitched. She looked over her shoulder. The Mist had moved a little more. It had moved closer. Moved toward her. It had startled her. The Mist was closing around the very neck of reality like a silver-gray hangman’s noose. She thought about her son’s questions.
How, she thought worriedly, could anybody think that there was anything on the other side of The Mist? It was—by definition—where the world ended. Everyone knew that, except for crazy people!
Then she wrung her hands and thought, could my Billy be crazy?
She recalled crazy Mr. King who used to live in a castle-shaped house on a big rock-like hill near the west edge of town, and the west border of The Mist. He lived alone there, scribbling creepy stories like a crazy man. He had a long, horse face and dark, weird eyes. One day he upped and walked into The Mist, and never returned. Well, good riddance to him!
Crazy Mr. King, in his silly stories, had populated the other side of The Mist with a frightening bestiary of spiders as big as puppy dogs, pulsating monstrosities with slimy puckered tentacles and bat-like things with enormous wings. In the past, others had thought that the spirits of the dead dwelled on the other side. The bard had called it the Undiscovered Country. But modern scientists said that there was nothing out there and that it was insensible to speak of nothing. The shrieks and cackles, the howling, and the din like the beating of hammers on tin were projections, the psychologists said, of one’s inner fears and hopes, demons and dreams. They were the sounds of silence, they said.
She entered the store, and the screen door shut behind her with a bang that made the segmented cardboard Santa above it wave down at those inside. They included Judd, and also Mrs. Cranston and her boy, Billy’s age, Jason. Jason was a problem child, too, and Mrs. Jackson looked hopefully at the boy, who was loitering while his mother was examining jars of jam.
“Well, how are you, Mrs. Cranston?”
“Just fine, Mrs. Jackson. And you?”
“Fine and dandy!”
Jason was staring morosely at the floor. Over the last several days, Mrs. Jackson had made a mental list of the town’s bad boys, comparing them with Billy. Jason topped that list.
“Well, Jason, how is school?”
“Answer the nice lady, Jason,” Mrs. Cranston hissed, elbowing her son in the ribs.
“I don’t like school,” the boy said sullenly, still looking down. “I can’t understand what’s going on, and Mrs. Martin always makes fun of me, and sometimes she hits me. Sometimes she hits me in the head.”
“Serves you right!” his mother snapped. “Maybe she can beat some brains into that thick skull of yours. The Santa knows I’ve tried, and I can’t.”
Jason was widely known as the town dullard—the next generation’s village idiot.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” Mrs. Jackson grinned, not sorry at all. An awkward silence ensued until Judd, the mind reader, intervened. Judd knew everyone in town, and all their problems. That was why people thought of him as a mind reader. But because he was a childless bachelor, some people felt sorry for him.
“A stressful time of year, for sure,” he said soothingly. “But just think, ladies, it’s only a few more days and then it’ll all be over for another year.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Cranston sighed. “When I was little, everyone looked forward to the holidays, even the adults. My mother made figgy pudding topped with white sugar, and she sprinkled it with vanilla chips. Oh! To die for! And her cranberry tarts! The real holiday spirit! But these days . . . ” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged with resigned despair.
* * *
That night, while Mom and Dad slept, Billy threw on a coat and sneaked out of the house in his pajamas and walked right up to The Mist. It steamed and smoked and swirled. He looked up at it with big-eyed awe.
He heard, coming from the other side of The Mist, distant moans, cackles, shrieks and a low, persistent din: The sound, he thought, of intermingled voices. He backed away, frightened. He only vaguely remembered his one other encounter with The Mist, when he was five years old. But now he felt fear again. Still, he plucked up his courage and again approached The Mist, this time tentatively. He reached out to it, pointing a finger.
It reached back, with a single tendril of smoke that shaped itself into a finger and touched his own.
“Billy,” The Mist whispered. “Billy. Billy. Billy.”
“W-what?”
“Join us. Come join us, Billy.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t belong here. You belong with us.”
The Mist parted slightly, and Billy gazed, his jaw suddenly slack, at the other side. Radiant beams of light streamed down on him and he backed away a second time, too stunned to speak. But as he turned to go back home, he thought about the coal. He was not afraid. But, just in case, he carefully counted the paces from the Mist back to the door of his house. Fifty feet. He could run that, if he had to. Sure, he could. The next morning he woke up, his pajamas slick with sweat, and he had forgotten most of his dream, if a dream it had been. But he remembered: fifty feet.
Just fifty feet to freedom.
