Category: writing

The Ninth Day of Christmas 

I stepped through the door of the barn out into the meadow. Birds were singing; flowers were blooming all around—daisies, buttercups, Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susans, you name it. There were even blinkin’ butterflies fluttering over it all. All that was missing was a frolicking little baah-lamb. Baah, Humbug!

This was baloney. I looked around, trying to orient myself. Would I be able to get back? The barn door behind me was still there, except from this angle the building looked like a romantically decayed hay shed, overgrown with picturesque ivy. Whatever—so long as I could get back out through it.

Turning around, I saw that the hyper-beautiful meadow in one direction extended to the edge of a supernaturally green forest, in the other rose up to the brow of a gentle hill. I couldn’t see any point in going into the forest—who knew what lurked there; I didn’t trust all this unreal and unseasonal beauty. I set out in the other direction and crested the brow of the little hill. Beyond that the meadow was curving away down a hillside, a path leading down into a lush green valley.

I had only walked for a few hundred metres when around a bend in the path I came on another green field. This one was not a picturesque alpine meadow strewn with wildflowers, but an equally picturesque groomed lawn, velvety-smooth and emerald green. It was surrounded by a low hedge spilling over with rose blossoms; a tent pavilion stood in its centre, gleaming white in the sunshine, with pennants in every colour of the rainbow glittering from its pinnacle. Beautiful people gently strolled about in front of it, the hems of the ladies’ gowns gliding over the grass, the men bending their shapely heads to hear what their companions were saying. I could hear strains of enticing music, and I was overcome with an urge to go over to find out what was creating this unearthly beautiful sound. I had to hear more of it, had to be near it, experience it, be among those beautiful people, be one of them. Walking on a little ways along the rose hedge, I came to a small opening, a gate just wide enough to let me in—as if it had been meant for me.

I stepped through, and was about to hurry towards the pavilion, when my eye fell on a person. A male person, apparently, dark-haired and dressed in dark blue pants and a grey shirt, sitting on the ground beside a little bush to the side of the path. He intently gazed at a little square flat thing in his hands, not longer than the palm of his hand, and periodically stabbed at it with his finger.

I frowned. There was something familiar about him. Where did I know him from? Something stirred in my memory. Wasn’t this the man I had met just recently—the most beautiful man I had ever seen? The man for whose sake I had come to this place, to be with him forever?

I gazed at him, willing him to lift his head, so I could see his mesmerizing silver-grey eyes, could exchange with him the loving glance that was sure to follow when he caught sight of me.

His fingers fumbled, and the square thing dropped from his hand and landed on his foot.

He flinched, snatched the thing up from the ground, and looked up.

His eyes met mine. Not silver-grey, but brown.

We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity.

All of a sudden, it was as if someone had turned a fan on the woolly fog that had filled my brain, and I could see in his eyes that it happened to him at the same time. Tom!

We rushed towards each other, but then Tom froze, throwing out his hands in a gesture that stopped me in my tracks. I opened my mouth to speak, but he frantically shook his head, pressing his fingers to his lips to tell me to be silent. He pointed to his left, and I turned my head to look.

From out of the green trees on the edge of the meadow came a procession of the most beautiful ladies I had ever seen. Stately and lithe, grave and merry, clear and mysterious all at once, they twirled and glided over the meadow, their motion in perfect harmony with the strains of the unearthly music that came from the white silk pavilion. A dance of ethereal beauty, performed by the most perfect physical beings I had ever laid eyes on. Nine of these ladies there were, led by one whose white-gold hair floated past her waist, setting off the silvery blue of her gown.

But wait—I had seen her before! I knew this not with the woolly-headed vagueness that had afflicted me when I first caught sight of Tom, but with a razor-sharp clarity that allowed for no mistake. This was the woman that had been in the house on Carson’s Landing—the one who wore the ring that I had been hoping for.

I turned to look at Tom to tell him what I knew, but I saw him staring at the lady, mesmerized. He moved slowly, as if he was in a trance—and then I noticed what he was doing: he was trying to lift the cell phone he was still clutching in his fingers, but his arm moved as if he was dragging it through molasses.

