As long as I can remember, my mother put bones under the Christmas tree. No other kids I knew put bones under their Christmas tree, just presents, but my mother put bones under the Christmas tree every year. When I’d ask why, she would tell me that it was an old folk tradition, something my Granny had taught her, and that she’d teach me about it when I was older.
The underside of the tree would stay bare until the 22nd of December. After I was snug in bed, she would put them out like some horror movie Santa and I would wake up the next morning to the heap of bones under the tree. Each year there would be more: a new skull, an extra tibia, another femur. I’d ask her where they came from and she would always tell me that she would explain everything when I was older; that told me nothing. It was getting to the point where there were more bones than presents, but my mother made sure I always had plenty of gifts on Christmas morning. And it was usually just the two of us for Christmas. Some years it was me, mom, and her current boyfriend, but the relationship never lasted through Christmas, and the man was usually gone and out of the picture by the morning of; mom always said she had the worst luck with men, even my father. He ran off when I was three and we never saw him again. It was fine though, because I was perfectly happy with it just being me and my mother without anyone else to possibly destroy our Christmas. But I grew up, and I grew lonely—lonely for companionship, lonely for companionship that wasn’t my mother; I wanted romance. I had no idea what I was doing when it came to dating, but I met someone in town, we hit it off, got coffee a few times, saw a movie or two, and I thought it would blossom from there. Eventually, we did become serious, but my mother didn’t like him. I figured it had something to do with her personal feelings on relationships, considering her history, but after a few months, she seemed to warm up to the idea of him in my life. I was ecstatic because I was sure I was in love. But what did I really know about anything? “More bones, mom?” I asked as she walked into the kitchen on the morning of the 22nd. “Sadly, no.” She sounded off as she spoke with her back to me, her hands moving methodically as she prepared her coffee like she did every morning. “Too bad.” I was being sarcastic, but a felt rather awful because I knew what the bones meant to her. “Maybe, maybe I can go out in the woods and find you some? You know I have a knack for that.” I offered my services as a finder of weird and obscure things, but my mother waved her hand at me. “No need. I will find something to go under the tree.” She waved her hand at me before she turned around with coffee cup to her lips. “You’re sure?” I softened my tone a bit more. “Yes, baby. It’s not time for you carry on this tradition yet.” Her words sounded strange as she smiled wryly at me and left the kitchen. This mood was very unlike her, especially this time of year. There was always a severity to her demeanor when the weather started to get really cold, but she still kept a rather jovial air. But not now, not today. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t place it and she clearly wasn’t talking. I had to get to class or I would have hounded her about what was eating at her, but I figured I would just let her sit with herself for a few hours until I got home from class. Maybe then I would be able to coax it out of her. It was the last day before classes ended for the semester. They released earlier than usual and I was able to make it home while the sun was still high and the day still bright and somewhat cheerful, despite the ever graying thickness of impending snow clouds. The flakes would start to fall soon and I knew that the whole of the land would be stark white by the time the sun completely set; how appropriate for the Solstice. When I arrived home, the front door was slightly ajar and I immediately felt a sense of dread deep in my stomach. It was quickly replaced by a fluttering as my mother burst through the door before I could even make it up the stairs. Her hands were full of leather cords, a metal symbol hanging from the bottom of each. She didn’t say a word to me as she stepped up a ladder and began hanging them from fresh nails imbedded in the underside of the porch awning. “Mom, what are you doing?” I paused with my foot on the stairs as I gawked at her. She immediately stopped what she was doing and turned her head to look at me as if she had no idea I was there before I spoke. “Decorating.” She smiled at me, but something was so very wrong about that smile. “Mmhmm, for what? Because those don’t look like Christmas lights.” I pointed at one of the symbols forged in cold iron. It had a large loop at the top, where the iron had been carefully shaped and folded over itself, the ends neatly curled inward with a small spiral. “The Solstice. We’re doing something a little