Granny's Christmas Tree
By Richard Paul


When I was four, it was something of a weekly ritual that I would spend Sundays round at my grandmother’s house. She was a kindly soul and I had come to look forward to Sundays as they tended to entail such treats as fish and chips, copious amounts of chocolate and cartoons on the wide-screen television that was at least twice the size of the one we had at home.

One such Sunday, about two weeks before Christmas Day, I was woken up in the middle of the night by an unfamiliar voice from downstairs, as well as the sound of my grandmother’s voice, both were quiet, I couldn’t make out any specific words.

At first I thought it was my dad, come to collect me. It was still dark out though, and come to think of it, the voice from downstairs didn’t sound at all like his.

Realization struck me like a backhand made out of cotton. Santa Claus was here, or at the very least someone in his employ. Perhaps the nice people at the north pole were offloading Christmas gifts early this year to save time, or perhaps they needed to double check that they’d not muddled up mine and my baby brother’s names on the ‘nice’ list; his name is James, mine is Jamie. (Thanks mum and dad, really helpful that was.)

Whatever the case, I decided that I should be present for any Christmas related business and proceeded to fling myself out of bed and out the door, dressed in my Spider Man pyjamas; ideal attire for formal business such as this would likely be.

I found my grandmother on the stairs. There was a calm focus in her eyes that I’d never seen before. Standing by the front door, dressed in black with a ski mask on his head and with a knife in his right hand, was a man who was most assuredly not a representative of Santa Claus.

“Keep out of the way bitch!” His muffled voice uttered, “Or I’ll slit your throat.”

He waggled the knife in the air for dramatic effect. I hadn’t quite put two and two together and realised that this fellow was breaking and entering; I wasn’t a particularly sharp child in truth. Before I could revise my conclusions about this unexpected visitor however, green lightning was suddenly shooting out of my grandmother’s hands. It all seemed to happen so quickly, and looking back there are only three things I can bring to mind about what happened. First, as I
said, was the rather salient presence of green lightning. It seemed to spread throughout the entire hallway with forks breaking off and crashing into walls and coats and the portrait of my late grandfather Raymond, which hung over the telephone. Nothing was damaged or marked
for being struck, except for the intruder that is, who bore the brunt of the blast.

What else I remember is my grandmother’s laughter. Normally when she laughed it was a quiet sound, somewhat labored due to her cigarette strained lungs. That night however there was so much energy and mirth in her laughter that it seemed almost inhuman, as if it were coming from someone or something else.

When all was done and the lightning had subsided, the knife-wielding intruder was gone and in his place stood a fully decorated, six foot tall Christmas tree.

My grandmother stood still for a few moments, grinning and catching her breath. When she finally turned around and noticed me however her expression changed from a triumphant to one of mild embarrassment.

Hurriedly, she put me back to bed.

“Just a bad dream Jamie.” She said, more than once. “Go back to sleep.”

She ruffled my hair, as was her wont, and walked back out of the room. Thinking the incident no stranger than what I was used to seeing on Captain Planet or Space Ghost each Saturday, I quickly fell back asleep.

That Christmas tree stood in the living room for twelve years, never withering or turning brown, there was never even a wayward leaf to be found on the carpet.

Sadly, when I was sixteen, my grandmother died. After the funeral we started emptying the house and the Christmas tree was thus consigned to the North Walsham recycling centre, along with some other odds and ends which were unsuitable for donation or reuse.

As we drove away, I spared one final glance for the tree. The last I saw, two of the centre’s employees were cutting off branches, making it compact enough to fit inside the skip I think.

I never told anyone about what happened that night, and my grandmother certainly never spoke of it. I’d almost come to believe that it was just a dream as she had insisted.

Two months later, when we were disposing of an old woodworm infested table at that same centre, I noticed a black ski mask lying on the floor, covered in pine tree leaves.

Five months after that I noticed it again at the centre, lying in the cardboard skip where we were disposing of an old television box. It was still covered in green tree leaves.

I have to wonder if it’ll be there tomorrow as well when we dump the old dishwasher.


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Richard is a 22 year old university graduate currently looking to make something of his writing and gain whatever exposure he can from it. He writes prose, poetry and scripts and beta reads academic texts on a freelance basis. He also bakes cookies from time to time, though they have the annoying habit of melting in the oven.