Nine ladies dancing!

I whipped out my own phone, shook the camera open, held it out and pressed the volume button. The shutter clicked—and with the sound, Tom came out of his trance.

His head flew around and he stared at me, then he pulled me down to the ground beside the little bush, out of sight of the dancing ladies.

I drew breath to protest, but he clapped his hand over my mouth.

“Don’t!” he mouthed soundlessly. “Do not speak!”

I nodded just slightly, and he took his hand from my face. Then he mimed zipping shut his lips.

“Oh-kay,” I formed with my lips, nodding and copying his zip-the-lip gesture for good measure.

He gave a quick nod of approval, then his head came up and he froze.

I cautiously sat up and looked over the bush. There, not ten metres away with his back to us, stood the gorgeous man from Engelhard’s.

My eyes widened. Him! The most wonderful man in the world! He was the one I had come here for! My one true love, my—

Something painfully flicked me on the ear. I hissed in a breath, and the pink cotton candy cloud disappeared from my brain. Tom was holding his thumb over the nail of his middle finger, poised to give me another flick on the ear, but at the sight of the glare I directed at him he hurriedly lowered his hand and changed it into a thumbs-up gesture.

I grinned. Then I pointed with my thumb over my shoulder at the people in the middle of the meadow, towards whom the not-really-all-that-gorgeous guy was strolling now. “What are they?” I mouthed at Tom.

He responded the same way. “Elves.”

I frowned at him incredulously, and he nodded.

“E-L-V-E-S,” he spelled out laboriously in finger alphabet.

“Really?” I mouthed.

He nodded, then he raised his finger in an expression of “I just had an idea.” He took his cell phone and pulled up the notepad program.

“Lured me in,” he typed. “Can’t talk out loud, else stuck. Elvis said.”

That had to be a typo; he probably meant “elves”. And why would they tell him that?

Tom saw the expression on my face, and he shook his head.

“No no no!” he mouthed. “Not elves—Elvis!”

He pointed at the name on the phone screen and then into the crowd around the pavilion, and all of a sudden it was perfectly obvious what he meant. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed the man before, he was so different from the ethereal creatures he was standing among. Although he was tall and dark like several of them, he was dressed head to toe in a white jumpsuit with pinwheel patterns made of rivets all over it, holding a snare drum under his arm as if he was in the middle of setting up the stage for a concert. But most importantly, in spite of his outfit, of his enormous sideburns, and of the ostentatious black curl that dipped into his forehead, even in spite of the dreamy expression on his face as he stared at the elven lady who was now gliding into the pavilion, somehow he looked real.

He was real, even if he had not aged a day in forty-eight years. Celia had been right all along.

Tom tugged my sleeve and held out the phone, showing me the message. “What day is it?”

I grabbed the phone from his hand.

“Jan 1,” I typed.

His eyebrows climbed to his forehead and he took the phone back.

“Took me @ xmas eve,” he typed. “Thought it was only xmas day. U sure it’s Jan 1?”

I shrugged. If this place warped time perception so much that he hadn’t felt eight days go by, it could be just about any date now.

Tom’s thumbs were flying over the keyboard.

“12 days of xmas song will get us out,” he typed, “Elvis said.”

I nodded vigorously. I’d known that! I quickly pulled out my phone, booted up the picture gallery and tabbed through the pictures, starting with the partridge in the pear tree.

Tom’s eyes widened. “Yes!” he mouthed, excitedly jabbing his thumbs up into the air.

But when I got to the picture of the eight girls in the barn—or the eight maids a-milking, as it were—my jaw dropped. There was the barn, and the rumps of the cows, and the four girls I had talked to at first—but in the back half of the barn, which wasn’t nearly as big as it had appeared, there were only a few empty cattle stalls, and scattered among them, four weird things. Splotches of light overlaid with shapes that looked like something Dr. Seuss might have drawn while on drugs. Eew, not attractive.

