Joanne Foster listened to Christmas carols on the radio for a moment longer then switched it off.

The joyous sounds seemed a million miles away. The very concept of joy was alien to her and had been for a long time now. She took a deep breath and walked slowly up the stairs to the first room she came to.

She hesitated for a moment then opened the door, looking into the room.

Jo exhaled almost painfully.

The back of the door was almost completely covered with paint, marker pen and biro. There was no particular design or shape to the scribblings, just a random, kaleidoscopic display of broad, aggressive strokes that disfigured the lower part of the door.

The room itself was untidy but Jo had come to expect that. No matter how many times she warned or threatened or pleaded with her ten year old son to keep it clean. There were toys scattered all over the floor and the bed. Most of them were broken. Teddy bears and other stuffed animals had been ripped open or had limbs torn away. Model vehicles had been crushed or their wheels removed. Toy soldiers had been dismembered; their discarded parts spread around like plastic confetti.

Jo sat down on the edge of the bed and it was all she could do to stop herself weeping.

If it wasn't one thing it was another when it came to their son, Harvey. The boy was now ten, but they'd had nothing but trouble with him ever since he was born. Even while he was being born, he'd been a problem. A very difficult forceps birth had seen her in labour for eighteen hours and necessitated a blood transfusion.

As he was growing up he'd been moved from school to school for various 'incidents' including slamming a girl's fingers in a door or sticking a sharpened pencil into a teacher's thigh. The problems had not evaporated at home either. The constant breaking of things, the graffiti, the damage done to the house itself. She didn't even want to think about what had been done to the two pets they'd bought to try and pacify him.

The puppy had been pushed into a cardboard box and sealed in with gaffer tape, trapped there for almost a day. The kitten had been saved just as Harvey tried to shove it into the microwave.

They'd taken him to doctors, even psychiatrists but they'd all said they could find nothing physically wrong with him. Similarly, psychiatrists had discovered little about his thought processes except that he was 'withdrawn'.

For withdrawn, read homicidal, Jo thought, sighing. And yet, for every moment of worry and concern there was one of joy and delight. Wasn't there? She racked her brain to think of those moments of joy, but nothing came to mind.

She was still sitting there when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She looked up and saw her husband standing in the doorway.

"Oh, Christ," Matt Foster murmured, seeing the expression on her face. "What's he done now?"

Jo pointed at the scribblings on the back of the door. Matt shook his head in weary resignation.

"My mum drops him off soon," he offered. "We'll have a word with him then."

"What's the point, Matt?" she said, exasperatedly. "We've spoken to him every single time something's happened and has it ever made a difference? No, it hasn't. The only one who seems to be able to get through to him is your mum."

Matt raised his eyebrows, glancing out of the window. The Christmas lights were twinkling in and around the front windows of some houses across the street. Others displayed little tableau with Santa and his reindeer or the nativity, all decorated with fairy lights. It was as if everyone else was having a wonderful Christmas.

Matt saw the car pull up outside.

"Speak of the Devil," he murmured, watching as Harvey bounced out of the car and ran towards the house, pausing briefly to wave at the car as it pulled away.

Matt let the boy in, wondering what had caused the look of excitement on his face. He dashed into the sitting room, narrowly avoiding the Xmas tree he'd pulled down two days earlier.

"I need paper," the boy said. "And a pen." He pulled out the drawers of a small desk until he found what he sought.

"What for?" Matt enquired.

"I need to write my Xmas list," Harvey announced. "Grandma says that if I send it to Santa at the North Pole then I'll get everything I want." He began scribbling on the paper in his spidery hand, consumed by his task.

"You've done your Xmas list before," Matt reminded him.

"But I haven't sent it to the North Pole before," the boy added, still scribbling. "Grandma said that Santa will bring everything I want if he sees my list while he's still in the factory with his elves."

Matt smiled. Santa Claus seemed to be the only thing that the boy truly believed in. Most boys of his age had long ago stopped believing earlier in their lives but not Harvey.

"Grandma said that he has a list of good children and a list of bad children," the boy murmured. "And there are good elves and bad elves who make up the lists. Santa takes one of them with him when he delivers presents. If the children have been good, then they get their presents delivered. If they've been bad they get nothing."

"So did Grandma tell you to make sure you behave?"

