Twelve Days of Christmas—Dark Tidings is a Substack special holiday event. Each day beginning Friday the 13th, we’ll count down to Christmas Eve with a dark tale featuring one of the gifts from the classic Christmas carol. A guide to all the stories can be found here.
"You don't strike me as crazy.”
I didn't say anything. He was baiting me and I knew it.
"So you can understand, Mr. Phelson—“
"Jack."
"Jack. You understand why I'm having trouble buying this?"
His eyes were set traps, warm and smiling at the edges, but black holes in the heart of them.
"You have anything else you want to say?"
I shook my head, felt the heaviness that had set in two days earlier knock in my skull. "You got an Advil?"
"Sure, sure. I'll have my guy get you an Advil and a cup of coffee. Maybe it'll help refresh your memory. We can go over the story again."
Patterns swirled in the red and green carpet. Strange choice for a police station. "What's with the carpet here?"
He glanced, then looked back at me with a smile, like he was happy I saw.
"Used to be a church."
"What happened to it?"
"Guess the town got sick of praying for help. Brought in the big guns instead."
The sound of his gum smacking echoed off the walls and high ceilings. I noticed them for the first time, and realized we were sitting in what must have been the pastor's office. Now all the windows except one had been bricked up, the only ornamentation hinting at the building's other life that strange swirl of evergreen and holly berries.
"So, Mr—" he stopped himself, "Jack, tell me again. What brought you all the way to Nederland this holiday season?"
I sighed, eyes closed, picturing blue sky and sunlight on fallen snow.
"You have a family detective?"
"Of sorts."
"You ever get the feeling that things were coming unglued at the seams? Like you're on the wrong path?"
"Not sure what you mean."
"It's the screens I guess. Not just with the kids, though it's bad with them. No, not just them though. It's all of us."
A knock at the door came. Two tabs of Advil and a styrofoam cup of coffee were passed from one balding man to the next. That meant there were men on the other side of that mirror, listening. And so what if they were? He wasn't getting out of this thing alive. Without Betty and the kids, he didn't even want to. No, let the damn thing come for him. But at least now there would be a story. The true story, not the one the nightly news would run.
"Springs Man Murders Whole Family, Even the Dog!"
He looked up to Detective Barren, then to the glass where the Advil delivery boy sat. "Take down this story. It'll be my last. And every word, no matter what you think, every last damn word is true."
Barren’s eyebrows went up at that. Let him smile about it. Sure. By tonight, he'll know the whole damn thing is real.
"It started with the birds."
The bird came out of nowhere.
"Jack, what the hell was that?"
"Oh god, hang on."
I put the blinker on, and pulled over into smooth gravel. The kids didn't look up from their phones. Betty was still tapping hers, unaware of the smear of blood on the windshield. A bird, light and speckled, flapped madly against the glass, spreading red. Betty looked up just as I stopped.
"Oh Jack! He's pinned!"
"I know."
I got out, slammed the door-dinging back to silence and let the mountain cold seep in while I examined the bird. The pinned wing was bent at an unnatural angle, and the sporadic flapping of the free one sent feathers flying. Betty got out now too, arms wrapped around her middle to shield against the light wind that blew in sudden gusts.
"What do we do?"
I looked at the bird, then back at her again. "I know what I should do."
"Oh Jack please. Not that."
"He won't survive out here in the wild. Doesn't even look like he should be here in the first place. Like a pigeon or a dove that got lost on its way to another city."
"Maybe someone owns him."
"Maybe."
Another car door opened and slammed, and Jenny and was out and looking, phone free for the first time that day.
"Can we help it?" she asked.
I looked at the snow capped mountains, the almost empty curve of highway.
"I don't think so kiddo. This guy needs a vet, and I doubt we'll find one where we're headed."
"Dad," she whined like she hadn't in years, and I saw then in her eyes the look of a child, one that I had lost to screens and AirPods years before. "Please?"
I sighed, and said the following against my better judgment. "Okay. Do we have a box?"
"We do," said Betty, "but we'll have to unwrap one of your presents to get to it."
"I don't care mom! I just don't want him to die."
I smiled, and helped free the damned thing from the wiper. Blood was coming out of its mouth. I knew that it wouldn't be long before it died, but there was a lesson in that too, a less gruesome one than what I was about to teach. I could let Jenn down softly, let her turn some energy away from the phone and onto nature. Something real. The strangest thing was that when I got hold of that bird, it stopped trying to fly away, like it wanted to find us all along.
