Диана Дуэйн - How Lovely Are Thy Branches

But as they got even closer she realized, even in this darkness, how blank their eyes were, and the way they weren’t focusing on her at all, but on something past her. They didn’t see her. My dream, Nita thought as they walked right at her, and then right through her. She could smell the beer on them as they passed through the space her dream-self occupied.

“Hey,” one of them said: Bobby, she thought, by the lower voice. “Not somebody. Something. Look, it’s shiny.”

“Still feels like something looking at us,” said Ronnie, the younger one, squinting at something ahead of them. Nita turned to see. “Creepy. …Wha’d those smartasses do now? Look, they left their tree outside.”

“Why’d they do that when it’s decorated?”

A chill that had nothing to do with the night or the snow ran up and down Nita’s spine. No! No no no no! Fil, get out of here!

But the quiet tree-shape, wound about with garlands, draped with tinsel, glittering indistinctly where it stood in the slightly drifted snow next to the garage, paid her no mind, did nothing at all. Bobby and Ronnie trudged over to it, trying to be quiet and failing utterly.

“Why’d they leave it out like this? Stupid.”

“Trying to keep it fresh longer, maybe.”

“Still stupid. Somebody might steal it.”

“Yeah.” There was a nasty snicker.

“Or torch it.” Nita heard a click, saw a lighter flare bright, then go out again. “Teach them to make noise, spoil other people’s Christmas. You hear the fucking racket out of them before?”

“Woke me up.”

The deeper voice swore again. “Assholes, all the cutesy holiday crap they spray around. All the time getting in your face with the carols and the family-values thing.” The sound of someone hawking, spitting in the snow. “You hear them in there tonight? Couldn’t hear yourself think, all the singing, some foreign freaks or something singing along. And now they leave this thing out here like nobody’s going to touch it—”

Laughter. “Torch it. Bet it’d burn real fast.”

“Yeah. Come on.”

One of them put out a hand. “But wait, what if that geek kid’s got a webcam looking at it or something?”

“Who cares. Pull up your hood, hide your face, what’re they gonna do? It’s still snowing, an hour or two and our tracks’ll be covered, nobody’ll know who we are or where we went.”

The lighter flared again.

“No, wait,” said the higher voice. “This tinsel, this other crap’s got fire retardant on it. Pull it off first, it’ll burn better.”

Hands reached out, grabbed loops of the garland, strands of the tinsel, pulled—

That was when the tree moved.

Nita saw Bobby and Ronnie reel back in shock at the sudden movement. And then they staggered back further as they realized the tree had lights, lights that looked like eyes, eyes that were glaring at them. Every one of these burned a dark and baleful red, a more concentrated version of the ruddy bloody light lowering above the clouds. Nita saw how the tree was now moving toward them as they backed up, and how it abruptly seemed much larger than it should have been: much broader, much taller, like something about to consciously topple onto them, massive, unavoidable. Shadow wreathed around it like fog, spreading, shutting them in, blotting out even the faint rose-tinged radiance of the snow. And from the depths of the shadow, a terrible voice spoke, it seemed, directly into each one’s heart.

Who’s. Touching. My. Decorations?!

The two parka-clad shapes collapsed onto the snow and froze there.

The shadow seemed to get deeper around them, and the night colder, as if the two would-be vandals had been snatched out of real life into some dark and deadly impossibility that had been lurking unseen on their doorstep.

I know what you are, the tree growled. It was an angry voice, full of power, and wild in a way that suggested that power might be turned loose at any moment. And I know the one you serve. You can do me no harm. Of more concern is what harm may come to you.

The Terror Twins lay huddling and shaking there on the snow, arms over their heads, wanting desperately to run away, not daring to move. Nita stood a few yards away from this and regarded the scene in wonder.

The angry voice spoke again, this time with more restraint: and the restraint was in its way even more terrifying than the power alone, for it implied what could happen if it slipped. Yet the One requests us to deal equably even with such as you, in hopes that the one you serve may sooner find Its way home at last. And I am reliably informed that mercy is valued even more highly than usual at this time of year.

Indeed the echo of voices singing “Peace on Earth and mercy mild” (one of them apparently Bill Murray’s) could be heard faintly all around, as if leaking from the playback of recent additions to the soundtrack of someone’s mind. Nita smiled to herself even as she shivered a little, considering once more—for she’d had it brought to her attention by Dairine in an informal debrief of events surrounding Filif’s visit to their house the previous year—that his toughness under pressure wasn’t to be taken for granted.

So perhaps, the darkly towering shape said, in honor of this season, you will be allowed to leave here unharmed. But should you ever… ever… consider such actions against another’s state of being or place of dwelling again, you will hear me speaking to you again. And I will not be as pleasant with you. We will not be as pleasant with you.

And the back yard was abruptly full of trees. It was a forest, sudden, deep, thick, dark, frightening in the way that great forests have been since the earliest times—that sense that in the darkness, wild things, dangerous things are looking at you, seeing you though they themselves cannot be seen. Except here, they could. Here the darkness had eyes, hundreds of them, thousands, staring, glaring, in every shade of angry, hungry red. The snow under the mist at their half-seen feet was bloody with that light, and the mist curled pink and warm like blood in water.

Be warned by us, therefore. Depart now into your own place— And suddenly the tone broke, shifted to a roar of fury. And be better!

The darkness surged closer, full of eyes, roaring. The two terrified shapes staggered to their feet, fled around the side of the house next door and (from the sound of it) nearly broke its side door down getting back inside.

And in Kit’s yard, the trees turned their attention to Nita, as if awaiting a reaction.

“My cousins—” she said, and bowed to them. “For your intervention, my thanks!”

All that multifarious rustling darkness swayed, bowing back. And then they were gone, and there was Filif all by himself, glittering ever so faintly and somehow managing to look quite innocent.

Nita folded her arms and tilted her head to one side. “Filif…!”

He rustled all his branches, glittering more brightly as the clouds above them thinned just a little, and the Moon, starting slowly to edge out of its coppery umber with the end of totality, cast a little more light on the scene. “Too harsh?” he said.

She laughed softly, went to hug him. “Oh, Fil! I almost wet myself.”

“Um. Is that good?”

“You have no idea.”

They laughed together for a few moments. “One thing, though,” Filif said. “Are you physical at the moment?”

“Uh,” Nita said, stepping back and looking at her fingers as she wiggled them. “Not sure.”

“Then this situation might wisely be considered paradoxical,” he said, “and you ought to retire until our respective states of existence are back in sync.”

“Breakfast time?” Nita said.

“Sounds good,” Filif said.