The Last Christmas On Earth

"What did I tell you?" she told him with a big smile on her face.

"As always you hit the mark again" he admitted "it has been scaring. And then the dog ... did you see what he did? Until yesterday he would never have dreamed of behaving that way".

"Dogs are special, probably Harry had a smell he didn't like. Now don't bother your brain anymore, the most important thing is that your boy is at home again and above all that he is safe and sound".

"You're right ... but I really want to know where he was all that time ... do you have any idea how long those thirty hours have been?"

Helen didn't tell him, but she knew it at least as well as he did because she had always felt an inexplicable bond with the boy. "Don't worry, sooner or later he will tell you everything. But you know him, don't try to force him or he will raise an impenetrable barrier and he will shut himself off ... be patient and let him decide when to tell you everything" she advised him shaking his hand to cheer him up and, as it happened other times their bodies touched, that contact gave both of them a sensation similar to a slight electric shock... Embarrassed, James pulled his hand away, then nodded unconvinced because he was dying of curiosity and wanted to ask his son about what he had been doing all that time.

"Now I really have to go, it's very late. Take a few days off, you look wasted" Helen said to close the conversation.

"I don't know, I'll think about it".

"What do you mean?"

"You know, if I stay more than a day locked up in the house, I end up going crazy. And then even Harry will be better distracted, whatever happened to him. I am sure that as soon as he returns to the Scout Camp and his habits than better it will be, for him and us all".

"So what?"

"I think I'll get back to work the day after tomorrow" James pointed out. She scolded him with her face, but she knew she couldn't force him to stay away from work.

"It's your decision, but stay close to him" she replied, and he nodded again.

"Will Eve go to work tomorrow?"

"Knowing her, I think so, and I don't get it. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't care about the two of us".

"Don't say that, you know everyone shows his feelings in many different ways. Still, until everything is back to normal, don't show up, otherwise I'll send you home" Helen concluded, laying down the bike, then pulled the garage door over and left.

On the way home, James saw the doctor going out and ran after him. " Dr. Parker ... Adam..." he called, and he slowed down.

"Don't worry, James, it's all right. I carefully examined Harry and, except for what the dog did to him, there is not a single scratch on him. I applied a light bandage to his arm, but Toby is healthy and vaccinated and the bite will have no effects" he informed him, continuing to walk towards his Guzzi.

"Indeed about the dog, do you know why he acted like that?" James asked him, accompanying him.

"I have no idea, I'm not a vet," Parker said rapidly. "Anyway, I gave the boy a sedative, you should go soon or he will be asleep" he added, stopping in front of the bike.

"Has he told you something?" James insisted.

"He's a little confused, he doesn't remember anything. Now I really have to go, I just received a call from the Roses" he concluded by showing him the flashing led on the pager.

"Thank you for everything, doctor. Goodbye".

The man answered with a vague smile and James walked away, but after just two steps stopped. "Dr. Parker?" he called him, and he sighed annoyed because it seemed that James was not really going to let him go.

"Look, I ... I know it's worthless, but ... I'm sorry for..."

"It's okay, it's okay. Now go to your son" the doctor ended the conversation, and James obeyed.

The doctor nodded to the ambulance driver like to say you can go home, then dropped the tool bag into the sidecar of his 1937 Guzzi Sport. He took a buckskin from the glove compartment and removed the layer of moisture from the saddle, an instant later he was booming away.

When the alarming situation ceased, James was experiencing tiredness he'd never had before. Looking down the stairs he was overcome with dizziness and had to hold onto the handrail to keep him from falling. He took a lifetime to reach the upstairs and once he reached the doorway of the bedroom he timidly looked out the door. Harry was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, Eve was sitting beside him and drawing some invisible circles on his forehead with his forefinger to help him relax. James looked at the life-size copy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun's golden mask hanging on the wall opposite the door, then glanced along a line of hieroglyphics until he came across a photo of the Giza Plain taken from the satellite and next to it the three-dimensional poster that reproduced the Sphinx. Later he saw the model of an ancient Egyptian Solar Ship resting on a shelf. He continued by the path of the Nile reproduced on the wall until he got right to his wife's face.