* * *
On Solstice Eve, the Jacksons went to church. Midnight Mass was traditional. They were dressed in their best. Billy picked at the knot of his tie. Mrs. Jackson tapped his hand away from it and said, “Billy, you look just fine. Stop fidgeting.”
“I don’t like wearing a tie.”
“Well, you have to wear it.”
“Why?”
“Why? Look at your father. He always wears a tie.”
“Why? That sounds whack.”
“Oh! No more ‘Whys.’ We’re going to church!”
Billy asked, “Where is the North Pole?”
His parents stopped, and looked down at him with fear.
“I mean, that’s where Santa lives, right? So where the heck is it? And for that matter, where is the South Pole? Is it on the other side of The Mist?”
Mr. Jackson crouched down to look his boy in the eye.
“Son,” he said softly and earnestly, “I’ll make a deal with you. You can ask your Why questions tonight, before bed, and I’ll answer them as best I can. But right now we’re going to church.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . Billy, everyone knows the North Pole is due north; right . . . right overhead.” He gestured desperately up at Polaris, the Pole Star, which feebly twinkled down through a round hole in the sky formed by the ever-encroaching Mist. “Polaris is where Santa lives, with Mrs. Claus, his elves and reindeer.”
“And where is the South Pole?”
“Down below, inside the earth . . . ” he pointed downward. “Deep, deep inside it, son. Where all the coal is. It’s a dark, dark place, sooty and dirty, and it’s where the bad folks go when they die. It’s not a place you want to be, Billy. Not at all.”
“Why not? It sounds kind of cool.”
“Oh, for Santa’s sake, let’s go!” Mr. Jackson angrily shot to his feet, and grabbed Billy by the hand. He yanked the boy toward the church, Mrs. Jackson following behind while wringing her hands and pining for more pencils to sharpen.
* * *
After services the choir closed with a gospel rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”:
He’s making a list
And checking it twice . . .
Gonna find out
Who’s naughty and nice . . .
“Horse puckie!” Billy jeered with a big grin, and then he dissolved into giggles and looked around at everyone. The singers broke off. The rest of the congregation lapsed into a stunned and traumatized silence. Then someone piped up loudly, “I’m betting we won’t be seeing much more of this sort of behavior after tomorrow,” and a few others murmured, “Here, here!” Mr. Jackson stared down into his pew, seething with rage. Mrs. Jackson was ashen.
She clasped her hands in silent prayer, and in her mortification she avoided all the staring eyes. Instead, her eyes wandered above the choir, the altar and the priest, and she saw on the wall behind them the great gilded Santa in his sleigh, guided by reindeer. With a jolly grin Santa was timelessly waving down at the worshipers. His red cheeks were as warm as candied apples, his blue eyes as cold as shaved ice.
* * *
Mr. and Mrs. Jackson slept fitfully. About 3 a.m., Mrs. Jackson woke with a start. She thought she heard something that sounded like the faint jangling of bells, and a familiar laughter. The moonlight streamed in through the window of the bedroom. She looked out the window and upward, and the moon was like a round white luminous eye peering down through a hole in The Mist. And then, at that moment, she saw the silhouette of the flying reindeer pulling the sleigh that held the Great God come down from Polaris. She saw his black fat shape against the moon, and the silhouette of his peaked cap and the sack slung over his shoulder, and she heard his laughter: “Ho, ho, ho!” The silhouette flew past the moon and was gone in an instant. Then snow started to fall. She pulled the curtains shut and curled up in bed next to her sleeping husband, trembling uncontrollably. In her dream, if it was a dream, she could not sleep again for a long time.
* * *
At dawn they woke. Mr. Jackson got out of bed and said, “Let’s go see.”
He waited for her.
“Mother, we have to.” She was sitting in bed, curled in a fetal position under the sheets, her face buried in her arms which were crossed over her knees.
“Mother. Come.”
In the living room was the tree, with the presents underneath it. The stockings on the wall were bulging.
They looked at the presents, the stockings and then at each other. Mrs. Jackson said, “I can’t look.”
“Mother! We have to.”
“Then you look. I’ll wait here.”
Mr. Jackson looked inside Billy’s stocking.
“You’re not saying anything,” his wife said.
Mr. Jackson said nothing.
“That says it all.”
Billy appeared in his pajamas, yawning.
The doorbell rang.
“Go answer it, Mother,” Mr. Jackson said softly.
“W-why?”
“You know why.”
In tears, his wife answered the door.
Three men stood on the porch, two of them dressed in funereal black with tall, starchy white collars and top hats.
