The Advent Calendar (3 page)

Abraham raised his staff and pointed it over the river. ‘Behold,’ he said, stretching out his hand. ‘See what every generation of humanity has longed to see since Cain walked the earth,’ he cried. ‘Behold the end of war.’

A moment later – a blinking of an eye – and the river and the cliff and the valley were gone. Sam and Alice were rubbing their eyes and back in the front room. Sam looked at Alice. Alice looked at Sam. Then both turned to look at the calendar. The second door was open now. A tiny ribbon of steel stretched across the top. In the open doorway was a tiny carving of a white dove, its eyes glistening blue like sapphire. In its beak it held an olive branch. In the Sunday morning silence, Alice put her ear to the doorway. She could still hear the distant roar.

3 December

Monday morning: the very worst day of the week. Double biology first lesson. As a matter of principle, Alice always switched off her alarm clock on Sunday nights. She cherished the secret hope that Megs and Sam would both go off to work and forget all about her. Sam, of course, never took the slightest notice of anyone or anything in the mornings. He managed to get himself dressed (sort of) and out of the house by half past seven without waking up at all as far as Alice could tell. Megs likewise was utterly predictable. She hadn’t even twigged that this was a regular protest yet. Alice was shaken back to life every Monday morning at 8.15, curtains jerked back, light on.

‘Come on, darling, come on.’ Megs was trying to squeeze cheerfulness out through her teeth but not quite succeeding. ‘Monday morning. Rise and shine. School awaits. That awful alarm clock has failed again.’ Megs was not a morning person.

For Alice, conversation wasn’t really for mornings either. She went into autopilot. Bathroom. Disgusting school uniform. Rabbit food for breakfast. Also disgusting. Megs was on the healthy-eating trip again. Her school bag weighed half a ton.

‘Come on, darling, come on.’ Megs’ voice was rising in volume and in tone, like a kettle coming to the boil. She held the car door open. Alice slammed it behind her. They were halfway to school before she even thought about the calendar.

Just for one fleeting moment the word ‘chocolate’ came into her mind and her mouth watered. Then a split second later she realised that Sam had gone off to work with his mobile phone. How would she get the code? Would it be a different time during the week? What if Sam wasn’t coming home tonight? Should she contact him at work? She could text him from a friend’s phone if only she could remember the number. And if one of her two friends had broken school rules and smuggled a phone in. Would the calendar still work if they missed a day?

‘Here we are, my precious,’ said Megs, leaning across to give her a kiss. Alice made a strangled ‘Gollum’ sound and leapt out of the car. ‘Bye,’ she called, but the car had already pulled away.

Her heart and her shoulders sank a little every day as she walked through the school gates. Everything about the place seemed ten times worse than her last school. The buildings were falling apart. Most of the classes were out of control. The Year 9 bullies were particularly vicious.

Something strange was happening. As Alice turned the corner into the main entrance a dark shadow moved across the edge of her vision. As she walked down the long spinal corridor to her form-room she turned round in mid-stride. There it was again (she thought) following her but she was not quite sure.

Since the beginning of term, Alice had teamed up with Suzie and Alex. They were both new as well. She knew that, like her, both of them had moved to the area because of problems at home. The three had become unlikely allies without ever declaring friendship. Suzie was much better spoken than the other kids in their year but Alice thought she was really nice. Before her parents’ divorce she used to go to a private school. She found it difficult to take in everything at class and often rang Alice in the evenings to talk about homework. Alex was a geek, pure and simple, the brains in the outfit. He’d moved into the area from somewhere in the north because of his dad’s job.

There were three clauses to the three friends’ unspoken treaty: always stick up for each other, be there at break and lunchtime (the worst moments), and never, ever ask questions about home. Because they all lived a long way apart, the three of them hardly ever met up outside of school hours. Their archenemy (apart from the bullies) was Miss Newton, the biology teacher, who was at least seventy. Suzie reckoned she was the Trunchbull reborn to torment her.

‘Hi, Alice! Good weekend?’ Alex was there first. Suzie arrived a moment later.

‘S’alright. Nothing special. You?’

‘Same old thing. Ready for biology?’

Alice, of course, was still thinking about the Advent Calendar. Her mind kept going back in spare moments to the doors and the new worlds. But she was much too sensible to mention it to Alex, especially as it was so new. It felt fragile, somehow. As if it could disappear if she talked about it. Not to mention the weirdness of it all.

