Improbable Botany

by Wayward

  The pillows moved.

  I was up, up, I leaped up, I ran away from the vent, out of my room into the dark hallway. The darkness pulsed around me. The furnace was shouting, panting, giggling, but I didn’t want to hear it, I ran through it down the hall —

  I stared down the stairs, into the living room.

  The Christmas tree glowed thousands of colors.

  I pushed through the furnace’s jabbering and shrieking, I ran all the way down the stairs and all at once its noise was swallowed in the tree’s tremendous stillness, like diving underwater. The tree was awake in the dark. Waiting. Its lights reflected silently off the ornaments, like bright hanging fruit, throwing dim blurs of color on the ceiling and walls. The tree was radiating silence, an antenna tuned to some secret frequency drawing down something I couldn’t understand and broadcasting it all through the house. Up and down the street I saw Christmas trees in other houses’ windows, glowing out into the night, glowing at each other, as if in conversation, as if an army of alien angels had taken up residence in every house on the street.

  The furnace hated it. The man in the furnace was twisting himself in knots, babbling to himself, hating them. I knew the flickering red eye and the steady orange eye were glaring. But the Christmas trees were silent, beautiful, and emotionless.

  I didn’t go back up to my bedroom. I was afraid of what was up there waiting for me. I slept on the couch in the living room, looking at the tree. I felt safer there. But I did not sleep too close to it.

  *

  The summer before Dad died he woke Jenny and me up in the middle of the night, whispering there was something he wanted to show us. A surprise. Mom was up too. We all climbed into the car and drove for what seemed like a million miles, far from the lights of the town and the highway. The windows were open as we bounced and rattled into the hot rushing darkness. I closed my eyes, listening to the chittering insects, smelling the warm night-forest air. There was no moon. When Dad parked off the gravel road and shut off the headlights, the darkness was total. We couldn’t see each other’s faces. Mom and Dad and Jenny and I made our way blindly through the forest, feeling our way through the poking branches, until we finally came out to a field where dozens of people were laying as if they were all struck down at once, laying on blankets, staring up into the sky.

  Far above a silver slash cut across the blackness. “There! There!” Jenny shouted out. “Oh, there! Another one!” — and then there was another shooting star, then another, another, so many shooting stars that for an incredible few seconds it seemed as though the entire sky had broken apart and the heavens were collapsing, stars whizzing, crisscrossing, flaming out, one after another.

  I remember Mom holding Dad’s hand too tightly. Dad was watching the stars with an incomprehensible look on his face. Something wasn’t right. Dad was looking at the sky at though it had told him something horrible; but it was a nostalgic look; he was happy but not happy; I had never seen my father look so young. I said something to him in the dream, because I was dreaming now, but I don’t remember what, and Jenny wasn’t there, Mom wasn’t actually there either, and there was no car, no field, no shooting stars — it was just me and Dad in the dark. Dad touched his cheek as though he’d just discovered it, and said “Did I ever tell you where I got this?” and it wasn’t even Dad anymore. It was the corn husk man. We were alone in the dark together.

  *

  I woke up. I was still in the living room. I looked out the window at the black night. No snow falling. Frozen silence. The house was cold, the living room dark.

  The Christmas tree was gone.

  I sat up, my mind suddenly clear.

  The living room was empty. The wrapped presents were still arranged in a circle around the empty tree holder.

  There was no tree.

  The Christmas tree moved past the window.

  I stumbled up, tripped over a present, ran to the door and threw it open.

  The Christmas tree was moving away from my house. Other Christmas trees were already in the street, drifting down from other houses, all moving in a great silent herd.

  I stared. I couldn’t breathe. I ran back inside. Everything in my body was electrified. I pulled boots over my bare feet. One more second and they might all be gone. I threw my coat over my pajamas. I ran back outside.

