Fraud at Snowfields

  Fraud at Snowfields

  By Daniel Klock

  Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Klock,

  all rights reserved.

  www.fatherchristmasbook.com

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  Prologue

  Bluerorcs! Six, seven, a dozen? He cannot tell because the tiny, bright-blue explosions of light keep blinding him. Will, running as fast as he can. Flashes of blue, flashes of yellow, brilliant flashes of blue and yellow together like fireworks—he is as frightened as he has ever been. He keeps running, followed by Bluerorcs, his legs pumping and his boots hitting the ground hard—thump, thump, thump.

  Then the thumping gets louder and changes into a persistent banging.

  ‘Aren’t you ever going to get up?’

  Will heard somebody yelling and sat up abruptly.

  ‘Mum’s called you twice already!’

  He realised it was his sister Lucy shouting at him through the bedroom door. And he was sitting in his bed, safe at home. He wiped the sweat from his brow. Only a dream—or rather a nightmare he thought, the pictures still quite vivid in his mind.

  ‘Okay,’ he muttered. Then louder, ‘Okay’, so Lucy could hear him and would stop thumping the door to pieces. ‘I’m awake, I’m coming.’

  He shook his head. What a strange dream that had been. It had felt so real. Actually it still felt real, as if he really had been chased by those strange creatures through some dark tunnels. Again he shook his head to clear away these strange memories, and hurriedly got up to wash and dress himself.

  ‘Morning, Will,’ his mother greeted him when he rushed into the kitchen. ‘Didn’t you hear me? You must have slept like a rock! Now hurry! You’ve hardly got time for breakfast. Quickly now, or you’ll miss the bus and Mr Walker won’t be pleased if you’re late.’

  This was Mr Walker’s week for late duty and as he was Will’s favourite teacher, he did not want to get on the wrong side of him, so he gulped down his breakfast, brushed his teeth—well, sort of, he really just wet them perfunctorily—grabbed his bag, and raced towards the bus stop. He was just in time to catch the bus. Breathing hard, he settled down in a seat and sighed in relief: no detention today...

  Chapter 1

  All through the day at school, Will had a slight headache. Not that it mattered much—in two days the holidays would start, and none of the teachers expected much concentration from their classes. In fact they themselves were not concentrating on the lessons too much, either, but were already making plans for Christmas and thinking of all the preparations they had yet to make.

  As the lessons were rather boring, Will could not help but think about his strange and rather vivid dream throughout the day. It had not really felt like a dream at all—not like any dream he had ever had before. Perhaps more like a memory? But really, Bluerorcs, what kind of a word was that? He shook his head and muttered under his breath, ‘That’s crazy. Such things don’t even exist in science fiction books.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Burns, you would like to add something? Hm?’ Will heard Mr Walker call him. He snapped to attention.

  ‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  But Mr Walker had already turned his attention towards Ben and James, who had started elbowing each other. ‘Boys, really!’

  Finally even this school day was over, and the bell released Will. He did not feel like lingering with his friends as he sometimes did, but caught the bus straight home, still slightly bothered by his dream.

  ‘Hi, Mum, I’m back,’ he called as he entered the hall and tossed his bag into a corner. ‘No homework,’ he added, before she could pester him.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ she called back. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Oh, Mum, what can school be like? Just the same as every other day,’ Will replied as he walked into the kitchen. There he stopped abruptly. He was suddenly surrounded by a waft of delicious aromas. He knew them so well: his mother was baking Christmas biscuits at last. Will’s mum had lived in Germany when she was a girl, and since no one in the family much liked mince pies anyway, she kept up the German tradition of making specially spiced biscuits every December. Suddenly his dream was completely forgotten as he found his mouth watering in response to the promising flavours.

  ‘Oh well,’ his mother replied, still with her back to him. ‘I thought that just before Christmas you would be doing something special, something nice.’

  ‘No, not today. Today was the same as always. But tomorrow is the last day before the holidays, so we’ll have breakfast together in class and some Christmas decorations and stuff like that. And Mr Rupert said he wants to read us some Christmas tales and sing some carols with us.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ replied his mother.

  ‘Yes,’ said Will. Then he grinned. ‘Much better than maths, anyway.’

  His mother smiled. ‘Of course. I can remember my school days as well.’

  Will laughed.

  ‘Now that you are home, could you help me with the biscuits?’

  ‘Sure,’ replied Will. ‘Just let me get changed.’

  ‘Of course. Go on then’

  Will went to his room. He took off his school uniform and got into more comfortable clothes. As he hung up the uniform, he thought his mother was right. It would be nice to have a festive breakfast instead of some boring history or maths lesson. And he had to admit to himself—although he would never have said this in school or to his friends—that he still liked Christmas stories and carols. This was his favourite time of the year and he had always felt something special about it. Somehow there was just … something … about Christmas that made him feel more real, more himself, something others did not seem to feel so strongly. He had always wondered about this, and was still thinking about it when he went back into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ his mother said. ‘Could you knead the dough over there, please? You’re stronger than I am.’

