I Found Christmas Lights Slithering Up My Street by Ben Farthing

Author:Ben Farthing [Farthing, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Ben Farthing

8

We fell free of the plastic forest.

The carolers’ eerie crooning had progressed to the hallelujahs of “Angels We Have Heard On High.”

David broke the caroler’s harmony. “What the hell!”

I turned around to see if the stop-motion demons were still following.

Rudolph and the Charlie-in-the-box slunk behind trees, several rows deep. They weren’t advancing.

Maria had stumbled coming out of the trees. She must have hurt herself, because she still knelt in the snow, head down, dark hair hanging over her shoulders.

I expected David to go help, but now that we had a moment to breathe, he was freaking out. “That wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been real.”

I craned my neck back to look up.

The Jones’ Christmas tree farm stood sixty feet high, twice as tall as the houses of Foothill Pines. It hadn’t been an illusion inside. The plastic trees had actually grown.

To the side of the forest, those strange string lights crawled up the Jones’ house to strangle it. I hoped they’d ran away while we were stuck in the forest.

“I’m serious,” David tugged at his hair with both hands. “What the hell is going on? I thought you guys were messing with the Jones.”

Harold paced the edge of the yard, watching the stop-motion movie characters slink deeper into the tree farm. “I told you it was real. The lights took my grandma. Oh god. Is she dead? You don’t think she’s dead, do you?”

I almost told David how we’d seen an eyeball and a pink hair curler and a screaming mouth inside those lightbulbs hanging from Harold’s house. But I decided to let the two of them scream their way into David accepting what was happening.

The carolers’ song drifted through the fake trees. They weren’t getting louder yet. Maybe the one who’d followed us into the tree farm had returned to her companions at the Jones’ front door.

From down on her knees in the snow, Maria coughed. Or maybe it was a loud wince.

“Hey.” David walked over to his sister. “We’ve got to figure out what to do. Get up.”

Maria tried.

She pushed herself to her feet. Her body rose in rapid-fire stutters. She screamed and her mouth moved like an old film reel.

I’d felt it, too, but only when the Charlie-in-the-Box had been wrapped around me. “Why is she still moving like that?”

“She needs to get farther away from the trees,” David said with too much confidence. “She’ll be fine. Let’s go find Dad.”

Maria turned her head toward her little brother. “What’s happening?” Her voice skipped like an old record. The mist of her breath came out in quick, stuttering spurts. Maria brought her hand to her mouth because of the pain but doubled over.

“Yeah, we need Dad.” David’s voice cracked.

“The puppet things stayed in the forest,” Harold whined. “Why is this still happening?”

David cleared his throat. “Guys, help me carry Maria.”

He and Harold picked up her legs and I put my hands on her back to keep her from falling backward.

But as they lifted and I kept her balanced, we all four moved with that stop-motion stuttering.

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