‘No,’ said Gina flatly, ‘I don’t, but I don’t believe the house is subsiding either.’
‘Well, it’ll have to do for now,’ said Jack with nonchalant finality. ‘Christmas starts here. We don’t want to spoil it talking about gremlins, now do we.’
They laughed together.
Gremlins. That surely bit deep. To call the Hell-spawn a gremlin.
The Yattering, weak with frustration, acid tears boiling on its intangible cheeks, ground its teeth and kept its peace.
There would be time yet to beat that atheistic smile off Jack Polo’s smooth, fat face. Time aplenty. No half-measures from now on. No subtlety. It would be an all out attack.
Let there be blood. Let there be agony. They’d all break.
Amanda was in the kitchen, preparing Christmas dinner, when the Yattering mounted its next attack. Through the house drifted the sound of King’s College Choir, ‘0 Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. . .‘
The presents had been opened, the G and T’s were being downed, the house was one warm embrace from roof to cellar.
In the kitchen a sudden chill permeated the heat and the steam, making Amanda shiver; she crossed to the window, which was ajar to clear the air, and closed it. Maybe she was catching something.
The Yattering watched her back as she busied herself about the kitchen, enjoying the domesticity for a day. Amanda felt the stare quite clearly. She turned round. Nobody, nothing. She continued to wash the Brussels sprouts, cutting into one with a worm curled in the middle. She drowned it.
The Choir sang on.
In the lounge, Jack was laughing with Gina about something.
Then, a noise. A rattling at first, followed by a beating of somebody’s fists against a door. Amanda dropped the knife into the bowl of sprouts, and turned from the sink,
following the sound. It was getting louder all the time. Like something locked in one of the cupboards, desperate to escape. A cat caught in the box, or a —Bird.
It was coming from the oven.
Amanda’s stomach turned, as she began to imagine the worst.
Had she locked something in the oven when she’d put in the turkey? She called for her father, as she snatched up the oven cloth and stepped towards the cooker, which was rocking with the panic of its prisoner. She had visions of a basted cat leaping out at her, its fur burned off, its flesh half-cooked.
Jack was at the kitchen door.
‘There’s something in the oven,’ she said to him, as though he needed telling. The cooker was in a frenzy; its thrashing contents had all but beaten off the door.
He took the oven cloth from her. This is a new one, he thought. You’re better than I judged you to be. This is clever. This is original.
Gina was in the kitchen now.
‘What’s cooking?’ she quipped.
But the joke was lost as the cooker began to dance, and the pans of boiling water were twitched off the burners on to the floor. Scalding water seared Jack’s leg. He yelled, stumbling back into Gina, before diving at the cooker with a yell that wouldn’t have shamed a Samurai.
The oven handle was slippery with heat and grease, but he seized it and flung the door down.
A wave of steam and blistering heat rolled out of the oven, smelling of succulent turkey-fat. But the bird inside had apparently no intentions of being eaten. It was flinging itself from side to side on the roasting tray, tossing gouts of gravy in all directions. Its crisp brown wings pitifully flailed and flapped, its legs beat a tattoo on the roof of the oven.
Then it seemed to sense the open door. Its wings stretched themselves out to either side of its stuffed bulk and it half hopped, half fell on to the oven door, in a mockery of its living self. Headless, oozing stuffing and onions, it flopped around as though nobody had told the damn thing it was dead, while the fat still bubbled on its bacon-strewn back.
Amanda screamed.
Jack dived for the door as the bird lurched into the air, blind but vengeful. What it intended to do once it reached its three cowering victims was never discovered. Gina dragged Amanda into the hallway with her father in hot pursuit, and the door was slammed closed as the blind bird flung itself against the panelling, beating on it with all its strength. Gravy seeped through the gap at the bottom of the door, dark and fatty.