Biology always, always, always started with a test. They got through as best they could. Then Miss Newton announced one of her special educational films. Most of them were ancient and crackly but this one was actually rather good, Alex thought. Miss Newton kept talking about nature ‘red in tooth and claw’. The film traced the food chain in an African game reserve. Alice was seriously thinking of becoming a vegetarian by the end.

She daydreamed whenever she could. There was no way of knowing whether Sam had a new code or if they would go somewhere new this evening. Once or twice during the day she had the weird feeling that she was being watched or followed and caught the shadow in the corner of her eye but the moment passed. At long last it was time to go home.

Normally, she caught the bus. Megs was still at work on the other side of town. She was just turning out of the gate when there was a fierce beeping on the horn. ‘Over here, Alice.’ It was Sam. He was calling to her from his rusty blue sports car parked over the road. ‘Over here, quick, jump in!’

Alice crossed the road and hopped in beside Sam. ‘What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at work? Is it something to do with the calendar?’

Sam grinned, shifted into gear, revved the engine and pulled away. ‘What happened? Tell me.’

‘The trains weren’t running this morning. Something to do with a bomb scare in London. It turned out to be a hoax but there was no way of getting to work. As soon as I got to the station, I had to turn round and go back for the car. I must have just missed you. I was walking home when the text message arrived. Here it is.’

Alice grabbed the phone. The message was just like the others but a different number: ‘Eleven, colon, six.’

‘Great. And thanks for coming to get me. Let’s go home and punch in the number.’

Sam went a bit sheepish. ‘Erm. Well…,’ he said, choosing his words very carefully. ‘I already did that.’

Curiosity and temper both flared up at once. Curiosity won, but only just.

‘What happened? If you went anywhere without me I’ll get Mum to chuck you out.’

‘Calm down, dear,’ said Sam, in his most annoying TV voice. He caught the look in her eye and stopped halfway through the quotation. ‘I was at home anyway so I thought why not just punch in the number? So I did. Another door had appeared.’

‘What did it look like?’

‘Strange really,’ said Sam. ‘Like a five-bar wooden gate. I couldn’t resist it and punched in the numbers and, well, nothing. There was just nothing. No different world, no smoke, nothing. I was just about to turn round and go back to work when there was a whirring sound and out of the door came this tiny strip of tape.’

He handed Alice the ribbon of paper with tiny letters neatly printed in a single line:

Alice and Sam are warmly invited to take tea at 4 p.m. at St Saviour’s Church, Eden Road on Monday 3 December. A and S.

‘A and S?’ said Alice. ‘Alice and Sam?’

‘Abraham and Sarah, I think,’ said Sam, pleased that for once he’d got there first (but he did have all day to think about it).

‘The old couple from the world with the weapons.’

‘Exactly,’ said Sam. ‘And here we are.’

He turned sharp left into Eden Road and pulled into St Saviour’s. It was a tall, dark church, set back from the street, surrounded by gravestones. The noticeboards had been spray-painted, the grounds were overgrown and several windows were smashed through. It was dark now and forbidding. There was a single electric light over a small side door.

Sam knocked three times. Alice stood there shivering. There was just a hint of a shadow in the street outside.

An instant later, the door opened. Warmth and light flooded out into the cold night. Abraham and Sarah were both there, both smiling, both kind of excited.

‘Come in, come in the pair of you.’

‘How wonderful to see you.’

‘It’s a cold night but warm as toast inside.’

‘Let’s take your coat and bag.’

‘My, this is heavy.’

‘We’ve been so looking forward to you coming.’

‘The kettle has just boiled this very minute.’

‘Perfect timing.’

It was like visiting the nicest grandparents you can imagine – except for the house or church or whatever it was. Alice never quite worked out which. Abraham and Sarah bustled them through a small ordinary looking hallway into a huge space which was like some glorious indoor jungle. Alice thought of the greenhouses at Kew Gardens. Sam thought of the rainforest in Brazil. There was every kind of tropical plant imaginable: palm trees and ferns and exotic flowers of every colour: blue and yellow, orange and pink. It was buzzing with birds and insects. The whole place teemed with luxuriant growth and life. There was a strong smell of rich earth mingled with the perfume of orchids. On either side of them, Alice saw enormous bananas, coconuts and oranges ripening on the bushes.

