Dark Night in Toyland

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“Don’t let it happen today,” Kirkham prayed.

And then that other side of him, that intruder whose caustic, sneering voice had been growing more and more insistent for the past month, cut in with: Yeah, it’s bad enough for a kid to die of cancer at any time—but if it happens on Christmas Day it makes him feel rotten.

Kirkham jumped to his feet and strode violently about the study, ashamed and afraid of the voice even though he was sufficiently Manichaean in outlook to understand why he heard it. The oak-panelled room had once seemed so right for a smalltown Methodist minister whose mission was the preservation of religious belief in the hostile climate of the 21st century. Now it seemed dark and claustrophobic. He went to the window and pulled aside the green velvet drapes. It was ocean-black outside—six o’clock on a Christmas morning. No different to six o’clock on any other morning in winter.

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