"If you're not hungry, at least try to get some sleep, the doctor said you should rest" she was saying to his son. James came in and she looked at him resentfully because a few minutes before he had attacked Harry, then she moved sideways to let him stay and he sat down cautiously beside her.

He took Harry's bandaged arm and lifted it gently, he opened his eyes in surprise and looked at him uncertainly because he feared his father would start to grumble again.

"How are you, Professor? Is it hurting you so much?" James asked affectionately instead. Harry was relieved cause when his father was angry he didn't call him by that nickname. "So you are not upset with me?" He still asked to have absolute certainty.

"Of course not," said James hinting a smile. Harry smiled at him and his eyes lighted up.

"I wasn't even angry before, it's just that you made us..." he started to add, but Eve pinched his leg looking at him badly and he winced because she had caught him just where the dog had hurt him before.

"... It is that we have been so anxious..." he mended, lowering his head.

"Dad and I were so scared for you, so we were so nervous" Eve explained.

"Yes, Mom is right" agreed James, "we have been very worried for you".

"I didn't want to make you ... it's just that..." the boy began to say, but immediately he fell silent because a lump in his throat prevented him from continuing, then he hit against the edge of the mattress to release his frustration.

"You don't have to worry, now it's okay. Let's not talk about it anymore, okay?" James suggested, winking at him. Harry smiled again and looked at the Constellation of Orion painted on the ceiling, made of a special fluorescent yellow paint that made it shine all night. "We will go to Egypt anyway?" He asked them, taking courage. James tried to imagine what would have happened if his son had lost himself in a Casbah or in the middle of one of those neighborhood markets crowded with tourists, and thinking that they probably would have never seen him again he overshadowed. While looking at the brochures stuck between two volumes in the library his heart shrank, then not knowing what to answer he turned to Eve. "Of course we'll go, if I am not wrong we decided that it will be your Christmas present" she confirmed.

"It's fantastic," the boy said enthusiastically. "Thanks" he added, hugging them both with his short, stubby arms.

"But you will have to be very careful and listen to everything we tell you!" Eve pointed out, and Harry nodded.

"You have to promise it" James pointed out.

"I swear on Amon Ra" Harry confirmed solemnly.

" Well. Now we go to sleep because we are destroyed and you will do the same. Do we agree?" Proposed his mother, getting up, James did the same.

"All right," said Harry.

"Goodnight, Professor," James told him, bending down to kiss his forehead.

"Goodnight daddy". Then when James was near the doorway he called him back. James stopped and turned to look at him, Eve passed by and left the room, but stopped in the hall to listen.

"Dad, I haven't told you a lie. I don't remember it, what happened. I woke up suddenly, and..."

"It's okay, I told you don't worry. What matters now is that we are all together again" he assured him. "Sweet dreams kid" he repeated, taking a step forward, but the boy called him once more, forcing him to stop again.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Dad, what does it mean I have the Down Syndrome?" Harry asked out of blue; James felt his stomach twisting and he cursed the moment he had used that word in his presence, even if unknowingly. He blamed himself for breaking the only taboo of his life and his mind ran back almost sixteen years before, it was a beautiful sunny morning like any other day. Dr. Parker had chosen that sunny morning to tell him that his son had genetic problems and that anomaly, that extra chromosome, would have caused him a "different" life.

He had reported it to him in the clinic, without preparing him at all for the news and without humanity, coldly explaining the fact to him as if he were teaching a normal lesson in a university classroom. At that very moment, James discovered the meaning of the word "hate", because he had hated the doctor for his eternally insensitive manners. He had thought that if someone had pointed out to him that he had just sat on a bomb ready to explode, he would have made that usual unbearable gesture with his hand and replied, "Well, we will see what we can do about it." He remembered how in an instant all the projects he had done on his child had collapsed, at that precise moment he realized that from that moment on their lives would be changed forever.