They flanked Judd, from the General Store. He was dressed as Santa Claus. He looked comical in his cotton beard, which was pasted to his cheeks with Scotch tape, and it was plain that the wiry store owner had stuffed a pillow under his red and white costume to simulate a gut. It kept slipping out from under his coat and he kept shoving it back up. But Mrs. Jackson failed to see the humor.
“You!” she said, staring wildly at Santa Judd.
“Aye,” the store owner said. In one hand he held a sack, and in the other The List. “I was deputized this year, Mrs. Jackson. I’m ever so sorry.”
“You’re—sorry.”
“Billy got the coal this year, Mrs. Jackson. But I expect you already know that.”
“The mind reader.”
“Bring Billy outside, please. Hurry up. We’re going to kill him.”
“It’s not fair,” Mrs. Jackson protested. “What about Mrs. Cranston’s boy? He’s not nice! He’s naughty, awful naughty! You saw him—you saw him in your own store the other day, being rude to his elders! Oh, what a brat! Why didn’t Jason get the coal this year, Judd? Why?”
“Mother,” Mr. Jackson said, touching her shoulder.
Judd and the others looked inside and spotted Billy.
“Billy,” Judd said, voice surprisingly stern, “Come with us, please. Hurry up.”
Billy studied Judd from afar, and then remarked in a candid and guileless way, “You look like a cretin in that costume, you know.”
Mrs. Jackson burst into tears, and as Mr. Jackson held her back she shrieked at Judd: “You’re just an old—an old bachelor! No better than a spinster! What do you know about —about children, and raising them, and who deserves to get the coal each Winter Solstice, and who doesn’t? Bachelor! Bachelor! Lonely old bachelor! Childless! Pathetic! Freak!”
“Enough!” her husband yelled, grabbing his wife by the shoulders and shaking her. “Snap out of it, Shirley!”
“Bachelor . . . bachelor . . . bachelor . . . ” her voice trailed off as Billy approached the men.
“I’m afraid you got the coal, Billy,” Judd told the boy, “whether or not I’m a cretin, or even a freak.” He sounded royally pissed.
“Why?”
Mr. Jackson approached Judd and the two other men.
“Judd,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Jackson?”
“The List . . . ”
“What about it?”
“You . . . ?”
“Yes?”
“Checked it twice?”
“You know I did, Mr. Jackson. I’m disappointed you would even ask.”
“Let me see it, please.” Mr. Jackson held out a hand. “You know that I’m legally entitled to check it. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Judd, but . . . ”
Judd looked wounded. But he handed over The List.
Mr. Jackson read it. Everything was in order. The names had been blocked out with a sharp, No. 2 pencil, the kind that Billy’s teacher, Mrs. Martin, favored.
NICE, NICE, NICE, had been stamped next to all the names, except the name on top, which was Billy’s name. The stamp said:
NAUGHTY
“As you can see, Mr. Jackson,” Judd said enthusiastically, pointing at various names on The List, “it was a close call. Jason was No. 2. But he didn’t quite make it this year. Maybe next year. In fact, I’m betting on next year, in the town pool. Next year, we’ll be going after the dumb kids. But this year . . . I’m so sorry, Ed.”
Mr. Jackson somberly nodded, and handed The List back to Judd.
Then Judd looked at Billy and said briskly, “Well, let’s get it over with, boy.”
Mr. Jackson saw the box outside, full of hard coal. Beyond it, the whole town had gathered. Some three thousand people stood about, and beyond them was The Mist and beyond that was nothing. It was the end of the world.
Billy saw the box, too, and he saw The Mist.
Just fifty feet away, Billy remembered. Even closer, now. As always, the Mist was making its closest approach of the year today, on the Winter Solstice. Fifty feet or less, Billy thought. I can run that.
The holiday festivities began.
People pranced toward the box, tore off the lid and grabbed lumps of coal.
Meanwhile, the men on the porch tried to grab Billy. But Billy kicked Judd in his pillow gut and then scooted under his legs and bolted toward The Mist. He heard the voices from behind the Mist calling his name, and as he ran as fast as he could, his lungs already screaming for more air, he imagined that the whorls and eddies of that bone-chilling silver-gray blanket were forming rescuing hands that were reaching out for him to snatch him away from this world. He threw himself at those hands while the others looked on dumfounded. They had never seen anyone try to run into The Mist before, though they had heard the stories about old Mr. King and a few others.
Someone yelled: “Grab him!”
