Brothers

As Jimmy and I laid in bed I asked him about the things he was saying with the older kids. “So, that stuff at school?” I asked. “You didn’t really mean what you said about not believing?”

“I meant it,” he answered.

The moment he said it I heard the clicking and creaking of the radiator come on, blowing warm air from the living room into our room via the duct. The warm air was calming.

“How could any of it be real? And, the older boys all say it’s made up. I mean, If it was real wouldn’t they have stories to tell. Like Jacob Conners, he sure isn’t a good kid. I saw him smoking behind the Lewis’s grain silo.”

“But, mom says it’s real?” I argued.

“And she’s a liar too, just like all the other parents.”

The clacking grew louder from the vent at the floor in the far wall.

Jimmy talked on as his voice grew more defiant, “Plus, how could a person keep an eye on us all the time? It’s stupid.”

“Magic?” I suggested.

He answered, “Magic isn’t real and Black Pete isn’t real. Watch, I’ll prove it. Fuck shit fuck fuck crap”.

I was stunned by his language.

I heard a hard knock from the far wall. I looked at the vent. Inside it was dark except for two round reflections.

“Black Pete is here,” I whispered.

Jimmy ordered me to shut up.

“There. There is the vent,” I continued.

There was a pause and then Jimmy said, “I don’t see anything.”

But I did. They had vanished, but I was sure that those two round reflections were there.

That night, after hearing a long muffled, yet obviously heated conversation between our parents downstairs, the door to our room opened and there, in the beam of hall light stood our mother. She came into the room and closed the door behind her. There we were, Jimmy and I tucked in bed as my mother took a seat at the other side of the room, the light of the moon beaming through the window creating a lake of moonlight between her in the chair and us in our beds. It seemed like an ocean away, but still not far enough. I could see the seering moonlit look of disappointment in her face.

In the dark she spoke. “I have had enough of your attitude Jimmy and both of you always fighting.” It was about to come, the worst punishment ever, and this time, not just for Jimmy, but for me too. But, it didn’t come. “You two are not in trouble. You have created your own trouble. Christmas is fifty-five days away. You have fifty-five days exactly to sharpen up and prove that you are going to be good little boys or else.”

She was calm, too calm. I was terrified. Everyone in Winterthistle knew of Father Christmas and we also knew of his servants, the creatures and characters that traveled with him at Christmastime. I wasn’t sure what she meant by “or else” but I knew it was scary, too scary to even want to know about, at least too scary for me to want to know, but not for Jimmy.

“Why,” Jimmy’s voice trembled, “What will happen?”

“Old Man Whipper will come for you,” she said.