I quickly swiped the picture to the right—and sure enough, the nine ladies dancing over the meadow were just the same: weird creatures laid over light splotches. The background showed as a stark, empty field, with a few bare trees and not much else. I shivered, and Tom put his arm around me, rubbing my shoulder. He looked down at my phone and gave me a questioning look.

I nodded. Yes, those had been the dancing ladies. But hang on—if it was the nine ladies dancing, it had to be the ninth day! I pointed at Tom’s cell phone where I had typed “Jan 1”, shook my head and made a “two” gesture with my fingers.

Tom frowned.

“Time moving too fast,” he typed, “u gotta get out of here or they get u 2.”

I stared at him. I wasn’t leaving without him!

He shook his head.

“Can’t leave til you get all 12 days,” he typed and pointed at my phone.

Get them all? How on Earth was I supposed to pull that off?

Tom took me by the shoulders, turned me around and gave me a gentle shove.

“Go,” he mouthed at me, “please!”

He tapped his wrist where his watch would be, if he ever wore one, and twirled his forefinger in a “hurry up” gesture. Time was passing!

A shot of fear skittered down my spine. What if it was already too late? What if the last few days had already come and gone while we were stuck here talking, and I had missed the mark?

The Eighth Day of Christmas 

I was out early again on New Year’s Day. The streets in town were dead—all the stores were closed, of course, and not even Dinah’s Diner had the “Open” sign out. But I didn’t need any of them, anyway; I was headed out of town.

Right at midnight, while I had been sniffling into my lonesome glass of champagne in front of the TV that showed the ball dropping in Times Square, the penny dropped in my mind. For all of last week, I had been waiting for something to turn up, had been half angry with Tom for vanishing as he did, had figured the police would find him. But as the crowd in Times Square in their backwards count to midnight reached zero, it had burst on me with more explosions and sparks than the fireworks: I had to get Tom back. Filing the missing persons report with the police wouldn’t do it—I had to go myself.

I knew it was something to do with that mansion at Carson’s Landing, and the two gorgeous people who had denied seeing him. With that woman who wore the ring that Joe Engelhard had hinted had been bought by Tom. So I was going back out there, and I was going to look, and knock, and ask questions, until I found something.

But I drew another blank. The fancy house was, this time, actually empty. No answer to my knocking and doorbell-ringing, no response to my wandering around the outside, tapping on windows, and even trying to peer in through the glass. Nobody home. Not even the swans were in sight on the lakeshore.

I got back in my car and stared out the window at the lake. Across the inlet, I could see the big barn of Whitewell’s Dairy Farm, where Celia still lived with her brother’s family. They were the nearest neighbours to the Carson place—maybe they knew where the inhabitants of the lakeshore palace had gone off to.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up in front of the Whitewell’s big barn. The door stood half open, and I could hear voices and the sound of machinery. I supposed that even on New Year’s Day the animals had to be taken care of on their regular schedule. I got out of the car and stuck my head into the barn. The warm smell of milk and cattle dung met my nose; black-and-white cow rumps lined up side by side to the right and left of the central walkway, stretching what seemed like a long ways into the distance. There was a rhythmic hissing noise, like some pneumatic machinery, and gently the tails of the cows swished back and forth as if keeping time to it.

Down the central aisle of the barn, a young girl and a guy walked towards me, carrying a piece of shiny machinery with hoses hanging off it. Oh, no, the second person was a girl, too—the short hair and baseball cap had me confused for a moment.

She looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “Hey, anything we can do for you?”

“Hi,” I said, “sorry to bug you while you’re working—”

“It’s okay,” she said, “we’re always working. Life of the dairy farmer. The milking has to be done, no matter what.”

“I guess. Well, I was just wondering. I’m looking for someone—my friend Tom. I’m asking around if anyone’s seen him.”

Another short-cropped girl’s head poked around the rear end of a cow just a few stalls down from where I stood.

“Do you mean Tom Rimer?” the girl asked. “Tallish, dark, drives a black 1970 Chevy pickup with purple fenders?”

“Yes!!” I said. “Yes! Have you seen him? Was he here?”

The girl shrugged. “Sorry, haven’t seen him—but his truck’s been parked by the forest road, just the other side of our property line, for about a week. At least I think it’s his truck.”

