The Christmas Thingy Read online

  The Christmas Thingy

  By F. Paul Wilson

  Pictures by Alan M. Clark

  Text copyright © 2005-2011 by F. Paul Wilson

  Illustration copyright © 2005-2011 by Alan M. Clark

  Physical Book design by Alan M. Clark

  eBook design by Eric M. Witchey

  Originally Published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2005

  eBook Published by IFD Publishing in 2011

  IFD Publishing, P.O. Box 40776, Eugene, Oregon 97404 U.S.A. (541)461-3272 www.ifdpublishing.com

  Discover other titles from IFD at Smashwords.com.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  All persons in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

  Paper copy ISBN 1-58767-135-2

  Hard cover ISBN: 1-58767-031-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4524-4554-0

  Originally Printed in the United States of America

  First eBook edition

  Dedicated to Ethan Paul Bateman and Hannah Elizabeth Bowers

  Alan M. Clark wishes to thank Melody Kees Clark for her assistance with Thingy’s note, and Jill Bauman for sharing her design ideas for Thingy.

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  THE CHRISTMAS THINGY is meant to be read aloud. So if you’re reading this to your children, or to your little brother or sister, try using different voices as you go along: Use your regular voice for Jessica; use a high-pitched British voice for Mrs. Murgatroyd; and hold your nose whenever the Thingy speaks. But most of all, have fun.

  The Christmas Thingy

  “You want what for Christmas?” Mrs. Murgatroyd says, bending to pick up the pieces of the plate she just dropped.

  “A monster,” Jessica Atkins says, nibbling on her toast. “Not a big, mean monster. I want a friendly little one to play with when I come home from school, and maybe keep me company at night.”

  “Don’t you wish for no monster, Miss Jessica,” Mrs. Murgatroyd says, her accent getting thicker with each word. “Not for Christmas! ’Specially not in this ’ouse!”

  Jessica is sorry for upsetting the plump old housekeeper, but now she’s very curious. “What do you mean, Mrs. M.?”

  “You just might get your wish!”

  “Really?” Jessica claps her hands with glee. “Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish!”

  “You’ll be very sorry, you will,” Mrs. Murgatroyd says in a grave tone. “Very sorry if the Christmas Thingy decides to pay you a visit.”

  “‘Thingy?’” Jessica laughs. “‘Thingy?’ What a funny name!”

  “You won’t be thinkin’ it’s so funny when you wake up Christmas morning and find out what’s ’appened to all your presents.”

  Suddenly Jessica is no longer smiling. “Wh-what will happen?”

  “The same thing that ’appened almost one ’undred—no, I do believe it was exactly one ’undred years ago.”

  Jessica waits patiently as the housekeeper counts the years. Mrs. Murgatroyd sort of came with the house and has worked here forever.

  “Yes. It was exactly one century ago this year that the Christmas Thingy visited this very ’ouse. The lit’le boy who lived ’ere then ’ad been wishin’ for a secret friend. Well, as Advent came, ’e got ’is wish: the Christmas Thingy arrived. It stayed right up until Christmas, it did, and then it left, because Thingies must always return to Thingyland before dawn on Christmas morning. But before it left this ’ouse a century ago, it stole some presents.”

  “Oh, that’s awful!” Jessica cries.

  “Not all the presents, mind you; not the ’ole family’s. Just one person’s. The ones for the lit’le boy who ’ad befriended it. The Thingy stole all the lit’le boy’s presents and took them back to Thingyland to ’oard and gloat over, because nobody gives presents in Thingyland at Christmas. They steals them.”

  “But why?”

  “Thingies steal,” says Mrs. Murgatroyd with a shrug. “They can’t ’elp it. Stealing is in their nature. As me Mum used to say, ‘Like a rose must bloom and a pig must squeal, a cow must moo and a thingy must steal. It simply must.’”

  “But what’s a Thingy look like?”

  “Ow, it’s an ’ideous lit’le creature, it is. Too ugly to describe. Let’s just ’ope you never ’as the misfortune o’ seeing the lit’le blighter!”

  Jessica nods, but inside she still wants her own little monster. Then she yawns.

  “You wouldn’t be tired now, would you? You just got up.”

  “I keep waking up and hearing noises.”

  “These old ’ouses is full o’ creaks an’ squeaks. You’ll get used to ’em after you’ve lived ’ere a while longer.”

  Jessica knows that the noises come from mice in the walls—little scratchings all through the night. But she doesn’t want to tell Mrs. Murgatroyd that. The housekeeper will start setting out traps. Jessica doesn’t want to hurt the mice, she just wants them to go away.

  She smiles as she realizes something: If she got a little monster for Christmas, maybe it would scare those mice away.

  With that nice thought in her head, she tightens the thigh strap on her leg brace

  and gets up from the table.

  “Thanks for the breakfast, Mrs. M.”

  The old housekeeper smiles. “You’re quite welcome, Miss Jessica. But don’t you be watchin’ any o’ those silly old movies now. You’ve already got enough strange notions in that lit’le eight-year-old ’ead as it is.”

