Christmas, 1933.
Tom,
Merry Christmas! I hope you've been resting properly, love. Remember to keep warm in the night.
Yours,
Mary.
The letter came enclosed with a package, redolent of cinnamon and sugar. It was the only Christmas present Tom had received not courtesy of sympathetic church-goers, so it was his and his alone to open.
Carefully, he pried away the wrapping paper, revealing a midnight blue sweater and scarf, along with a tin of ginger newts. He stared at them for a long while, in his dingy room with his ancient bed and his crooked cupboard, before reading the letter again and tucking it beneath an oil lamp on the window sill, shadowy snowflakes drifting down Mrs. Riddle's elegant script.
Christmas Tom always spent alone, despising the crowds of shoppers and salesmen who tended to descend upon the inner city for the occasion, shouting and singing and chuckling. And while Tom still regarded the holiday as little more than an opportunity to slither about pinching valuables, he found it wasn't quite so miserable anymore.
*
December 31st, 1933.
The day began much like any other. Tom, who'd sighed and rolled about on his tatty mattress most of the night, could not have been more anxious in the morning. In spite of his exhaustion, he arose from bed to painstakingly scrub his skin in the freezing bath, brush every nook and cranny of his teeth, and trim all his nails. By six o'clock he was primped to perfection, while everyone else was still asleep.
He'd chosen his clothes the day before: a faded beige shirt and black trousers with not a single hole in them, the sweater Mrs. Riddle had sent, and a heavy black coat Tom had nicked off of a dead homeless man the winter before, which one of the nurses had shortened and tightened so it didn't engulf him entirely. Thusly dressed, he waited impatiently in his room, with his sheets straightened and scanty belongings in a small, shabby case by his side.
Come eight, Martha brought him a small breakfast of plaster-like porridge and a salt cracker, sliding a small rainbow lollipop into his hand with a cautious half-smile. Mrs. Cole had let him eat on his own since he'd hung the rabbit, for Tom's presence loomed over the other children an ominous shadow, and Billy Stubbs had already begun to look sickly. He forced himself to eat, though it did not satiate, swinging his legs about, full of restless thought. By eleven, he was sick of sitting around in anticipation and sneaked out for a walk.
He paused near the tree by the gate, the name Sejwick carved crudely into the bark; a patch of fresh dirt sat at its roots, beneath which Tom imagined the decaying corpse of the fluffy, red-eyed rodent and smiled.
Central London swarmed with people, hastening to catch trains, smoking in between lunch breaks, looming in corners behind newspapers. Dossers littered street corners and stared out from the skeletons of destroyed flats, thoroughly ignored in their starving sickness. Dirty snow carpeted the roads like an urban glacier, the cold already crawling its way into Tom's scuffed boots. Come noon, he veered into a frowsty diner, warming his hands on a newspaper filled with corn, observing passersby thoroughly jaded by the weather. The cashier, a sharp man with a particularly cynical view of children, ushered him out as soon as the last kernel disappeared and Tom found himself again in room twenty-seven, sitting just out of sight of the window.
Mrs. Riddle would come for him at eleven o'clock, he knew, fidgeting with his cuffs and slouched in bed. Soon, Tom would be leaving this place — forever, but soon was currently seven hours away, he lamented, and seven hours made four hundred and twenty minutes, which made only too many seconds to wait ... a twinkling spark from somewhere snagged his attention but by then, Tom's eyelids were already drooping. In a blink, he was asleep.
*
It was pitch dark when Tom's eyes snapped open. The city beyond the window lay quiet, London's usual humdrum of smoke, wagons, and people replaced by utter silence. The stillness prompted him to sit up, nerves fraying at the memory of bustling noon just hours ago.
He stepped off the bed, the floor inky beneath his shoes, coat brushing his ankles like outstretched fingers of the grubby carcass he'd relieved it from. A brilliant white spark shone from the keyhole of his door, though all else was black.
"Tom. Come out, now. You're leaving soon."
Though he couldn't tell to whom the voice belonged, Tom obeyed, patting down his hair as he grabbed his case and swung open the door, expecting Mrs. Cole, Martha, anyone —
— not the black silhouette looming over him.
His hands went slack, some chimaera of confusion and loathing in his heart. An odious betrayal roused like a black bear after the longest winter, starving and slow. Dimly, he recalled echoes of vague voices, deeming him unnatural, crude abomination, scheming snake, devil, and one could resist fate only so long before resignation settled in (Prometheus, clenched on a cliff beneath the eagle's crooked beak).
The figure extended a hand, stale, skeletal, curling it around his shoulders as its hood fell back, descending its gaping maw onto Tom's head; he closed his eyes, choked down a scream —
"Tom!"
He was panting, cold metal scorching his back — his bed —
"Tom, it's nearly eleven!"
Mrs. Cole's voice, rapping against his eardrums, shivering, ringing.
The door flew ajar, the matron glaring at him sprawled on the floor in a rectangle of light, as if a discarded robe. A cross shone on her chest a beacon.
"Dear, you'd best get along now." Her voice was softer than he'd ever heard it, her eyes too. After all, she'd never see him again after tonight. "Your grandmother will be here at any moment."
Gulping, Tom nodded, though his mind was elsewhere, in that pocket of reality where time had stopped and that thing — that black nothing had come for him, had strung his life from a lightning rod, atop an old cathedral in an older graveyard ...
He shook himself, gathered his wits and his things, and followed Mrs. Cole outside.
*
Mary Riddle arrived in a sleek black car that seemed to wink back the light of late night fireworks, stopping by the cemetery-esque gates of Wool's where Tom and the matron stood waiting, breaths misting in front of them. A shimmering silver shoe and pale leg stepped out of the back door, followed by a flushed Mrs. Riddle, lips painted apple red and hair in an intricate twist. So out of place did she look in the dirty street Tom could hardly believe she was there at all.
She shook hands first with Mrs. Cole, whose judgemental eyes flicked between the hem of her dress and her heeled shoes, before the matron returned to the orphanage with a final, solemn look at Tom. At last, Mary turned, beaming, to Tom.
"Oh, Tom," she gushed, pulling him into her satin embrace, the night air suffused with the scent of lilies and liquor. Tom complied, cheek pressing into her fur-covered shoulder, steeped in relief. "Happy birthday, love." She tapped the tip of his nose, glassy eyes roaming over his face. Her smile grew, into a sweet, sorrowful thing. "Lets hurry you out of here."
So Tom followed her, hand in hand, into the car, she chattering and he watching, numb, as Wool's Orphanage grew smaller and smaller in the street until they turned a corner and it was gone, forever.