Free Of Mice and Nutcrackers: A Peeler Christmas by Richard Scrimger Page A

the sides, and you wish you’d kept your mouth shut.
    I stagger backwards, screaming. I bump against something, trip, and end up by the stairs. I keep screaming and screaming.
    *
    A shaft of light, shining down on my dark world. Light from the kitchen. The door is open. Mom calls my name. I can’t stop screaming. Mom runs downstairs.

    I spend the rest of the evening in the family room. I try to tell Mom about the rustling noise, and she says
there, there,
and strokes my hair. That feels nice. Then she wraps a blanket around me and turns on the TV. She has work to do upstairs. Bernie bounces on the couch beside me. Ordinarily this would bother me, but tonight it’s soothing. He’s company.
    I can’t help wondering if it was Bill down in the basement all the time, scaring me. If it was, I’ll kill him.
    During a commercial I wander into the kitchen for a glass of juice. The basement door is open. I go over. I hear noise coming from the dark below.
    “Hello?” I call. If it’s Bill downstairs, I’ll close the door and see how he likes it.
    The basement light comes on. “Hello, yourself,” calls Grandma.
    I go down a couple of steps and peer into the basement. Grandma is standing on a chair, screwing in the lightbulb. “Can you hear a rustling noise down there?” I ask.
    “You know, missy, I think I can.” She steps down off the chair, pulls the chain so that the basement disappears in darkness.
    I should do homework, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I watch TV shows I don’t care about, following images across the screen, not paying attention to the dialogue. Bernie stops bouncing, trots off. I hear him talking to Grandma. “Do you want to –”
    “No,” says Grandma.

I dream about going camping, which is strange because we don’t camp. Not since the time two years ago when Bill, pretending to be a pioneer, insisted on chopping firewood. He swung hard, smashing the container of spaghetti sauce instead of the log he was aiming at. Then he swung again, knocking down the tent; and again, slicing a big hole in the canoe. Three strokes and we were out – no dinner, nowhere to sleep, and no way to move on. That incident ended Bill’s attempt to live the pioneer life.
    I wake up. There’s the smell of smoke in my nostrils. Cigarette smoke. Strange, because no one in the household smokes – no, wait. I’m forgetting Grandma. I frown, and go back to sleep. I dream some more, this time about an outdoor bowling alley. There’s a shoe rental, a vending machine selling potato chips, and a campfire. Someone a few lanes over is crying for help. There’s a witch sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows. She cackles when the pins go down.
    “Help!”
    I sit up. It’s Dad’s voice. “Hey! Help!”
    I get out of bed. I don’t hear anyone bowling. I look out in the hall. “Help!”
    I run to the stairs and peer up. “Oh, Dad!” He’s in the corner of the stairs, where they turn on the way down from the third floor.
    He’s crouched in a ball. “I’m lost!” he says, in a small voice.
    I run up the stairs and grab him by the hand. “Dad!”
    “Helen?”
    His hand is so hot, but he’s shivering. It’s very strange. “It’s me, Dad. Jane.” “Jane?”
    “Your daughter.”
    “I don’t know where I am,” he says.
    “But you’re home.”
    “I’m lost.”
    “No, you’re not. You’re found.” I lead him up the steep stairs to the third floor, my poor lost dad. His face is covered in sweat. He can’t stop shivering.
    Mom is asleep in a chair beside the couch. The upstairs office is not like I remember it a few days ago. The computer table is pushed into the far corner, out of the way. The couch has sheets and blankets on it. They’re all rumpled now. The desk is covered in pillbottles and thermometers and washcloths. Mom startles awake as we come in.
    “Alex,” she says. A tone I’m not used to hearing. “Oh, dear, Alex, what are you doing?”
    “I got lost,” Dad whispers.