  “What else am I going to do?” Jessica whispers as she limps up the steps to her room. “I’ve got nobody to play with.”

  Sometimes Jessica wishes her folks hadn’t moved here to England. The idea of living in London for a year while her parents write an important research paper seemed so exciting last summer. But they rented this big old Victorian mansion to live in, and it’s so far from where most of her classmates live that she hardly ever gets to see them.

  It’s not as if no one likes me, she thinks as she enters her bedroom with its high ceiling and huge bed. It’s just that I can’t do a lot of the things they do.

  Jessica knows she’s a normal little girl in every way except maybe that she likes monsters. Oh, yes...and her left leg doesn’t work. People tend to forget that because Jessica tends to forget it. Her left leg has never worked since the day she was born so she’s quite used to it. She has to wear a brace from her hip to her ankle to help hold her up. But she hardly ever thinks about it. She pulls on her brace every morning like other children pull on a sock.

  But it means she can’t ride a bike or walk very well with her braced leg, and since both her parents are doing research all day, she spends a lot of time after school alone.

  Not completely alone. There’s Mrs. Murgatroyd, of course, but she spends the whole day cooking and cleaning, so she’s no fun.

  To pass the time between the end of school and the time her mom and dad come home, Jessica watches movies on the DVD player. She watches only fantasy, science fiction, and monster films. Everything from Frankenstein to Godzilla to The Wizard of Oz to Star Wars to Gremlins, and back again. She loves monster films the best.

  But all the films in the world can’t take the place of one real friend. Jessica doesn’t tell her parents, but she’s very lonely here in England.

  And so, despite Mrs. Murgatroyd’s warning, Jessica decides to keep wishing for a little monster for Christmas. She knows it pr
obably won’t matter anyway. Wishing hardly ever works, otherwise her left leg would have been as good as her right long ago, but she also knows that Christmas is a special time in the world, and unusual things can happen in this magical season.

  Very unusual things.

  ~~~

  “What was that?” Jessica says, sitting up in bed and looking around in the dark. It’s a chilly night in the first week of December.

  “Just the wind,” she tells herself. “I hope.”

  Despite her love of monsters and spooky movies—which she knows are only make-believe—Jessica isn’t terribly fond of being alone at night in her second floor bedroom. This room is old and dark, with high, carved ceilings and strange wallpaper. Not at all like her bedroom at home in America.

  She listens carefully and hears the usual faint little scratchings of the mice as they run up and down in the spaces inside her walls. She’s not afraid of mice—she’s seen a couple of them and they’re cute little things.

  But now, she hears a different sound. A rustling that seems to come from under her bed. Thinking it’s a mouse, she looks below with the flashlight she always keeps under her pillow (just in case there’s a power failure) but sees nothing.

  “Yep,” she sighs. “Just the wind.”

  ~~~

  The next afternoon after school, Jessica goes to her dresser and finds that both of the candy bars she always keeps in her top drawer (in case of snack attacks) are gone. Only the empty wrappers remain.

  The mice ate her candy!

  At least she thinks it was the mice. To find out for sure, she decides to set a trap. Not a hurting trap—a tasty trap.

  That night, sometime after dinner and before bedtime, while Mrs. Murgatroyd is clearing and cleaning up and Mom and Dad are having their coffee, Jessica places one of Mrs. Murgatroyd’s homemade donuts on a plate on the night stand next to her bed. She ties a string to the donut, and attaches the string to a bell. Then she turns out the light and waits outside her door.

  It’s not long—only minutes, really—before she hears the tinkle of the bell. She leaps inside the room with her flashlight and finds...

  ...an empty plate.

  “The donut!” Jessica cries. “Where’d the donut go?”

  Then she notices a trail of crumbs leading across the carpet. She follows them to the closet and, without waiting to decide whether she should be scared or not, she pulls open the closet door and shines the light inside.

  And finds two big eyes staring back at her!

  Jessica lets out a little “Eek!” and turns to run, but a funny voice stops her.

  “Don’t be afraid, Jessica. I’m what you’ve been wishing for.”

  The voice seems friendly enough, so Jessica turns on the bedroom light and steps back.

  “Come on out where I can see you,” she says.

  “Okay,” says the voice, which sounds like someone talking while holding his nose, “but don’t be scared.”

  And out of her closet steps the strangest little creature Jessica has ever seen. Her first thought is that it looks like an oversized mushroom with big eyes and two feet; around the edge of the mushroom cap are a bunch of twisty little tentacles. One of those tentacles is coiled around a half-eaten donut. Jessica realizes why its voice sounds like someone talking with a pinched nose—it doesn’t have a nose!

  Jessica can’t help it. She begins to laugh.

  “You’re not afraid of me?” it says in its nasal voice.

  “No! I think you’re funny-looking! What on earth are you?”

  “Funny? I’ll have you know I’m the Christmas Thingy.”

  Jessica is shocked. She stops laughing.

  “The one who was here a hundred years ago?”

  Thingy smiles and bows. “The very same.”

  “The one who stole the little boy’s presents?”

  “Of course not! I wish I knew how that story got started. It’s not true! Every time something gets lost at Christmas, I get blamed for it. It’s not fair. I’m innocent!”