  ‘Okay.’ Will went over to the side, where a lump of dough was sitting on the worktop. He started kneading it, inhaling deeply—cinnamon, vanilla, almond…. Mmm, the smells of marzipan, cardamom, coriander…. He was well-practised in picking out all the different aromas. He stole a bit of the dough—didn’t it always taste even better before it was baked?—then he mixed more flour into the rest of it. He smiled as he listened to the carol on the radio. And he had to think about his seemingly extraordinarily strong feelings about Christmas yet again.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ asked his mother.

  ‘Oh, I’m just happy it’s Christmas.’

  ‘You’ve always liked Christmas very much,’ his mother observed.

  ‘Well, it’s such a nice time. Everybody’s really friendly and happy, there are the presents, the Christmas trees, the decorations everywhere—I think that’s all just wonderful.’ He pointed at the ball of dough in front of him. ‘Is this enough?’

  ‘Let me see.’ She came over and looked at the dough. ‘Yes, that’s fine. Now you can roll it out. The cutters are over there.’ She pointed to the sideboard.

  ‘Okay.’

  Will started rolling out the dough using the large rolling pin. When he judged that the dough had the right thickness, he went over to the sideboard and fetched the cutters. He first selected one that was in the form of a Christmas tree—one of his favourites.

  ‘Isn�
�t Lucy here yet? I haven’t seen her, and I thought she only had school this morning.’

  He started pressing the cutter into the dough.

  ‘No. Yes.’ His mother laughed when Will looked confused. ‘Your sister finished school early, but she went over to visit her friend Laura, and I expect it will be some time before she’ll be home.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, those two can talk for hours.’ Will rolled his eyes. His mother laughed again.

  Will continued pressing the cutter into the dough until he had used up all the space. He placed the biscuits on a baking tray. Then he rolled the rest of the dough back into a ball and flattened it again with the rolling pin. This time he selected a cutter in the form of a star. He enjoyed the work and listened to the carols still playing on the radio.

  When he had finished up all the dough, he placed the rest of the biscuits on the baking trays and said to his mother, ‘I’m finished. Do you need help with anything else?’

  His mother looked at the baking trays and nodded approvingly. ‘The biscuits look very nice. Thank you. I can do the rest. Off you go.’ She smiled.

  Will smiled back, washed his hands, and left the kitchen. He went up to his room. His eyes fell on his bed. Underneath it were the presents he had bought for his parents and his sister. Now that he was twelve, his belief in Father Christmas was beginning to weaken. When he had been a young child, he had, of course, firmly believed in Father Christmas. But then, over the years, he had been told Father Christmas was just a myth, a fairy tale for children. Later on he had learned that the usual appearance of Father Christmas—the image of a nice, jolly and rather corpulent man with a bushy, white beard, and a magnificent red robe—was supposedly just a clever marketing campaign by a well-known soft-drinks producer. He grimly remembered what a tremendous disappointment that had been! After all, he had always been most firm in his belief in Father Christmas. He just could not imagine Christmas without him. All those years he had always been most diligent in writing his letters to him, spending ages so the writing would be very clear and easy to read. And he always had them ready by the end of autumn so they would reach Father Christmas in good time. But then he learned his parents were supposed to buy all the presents, gift wrap them, and place them under the Christmas tree while he was sleeping on Christmas Eve.

  And everybody seemed to confirm this: the shops, the television, his friends at school, and even his parents. He could still remember the long and heated discussions he had had with his friends when the first of them had been told Father Christmas did not exist. But in the end he grudgingly had to admit that they seemed to be right. There were, for example, all the people attacking the shops and buying lots of toys, electronics, and just about everything else you could think of right before Christmas. There were men in Father Christmas costumes in the shops and shopping malls, virtually at every street corner, ringing bells and shouting, ‘Merry Christmas’.

  But, in spite of all the evidence, Will always had a nagging feeling there was more to it, more than just a fabricated story and a marketing gag. There were some things that just did not fit. For example, he sometimes thought his parents looked vaguely puzzled when he opened his presents on Christmas Day—as if they were surprised by the presents he unwrapped. He always got what he had asked for in his letters—well, he thought somewhat sheepishly, as long as he asked for sensible things like a model railway or a backpack, and not a fully functional moon rocket or a living elephant. Sometimes, though, his parents had looked vaguely disturbed by the things he received, as if they could not remember buying them. And, now that he thought about it, he’d often felt the same way about the presents he had given them. Sometimes they looked grander than they had when he had bought them or were more the colour and shape his parents liked.

  But because just about everybody had told him Father Christmas did not exist, he had always dismissed this as a trick of his imagination. In the last months, though, he had sometimes thought about it, and more and more aspects seemed not to fit the explanation. He suddenly realised they would make rather a lot of sense if Father Christmas really existed after all. Or was it really just a children’s tale? Was he not too old for this, and was he just making things up, willing them to be true?

  Well, nothing he could do about it anyway. He would not be able to prove the existence or the nonexistence of Father Christmas. And, of course, he would not hear the end of it from his sister if he brought up this topic yet again. He just could not believe that others did not see or feel all the hints and clues he could see and feel. And that nobody else wondered about this.