  The night was cold and clear. No moon. All the Christmas trees still had their ornaments, their string lights somehow still glowed, everywhere on the street the Christmas trees were coming out, emerging from every dim house, gathering together and pushing forward in a bright silent mob. My Christmas tree was leading them. I ran after them as they pressed on, rustling to each other, slowly turning, branches swaying, ornaments of stars and angels and lights on every side of me, more and more trees joining us up and down the street, dozens of trees now, maybe a hundred. My Christmas tree had gathered an army. The world did not notice. The world was paused. I had entered some secret backstage of the world, something that wasn’t meant for me, something so separate from me that maybe I wasn’t even seen. I was pressed in on every side by prickling branches. The air thrummed with invisible messages. I was caught up in it. I did not know if they were taking me somewhere or if they knew I was there at all, we were far from home now, and then we stopped somewhere deep in the forest.

  My Christmas tree was there.

  It had brought me to a hole.

  The hole was wide and deep enough that I could climb in. The Christmas trees were gently pushing me. There was something in that hole I didn’t want to see. The ground around the hole was frozen but the hole was fresh and raw. I knew what belonged in the hole.

  *

  I couldn’t do it.

  Things got worse. The next day and the day after that Mom didn’t get out of bed. She lay facing the wall. Grandma kept going in to her and bringing her food. She would go in to retrieve the food later. It was cold and untouched. Grandma had a big old red medical book she consulted before going to doctors. The book didn’t work. So Grandma brought an actual doctor to the house. He was nephew of a friend, a favor called in. The doctor came, and stayed a while, and left. Jenny and I were shut out of the room. Grandma didn’t say what was wrong.

  I was too afraid to do it.

  The furnace kept after me every night. It wanted that Christmas tree out. It wanted me to do something about that tree. I could feel it eating our time faster, I could feel the whole house take a wrong turn, the furnace wrapping up the house and sending it down to the bottom of a black ocean. Jenny and I fought for no reason. Grandma was scatterbrained, she didn’t answer the question you asked. Mom stayed in bed with those pillows crushed on either side of her head.

  I knew I had to go down there. But the furnace terrified me. I couldn’t bear looking into that flickering red eye and steady orange eye, they were the eyes of the man in the truck and he was coiled up in our basement blasting hot air over us and we were all being steadily damned.

  I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the Christmas tree. The furnace put pictures in my head showing me what I had to do to it. The tree glowed with cold, impersonal light. It didn’t talk. I wanted to talk to the tree, to pray to it, to be friends with it but it was beautifully and horribly silent while the furnace droned, cajoled, joked, and hissed, threats and secrets and bad words blasting hot out of its angry metal mouths.

  “Ha ha, I will show you my face,” said the furnace. “I will eat your time too.”

  *

  It was the night before Christmas Eve but it didn’t feel like Christmas. This was usually the time that Mom and Dad had everything set and ready, the house all decorated, presents wrapped, cookies baked, ready to sail into Christmas Day. We hadn’t done any of that this year. We weren’t even at our own house. I wanted to be home. Grandma was too busy taking care of Mom. That morning Grandma had cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast and Jenny said, “I don’t want eggs, I want Raisin Bran,” and Grandma said “We don’t have Raisin Bran,” and Jenny s
aid “But I want Raisin Bran,” and Grandma said “This is better than Raisin Bran, I made this for you special,” and Jenny just put her head down and cried, “I’m never going to have Raisin Bran again, I want Raisin Bran, I just want Raisin Bran.” Grandma tried to help her but Jenny threw her plate so hard it broke, bacon and eggs and jagged ceramic scattered across the linoleum, and then Jenny was really screaming. Grandma told me to go down into the basement to get a mop and bucket. I hadn’t been in the basement since the day Grandma had shown me the doll in the box. I didn’t want to do it.

  Grandma told me again to do it. Louder, sharper.

  I crept down the stairs. I didn’t even glance at the furnace, I just got the bucket and mop and ran back upstairs as fast as I could. But I did glimpse the furnace crouching in the back of the room, its flickering red eye and steady orange eye, and behind it, the door where the little man lived.

  “Do it,” said the furnace. “Or I will tell you something you don’t want to hear.”