Since then they would have had to think mainly of blocking the blows because Harry would never have reached full self-sufficiency and probably would have been bullied even starting from the kindergarten. Often James asked God why it had happened to him, almost as for personal offense or spite, he had repeatedly wondered if this was a punishment for something he had done and, if so, for what. But when he picked up Harry for the first time all his doubts and bitterness suddenly vanished and over time he learned that his son was something incredible. Something different, indeed not worse, and so he had made peace with God.

While he was looking for the most suitable words to answer James swallowed a couple of times, he had the impression time was flying. Harry kept staring at him, waiting for an answer, his eyes half-closed and his tongue resting on his lower lip, just a little bit protruding, and he couldn't tell if the question had been asked three seconds or three hours before.

"It means...it means..." he stuttered, unable to finish the sentence.

"It simply means that you are special ... but you already knew that!" Said Eve, returning into the bedroom to help James.

"Now sleep, or this time I'll be the one to get angry!" she added a little bit impatient, tucking him in, then turned off the lamp on the dresser and took James by the arm to drag him out.

James was still under the sheets with his arms folded under his head and peering at the ceiling, he was too tired to sleep and couldn't stop thinking about those nightmarish hours. He heard the television downstairs turning off and his wife slowly coming up the stairs. Eve entered the room, took the clip out of her hair and placed it on the dresser, took up her brush and the nightgown and went to the bathroom without looking at him once. He followed her with his eyes until the bathroom door was closed, only then he slapped with anger the pillow next to him. Eve had stopped changing in front of him for so long, over the years they had almost completely lost their intimacy and confidence and had sex seldom; James could not even remember when it had been the last time. Moreover, she always wanted to have it in the dark, as if she had something to be ashamed of, and James had never liked that. In the end, as in a silent truce, he had stopped looking for her and she had begun to deny herself, without trauma, and James had thought resignedly that it was probably because of their own hormones that they no longer fit.

Suddenly he compared his wife to a Praying Mantis: just as the insect kills his companion after the relationship that serves only to procreate, in the same way, she had killed their relationship after having had Harry. Annoyed by his own thoughts, he snorted and turned on his side in trying to sleep. Eve entered the room continuing to smooth her hair with her fingers untangling a knot. She put the brush on the dresser, mirrored herself one last time and slipped under the sheets. "Goodnight," she said, turning off the light and then turned her back.

"Goodnight?" James said, turning the light back on, Eve gave him a nervous glance. "Why, now what? I'm destroyed and I want to sleep!"

"How can you be so calm? Our son was away for a day and a half, he came back with torn clothes and broken glasses but no a single scratch on him. Furthermore, he does not remember where he was nor what he did for all that time; we have been searching for him by sea and by mountains and there was no single sign of him. Then suddenly, as he had disappeared, he reappeared magically, even so, everything is fine now? As if nothing ever happened? And all you can say is "goodnight"?"

"Why? What do you think we should do now? Do you want to call the FBI to find out what happened? My son has come home and that's enough for me, and let it be enough for you too!"

"I can't!" James murmured, shaking his head. She sighed dejectedly.

"He got probably lost, perhaps he found slept in a barn or a cabin for hunting and spent the night there. And maybe he doesn't want to tell us the truth because he fears our reaction" she strived to say it stretching her arm toward the light switch.

"When he told us he didn't remember anything he wasn't lying!" James insisted.

"How can you be sure of that?"

"You also know that Harry doesn't tell lies! And in any case, this fact changes everything, we will have to review the margin of trust and freedom that we can grant him! This is a big step backward" he concluded dismayed.

"How can you say so? I think you're exaggerating".