  Oh well. He would just enjoy Christmas like he did every year. He went to his computer to check his e-mails. There were none. So he picked up the book he had been reading. It was, of course, a good Christmas story. He went downstairs to the living room, sat down on the sofa, and started to read.

  As he read, he turned to musing. What did make him love Christmas so much. He remembered when he was very little, he had had a dream. His parents had told him Father Christmas comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve and leaves the presents in the stockings and under the Christmas tree. In his dream, Will woke up in the middle of the night on the twenty-fourth of December. A noise had disturbed him. He was only five but he crept down the dark stairs, missing the third one from the top that creaked—he knew that because he had already been caught trying to get ice-cream in the middle of the night—and there in the living room was Father Christmas—no mistake. The old man winked at him, sat him on his knee, whispered a message Will could never quite remember, put his finger to his lips, and was gone. Will thought hard, still wrapped up in the magical presence that had just left. But there were his presents, as promised. Did he get the Lego he wanted? Was the model car there? It did not look as if he had got the jet plane he wanted—the parcels did not look big enough. Dare he open the presents? No. His mum and dad would not be pleased. Christmas was always a special day in the family. He was only a little boy but he still appreciated the ritual. Get up, long breakfast, open presents, one at a time, dinner—ooh—turkey, stuffing (that sometimes tasted better than the turkey) baked potatoes, vegetables (forget those!), Christmas pudding, crackers, funny hats, jokes. Then Dad, snoring on the sofa, Mum in the kitchen, he and Lucy sharing, bickering. Tea-time. Christmas cake, biscuits (no mince pies), trifle. Supper: pork pie, cold turkey, ham, salmon, crab paste, goodies that never came round again until next year.

  So Will crept back to bed and waited for the next day. But his dream of Father Christmas kept him warm through the night, the whispered words always a kind of promise, just out of reach.

  Will grew older. Christmas stayed the same. One year he stayed awake all night, creeping downstairs in the early hours (missing the third step, of course) but he never saw Father Christmas again. And yet, somehow, the remembered presence and scent of the old man seemed to linger in the Christmas paper, in the presents, in the essence of the day.

  Will could feel it creep over him again as he fell asleep over his book.

  In the early evening his dad came home. They had supper and then spent the rest of the evening in the living room watching television or, in Will’s case, reading. He finally went to bed. Before he eventually dropped off to sleep, he thought yet again about Father Christmas and how he could not believe the old man did not exist.

  Early next morning Will was woken by the alarm clock. He got up and stumbled into the bathroom, still quite sleepy. After he had washed himself, he was a bit more awake and remembered this was the last day at school before the Christmas holidays. This woke him up quite a bit more, and after getting dressed he very nearly bounced down to the breakfast table, where his mother was just putting out his cereal.

  ‘Good morning, dear,’ she greeted him.

  ‘Morning, Mum.’

  ‘So lively this early in the morning?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Indeed. Today’s the last day before the Christmas holidays!’ Will announced.

  ‘Oh
, that’s why. I wish you’d treat every day at school like this.’ She grinned.

  Will grinned back. ‘No way!’

  His mother laughed.

  ‘Eat. Eat and get yourself off to school, you!’

  ‘No. No breakfast today. We’re going to have breakfast at school, remember?’

  ‘Oh, right. I forgot.’

  Will was actually five minutes early for the school bus—he could not remember that happening before. Oh well. It was Christmas after all.

  His way to school was uneventful, and at the beginning of the lesson with Mr Rupert they put up Christmas decorations in the classroom. The girls had prepared paper-cuts for the windows in the shapes of Christmas trees, reindeer, and Father Christmas with his large, well-filled sack, riding his sleigh. The boys hung up red and green garlands as well as stars made out of golden foil along the ceiling and walls. The school had provided a small Christmas tree that stood in a corner of the classroom. The students had already decorated it with self-made hangings two weeks earlier, and had put a large, golden star on its top.

  When they had finished with the decorations, they prepared breakfast. They pushed all the tables together so they formed one large table. Everybody had brought something for breakfast like marmalade, chocolate spread, or rolls, and they put it all in the middle of the table to share. Mr Rupert sat down in their midst, and they started to eat. After Mr Rupert had eaten a couple of rolls, he fetched a large book with a bright, glittering white cover that looked like ice. The title was printed in red letters on it. It was a story about a boy joining the workforce of Father Christmas.

  Some of the boys started to snigger. The workforce of Father Christmas indeed! Did their teacher think they were still babies, believing in goblins and elves and other little Christmas helpers? And then a boy who actually worked for Father Christmas, manufacturing presents, riding sleighs, popping down chimneys? Will listened curiously. The whole story had an almost familiar feel about it. The sniggering grew louder and one of the boys pointed at Will’s rapt expression. Two boys were now actually laughing out loud. Irritated, Mr Rupert closed the book and suggested ending the morning with singing Christmas carols. The girls sang with quite a bit more enthusiasm than the boys—well, except Will of course, though he did try not to show it too much. He realised some of the laughter had been directed at him for being so interested in the story, and he certainly had no intention of becoming the target of some prank afterwards. But inwardly he enjoyed himself very much. It was the best day at school in a long time.