  “I believe you!” Jessica says, feeling sorry for Thingy.

  “You do? Oh, good. I’ve been so upset about this that it’s taken me a hundred years to get up the nerve to come back. But you wished for me, so I came. And now that I’m here, I hope to restore the good name of Thingies everywhere.”

  “And I’ll help!” Jessica says. “I’ll tell Mrs. M. that—”

  “Oh, no! You mustn’t tell Mrs. Murgatroyd! She’ll never believe me. She’ll chase me back to Thingyland before I get a chance to prove myself. Let’s keep it a secret from her for now. You can tell her all about me on Christmas after you’ve opened all your presents. That will show her.”

  “Does that mean we’ll be secret friends?” Jessica asks.

  “The very secretest. And to prove I’m your friend, I’m going to get rid of all those noisy mice scratching inside your bedroom walls at night.”

  “Don’t hurt them!”

  “I wouldn’t think of it. I’m just going to send them to the basement where they won’t bother you anymore.”

  As Jessica watches, Thingy twists its tentacles into braids and squeezes its eyes closed real tight.

  “There!” it says after a moment. “They’re gone.”

  “For good?”

  “For as long as you live here.”

  “How do I know they’re gone?”

  “You’ll see,” says Thingy.

  ~~~

  Later that night, as Jessica lies in her bed in the dark, she strains her ears but can’t hear a single scratch in the walls. The silence is glorious!

  “Thank you, Thingy,” she says into the dark. “I have a feeling we’re going to be great friends.”

  “Of course we are,” says Thingy from its place under her bed.

  ~~~

  As soon as Jessica awakens the next morning, she looks under her bed. But all she sees are a few dust bunnies.

  No sign of the Christmas Thingy.

  She sighs sadly. “I must have dreamed the whole thing.”

  But as she’s pulling on her leg brace, she hears a familiar pinched-nose voice. “What’s this, Jessica?”

  She looks up and there’s Thingy standing by the open closet door.

  “Thingy! You’re here!”

  “Of course I’m here. And you’re there.” With one of his tentacles, he holds up a black rectangular box. “But what is this contraption?”

  “It’s a DVD—a movie.” She looks at the title. “That one’s got no talking but it’s super. It’s called The Thief of Baghdad.”

  “It’s about someone who steals?” Thingy asks, its eyes suddenly bright.

  “Yes. And there’s lots of magic stuff in it. Even a flying carpet.”

  “A flying carpet?” Thingy says. “That sounds like fun!”

  With that, Thingy braids up its tentacles and squeezes its eyes shut, just as it did last night.

  For a moment, nothing happens. Then Jessica notices a ripple running over the throw rug on the floor next to her bed. As she watches, its edges begin to flutter.

  Thingy jumps on it. “Hurry, Jessica. Hop on!”

  Jessica steps onto the rug and drops to her knees at its center as the rug begins to vibrate.

  “What’s happening!”

  “We’re about to have some fun!” Thingy says.

  A very astonished Jessica finds herself rising into the air upon the rug.

  “We’re flying!” she cries.

  “Yes. A flying carpet. Just like you said.”

  Jessica is a little scared but she’s also very excited. She’s flown on a plane before, but never on a carpet. She laughs as they rise almost to the ceiling, then lets out a little scream as the carpet begins to swoop about the room, diving up and down like a roller coaster.

  “This is fun!” Thingy says to her. “Why didn’t I ever think of it before?”

  “Maybe because you never watched The Thief of Baghdad. If you want, we can—” Suddenly, Jessica notic
es that they’re swooping straight toward her bedside lamp. “Look out!” she cries.

  “Whoops!” says Thingy as he tries to pull the carpet out of its dive. He almost makes it, but the edge of the rug catches the rim of the shade.

  The lamp falls to the floor with a crash.

  “Oh, no!” Jessica cries as the rug settles back to the floor. “We broke it!” Suddenly, she hears footsteps on the stairs. “Hide, Thingy! Here comes Mrs. Murgatroyd!”

  “Okay,” says Thingy, “but first...”

  Thingy braids its tentacles and scrinches up its eyes.

  As an amazed Jessica watches, the broken pieces of the lamp begin to move.

  “Hurry!” Jessica whispers. “I hear her coming down the hall!”

  The pieces rise into the air and begin to revolve around each other. Slowly at first, then with lightning speed, they swirl as if caught in a miniature tornado.

  “She’s right outside the door!” Jessica says.

  Suddenly, with a flash of light, all the pieces rush together again and the lamp is as good as new.

  Jessica hears the door knob turn. She looks up and sees the door beginning to open.

  “Miss Jessica?” Mrs. Murgatroyd says as the door swings open.

  In a single blur of motion, the lamp hops back up on the night table and Thingy dives under the bed.

  “Yes, Mrs. M?” Jessica says, gulping with relief as the old housekeeper steps into the room.

  “Did you ’ear a loud noise just a moment ago?”

  “Yes, I did,” Jessica says. “It sounded as if a lamp had fallen and smashed on the floor.”