Abraham led Alice and Sam slowly down a raised pathway made of logs towards a large clearing where there was a table and some chairs laid out with afternoon tea. They were just about to sit down when a great black bear, as tall as a man, came walking out of the trees to the left on all fours and ambled towards the table, sniffing the cake. Alice jumped behind Sarah for protection.

‘Not for you,’ Abraham said to the bear, who ambled straight on again back into the trees. ‘Don’t be frightened, dear,’ said Sarah. ‘None of the animals will hurt you. But they might want to come and say hello.’

Sam and Alice looked around a bit more carefully when Sarah said this. Sitting at the table while Abraham poured the tea, they peered into the bushes. Wherever they looked, eyes and ears and snouts stared back at them. On the ground were hedgehogs and mice and voles. From where he was sitting, Sam could see a great buffalo, a leopard and what looked like an old grey wolf. Alice saw the stripes of a great Bengal tiger not ten feet away. Playing round its feet were a pair of young monkeys and a goat. In the distance the long neck of a giraffe was visible above the fruit trees. Alice loved snakes whilst Sam was frightened of them. To Alice’s lasting delight (something she remembered for days afterwards), an enormous python slithered from the long grass at the edge of the path, underneath the table and into the bushes on the other side. Sam lifted up his feet and gripped the sides of his chair in terror.

‘So is this another world?’ asked Alice.

‘It’s more like another window on our world,’ said Sarah. ‘How are you enjoying the calendar?’

‘I like it a lot,’ said Alice, with her mouth full of the most delicious scone and strawberry jam. She helped herself to more cream and Sarah passed her a napkin. ‘Much better than cartoons and chocolate. Will it be like this every day?’

‘Wait and see,’ said Abraham. ‘We don’t want to spoil the surprises. But we will say that nothing that happens when you open the doors will hurt you or cause you any harm.’

‘Do we always need to be there together?’ asked Sam. ‘What about school and work and stuff?’

‘The codes will arrive at exactly the right time every day,’ said Sarah. ‘But it might be a different time on different days. Don’t try to plan it all out – just let it happen. If only one of you is there, punch in the code anyway. The calendar will find a way to draw you both in together.’

‘How long will it last?’ wondered Alice.

‘There are twenty-four days on the calendar,’ said Sam.

Abraham took Sarah’s hand and gazed at her, his eyes full of love and tenderness. Sarah smiled back at him. He turned back to Alice, eyes twinkling.

‘If you want it to, it lasts for ever.’

There was a moment’s pause, then Sarah took their cups.

‘Come on, dears, you’ve finished your tea. Let’s show you round.’

Slowly they walked around the garden. Abraham walked ahead with Sam, pointing out the species and varieties of birds and flowers and the different types of fruit. It was a very long time since Sam had spent time in a garden. It was also a very long time since he had had a proper conversation with someone older than himself. Alice thought he seemed to relax a little and he began to breathe more deeply. He was strangely quiet as he looked around. At Abraham’s invitation he picked an apple and began to eat it. Alice walked quietly by Sarah’s side. Conversation was unnecessary: it was just good to be here. She tried to see beyond the trees and the bright light to the roof of the building but found she couldn’t. For all she knew, they could have been in the middle of a real garden with an open sky above. At every turn in the path there was a different scent of blossom or fruit or rich earth smell. For some time they walked beside a stream with the most enormous peaceful carp just below the surface. Sarah had brought the remains of a scone and showed Alice how to hand-feed the great fish.

They came at last to what Abraham said was the very centre of the garden, and to an enormous tree. Its canopy made a roof over the central glades. Its branches reached up as high as Sam could see, alive with birds and a tribe of monkeys playing and swinging through the upper branches.

But at the base of the tree, Alice saw, in among the roots, something was moving. She looked more closely. There were snakes. Snakes of every kind, coming and going, in and out of the ancient roots of the tree. Some of the roots themselves stood proud of the ground and the creatures wrapped themselves around the fibres or else lay still across the top. She recognised a cobra and a rattlesnake and an adder. On the far side was an enormous boa constrictor. Sam had turned pale and gone into hiding behind Abraham.