"Do you think I'm exaggerating? Think if it happens again, maybe next time we might not be lucky enough to see him again! Do you know how many people disappear every day without leaving a trace?"

"It won't happen again, don't worry!" she cut him off with her firm expression. Shocked by the excess of security in the tone of his voice, James oddly looked at her.

"I mean, my guess is it was just a prank, I don't think he will do it again... and how can you even presume to know how I feel about it? I'm exhausted, I stayed awake all night the same just like you! Now I'm begging you, please turn the light off, I really need to get some sleep!"

James thought about them, when in the middle of the night together they were wandering in the woods searching for Harry, shouting his name as loud as they could, and concluded that perhaps he had judged her too harshly. Eve had not stopped searching for a moment, even when he had returned to base camp to take stock.

"You're right ... I'm sorry, that was mean of me" he admitted, and she looked at him seriously. "You're forgiven," she told him after a moment.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, as long as you let me sleep now ... please, I need it so much" Eve said, then turned on her side and curled up. James turned off the light and turned to her, made his chest stick to her back and pushed his knees into the crook of her bent legs, then gently laid his hand on her hip and moved a little closer. He had naively dared to hope that episode could have helped them to be closer, to reopen a speech that had by then been closed, but in response, she took off his hand and let it fall a little further. "I said goodnight" she pointed out, pushing toward the edge of the bed to get away from that contact.

"Goodnight" James replied, annoyed and disappointed, then turned away.

After continuing to change position and turning over for at least half an hour James had succumbed to fatigue, the digital alarm display showed it was seven minutes past three in the morning and he had been snoring loudly for over four hours. Eve put her hand on his shoulder and shook him vigorously, he mumbled something in protest and curled up pulling the sheet towards him. She began to count mentally and before she could even arrive at ten James was snoring again, stronger than before, so she turned on the lamp and studied him to make sure he was really sleeping soundly. When she was sure nothing would have wakened him up, neither firing a cannon shot, she turned off the lamp and took a flashlight from the drawer of the dresser, slipped silently out of bed and after putting on her robe she climbed the stairs leading to the attic.

In the attic, she started looking for a faulty wooden skirting board element, once she found it, pushed the table away and slipped her hand into the slot to pull out an old leather bag. She opened the zipper and spilled the contents onto a dusty carpet, chose what she needed and repeated the stairs. She went back into the master bedroom, holding a small bottle to which she had already removed the cap, then she went around the bed to join James, stopped in front of him and after a brief hesitation she placed the bottle just under his nose for a couple of seconds. He jumped suddenly and opened his eyes, opened his mouth as if to say something but unable to speak, because he instantly fell into an even deeper sleep. Immediately afterward, Eve went to the bedroom and repeated the same treatment to Harry, who had the same reaction as James, then took an object similar to a metal clamp from a pocket of her robe; an object that ended with a magnetic hemisphere placed on top of a telescopic stem. She pulled the boy's head abruptly, grabbed the pliers and stretched the stem towards his face while wondering how she could not be sorry for what she was doing to him. She looked at him again for a few seconds, her arms firm, still being completely indifferent, then she summarily slipped the device into his nose because she was in a hurry to go back to sleep.

The Rockland Sheriff's Office controlled the entire Knox County coastline and much of the hilly area behind it. It had been placed inside an old neoclassical building set in open countryside, near the Provincial road that connected South Hope to Rockville and even to the vastness of the area it was perfectly equipped. Helen hardly up to the steps until the entrance, framed by the stubby white columns that supported the pediment, she mumbled a greeting to the agent Dower who was working in the gatehouse and slipped furtively into the hallway reluctantly. The woman had never been happier to work in such a quiet town, she knew that probably that morning would run off without trouble and she would have enough time to recover. She needed to sit and stay as long as possible with her eyes closed because she felt like she was falling apart; in fact, she spent the whole night trying to delete the image of that frightened boy clinging to the handlebars of his bicycle.