Of course it was Tom’s truck; it was the only one of its kind in town. It had been in almost mint condition when he bought it a couple years back; it used to belong to Eldon, the guy that disappeared back in ‘71, and it had sat in storage ever since. Finally, a sign of Tom’s whereabouts!

“Oh!” A fourth girl came out from between two cows further down the barn. “Is that whose truck that is? Do you know if he’d consider selling?”

“Em, you need another truck like you need a hole in the head!” the first girl said.

The Em girl pouted. “But I want it, it’s really cute!”

She sounded like a grade school kid with her Barbie doll collection. Now I remembered: the Whitewells had a whole lot of daughters. Four, or five—yes, there was another one, way down the other end of the barn. Oh, six! Yet another one. That was a lot of girls. As far as I knew, they were all adults, and most of them lived away; they must have come home for a holiday visit.

“So, Tom’s truck is here?” I said, excitement making me feel tingly all over. “Do you have any idea where he went from here?”

The first girl shook her head. “Not me,” she said. “Em? Mara? Cally?” The three girls that were closest to my end of the barn shook their heads. “So, sorry, can’t help you,” she said. “If you want to stick around until we’re done the milking, might be able to talk it over then and see what we can do.” She hoisted her shiny machine and turned to the nearest cow rump.

At the far end of the barn, I could see yet another two figures emerging from between the cattle, and they and the last two that had come out looked like they were staring at me. I gave myself a slight shake. Eight girls. Eight girls in a barn, milking the cows.

Surreptitiously, I took out my phone, booted up the camera, and took a picture of the length of the barn.

The girl farthest down the building was waving at me—beckoning me. Did she want to tell me something? Those four at the other end of the barn hadn’t responded to the first girl’s question. Suddenly I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they knew something. Something about Tom.

I hitched my purse higher on my shoulder and walked down the long aisle of the barn over the squeaky-clean polished cement. Somewhere half-way down, my foot caught on something—for a split second, it felt as if I had walked into an invisible wall.

But I kept going, walking towards the four girls at the far end of the barn. They just stood there. So did their cows—where the ones at the front of the barn vigorously swished their tails and rustled around in their stalls, these ones held perfectly still. In fact, they looked fake, as if they were nothing but movie props—cardboard cutouts.

I looked at the girls as I got closer. They looked familiar. Really familiar. They looked—they looked just like the other four girls in the front section of the barn. Two of them with short blonde hair, one with medium-length brown hair, one with a ponytail under a backwards baseball cap; all of them wearing jeans or overalls and rubber boots. I looked back towards the front section of the barn, and then ahead to the back section. The one was a mirror image of the other.

“What’s going on here?” I could hear slight hysteria in my voice.

“Nothing,” said the girl who was the double of the first girl. “You want to find Tom? We can help you.”

They were giving me the creeps, with their silent, unwavering smiles and the motionless cows between them. Yes, I needed to find Tom, but not with their help!

“No thanks!” I said. “I’ll be leaving now, thank you!”

With a few strides, I reached the barn door and pulled it open.

In front of me was a spring meadow in full bloom.

The Seventh Day of Christmas

My work day had never seemed as long as it did on that New Year’s Eve. I snapped at old Ernie Smith when he took so long to decide which antacid he wanted, the 10 or the 20 mg, and had to apologize; and then had to apologize again when I sent a mom with two sneezing, snotty-nosed, whining kids down the wrong aisle in pursuit of cold medicine. Finally, when I realized I had counted out the one hundred tablets of Malvinia Shoemaker’s heart medication in the double-strength dose instead of the single-strength, I threw in the towel.

“Look, Gina,” I said to the pharmacist, “I think I need to call it a day. I can’t think straight; you’ll have to double-check everything I’ve done in the last hour or two. I’m really sorry. Do you mind if I knock off early? I don’t want to accidentally poison anyone.”

Gina looked over the top of her reading glasses down the empty aisles of the drug store. “Go ahead, I think I can hold down the fort. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Just—well, you know.”