"Yes. She even sang me a song," Harvey said, happily. "'He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake'" the boy trilled. "'He knows if you've been good or bad so be good for goodness sake.'"

"That's right," Matt said. "So, make sure you are good."

The boy didn't respond again, he was too concerned with the list he was still creating. Matt watched him for a moment longer, aware that Jo had joined them in the sitting room.

"I spoke to Harvey," he said, giving her a knowing look. "He knows he's got to be good or Santa won't come."

She frowned and was about to speak but Matt shook his head.

"It'll be okay," he said. "Harvey just needs to post the letter to Santa that he's writing."

"You should write one too, mum," the boy intoned. "Tell Santa what you really want and then he'll bring that for you."

"Good idea," she said, smiling, watching as Harvey carried on writing.

They had no trouble that night.

The next day Harvey posted his letter, the letter carefully addressed:

FATHER CHRISTMAS; THE NORTH POLE.

They had no trouble that night either.

Even on Christmas Eve when he was usually more restless and impatient than usual, he settled down in bed quickly.

When Matt looked in on him at about eleven, he was fast asleep.

The snow began to fall about the same time. By midnight it was laying thickly, almost a foot deep, bringing that soft, impenetrable silence that always accompanies a heavy snowfall.

An hour later, the whole countryside resembled the front of a Christmas card, buried, as it was, beneath a gleaming white blanket.

That was what Harvey Foster saw when he woke and peered out of his bedroom window. The silence crowded in around him. The whole house had a sepulchral feel to it, every slight sound amplified by the solitude. So, when Harvey heard one of the boards on the landing creak he snapped his head around in that direction.

There was another second of silence and then more creaking, this time closer to his bedroom door.

Harvey suddenly thought of the song his grandma had taught him, the lyrics tumbling through his mind:

'He knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake...'

Harvey hurried back to his bed, clambered in and pulled his Guardians of the Galaxy duvet up around his neck, closing his eyes a little, feigning sleep. But then, he reasoned, Santa knew everything. He was like a red suited, white bearded God. Probably even more powerful because God didn't deliver presents to everyone on earth on Christmas Eve.

He slid further down in his bed, his head now under his duvet completely.

The boards creaked again, this time inside his room. But with that sound came something else.

A rancid, pungent stench that filled his nostrils despite the duvet that covered him. A smell he had never known before. One so foul it made him feel dizzy. He was about to peer out from beneath the duvet in an attempt to locate the source of the smell when he felt strong hands on his shoulders.

Harvey tried to scream but it was as if every muscle in his body had frozen.

The only parts of him that seemed to be functioning were his eyes and they were bulging wide now, fixed on the shape that was holding him about three feet in the air.

It was dressed from head to foot in green velvet, a red cap perched on its misshapen head. A head that looked as if it belonged to a deformed baboon. Thick saliva was dripping from its canine teeth and its red eyes glinted as if lit from inside the skull by a blazing fire.

In some warped, parallel universe or the imagination of a madman, it might have passed for an elf.

Behind it stood a more familiar figure.

Harvey saw the red suit, the shiny black boots and the bushy white beard. The figure was holding a large brown hessian sack. It was that which the green clad creature stuffed Harvey into.

Only now did he find the breath to scream. The sound thrummed inside the sack and within the silent confines of the house. The stillness was suddenly broken by the sound of jingling bells but that too faded abruptly as the solitude returned.

By the time Matt got to his son's room, it was empty. He looked around, wondering what had made the dirty footprints on the boy's carpet but more taken with the fact Harvey was not there.

Jo appeared beside him, peering into the boy's room.

"Has he gone?" she asked.

Matt nodded.

Jo held up a piece of paper, pushing it towards her husband.

"What's this?" he asked.

"It's a copy of the letter I sent to Santa when Harvey sent his," she said.

"It looks as if he really does take notice of letters sent to the North Pole."

Matt opened the piece of paper and scanned what was written on it:

DEAR SANTA,

PLEASE TAKE OUR SON AWAY FOREVER

LOVE JO AND MATT.

The cloying silence was suddenly replaced by the sound of laughter.

"Merry Christmas," Matt said, chuckling.

"Same to you," Jo laughed.

© Shaun Hutson 2021