She walked through the hallway with his head down, pointing straight to her office, responding with nods and grunts to the greetings of the agents she met along the way.

"Helen" the receptionist tried to stop her with her shrill voice, but Helen as responding raised an arm, to say "whatever it is, it can wait", and went straight on her way. Cindy looked at her walking away shocked because she didn't expect such an answer, then shrugged, thought "worse for you!" For a moment Helen felt guilty for being so rude to her, and soon she was seized by the suspicion that probably, judging by the anxiety she had caught in her voice, that morning would not have been as quiet as she had hoped. Opening the door of her office she closed her eyes and began a loud yawn that ended when the door was closed.

"Bless you!" Exclaimed an unexpected male voice, making her jump. Despite her numb senses and the blurred vision due to two massive tears, Helen found that figure and voice vaguely familiar. She repeatedly rubbed his eyes, and when her eyes started working well again, she looked frustrated at the man who was sprawled on her chair. Dr. Stevenson was the last person she ever wanted to have to deal with that morning.

"You took it easy this morning!"He said, checking the clock, then reached for his red-orange juice, but she forced him to retract his arm with a sharp glance. While she was trying to find the words to answer in the most appropriate way, she violently scratched the little finger of his right hand, which continued to annoy her uncomfortably from the previous night. "What a nice surprise" she mumbled, "I come to work after two consecutive nights without sleeping and I find you blissful seated on my chair, with your feet crossed on my desk. And as if that was not enough you have just eaten my breakfast, and you are not just someone but a coroner. And if there is a coroner in my office, then there is a dead body coming! Am I right?"

Stevenson pointed to the corridor in the direction of the morgue, to specify that the corpse was already on the couch, then raised his hand to show his fingers open to "V" to emphasize that, indeed, the corpses were two. At first, Helen hoped that the doctor was there for a quick visit and as usual he had stopped only for one of his usual jokes, perhaps even for have his breakfast, but looking at him again she realized that on his face there was not even a shadow of a smile.

"Gosh! What a great way to start the day" she murmured, despaired. He spread his arms as if to clear his name and then pointed to the dust-covered treadmill set in a corner of the office. "Do you still keep yourself fit?" He asked. She turned absently to the roller, but just a moment later she remembered that this was one of his usual tricks, her head snapped back and surprised him with his open hand reaching back for her juice. Helen put her hands on her hips and looked at him annoyed, then he faked to sweep away some crumbs from the desk and then tidied up his shirt.

"I haven't lighted it for a while..." Helen said turning around the table while he got up to let her seat, she sat down and scratched her little finger again, yawning again.

"What happened to your finger? It seems to be pretty bad".

"What do you mean?" She asked, looking down to take a look until then she had not considered that annoyance and it appeared alarming.

"I don't know, from the color of the skin it would seem the beginning of necrosis ... if I were you I would immediately jump to a dermatologist to get a check" Stevenson advised her, grabbing her wrist to look at it better, but she abruptly pulled her hand back. "Forget my finger and tell me who's there!" She said, then grabbed the glass and took a couple of sips of juice because she began to feel her throat dry.

"I don't know, they didn't have documents and their car doesn't have a license plate" the doctor informed her, and she threw her eyes to the sky, cursing it because that was the worst way to start an investigation. "Where were they found?"

"Apparently two nights ago they were in the mood for effusions and they hooked up in the woods behind Camden Hill, near the Megunticook Lake. What happened afterward is unknown, they were found this morning at dawn thanks to an anonymous phone call".

"Did you say two nights ago?" Helen asked, surprised.

"Yes I did" he confirmed.

"And how do you know they were there for two days?"

"You know how long I've been in this business, haven't you?"

She nodded as she wondered how two bodies might have been found right there. In the previous two days they had searched that area far and wide with every mean looking for Harry; how could they not have noticed a car with two bodies inside?

"What's the matter?" Asked the doctor, noting his perplexity.