Winston Porter Rolls the Dice

(This is for those of you who asked for a continuation of “Winston Porter Loses His Marbles,” though I’ve tried to make this one stand on its own.)

To his customers, Winston Porter was a kind old man who ran a toy shop in the Old Town section of Porterville. Winston was short, trim, and neatly dressed, and adults liked him even if children found him rather strange.

But Winston had made a terrible mistake. He’d let his precious bag of marbles out of his sight long enough for Sammi Willis, a naughty child, to steal them from Winston’s shop. Winston’s marbles weren’t just pretty toys. They kept Porterville itself running smoothly, and if they weren’t in the hands of a Porter, things could go very bad very fast.

When he got his marbles back, Winston discovered that the devil’s eye, a bright red marble with a yellow slash that looked unnervingly like a pupil, was missing. Had the girl kept it, hoping he wouldn’t notice? Did she know what it was she had? The fretting kept him awake at night.

And while the devil’s eye wasn’t the type of marble one used to undo damage, the other marbles wouldn’t function quite as well if their owner didn’t possess the complete set.

Winston did what he could to correct the chaos the Willis girl had caused. Once he was satisfied that Porterville was back to a state approaching normalcy, he set out to get the devil’s eye back.

After closing Porter’s Playthings on Wednesday evening, he hopped in his small silver car and drove out to the Willis home.

The family lived in a good-sized brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac. The minute Winston got out of his car, he sensed trouble. He wasn’t sure why; the house was covered in Christmas lights and looked happy and festive. But his pulse quickened all the same as he walked up to their door and knocked.

Lisa Willis and her husband Bradley opened the door, and Winston stifled a gasp at the sight of them. Their faces were chalk white, but the skin around their eyes had that bruised hue that indicated a severe lack of sleep. A tune that sounded like a warped rendition of “Happy Birthday” poured from the house, and an odor of burnt cookies wafted by.

Lisa greeted Winston with a toothy grin that chilled his blood.

“Mr. Porter! Have you come to celebrate with us?”

“Er … celebrate? What’s the occasion?”

Bradley made a high yelping sound that might have been an attempt at a hearty laugh. “It’s Christmas!”

Winston touched the back of his neck. “Not quite yet.”

Lisa spoke next, still wearing that hideous grin. “And after Christmas, it’s Robin’s birthday!”

“Every day!” Bradley chimed in. “Forever!”

Winston’s eyes drifted behind Lisa and Bradley. Piles of torn wrapping paper blanketed the foyer. Stuffed toys, books, blocks, and half-eaten pieces of cake were strewn everywhere.

“Oh dear,” he murmured.

Someone inside the house sobbed. “Why aren’t any of these presents for me?” Winston felt fairly sure that was Sammi, the girl who’d stolen his marbles.

And then little Robin, the youngest of the clan at age two and a half, toddled to the doorway. A pink Hello Kitty party hat sat on her golden curls, and her chubby red cheeks were smeared with cake frosting.

Hmmmm. Winston crouched down as far as his knees would allow and looked into Robin’s bright blue eyes.

“Hello, little one,” he said, trying to sound kind. “Might you have something of mine?”

In response, Robin Willis flashed a mouthful of razor-sharp yellow teeth and let out a ferocious roar that sent Winston toppling backwards. He pulled himself to his feet and limped to his car as “Happy Birthday” started up again.

“But Mr. Porter!” Lisa called, sounding slightly desperate now. “It’s time for cake! And Santa’s here!”

Winston did not want to have cake or meet Santa. He slammed the car door and tore away from the horrible scene.

As he drove back to the store, Winston’s mind raced. He needed that marble back, and he wasn’t sure how to get it. Small children could be very … possessive.

At the shop, he played a game with his marbles, imploring them to summon their missing brother back home.

He was still pondering what to do on Friday as he tended to customers at Porter’s Playthings. And then Santa Claus walked into his shop.

At first the shoppers glanced over at Santa and chuckled as they took in the red coat and hat, but then they looked more closely. Parents gasped, yanked toys from their children’s hands, and hustled them out of the store. In less than a minute, the place was empty except for Winston and Santa.

Santa reeked of sulfur, and the grin he wore looked like a skull’s rictus rather than St. Nick’s merry smile. His beard was stained with something Winston hoped was soup. And his eyes … oh, his eyes.

They were a solid bright red, with yellow slits for pupils.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Winston said to the Santa creature. He hadn’t, but it seemed like a brave thing to say.

“I’ll bet you have,” Santa replied. Winston was thankful that no children were around to see the creature or hear that deep, raspy growl of a voice or else Christmas as everyone knew it would end for good; no child would ever want to think of that coming down their chimney. He hurried to the front door, locked it, and put up the “CLOSED FOR EMERGENCY” sign he’d drawn the day the marbles disappeared.

“Well, then.” Winston tried to keep the tremor out of his voice as he faced the dreadful thing. “May I please have my marble back?”

The thing made a gurgling sound that Winston supposed was meant to be a laugh. “Not how it works, sport. We play a game for it.”

“I see. What game?”