different this year.” My mother smiled at me again; this time the lie behind it was a little more convincing. “And what are those symbols?” I asked curiously. I felt like I had seen them somewhere before, probably in a movie, but I couldn’t quite figure out where. “They’re—they’re troll crosses. Christians put up crosses for Jesus, we put up troll crosses for the Solstice.” She nodded with another weird smile and went back to “decorating”. “The crosses are used at Easter, Mom, not Christmas. Baby Jesus was born on Christmas and died around Easter. If they’re hanging up crosses around other times of the year like you are hanging these—they’re probably trying to ward away evil like every haunted house movie.” I had a feeling and I definitely didn’t like it. My mother had hung the last of the troll crosses and stopped dead on her step of the ladder before she took a very deep breath and sighed. “Happy Solstice, baby. I made some cookies this morning after you left for class if you want some; they’re on the kitchen table.” She never looked at me as she climbed down off that ladder and calmly walked back inside. I was left standing there, one foot still on the stairs, alone. She had completely ignored what I said, dismissed me, and went about her business as if we had never had the conversation about the troll crosses. This was the first time I had ever seen them, at least in a way that I could remember, and there was something eerily unsettling about the dozens of iron sigils swaying in the icy breeze that had begun to blow. The snow was coming, and it looked to be heavy, so I convinced myself that my mother knew how bad the storm could be and put the crosses up to protect us from the impending blizzard. But I knew I was convincing myself of a lie. (*) I had fallen asleep. I couldn’t get my mother to talk to me about anything. After she had hung the troll crosses and disappeared inside, I found her in the kitchen making something in a pot on the stove before she transferred it to the iron one that she hung in the fireplace around this time of year. Usually she was making barley stew, but whatever this concoction was, it was not barley stew. When I asked about the recipe, she turned to me and smiled, but never said a word. I had never seen her act so bizarrely and I was starting to get concerned, but I couldn’t get her to communicate with me and in my frustration, I hid myself in my room with my headphones on and a new book. I had been studying so hard for my finals and spending long afternoons with the animals, preparing them for the bitter cold of winter, trying my best to pull my weight while still getting an education. So, inevitably I fell asleep. But I woke up abruptly for some reason. There was this sound—no, a sensation. A vibration in the air that was heavy, a low thrum that reverberated through every fiber of my being. It felt—large. Tall and hulking, intimidating, foreboding…threatening. I was instantly on the defensive as I leapt out of the bed, but quietly made my way to the door. It was partially open and I knew just the right speed to swing it in so that it made no sound. The weight of the vibration intensified as soon as the door was wide open and I could hear my mother whispering loudly in the living room. Her words should have made sense, but my brain couldn’t wrap itself around the sounds to translate them; all I knew is that they were angry and desperate. Then something replied. It was the vibration. It rippled through the air with such a weight that it felt like I was sinking; every limb, every bone, every organ felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. It spoke words that sounded more like earthquakes rumbling deep within the earth and I had to clutch my throat so that I didn’t make a choking sound, my whole body completely disoriented. Whatever it said caused my mother to cry out in strangled anguish. She was begging it in that tongue that I couldn’t understand. I forced myself to crawl to the top of the stairs. I could tell the conversation was getting heated and I had to see who she was talking to. It was either going to end in one of two ways: the vibrato would leave in a deliberate act of ending the conversation or it would escalate into violence and I didn’t know if I could even help her. My mother continued to beg and plead, but the vibration had had enough and it bellowed so loudly that I feared my skull would split in two. The front door blew open with a phantom gust, icy cold air blowing in swirls of downy snow. I had just made it to the top stairs in time to see the backside of something as it exited the house. There were three of them that I saw on the edge of the porch as the door slammed shut on its own and my mother’s sobs began to echo through the house. What I saw was impossible. I was still asleep; there was no arguing that. This had to be a dream, because the beings that I saw leaving my house angrily were heads