She gave me a sympathetic look. “It’ll be fine,” she said soothingly. “He’ll turn up.”

“I hope so,” I said and rubbed my aching temple.

Gina raised an eyebrow. “You’re not coming down with something, are you?”

I gave a humourless laugh. “I’m not sure.” Was a case of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” a diagnosable condition?

“Well, better get some rest, then. Give the New Year’s Eve parties a miss.”

“Hadn’t planned on going to one, anyway, even if…” I’d wanted to just spend it with Tom, watch the TV broadcast, toast with a glass of champagne… “Thanks, Gina. I’ll see you Thursday.” I hung my white lab coat on the hook behind the door of the staff room and headed out to my car.

As I put the key in the lock, suddenly there was a hand on my arm. I turned my head and looked into Celia Whitewell’s wrinkle-framed brown eyes, her grey hair hanging wildly around her face.

“This is the year,” she said urgently. “Right around now, that’s when they took him. And every twelve years, the portal opens again; that’s when they come back through. I didn’t manage to get to him last time, or the time before, but now, but now… In the twelve days, every twelve years…”

And a hey nonny nonny, I’m sure. Poor woman.

I soothingly patted Celia’s hand, then gently removed her clutch from my sleeve. But she wasn’t even paying attention to me anymore.

“Every twelve years…” she muttered, and she shuffled away towards the big grey structure of the community hall which was even older than she was.

Where to now? I had called everyone I could think of to ask about Tom, but no luck. However, I still had not gone out to Carson’s Landing to track down that lady. Why had I been procrastinating on this so long? It was almost like I was scared to go out there. But the last person I knew had seen Tom before he disappeared was there. I had to do this.

Resolutely I turned the key in the ignition, shifted the car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

Ten minutes later, I turned down the side road off the highway that led to Carson’s Landing. Old Jimbo Carson had lived right at the very end of it, in a small house—more of a cottage, really—that his grandfather had built there in the days of the gold rush.

The building that stood on the site of Jimbo’s little house now was certainly no cottage—I hardly even wanted to call it a house. “Mansion” was more like it, if not “palace”—a very modern one, at least. Three stories tall, it had two floors of wrap-around decks with Plexiglas railings facing the lake, and the roof on the lake side came to a high peak in the centre, with glass, glass and more glass instead of walls.

I parked the car and turned off the ignition, sitting there and staring at the place. It didn’t look like anyone was home inside that glass castle—was there? They were probably out doing New Year’s Eve somewhere. Maybe I should just leave again.

But no! I’d never find Tom if I was chicken. Tom… I gave myself a mental kick in the pants and got out of the car. Suddenly lights flared up inside the building and over the front door, their brightness making me realize that dusk was not far away.

The door opened and a figure stood outlined against the inside lights.

“Hello! Can I help you with anything?” a beautiful baritone called out to me.

Mr. Jewellery Store Guy! Once again I got that strange fluttering in my stomach and a strong sense of vertigo.

“Umm, uh—” Get a grip, Mac! I gave myself a push away from the car and forced my wobbly knees to walk in the direction of the house. “I’m, uh, looking for someone. Uh, my, my…”

“Yes?” He flashed me that thousand-watt smile, and again it seemed to knock the stuffing out of me.

“It’s, uh, um… Actually, I’m looking for Tom,” I said. “My, uh—he’s a friend. And someone said that—” I was making no sense, and he was still beaming that smile at me. “N-never mind,” I stammered. I was obviously at the wrong place, wasn’t I? “I think I’ll just, uh, go.”

“Yes, maybe you should,” the man said, but the waves of charm that radiated off him made it seem as if he had just issued the most cordial invitation to come into the house.

“Y-yes,” I said, taking a step closer, “maybe…”

“Who is it, Galaeron?” a melodious woman’s voice came from inside the house. I had never heard such an attractive voice before—well, not before I had heard the man’s. This was a woman’s version of the same honeyed, dulcet tones that made me want to sink into whatever it was they were offering, made me want to stay and never leave… I took one more step towards the house.

