The
Christmas Tree by Susan Buffum
The wide floorboards creak and crack
beneath the worn, faded wool carpet, its pattern barely perceptible. Raw wintry
air seeps beneath the weather-bowed sash. There is nothing but moonlight
beyond, passing through wavy panes of glass, stretching tendrils of pale light
toward the dark corner where an ancient Christmas tree tilts,
slouch-shouldered, defeated, brown needles in a ring on the floor beneath its
skeletal branches. A tin star droops from the top most branch, waxen tears from
the candle within having adhered it to the bough, brown needles jutting through
the now age-tanned wax. Shards of broken glass ornaments litter the floor, dull
glinting blades poised to cut and pierce the tender flesh of unshod feet.
But the feet that trod these boards,
this rotting carpet, feel nothing anymore. Their steps are more a glide, a
drift, a draft of smoke or bank of fog in motion. They are silent, yet the
floorboards protest as if a living soul strides forth toward the corner where
the relic of Christmas past stands forlornly, its memories of a holiday long
ago shattered and shed.
The faint laugh of a child fills the
room and then fades to silence. A woman’s voice comes from another corner near
the crumbling fireplace, the hearth spattered and stained by the droppings of
birds that have found their way down the flue and vainly sought the ascending
pathway toward freedom to no avail. Small piles of feathers and bones litter
the floor beneath the windows where the promise of sunlight had drawn the
trapped, winged creatures, where the cruel glass had broken fragile neck bones
and bodies had fallen. A man’s voice calls from another room, his words
muffled, unclear.
The wisps of mist drift nearer the tree,
yet nothing that lies in that magical circle of brittle brown needles, dully
glinting glass shards, and rigid droplets of
hardened wax is disturbed by the small feet, formed and visible now
beneath the mist.
From the swirling mist a child’s legs
and torso take shape and then its arms. The head is next and a circlet of mist
drifts in a lazy spiral around it, obscuring any facial features that may have
appeared. One arm rises. Clutched in a tiny fist formed of denser fog there is
a small candle, the flame having burst into bloom, a dancing orange and yellow
lily of light that shines upon the barren boughs, its light just reaching the
wall behind. The light wavers as the child appears to light candles that no
longer exist in this world.
The woman’s voice exclaims. Near the
doorway, a man clears his throat. The child’s laughter is a musical peal of
delight and excitement. And upon the desiccated branches small spheres of light
begin to glow.
Invisible arms lift the phantom child,
its misty form moving here and there, more spheres of phosphorescent light
illuminating as if fireflies have landed upon the needleless branches and
settled in at some unspoken command. A woman’s gasp, the sudden clap of hands
as the light reaches the top most branch of the forlorn tree.
For one shimmering moment the tree is
there in its corner, standing tall and proud, aglow with the light of dozens of
candles, ornaments glinting among the boughs. A brief glimpse into the past and
then the ghostly child coughs harshly, the candles shiver in their holders
among the boughs. The child of fog and mist begins to dissipate as the spheres
of light blink out like stars at dawn as the sun rises above the sea.
There is nothing there in that corner
any longer but the skeletal remains of a tree shrouded in shadows that drape
around it like a pall. The pale tendrils of moonlight recede. The room grows
darker. The wind moans beneath the sash. The room grows colder still.
The floorboards crack and creak, and
then a door opens, aged hinges protesting against the unwanted separation of
warped door from weathered jamb. Cold air rushes into the hall while outside
the soft, crisp, crunch of footsteps in frozen snow retreat from the granite
stoop and fade. An owl hoots. The moon
slides from behind a cloud to reveal faint fractures in the snow, the gaping
maw of the door as it stands ajar.
Then, from inside the house, a soft
clattering sound, a gentle sighing whoosh, as the Christmas tree of yore at
long last succumbs and falls to the floor amid the scattered debris of its
former glorious self.