The rictus widened. “Anything except marbles. Can’t have you messing with them to influence the outcome. I’m partial to chess, myself.”

Winston had never liked chess. He looked over the board games he stocked. Clue? Monopoly? Operation? Hungry Hungry Hippos? No, no, none of those would do at all …

Yahtzee. Perfect.

“I’ve just the thing, sir,” he said, attempting a cheerful tone. He reached over and grabbed a box depicting a bespectacled old man in a mortarboard and a bright red bowtie.

“Yaht-Zee?” The Santa thing frowned, scratching his scraggly beard and revealing long talons at the ends of his fingers. Winston suppressed a shudder.

“You’ve never played? Oh, it’s fun. Come with me.” He led the creature to the back room and pulled two chairs over to his table.

Winston tore the box open and removed score pads, a cup, and five black and white dice. He took two pencils from the glass holder on his desk.

“What’s all this?” Santa scowled down at his scorecard.

“It’s quite simple. You get up to three rolls on each turn to score individual numbers or combinations. Write down the score on those pads. Whoever has the highest score at the end wins.”

Santa scratched his beard again and then raised an eyebrow at Winston.

“Show me the rulebook.”

“Of course!” Winston handed over the yellow and red “How to Play” pamphlet.

The Santa thing wadded it up, tossed it in his mouth, and swallowed. His red and yellow eyes studied the ceiling for a moment, and then he belched.

“OK. Got it,” he said.

Winston, who would have liked a refresher on the rules himself, could only stare.

“Well,” he said finally. “Who starts?”

Santa nodded at Winston. “You first. I insist.”

Winston placed the dice into the cup and shook. He started off strongly, scoring four threes and then four sixes on his first two turns. He remembered that getting the 35-point bonus for the upper section was crucial to winning.

And he rejoiced silently when Santa used the Chance box on his first turn. Perhaps the rule book should have mentioned that it was unwise to waste that one too early.

But Santa began to catch up. He hit a 40-point Large Straight and a 30-point Small Straight. And then he rolled four sixes and a five for the Four of a Kind space. Winston began to gnaw his lower lip.

He thought he could relax again when he rolled the dice and five ones landed in front of him. “Yahtzee!” he crowed.

Santa rolled five sixes on his next turn. Damn it.

And on Santa’s very last turn, he threw five more sixes. 30 points plus 50 extra and the 35-point bonus.

It was over. Winston had lost. The Santa thing made his gurgle-laugh.

“You were right,” he said. “That was fun!”

Winston slumped in his chair, feeling broken. He’d failed himself. He’d failed Porterville.

Santa ran a talon through his stained beard again.

“Oh, don’t look like that, chum,” he said finally. “Tell you the truth, I was getting a bit lonely over there. And having a kid that young for a master is boring. Cake and presents all the time isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds.”

“It didn’t look like any fun at all,” Winston said, recalling his awful visit to the Willis home.

The Santa thing studied Winston for another moment. And then he raised a hand to his left eye. He put fingers above and below the eye socket and squeezed.

With a sudden squelchy pop!, the devil’s eye marble fell from his head. He offered it to Winston, who pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and used it to pick up the marble from the creature’s hand.

As Winston held his devil’s eye, he felt as if the very universe around him sighed with relief.

“Thank you,” he said.

Santa stood up. “Take better care of those,” he said through that alarming grin. “If you lose ’em again and someone more interesting finds me, I might stay gone.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Right, then. What’s that fellow say? Ho ho ho, and all that.” And the Santa thing spun in a circle and vanished in a cloud of sulfurous smoke.

Winston stared until the cloud dissipated completely. And then he retrieved a bottle of brandy and a snifter from the supply cabinet. He poured himself a drink and sat down over the Yahtzee game, pondering the five sixes the Santa creature had rolled.

“Good heavens,” he murmured over and over, although he knew perfectly well that Heaven had nothing to do with what had just happened.

When Lisa Willis woke up to a bright, sunny Christmas morning several days later, she knew something was terribly wrong. The twins usually ran into their parents’ bedroom to whine them awake the second that the first rays of sunlight pierced the dark horizon on Christmas mornings.

Lisa leaped out of bed and ran down the hall towards the twins’ bedroom. She flung the door open.

Sammi and Steven were still sleeping peacefully in their beds. She stared at them for a second to be sure they were breathing. Lisa had a very vague feeling that something odd and bad had happened last week, but she no longer remembered the specifics.

“Sammi? Stevie? Come on, guys!” She clapped her hands.

Sammi grumbled and rubbed her eyes, and Steven sat up, squinting at her.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“Nothing’s wrong, silly. It’s Christmas!”

Sammi and Steven looked at each other and burst into noisy sobs.

“Nooooooo!” they howled in unison. “Not again!”

Note: This is the second story in a series. I’ve tried to make it stand alone as much as possible, but if you’d like to read the other stories (and I hope you do!), here they are:

Winston Porter Loses His Marbles Winston Porter Kicks the Bucket Winston Porter Gets Played for a Fool Winston Porter’s Heir Apparent