A New Christmas Ghost Story

 

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.