The rest of the drive was better. Betty and the kids were off the phones, talking bird care and plans for when we got to the cabin. The bird sat queitly in the box wrapped up in one of Jenny's shirts. Even Ev seemed to come alive, soften a little. I took it as a good sign, a Christmas miracle even. Something that reminded me of my own childhood trips to the cabin.
"You went there every year?"
"Every year until my grandma died. I was thirteen then. That was my last good Christmas."
I looked around at the stale room. The styrofoam squeaked under my fingertip. The detective moved his foot, adjusted his folded hand under the angle of his jawline.
"Is that why you did it?"
I let a sigh out, and put the quickly cooling cup back on the table.
"It would have been easier if I had done it."
"Easier?"
I looked him in the eyes. The pale blue irises took me back to that clear winter sky only the day before.
"If I had done it, I would have let them down easy, the way I did that bird."
The detective scoffed in a way that made me think he was offended. A shadow fluttered briefly against the window. He followed my eyes there, and I knew he had seen it too.
For some people it's a song, or a smell. For me, it was that cabin. Seeing it again made me realize what I had been missing for thirty years. The roof had a thin layer of snow, and the woods around were quiet in a way that only winter brings. The place had been opened up, and a decent stockpile of dry wood was nestled next to the front door.
"I don't have any service," Evan said, taking his earphones out for the first time in three hours.
"That's kind of the point bud."
He held his phone up above his head, and spun around a few times, checking for a signal.
"Trust me, you won't find anything here."
"Ugh. Why are we doing this again?"
"Dad wanted an old fashioned Christmas," Betty said, taking my side, a miracle.
The kids walked in, Jenny with the bird tucked in the box under her arm, and Evan, resigned to a weekend unplugged with his family.
"Remember when they liked us?"
"They still like us."
I put my arms around her shoulders, hands on the back of her neck. She hugged me back around the middle and stared up at me.
"You like it here?"
"I'll be honest Jack. I didn't know what to expect out of a weekend in the woods like this. I knew it was important to you, but this place is gorgeous. I think its a perfect way to spend Christmas."
We kissed there, warmth on warmth, on guard against the swirling cold. I let Betty go and went to unload the car. It was Christmas Eve, just three days after solstice, and night would be coming soon.
"First night at the cabin. You know what that means?"
"Something boring," Evan said from a slumped position on an old blue patterned chair. It was the same one I always sat in when we came here.
"No, far from it. Some of the most magical Christmas memories I have involve doing what we're going to do tonight."
"I'm tired. Can't we do it tomorrow?" asked Jenny.
"No little darling. It's very important that we do it on arrival. It's a welcome ceremony, one your great grandmother taught all of us grandkids about this place."
"Why can't we just ruin Santa for her, like a normal family? Why's it got to be so--" Evan was staring at the ceiling searching for the word, "weird."
With that he was up. Jenny followed him. "I'm gonna check on the bird. See if he needs anything."
"You do that. I'm gonna get the offerings ready."
Evan sighed loudly from the stairs. Betty smiled at me, but her eyes were a question. Offerings, they asked.
"It's simple. Some seeds, a bundle of twigs, a little bit of wine. Symbolic, you know?"
"Uh huh," she said, and walked away before saying what she really thought of the strange little ritual.
When she disappeared around the corner, I pulled the needle from the little cloth pouch and pricked my finger. It was, I could admit to myself now, the strangest part of the whole ordeal, but maybe only to the modern mind. As I watched the blood pool on my fingertip, I could hear my grandmother’s words echo in my mind.
"This ground is thirsty for blood. The spirits grow strong on it. You either give a little as an offering, or this place will take it. And make no mistake. This ground is greedy."
I smeared it on the twigs, and went to put on coffee and the kettle. A fire would need to be made, the ashes smeared on the blood, burned tree mixing with me, giving the wandering night spirits something to remember us by.
"That way they know not to harm us," I said as we walked the trail, bundled up against the growing wind. “After we leave our offering at the tree, we take a a sprig of berries and some clippings from her branches. We tie them over the front door when we get home, and that signifies the beginning of Christmas."
Jenny stroked the bird. It was wrapped in a towel now, the eyes drooping. "Dad, do you think he's gonna be okay?"