taller than the seven foot Jul tree and just seeing their backsides as they left caused my whole body to involuntarily shudder in fear. I was in shock, I knew that feeling, but I wanted to wake up. My mother’s sobs should have woken me up… “Mommy?” I called out meekly from the top of the stairs. I wasn’t asleep. “Baby?” The sobbing stopped abruptly and I could hear her choking them back, “Did I wake you?” “You—you didn’t wake me.” I finally pulled myself to my feet and clung to the bannister for support as I carefully guided myself down the stairs. “No?” She appeared at the bottom before I had fully made it down. Her face was stark white save for the smears on her face, the streaks of dark red that also covered her fingers and hands. “Who were they, mom?” I wasn’t going to let her avoid me any longer. “Who was who, baby? Were you sleepwalking again?” She tried. She tried to change the subject and avoid telling me what was going on. “No…no. You’re not doing this to me. I know you’re just trying to protect me, but you’re not going to avoid telling me the truth. Do you think that you can just smile, bake me cookies, and eventually I’ll just stop asking questions? Mom, you know that we don’t do that; we’ve never done that. And especially now! I’m officially an adult and I think that you should be able to talk to me like one. What the hell is going on?” I gestured at the blood on her hands and the snow that had gathered on the floor just inside the threshold. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with bruised eyes, dark with lack of sleep and exhaustion. If she wasn’t going to explain, I was going to figure it out anyway and I began my descent of the stairs once again. This got my mother to finally move as she tried to prevent me from passing her at the bottom, but I asserted my size and tried to politely push past her. But she grabbed me roughly by the arms and tried to push me back up the stairs. I couldn’t let that happen and even in my surprise that she had put her hands on me like that, I was determined to discover what she wanted to keep me in the dark about. I didn’t mean to throw her like I did. It wasn’t a violent gesture, but my mother, in her tired state, lost her balance and fell against the stairs. She slid to the bottom, calling out for me to stop as I turned into the living room to a grizzly sight. The old rug that my mother had woven was soaked in blood. Laying atop it was what looked like a person, or had once been a person, in a hurried state of dismemberment. It was definitely a man based on the face that was staring back at me, glassy blue eyes now foggy in death. He looked like he had been hacked at in a frantic state; nothing was neatly in pieces and the flesh was torn as if gnashed at by wolves. At least I didn’t recognize him, because I probably would have done much more than turn and vomit right next to the Jul tree. “M—mom,” My voice didn’t sound like my own as it escaped my lips. I could feel the vomit still in the corners of my mouth and used the sleeve of my sweater to wipe it away; I didn’t care about how gross that was with the image before me. “You have to let me explain,” My mother came up behind me with a confidence in her voice unlike the way she had been speaking throughout the day. “Let you explain?” My voice pitched as I backed away from her closer to the tree, “There is a chopped up dead man on our living room rug, mom! What the fuck is going on?” I contradicted myself, but the shock had gotten to a point where I needed answers and I needed them now before I made the decision to run terrified from the house—terrified of my own mother. “I said I will explain, but I need you to not interrupt me. This is a long story that I have dreaded having to tell you for the majority of your life.” My mother paused, motioning for me to follow her to the kitchen. It was as if she just realized that she was covered in someone else’s dried blood. As much as I didn’t want to follow, my feet had other plans. She went straight to the sink and adjusted the handle for warm water before she began to speak, “I don’t know what you saw besides the man in the living room, but I am going to start from the beginning and try to get it all out while I can.” “When you were three, you started to get headaches. We didn’t realize that was what they were at first, only that you were inconsolable most of the time and we had to go through months of testing before we determined what the problem was—you had a brain tumor.” My mother spoke loud enough for me to hear her over the running water. A brain tumor? I had a brain tumor? How had she never told me this before? “I can see you wanting to ask questions, but I need you to wait. We discovered the tumor and soon after the doctors told us that it was malignant and basically gave you no more than six months to live. It was inoperable and there was nothing they could do—we basically were waiting for you to die.” My