  *

  Now it was night and I was standing alone in the dark with the Christmas tree. The furnace hissed commands. During the day the Christmas tree was just a normal tree, but at night it seemed to grow, to unfold, to blaze with stranger, deeper light, like a glittering alien peacock. The furnace pushed nightmare pictures into my brain. Broken ornaments. The Christmas tree knocked over. The tree on fire. I was close enough now to touch the Christmas tree, I was standing next to it, as the furnace said yes, yes, pull it down, break it, do it. But the Christmas tree was too bright, too full of raw magic.

  “Do it,” said the furnace.

  I ran upstairs, thinking I was getting away.

  “Then I will tell you something you don’t want to hear,” said the furnace. “I will tell you why you can’t go back to your own house.”

  All night the furnace ate my time.

  *

  I knew that Dad wasn’t happy. I knew he acted happy for us. That he wasn’t well, though he pretended to be well. That he had tried something and failed. That time had run out. That something had caught up with us. That he had made a mistake, or missed something, or gotten lost, or done something wrong, or failed a test, or got struck by something unexpected; something had curdled inside Dad and gone bad, and curdled him, made him go bad; his insides, I knew, had gone bad.

  *

  On Christmas Eve Grandma decided we should go to Midnight Mass. It was a terrible idea. The radio and TV were talking about the storm that was coming, the blizzard that would hit that night. Mom stayed at home in bed. It was just me and Jenny and Grandma, who somehow hadn’t taken into account how young we were. The storm was already in full force when we drove to the church. We could barely see out of the car, couldn’t see the road. It was strange to be at the church late at night, it wasn’t even our church, it was Grandma’s church we had been going to since we started staying at her house, smaller and smellier and more old-fashioned than our normal church. There were decorations in the church that were weird and gross and I didn’t want to look at them. Being there at night made it even spookier, there was a choir that came from nowhere, the choir stalls had always been empty before but now all these old people appeared, singing a high creepy song with words I couldn’t understand. The organ was groaning chords of hundreds of notes fitted together in such a way that blasted you flat, weighed you down under its grinding triumph, like the victory march of some war you never knew about, between people who didn’t mean anything to you. The incense rolled out over us, the priest was talking about celebrations but I never understood why he called it that, everyone’s face looked dead, nobody really sang like they were happy and the priest’s voice went on in just the way the man in the furnace droned when he wasn’t talking to me, when he was just talking to itself in the furnace, like somebody reading out loud the titles of all the books they owned, a bunch of words even they didn’t care about, and yet I was afraid at any moment the priest might, like the furnace, stop droning and speak directly to me. My nostrils tickled from the incense, my head was swimming, I was dizzy and sick and just wanted to lie down like Mom and go to sleep. The blizzard howled outside and I remembered how after Dad died I’d heard how there was one unforgivable sin, something so bad you would go to hell no matter what, and Jenny, who had tried to stay up because she wanted to be good, because she wanted to make up for the Raisin Bran and the broken plate, she hadn’t complained at all that night, she was really trying to tough it out but it was too much for her, during the second reading her legs gave way and she fainted.

  The people around us helped us. Everyone was really nice. But we left then, before the service was over. I had never seen Grandma look helpless, like she didn’t know what she was doing. But during the drive home, she looked like that. Old and confused. She had been just as sad as us, she was hurting too. She took care of us but there was only so much she could do. There were some places only I could go.

  *

  Jenny fell asleep in the car on the way home. Grandma wasn’t strong enough to carry her in herself, so we pulled out Jenny and she stumbled in with us, half-awake, leaning on Grandma, and Grandma took her straight to her bedroom to change her into pajamas and tuck her in. The night was a bust. Church had gone wrong, nobody wanted to talk, everyone just wanted to go to bed, and for a moment before I had to go up to my own room I was alone with the Christmas tree, and I said to it:

  “Yes. Tonight I’ll do it.”

  I went upstairs and passed Jenny’s room. She was already asleep. Mom was asleep in her room. Grandma clunked around in the bathroom but she was exhausted. I knew soon all of them would be dead asleep.