Judd was bounding after Billy, but his pace was slowed because he kept pushing the pillow up under his suit. Billy was about to plunge headlong into The Mist when, running too fast, he tripped and fell on his hands and knees into freshly fallen snow. Someone snatched him up by the back of his pajamas and when he looked up and behind him, he saw that it was his father.
“Ed, what are you doing? ” Billy heard his mother shrieking.
His father yanked Billy to his feet, and then turned him over to the mob.
Billy kicked like a mule, but they got him under control and dragged him back from The Mist and to the lawn, covered with snow, and threw him down on it.
He scrambled to his feet, but then Farmer McGowan stepped out of the mob and kicked in Billy’s teeth.
“That’s for pulling my daughter’s pigtails in class,” he told the boy. The mob roared.
Billy sat in the snow, dazed. Bits of his broken teeth dotted the snow. They reminded Mrs. Cranston of chips of vanilla on sugar-topped figgy pudding, the kind that Mom made that were to die for. She was holding lumps of coal.
Mrs. Martin, Billy’s fourth-grade teacher, stole up behind him. In one hand she clutched brand-new, freshly sharpened No. 2 lead pencils, like arrows in a quiver. She punched the boy in the side of the face. Then she spat on him and hissed, “Questioner! Impertinent questioner, and sayer of oaths!”
”Our only child!” Mrs. Jackson wailed, clinging to her husband, who struggled to console her, while secretly itching to step out and give Billy a shot himself. A smile stole across his face while his wife buried her face in his chest and sobbed, “It’s not fair! Not fair! Why? Why?”
Mrs. Martin seized Billy by the hair, and yanked his head back until he was looking up at her. She then raised a fist, clutching a pencil, and brought it down. Then she brought down another.
“Out, vile jelly!” cried Mrs. Martin, who taught introductory Shakespeare to her fourth-graders. Then she let him go.
Billy staggered to his feet and blundered blindly about, screaming, “Mommy! Daddy! Where are you? Help me! I can’t see! Mom-MEEEEE! Help MEEEEE! ”
Pencils stuck out of his eyes, waggling as he went.
“Oh my Santa,” Mrs. Jackson cried, “That bitch put out Billy’s eyes! ”
“Ho, ho, ho!” Judd said. “Billy goes through pencils. Ah! But sometimes, pencils go through Billy.”
Mrs. Martin danced about, chanting in a mystical way, “He does not look, and so he cannot see.”
Mrs. Jackson tore from her husband’s grasp and bolted toward Billy, who staggered about, sightlessly patting the air. He was screaming for Mommy.
Her husband bounded after her, seized her by the wrists and dragged her back into the house.
“Stop it, Mother!” he raged, and then, stripping off his tie, he threw her to the floor. When she sprang to her feet, gibbering, he slapped her so hard that blood bloomed in her mouth. She sprawled across the couch and looked up in terror at her husband, holding a hand to her lips.
“He’s getting what he has coming to him!” Mr. Jackson roared. “Billy was a botch, bitch! Your fault! Good riddance to him!”
She sobbed. “Why? Why Billy?”
“You know why! He’s bad! And if we don’t kill him then Santa will withdraw His protection and the Mist will keep coming and coming and coming until it eats us all! Until it erases the whole world, instead of going back as it always does after the blood sacrifice on Solstice Day! You know that, Mother! And you know the old nursery school rhyme: ‘Shiny toys for the nice little boys/Darky coal for the naughty bad soul!’ Now shut up!” He hit her again.
Outside, the first piece of coal hit Billy. Mrs. Cranston had thrown it.
Some folks brought up a coffin and shovels. They were going to send Billy to the South Pole.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Judd said. He handed out more coal from his sack. “Merry Solstice Day, everyone, and a Happy New Year!”
The Mist was already retreating.
Jason, Mrs. Cranston’s boy, took a hunk of coal from Judd that was so big he had to hold it with both hands over his head, and he tottered toward Billy. Lumps of coal were raining down on Billy now, ticking off his head. Billy sank into the white snow, which was turning as red as holiday cranberry sauce. In a faltering voice, he asked why.
David Misialowski has had six short stories accepted for publication. “The Night Editor” appeared in Zahir; “Dust” and “One Afternoon, Missing” appeared in Dragons, Knights and Angels Magazine; and “We Take Death to Go to a Star” recently appeared in Macabre Cadaver. “Solstice Day” is scheduled to appear in Macabre Cadaver, and “Ant Farm” in SpecFicWorld, before the end of the year.