mother had finished washing her hands, wiped down her face, and had now come to stand by the kitchen table. She made me sit with my back to the living room and took a chair across from me as she went on. “Your father and I had already separated when I found out about the tumor. I met up with him to let him know, but his only concern was how much it was going to cost him in hospital bills to keep you alive just a bit longer. I should have killed him right then, but I’m glad I didn’t.” My mother had a wistful look on her face, but she continued on. “Your Gran was not happy about this, which was to be expected, but what she suggested to me was ludicrous and out of the question.” My mother had taken a cigarette from her purse hung on the back of the chair and lit it; she never smoked in the house. “What did Granny think you should do?” I couldn’t help myself. “That I make a pact with the frost etins.” Do what now? “Mom. What are you talking about?” As if the dead man in my living room wasn’t crazy enough, I needed just a bit more insanity in my life. “The frost etins will make pacts, deals, with humans for the right price. She suggested that I make an offering to the etins and ask them for aid. I didn’t think they’d show; I never thought they’d come, but they did. They accepted my measly offering of cooked meat and they came. I pleaded my case and they accepted that too. They said they could spare your life, but it would come at a price.” My mother paused again, this time with her eyes fixed on me. She didn’t blink, she didn’t twitch, she just stared. “What was the cost?” I had to know and I knew that I had to pull it out of her. “Death was coming for you and the only way to stop it from taking you was with yearly offerings. The etins froze the tumor, keeping it from growing any further, keeping it from affecting your brain. In return I was to hold a blot every Solstice, their time of the year, and sacrifice a life for every year that they added on to yours.” My mother’s stoic expression broke and silent tears began to well in her eyes. “A human life?” I thought I understood that much. “A human life. A human life would be sacrificed, the flesh given to the etins as offerings, the blood to aid another year of life, and the bones—” “And the bones ended up under the tree.” A shiver crept up my spine as the sudden realization of the bones that had been a norm of my holidays since I could remember belonged to once living breathing people that my mother had—murdered. “You KILLED people?” I asked, tears now hot on my cheeks. Of course she killed someone, he was dead in the other room, but I hadn’t expected multiple someones. “I had to, baby. If I didn’t, you died. Your heartless wretch of a father was the first to go, a decision that I didn’t need to take time to make. The bones were placed under the tree, one from each sacrifice, as a warning and ward to death: your dues are still being paid and your life extended. There are fifteen under the tree right now.” My mother started to relax as she lit up another cigarette. “But I’m nineteen and you couldn’t find a new bone for this year.” I now understood why she had been so upset this morning; she couldn’t find a sacrifice in time. I didn’t have time to mull over the revelation that my father never actually ran off… “Not exactly. I had no problem finding the offering, my fear was that it wouldn’t be accepted.” The tears started again as my mother blew out a huge puff of smoke. She was making me want one… “And based on what I heard, even though I couldn’t understand it,” I took a ragged breath, “It wasn’t accepted.” “Always so intuitive, you are. No, they didn’t accept it. That was a wasted sacrifice, but it also wasn’t my best work.” My mother’s words sounded calloused, but I was trying to see this situation from her perspective. “I don’t understand. Why accept it for this long and then all of a sudden—” Why let me die now? What was the point? Why wasn’t this sacrifice as good as the others? Panic had set in that I could possibly die at any moment without being able to defend myself. “Baby, shhh. No, calm down. They didn’t rescind the pact, they just won’t accept the sacrifice and offering from me.” My mother had risen from her chair and come to embrace me, to comfort me in my anxious state. “Why? Did they think you cheated them? Do they want more?” I couldn’t comprehend what I was feeling. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want any more to die just to keep me alive. The internal confliction was causing my throat to tighten and my hands to shake. “Stop. Take a deep breath and listen to me.” My mother gently took my face in her hands and commanded me to look at her. “Those men, all those boyfriends that I had through the years—I chose them because they were a waste. They were repeat offenders: abusing women, hurting animals, manipulators, gas-lighters. They were men who were never going to learn and I chose them for this reason. The ice etin love the taste of scum like them; devouring all the trash that pollutes the worlds. We, me and the etins, did the worlds a favor and it saved your life. But I am only responsible for that life while you are still a child. Laws are different here than they are where the etins are from, so they let me be responsible for you just a bit longer…” My mother was clearly trying to stay strong, but I could hear the breaks in her voice. “What are you trying to tell me, mom?” I had a sudden sense of dread wash over me. “I made fifteen sacrifices in your favor. I took fifteen lives, sixteen, but fifteen lives so that you could have fifteen more. But part of the contract states that when you become an adult, the pact is transferred to you. You are responsible for the lives taken to save your own. That is why the etins didn’t accept my offering and they were firm on that.” My mother’s face hardened as she spoke those last words. There was nothing she could do. The minute she made the fifteenth pact last year, right after I turned eighteen, the responsibility became mine. But she had never told me, she had tried to carry my weight without letting me know there was even a burden to be carried and I knew—I knew that she was holding tremendous guilt for that now, because in trying to keep me from becoming a murderer like her, it may have been the one thing that actually killed me. “So, I have to kill someone to get another year?” I wanted to be straight on this and make sure that I understood completely. “Yes. There’s no real discrimination, but the dirtier the soul, the better. That doesn’t matter though. I’m going to go through your Gran’s old books and find a loophole, find some way that you won’t ever have to walk this road.” My mother broke again and took my hands, assuring me that she would make it right. But I thought about it. I thought about all the sacrificing she had done to keep me alive, to love me, to educate me, to send me to school and protect me to the point that she never really got a chance to be happy outside of us. She deserved to be happy. And me being dead wouldn’t make her happy… “No, mom. You’re not fixing this. You don’t have to protect me anymore. You’ve done so much for me, sacrificed so much that I can’t even imagine, and I want you to be able to relax, to be happy, to not have to worry about me. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do and sometimes they are hard and sometimes people won’t agree with it, but I believe what you did was right. No one will miss those sorts of people, you get to finally live your life, I can live mine—the worlds are a better place. But it’s a heavy price, a whole life for just one year,” I hesitated in my confident speech. “But a year for you would do a world of difference for good when they will never do a single good thing for the world in their lifetime. If you choose this route, you are committed to the pact. The moment you decide that you won’t make a sacrifice is the moment you forfeit your life to them. And if you’re going to do this; you have to choose a sacrifice soon before Jul comes to an end and you don’t have long.” My mother bolstered my confidence and her own. This would be a big decision to make. “You know you were right about him. I painted a pretty picture for you so that you liked him, but—but he’s not a good man. The things he’s done to me,” I closed my eyes, trying not to recall the trauma that I held in regards to my boyfriend, the man that I couldn’t get away from, the man I thought I loved, “And I’m not the first. I can’t get away, mom. I’ve tried. The fact that I was able to come here was a miracle because he wanted me to stay at the apartment with him for Christmas, but I told him that it was tradition and I had to be here. I had to sneak out while he was sleeping and I’m surprised he hasn’t come looking for me…maybe it’s the snow.” I rambled on, not sure where I was going with this. “What are you trying to say, baby? Are you trying to tell me that you want your first sacrifice to be him?” My mother narrowed her eyes at me. I could see the pure hatred and rage behind them for the man I thought I loved. “We don’t have much time, do we?” I spoke with no emotion. The decision was made. “Good choice; the etins will be pleased.” My mother kissed my forehead, “Now, get back to bed while I clean the mess up in the living room. We have a lot of work to do in just a few short days. Oh, by the way, Merry Christmas.” My mother handed me a cookie from the plate on the table before grabbing the box of garbage bags and the mop. “Merry Christmas, mom.” I smiled, shaking my head as I took a bite of the cookie. She had made enough sacrifices for me and it was due time that I returned the favor for her.
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E.M. MoonStories from the World Wide Weird Archives
December 2021
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