The Last Christmas On Earth

"Yes?" He replied annoyed, like to say: "what else now?"

"Thank you."

As soon as she returned to the office, Helen dialed the doctor's phone number. "You have to run here right now," she said without even saying goodbye as she heard the receiver pick up.

"You are out of your mind, today I've already done so many miles that I became Shell's shareholder ... what the hell happened?" He replied.

"I ... I don't know how to tell you, I'm afraid you think I'm crazy!"

"After the outburst you had this morning, there is no doubt about it. Come on, spit it out, I'm busy and I can't stay on the phone all day," he informed her.

"Fine! Is there a logical explanation to the fact those two dead bodies are already mummifying?" She then asked. The coroner took a few moments of silence and Helen feared he was about to shoot one of his usual, stupid jokes.

"Of course I do!" He answered confidently, confusing her.

"...Really?" She hesitated.

"I am sure, indeed, I am absolutely sure ... the explanation is that we are in the middle of an episode of X Files" he confirmed with his usual irony, provoking a tide of anger that she kept for herself thinking "I knew it!".

"I'm serious," she told him frustrated.

"Whether you're joking or not it doesn't change so much, now I don't have the chance, and honestly I don't even want to ride for three hours in the car to come and see it. I promise that I will be there the morning after tomorrow, when we will also have the results of the toxicological exam."

"The day after tomorrow? But it's an eternity!"

"I know, but I'm not just following your case ... I'm really sorry," he replied. Helen told herself that in two days, going ahead at that speed, corpses would remain nothing but dust. On the other hand, even if the coroner came back and found that a mummification process was in progress, without the lab reports and the results of the analyzes written by Larry, they would still not know what to do.

"All right, I'll wait for the day after tomorrow. But don't blow it off, I don't know where to hit the head anymore."

"You can count on me, I'm dying from curiosity," he assured her, using a tone that once again didn't convince her at all.

"Mom's coming!" Harry said happily as he heard Eve's car roar. Immediately after he ran out because he had a mad desire to hug her and show her the new glasses and the model. And then he wanted to make peace with Toby and play with him as always. James looked out on the patio, Harry reached Eve and dived into her arms, then peered inside the car without being able to see his beloved dog.

"Mom, where is Toby?" He asked, moving away from Eve, she put her hands on his shoulders and bent to look him straight in the eye to prepare him for the news. "Love, a very bad thing happened to Toby ..."

"Where is Toby? I want Toby! Where's my Toby?" Harry began repeating around Eve's Voyager, she chased him and grabbed him by his shoulders again. "Love you must be strong," she whispered in his ear.

"What did you do to him? He didn't bite me on purpose, he didn't bite me on purpose! Why did you hurt him, he didn't bite me on purpose!"

"Honey, I didn't hurt him! When we left the clinic he ran to the middle of the road chasing a cat, and a car could not stop in time ... it hit him," Eve explained to him, but Harry shook his head struggling to repel the tears.

"I don't believe you!" He shouted, showing his fists.

"Harry ... honey ..." the woman tried to calm him.

"Leave me alone!" Harry repeated, then ran into the house and went to lock himself in his room. Eve and James followed him up the stairs and waited ten good minutes at the door calling him, but he didn't show up.

"He's able to stay in there for two days, it's better if we go back downstairs," suggested Eve to James. She went down to the kitchen and started fumbling with the microwave to warm up the dinner. James remained still for a while, leaning against the handrail, staring at the door of Harry's bedroom with his arms folded, then decided to join her.

"What happened to Toby?" He asked, helping her set the table.

"I've already told you, he ran in the middle of the road and ended up under a passing car, the driver couldn't brake in time. Luckily no other cars passed by, otherwise, someone would have been hurt."

"It shouldn't happen," said James. "But even if it is ugly to say, I must admit that after his behavior of last night I feel almost relieved because this incident has taken away from us a big problem," he added, ashamed of himself for his petty statement.

"Yeah," she agreed, continuing to slice the tomatoes.

"But you should have brought him home, didn't you think Harry wanted to bury him here in our garden?"

"Of course I thought about it, but if I had brought him back, Harry would have liked to see him and it wasn't really the case ... that poor beast was torn to shreds," Eve replied without turning around. "He said he would think about it ..." She added, but cut off short the sentence there because she did not want to discuss it again.

"Let me guess ... Dr. Parker, isn't it?"

"That's right," she replied, ignoring his provocation, then placed the tray with the chicken nuggets and chips on the table. She distributed them in three plates and covered Harry's with another upside-down plate, then sat down and began to eat. James drowned the fries in the ketchup and began fiddling with a fork against a croquette, continuing to turn it over thoughtfully without putting anything in his mouth.

"Don't you eat?"

"A lot of strange things happened around here today," he informed her.

"For example?"

James told her about the helicopter and Harry's crisis, about the bleeding and the strange movements in the woods, about the dart that made him lose consciousness and finally about the pranotherapy his son had given him, but all the time Eve continued looking at him skeptically.

"You do not believe me? Look here, I still have the sign," he said, turning to show his neck.

"In my opinion, your poisoned dart seems only the sting of an insect, there is still the sting," Eve minimized. "Wait till I take it off, stand still for a moment ... that's it," she said. James groaned because of the pinch, then looked at Eve undecided whether to be happy or upset because all his assumptions had been dismantled piece by piece within a minute. No one came to his home to kidnap his son, no one shut him a narcotic dart.

"You're still shaken by what happened to Harry," suggested Eve.

"Oh yes? And what about our son's behavior?"

"And what's so strange about him?"

"What's strange about him? I felt he was not alone in his room, that he was talking to someone. You know he never opens the window because he is afraid of spiders, and instead I found it completely wide open. And then my headache ... "

"Suggestion," she said. Immediately after she gave him a tender look as she hadn't done for a long time, she shook her head slightly and dropped the fork on the plate to caress the back of his hand. He was confused by her attitude, but he returned her affectionate gaze anyway. Although sometimes it seemed that it was the entire Chinese Wall that divided them, Eve still needed so little to take hold of him. He saw that she was going to speak and he arranged to listen to her.

"What happened yesterday proved to us all, much more than we thought."

"You mean I'm ranting?"

"No, I just want to say that maybe we need a little break-off. We could try to spend next weekend out together, maybe it could help us forget more quickly what happened."

James looked at her more and more astonished because in the last few years she had always shown herself reluctant to leave the narrow margins of the country, and even on the rare occasions that they had planned something, an unexpected last-minute event had always occurred forcing them to give up. And often the unexpected had something to do with her work or even with Dr. Parker himself. Those facts, along with so many other small signs, had almost led him to suspect that she had some particular reason to be holed up in that anonymous town, so much that she sabotages their holidays.

"I have no intention of forgetting, I want to understand," he pointed out with his usual air, abruptly changing his expression. "I want to understand why our son seemed to have become another person, and if necessary I want someone to visit him."

"Oh yes? And who would be to visit him, maybe an exorcist?" She taunted him, her sarcasm broke in an instant the idyll that James created in his mind.