Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

“Oh, no problem. You had almost made it out of the grass, and you were near the top of the hill, so it was easy for me help you. I always keep a torch nearby that can easily be lit. They don’t like fire, and they don’t come up close to the train. They don’t get out of the grass, as far as I can determine. But I will tell you true, had I heard your scream too far beyond the hill, well, I wouldn’t have come after you. And they would have had you.”

“I screamed?”

“Loudly.”

I got on the train and walked back to my compartment, still trembling. I checked my door and saw that my lock had been thrown from the outside, but it was faulty, and all it took was a little shaking to have it come free of the door frame. That’s how I had got out of my room.

The train man brought me a nip of whisky, and I told him about the lock, and drank the whisky. “I’ll have the lock fixed right away, sir. Best not to mention all this,” he said. “No one will believe it, and it could cause problems with the cross-country line. People have to get places, you know.”

I nodded.

“Goodnight, sir. Pleasant dreams.”

This was such an odd invocation to all that had happened, I almost laughed.

He went away, closing up my compartment, and I looked out the window. All there was to see was the grass, waving in the wind, tipped with moonlight.

The train started to move, and pretty soon we were on our way. And that was the end of the matter, and this is the first time I have mentioned it since it happened so long ago. But, I assure you. It happened just the way I told you, crossing the Western void, in the year of 1901.

ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE Joachim Heijndermans

“Billy!” whispered Leah. “Billy! Wake up!”

“What?” groaned Billy. Though he hadn’t yet learned how to read the time, little Billy could tell it was late in the night by looking out the window. The sky was an inky black, with only the light fluttering of snow passing by the window to break the dark monotony.

“Do you hear that?” Leah asked.

Before Billy could even ask what she was talking about, a thumping sound from downstairs chased away any sleep he still had. He looked his older sister in the eye, both of them silently agreeing that the sound could be only one thing. Santa was here.

Without saying another word, Billy and Leah slipped their feet into their slippers and slowly left their bedroom. They walked carefully, so the floorboards would not creak. With a gentle pace, they crawled down the staircase. Leah halted before she reached the bottom and crouched down, peering between the wooden bars of the bannister. Billy expected to see a large smile plastered on her face, delighted by the sight of the jolly old elf eating the cookies they had laid on a plate before they’d gone off to bed.

But there was no smile. There was nothing. Leah stared blankly into the living room, her mouth opened slightly. When Billy caught up with her and looked for himself, his blood turned to ice.

There, in front of the Christmas tree, carefully holding an ornament between two elongated claws, stood a thin skeletal being. Its bright red skin hung loosely from its thin and brittle-looking frame. A small turtle-like head on top of its long, thin neck moved from side to side, mesmerized by the glass figurine. It was a little Mickey Mouse, dressed in a Santa suit and crossing off names from a list with a long feather quill. It held the mouse to its face and opened its two large nostrils, which up until that moment had not been there. It could shut them as tightly as the children could shut their eyes, something which the creature seemed to be incapable of. Large yellow eyes took up the majority of its face, but not once did the creature blink.

Having grown bored with the ornament, the thin specter gently hung it back on its designated branch on the pine tree, then turned to other matters. Its large eyes had fallen on the plate of cookies and the glass of milk. With its two-fingered hand, it lifted the glass then opened its maw. A large prehensile tongue shot out into the glass. Within seconds, the milk vanished from its container, leaving behind a puff of steam, as if it had boiled off in an instant. The cookies met a similar fate when the figure took the plate and placed it in its mouth. When it pulled the plate back out, all the cookies had vanished. Not even the smallest crumb was left behind.

Then, to Billy’s horror, Leah gasped. It was the lightest of gasps, one that only the most alert of adults would have picked up, or perhaps a guard dog. And even then, they wouldn’t have thought much of it. But the red creature heard, and jerked its head toward them. With wide, serpentine eyes, it regarded the two small children huddled at the bottom of the staircase.