‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, only one creature was stirring; cause she’s single, no spouse…
A fire crackled and snapped over a yule log burning in the hearth. It made things warm and pretty with a soft orange glow that flickered and danced on the walls, but it also made Andy’s eyes ache just above the brow of her nose. She was on the floor reading at the foot of her fully decorated Christmas tree --an ancient voodoo text in one hand and a glass of eggnog in the other-- and the dim, dancing light put a strain on her vision, a strain that the eggnog could only help with a little. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop her from reading, and sipping, and sipping, and reading. Maybe there were better ways to spread a Christmas Eve, but it was Andy’s first Christmas in the new body. Life was still… unstable, to say the least, and a quiet night in studying ancient evils… that was sort of the best she could hope for.
“How the hell does this stuff even get on the Internet?” Andy sighed and set the book down. She downed the rest of her eggnog before bothering to pick it back up again. Her eyes needed the rest anyway.
Trying to understand Chucky’s cult spell had been her little pet project since Thanksgiving. All of this voodoo-magic-mumbojumbo was still very new to her, but if an idiot like Charles Lee Ray could wrap his dim head around it she was sure she could figure it out, too. Moving souls from one vessel to another was one thing but the cult spell, splitting the soul up into equal parts and making a small army of one’s self, that was a whole new level of magic, and Chucky had a good 30 odd years of practice on her. By default, Andy was already behind the 8-Ball.
When Andy set her empty glass down on the floor she had every intention to pick her book back up, to get back at it, but a distraction found her first. A simple hand mirror sat under the tree, or at least it looked like a simple hand mirror. It was a recent find that Andy had picked up at a pawn shop not far from where she was crashing. The mirror, in fact, was enchanted and when someone looked into it they saw their true self. Andy picked up the mirror --as she had almost every day since she got it-- and she turned it over to see the reflection of a man staring back at her. It was her face, her old face; the one with the tired eyes and thirty-six hours of growth on his cheeks. She smiled and he smiled, and Andy took a moment to acknowledge her new normal. It was important for her to do that every now and then and remind herself of how far she had come, and beyond that, how far she still needed to go.
Andy set the mirror back down under the tree and took a moment to admire her decorating job. It was a tall, real pine tree that she had bought two days earlier and decorated herself. She couldn't remember the last time she bothered to decorate for Christmas but this year she had a new lease on life. If she didn’t do something different, what was the point? She decorated the tree just as her mother used to when she was small. The branches were long and bushy and sturdy and they could handle loads of lights and ornaments and a big, bright star at the very top. Tinsley dangled from it and a hand quilted skirt sat around the bottom, bringing the whole thing together. It was a fine tree, it would do the trick, but it was her tree, and that meant something in a way that never meant anything before.
“Focus, Andy,” she said to herself as she opened the book again. “Focus.”
The tree twinkled as Andy studied the spells.
“Ade… due… damballa… All of these damn spells are the same. Give me the power I beg of you.” Andy waited for the sound of thunder or anything ominous but when she listened carefully all she could hear was the crackling fire and the distant sound of a cold wind blowing outside. In the quiet that followed, Andy found herself yawning. Suddenly, she realized how tired she really was. “I think I had too much eggnog. I’ll try again in the morning.”
So Andy turned in. She snuffed out the fire, put her empty glass in the sink, and set the book down on the mantel before turning in to bed for the night. Moments later, the house was dark, Andy was in bed, and all was quiet. But quiet never lasted long for a Barclay.
In the dead of night, the house settled, popping and creaking in the dark. Then the Christmas tree jingled, as if the tree itself shivered, and the wood moaned, eeping out a soft, “Ekk-ekk-ekk”.
It was sometime around three AM when Andy woke in the middle of the night with the sudden urge to use the restroom. She half way through her mid-night wee when she heard a thumping coming from downstairs. Her hackles were raised, she was immediately on edge. Someone was in the house? She listened some more, careful not to make a sound. For a moment only the quiet answered her back and then she heard it again, a steady THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. Not one to mess around when her life was at risk, Andy shot to her feet (gave a quick wipe) and pulled up her pants on the way back to her room. She retrieved a fire axe that she kept by her bedside, and, armed with the heavy weapon, she ventured down into the dark.