A woman’s face appeared over the man’s shoulder. White-blonde hair flowed back in ripples from a smooth white forehead; silver-grey eyes that were set at a slant looked at me from under incongruously dark, perfectly straight eyebrows; and a tiny mouth with delicately rosy lips formed into a pout.

“Well?” she said, raising one of her perfect eyebrows.

In her own way, she was as stunning as the man, but I couldn’t stand her—which was what saved me. The antipathy I felt slapped my brain back to functionality.

“I’m looking for my b- my friend Tom,” I said. “About your height—” I gestured at the man, “dark hair, brown eyes. Someone said they saw you,” I looked at the woman, “talking to him on Christmas Eve, and nobody has seen him since.”

She gave an affected laugh, as silvery and metallic as her eyes. “Am I supposed to have done away with him? I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t even remember talking to this—Tom.” She laid her left hand caressingly on the man’s shoulder, as if to say she had no need for the likes of Tom—and what I saw then snapped me out of the last of my daze. On her left ring finger sparkled the princess-cut diamond from Engelhard’s.

“All right,” I said, and I heard a slight hiss in my voice. “I just thought I’d ask. Goodbye.”

I turned to leave, and there on the lake shore beside the house I saw them: seven perfect white swans, swimming in one line along the encroaching ice of the shoreline. I pulled out my phone, shook it to open the camera, and clicked the shutter.

When I turned back to the house, the door was closed and the lights inside had gone dark.

The First Day of Christmas 

If you think that elves are small, cute, cheerful creatures with pointy ears, green hats, and jingle bells on the hems of their shirts, do yourself a favour: think again. Mind you, I can understand how you would come to such a conclusion, especially at this time of year—even our small town has a Santa in front of the grocery store with those little green guys flocking around him, luring small children to sit on his knee. Luring them—that’s about the only way in which the cheesy Christmas elves resemble the real thing.

I don’t know if it would have helped Tom any if he had known what elves are really like, that Christmas Eve he disappeared.

Tom Rimer is—well, was—my boyfriend. We had made tentative plans for him to pick me up from my place so we could go up the valley to spend Christmas Eve with my family; on Christmas Day he was on the early shift in Lord’s Mine.

He didn’t show up. I wasn’t too surprised—Tom’s a good guy, but not the most punctual; he tends to lose track of time.

However, when half an hour after he was supposed to have been there he was still a no-show with no communication on whether he was coming or not, I was getting a little miffed. After an hour, I was fuming. I’d tried calling him about three times, but the cell reception isn’t the best around here, so I didn’t get through.

I reached for my phone one more time and was just starting to type out yet another irate message, when my phone pinged and a text from Tom popped up on my screen.

“12 days xmas” it said, “has 2B the whole thi”

“*thing”

“else I’m stuck here”

“pls try!!!”

Say what? Tom is prone to being cryptic with his texting, but this was a bit much.

“???” I texted back, then, “Where r u?”

But there was no response—it was almost like I could hear the texts falling into the silence of an empty room. I gave up.

“Leaving without you,” I texted, “c u Saturday”

The next afternoon—Christmas Day—was when it started up.

“Look at this, Mac,” my mom called out, “come over here!”

I stepped over next to her by the living room window and looked out into the snow-covered yard. The Bosc pear tree still had a few forlorn brown fruits dangling from its highest branches where Dad hadn’t been able to reach them—plus, he always said, leave some for the critters, they need to live too.

In this case it looked like the critter in question was a small, round bird, perched on the spreading lower branches of the tree.

“That’s a big quail,” I said. “I didn’t know they like sitting in trees. And where’s the rest of the flock?”

“It’s not a quail,” Mom said, “it’s a partridge. Get it?”

Oh, cute. A partridge in a pear tree.

I reached for my cell, shook it to open the camera—it’s one of the features I like about that phone—snapped a picture, and texted it to Tom along with a pointed “See what you’re missing?”

I never got a response, but as I figured he was at work I wasn’t too worried. Unfortunately.

When I got home late that night, I found a message on the answering machine of my landline.

“Hey, this is Herb. Trying to get a hold of Tom; he didn’t show up for work today. Tell him to get in touch, would you?”