  *

  I was awake. I felt the same way I felt when I slept in this bed for the first time. I looked out the window, up and down the street, at the darkened neighborhood. The big storm was finished, it had moved on and was destroying the world somewhere else. The snow outside was smooth, swooping, untouched. To see huge snowdrifts in the middle of the street made it feel like the house was in a completely different neighborhood. The bright moon lit up everything with sharp shadows. The furnace roared along but the voice had gone silent. I did not know what kind of silence.

  I saw them now. They were outside the house.

  I got out of bed.

  My bare feet touched the carpet.

  I saw them waiting in the street.

  I came out of my room and down the stairs. The house was dark, the world hushed. The Christmas tree was not at the bottom of the stairs. It had heard me. It was just me and the furnace.

  I felt eyes looking at me from behind mirrors. I moved past the mirrors, my eyes straight ahead. I glimpsed shapes huddled in corners. Do not look, do not look. I came through the foyer, walking slowly, do not run, do not turn on the lights. I turned and I was at the top of the basement steps.

  He was down there.

  The furnace roar was too loud, louder than it had ever been. I took a step into the basement. The step creaked. Another step. It was too hot, too loud, rushing in my ears, the darkness was full of shapes jumping and wiggling and I had to ignore them, to keep on. I came to the bottom of the stairs. At any moment hands would grab me from behind, drag me into the furnace, take me all the way down to hell. I turned the corner of the basement and stared into the dark.

  The flickering red eye and the steady orange eye stared back.

  I walked blindly through the dark basement. All I could see was the red eye and the orange eye. The floor felt like it was sloping downwards, pitching me forward, pulling me towards the furnace, I had to fight from getting sucked in, no, I was taking every step myself, closer to the furnace, too close. The red eye and the orange eye stared into my own.

  I couldn’t move. The red eye and the orange eye burned into me. But I stared back, I did not look away, I kept looking into the eyes, even as the outline of a face began to come out of the dark, a face I knew took shape in the darkness, all around those eyes, the furnace was roar, roar, roaring and I felt all hell open up.<
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  I stared at it.

  The eyes sputtered.

  The roar dwindled.

  The eyes went dark. The noise dwindled.

  I was alone in the basement.

  The furnace was dead. I didn’t move. It was dead but I was still alive and I was still afraid. I crept forward behind the furnace and saw the two little doors in the wall, just barely, in the glow of the still-flickering pilot light. I lifted the latch and opened the door. Ash fell out.

  There was the box.

  It was open.

  It was empty.

  A hand fell on my shoulder.

  The corn husk doll was bigger than me now.

  *

  He was as big as a full grown man. He stood just behind me, head bumping the ceiling, face expressionless. His seed eyes stared at me, his bark mouth hung open.

  His hand stayed on my shoulder.

  I tried to move away. The hand pressed down and I could not. His other hand moved as if to touch my cheek. But he didn’t.

  He let me go, and held up both hands to his own face, looking at them as if he didn’t know what they were, he didn’t know how to work them.

  My heart pounded. I backed away. I went for the stairs. The corn husk man turned. He held out his hands as if to say: don’t leave.

  I stayed where I was.

  He was looking around the basement. He moved to the corner where there were stacks of old cardboard boxes. He fumbled at a box. He couldn’t open it.

  I came over.

  He watched me. The bits of pine cone and seeds glued to his head didn’t move.

  I opened the box for him.

  Inside were piles of dusty children’s books and battered toys from what looked like the 1950s. He stared at the toys, then pawed through the books, not as though he meant to read them, but just to see the covers. He looked at them for a while.

  Then he straightened up again. He turned, and walked upstairs, and did not look back.

  I went with him.

  He peered around the dark hallways as if searching for something. He went from room to room, stumbling a little, pausing at strange places. He held the doorknob to the side door for a long time. He stared at the picture over the mantel above the fireplace — I had never even really looked at it before. He stopped at the step between the family room and the kitchen.