"Not sure. Could go either way."
The wind was howling in bursts and gusts, and Jenny held the bird's head against the outstretched fabric of her coat, hoping to shield it from the cold. My feet were tired, and the buzz of adventure was turning to stiff resignation at the reality that my children could not see the magic that this place held for me all those years ago. I had waited too long to take them here.
All they would know of Christmas were crying Santa pictures and the blue glow of computer screens on my and Betty's faces, as we clicked on gifts to have shipped to the house. There was no Christmas magic here, and if not here, not anywhere. Whatever I imagined this would mean for my family evaporated in the dusky glow of that December afternoon.
"Well, here it is," I said, deflated.
"Wow," Betty said, her eyes turned up, head back and staring at the enormous tree with a smile. "It's so big!"
“This is the original North American Christmas pine, the only one of its kind left this side of the Rockies. And these berries,” I picked a few of the glistening red from a low hanging bough to show them, “are the only like it in all the woods. That’s why they are so special.”
Evan pulled out his phone, and took a picture. I looked to see Jenny, anticipating a smile on her face, the little bundle of bird tucked lovingly in her arms like baby Jesus. But her eyes were turned down, staring. When she looked up there were tears brimming. "It's the bird dad. Something's wrong."
I drew closer, and saw that the eyes were milky. The bird's head thrashed wildly, like it was trying desperately to escape. The wind died down and Jenny's tears fell.
"Maybe he's trying to fly." She knelt, and I knelt with her as she unwrapped the towel. Evan and Betty came behind us. "Oh dad," she whispered.
The body was shuddering. Pink bubbles began to pool around the soft white feathers, staining its breast with blood.
"I think we have let this poor thing suffer long enough."
They looked at one another, then back at me. I nodded and reached into my back pocket, feeling for the smooth handle of my knife. It wasn't there. I sucked in air through my teeth. The icy cold stung the back of my throat. "You don't have to watch."
I stood up, and readied myself, raising my boot above its head.
"Dad!" Evan and Jenny both said it together, but it was too late.
The head gave easily underfoot with a soft crunch, like stepping on fallen leaves, and Jenny and Betty held their hands to their mouths in shock. Evan wore a look of disgust in place of his usual apathetic demeanor. For a moment none of them said anything. I didn't move my boot.
"Now look, I know that was hard—“
"I hate it here!" Jenny was up and running from the clearing. Betty gave me a look, then followed behind her. Evan waited, that look unmoved for a few moments before he gathered himself, and went to the trail without looking back.
Shame washed over me. It took me a while to move my boot, to look and see what I had done. There was a small pool of blood on the towel. The bird's once white head flat, mangled with specks of yellow and blood and bone. And something else there in the midst of the gore: a sprig of pine covered in red berries.
"You know what they say about me around here Jack?"
I shook my head.
"They call me a patient man." He waited. “So to avoid ruining my reputation, I'm going to ask you to cut the bullshit. Do you know what we found in the clearing? At the cabin?"
"I ran. After they were all gone, I ran."
"Your children's heads were crushed. Your wife’s is missing. Now that is strange Mr. Phelson, but not unheard of in my line of work.” He was back to formalities. “What troubles me is the blood.”
“The blood?”
“There is none. None at the scene. None in the snow. None in their bodies. I'd like to know how the hell that happened. And not this concoction you've imagined in your mind. The real deal."
"You don't see?"
"See what Mr. Phelson? That you're out of your damned mind!?"
"Maybe I was, but I'm not now. It's all so clear."
"What! What's clear?"
"The offering detective. I didn't leave it."
His mouth twisted into a strange grin, the pinhole of black pupils growing wild.
I woke that night to the sound of bird's wings. It pulled me from sleep before all the others. The window was dark, the night moonless, yet somehow a strange shadow was cast on the floor. Something small, its movements jittering, a tip tapping on the wood floors as it made its way toward me.
I sat up, straining my eyes against the darkness to see it, and realized to my horror it was the bird. Its head was crushed as it had been underfoot. I shook Betty to wake her, but also to wake myself from the nightmare. But she didn't move.
"Betty," I whispered, leaning over to get a look at her sleeping face. She lolled strangely against my attempt, her body limp, and I realized all at once, cold.
I said her name again and again, and finally rolled her towards me, only to see that her head was gone. Bile was in my mouth, my heart deep in my bowels. I recoiled, pushed away from her and ran from the room. The sound of wings followed.