Careful footsteps led her back toward the living room, axe held firm and high. At first, everything seemed quite normal, calm almost. Her stocking dangled off the mantle, useless mistletoe hung above the threshold that led into the kitchen, and the hand mirror sat below the… wait, where was the tree?
A soft “Eek-eek-eek,” came from behind Andy and the hairs on the back of her neck stood upright. There was a soft jingling sound, the sound of ornaments tinking against plastic lights, and when Andy slowly turned to face the intruder in her home, she saw her grand, decorated tree standing there, branches extended like pine needle arms, looming over her; a shadowed and wooded monstrosity.
Andy screamed and the tree screamed back.
WHACK!
A hefty swing of the axe struck the tree halfway up and the grand thing tumbled down, falling over an ottoman and smashing old ornaments against the carpet below. She had no idea how her tree came to life, but she didn’t really care either. That was a mystery to be solved after she killed it. She raised the axe high above her head and readied another blow, this one straight down into the trunk of the thing, but before she could let the axe swing the tree reached out with its anthropomorphic hand and grabbed her by the ankle. With the weight of the axe above her, it only took a simple tug to send Andy tumbling down to the ground, falling in the spot where the tree should’ve been.
“Eek-eeeek--eeek” the tree seemed to be talking as it got itself up to its feet. Wait, it had feet? Andy winced through the pain of the fall and looked up to see the tree lumbering toward her, crying out in its strange tree language all the way over, “Eeeek-ta-ta-eeek.”
Andy turned over as the tree stood above her. She reached for the axe, but before she good get a good grip, a distraction gave her pause. The enchanted hand mirror was turned over and facing up. In it, she caught a glimpse of the tree’s reflection and it wasn’t the big, bushy branches she saw in the glass, but the scared and puffy eyes of her old face, with thirty-six hours of growth on cheeks slick with tears. She froze with confusion, unsure of what this all meant, and then it hit her. She turned over and looked up to the tree. The cult spell, it worked?
“You’re… you’re me?”
The tree nodded as best a tree could nod. “Eeek-ta-eek-taa”
“I don’t understand. I… you’re trapped in that object? I’m trapped… we’re trapped? How does this work?”
“Ta-eek-eek-eeek-ta-eeeek,” The tree used one of its fingers to point down to the axe.
Andy picked it up. “I don’t speak tree. How… how do I get you out? We need to find you a new body.”
“Eeeek-ta-ta-ta-eeeek,” the tree said. Suddenly, Andy wasn’t as confused. She didn’t know how, maybe some sort of psychic link or side effect of the spell, but she was starting to understand tree-speak.
“You’re… you’re trapped.”
“Eeeeek-eek-ta,”
“Suffering?”
The tree nodded and again pointed to the axe. “Eeek-ta-eeeeek,”
Andy got to her feet and looked down at the axe. “You need me to kill you?”
The tree nodded and cried sap onto the floor. Andy reached out with her other hand and placed it where she thought a tree might have a shoulder and she stood there with her tree-self in a moment of respectful silence.
“Maybe you should… maybe you should lie down for this?” she suggested. The tree agreed, took off the skirt, folded it, and then sat back, lying horizontal on the floor. Andy readied herself for the weirdest thing anyone had ever done on Christmas. She raised the axe above her head and said a parting word in the tree’s native tongue, hoping that this version of herself would go on in peace, somehow.
“Eeek-ta-ta-ta-eeek,” Andy said, and with that out of the way, she brought the axe down with a heavy chop to the midsection. Bark split and blood spurted from the tree, splashing Andy in the face. The tree screamed and cried out, but Andy didn’t slow down. She had to keep going, she had to make this as quick as possible. Chop-chop-chop. She didn’t stop until the crying stopped and there was just a pile of broken branches, torn pine needles, and blood pooling around her feet.
“Merry Christmas, tree-me.” she said, blowing hair out of her face. “Merry Christmas.”