"Jenny!" I yelled, rounding the corner into the room her and Evan shared. Both of their beds were empty, the comforters pulled down like they had been ripped from their beds.
I ran to the living room, and saw in the entryway that the door was open. The fire was dead cold in the wood burning stove, the kitchen counters covered in snow drifts. The wind blew from what I could see was a blizzard outside.
I did the only thing I could do. I ran. At first I hoped I would see their footsteps in the snow, something to help me find them. But the sound of wings sent me running, first for my keys, and then to the car.
“I didn't stop until I got here.”
"To the police station."
"Yes."
"You know what I find interesting? That somehow they all died, but you escaped."
"Is that what you think detective?"
"It's what I know. You’re here now, aren’t you?"
A shadow of bird’s wings fell across the red and green carpeted floor. The detective and I both looked to the window, but nothing was there.
"It isn't midnight yet. Still Christmas. Still light. But I know that when the darkness comes, I'll be gone too."
The detective knocked on the window. "We're done in here. Get him in restraints. I’ll take him to his cell and stay with him a while. Guy’s a suicide risk."
"It doesn't matter you know. When it comes, none of us will be able to stop it."
The detective nodded as the deputies filed in. Two of them cuffed me and he led me back to the empty cell. I sat, and he sat on the other side of the bars, across from me. The light lit his hair in a strange halo, his pale gray suit dark as night. I let my eyes fall down the length of him to the concrete floor below, seeing for the first time the outline of his profile in shadow. His head was small and round, his body pear shaped, and outstretched on either side, the unmistakable outline of wings.
“Your shadow—” I started, then met his eyes. “No! Sir! Sir!” I called to the deputy, but the door slammed shut behind him, and locked.
Deputies Warner and Crag clocked out and made their way down the hall.
"Guy's a kook for sure, but it still doesn't make sense."
"With crazy people it almost never does."
"Where did the blood go? How did he get them to that clearing, storm being what it was? You can't walk through those drifts."
"Didn't you listen? They were there before the storm came, at the clearing. That bird bullshit? That story? That's about killing his family. He told us how he did it. You just have to listen."
A strange rustling interrupted them.
"Do you hear that?"
They both turned to the glass doors at the front of the building. The sun had just dipped behind the mountains, and they could barely make out the image in the dim foyer. A bird, light and speckled was there, one wing stuck in the seamless crack between the doors. The other flapped wildly.
They jumped at the rattle of a fist on the glass. A woman dressed in a pantsuit, badge pressed to the window was there, signaling wildly against the sideways snow. They pushed the door open, careful to avoid the bird caught there, and it flew up towards the ceiling beyond where either man could catch it. The woman pushed past them, stomping her boots on the green and red carpet, white chunks of snow falling around her.
“Ma’am? Can we help you?”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” she pulled her badge up again, her photo, name, and rank displayed for them to see. “It took me forever to get here in the snowstorm.”
“Detective—” one deputy started, but the words failed him. They looked at one another.
“Yes. I’m here to question Mr.—” she glanced down at her phone, “Phelson. You know, the guy who murdered his whole family?”
She waited for one of them to laugh or answer, but they stared, pale and blinking. The sound of fluttering wings broke her concentration, and she looked up to see a turtle dove perched on an exposed wooden beam. She looked back at them.
“Where is Mr. Phelson?”
“He’s in his cell, with the detective.”
“I’m sorry—” her words were broken off by the sound of wings, first above, then behind, then all around. The jail was old, a reconverted church, and the sounds of Jack’s screams echoed off the high ceilings like the congregation of voices singing church hymns , a strange mix of past and present, of what had been, and what is.
Thank you to Garen Marie for creating and organizing Dark Tidings and gathering so many storytellers together, and to MARK of the BRAND for the amazing artwork!
Read Bridget Riley's “Beaks Bloody” for Three French Hens, and check in tomorrow for the grand finale with Sam Rake’s contribution for A Partridge In A Pair Tree!
I DONT LIKE THIS.
I mean, it was very well written and very effective yadda yadda BUT THIS WAS NOT FUN TO READ. AWFUL/AMAZING. GOOD JOB/STOP THAT
As we *just* stayed at a cabin on Christmas Eve, I’m really glad I hadn’t read this until after arriving home! 😮💨