Christmas Trees & Monkeys

by Keohane, Dan

  * * *

  Nicholas tapped the syringe twice to free the bubbles. Only a half dose, but it should make the monkey go away. Tap tap again. No bubbles. Now the needle was in his arm. Slow push of the plunger. Hot metal in his blood. Thinning. The yellow walls of the apartment dripped and peeled then everything was blue. Pink. Ecstasy. He turned his head, at least he thought he did. The television wore a top hat. Skinny arms (one held a cane) on each side of the square box. It danced about the room. Mickey Mouse just kept jumping up and down on the screen.

  Nicholas laughed as he lay on the thin rug. Above the holes in the knees of his camouflage pants, a slow, dark urine stain crept. The television was still on. The news broadcast showed the ape stopping on the leftmost tower, reaching for something unseen before it. Nicholas didn’t see this. In fact he was staring at the ceiling. He smiled half from the euphoria and half from the lack of facial control caused by the drug. Just the free-based blissful haze of his universe. The smile tightened suddenly. A frown.

  The crash came too early. Purple was here now. The walls solidified, bright evil violet. They breathed, folded in, breathed, twisted out. The room writhed and turned.

  “Too soon,” he muttered. Crawling to his knees he grabbed the discarded syringe. Still a lot left. He messed up. Just take more. He never got the chance. The wall before him twisted into the head of the ape. It’s expression was not blank as on television. It bared teeth, purple like the wall. The eyes complete blackness. It opened its mouth and roared. The sound flooded the room with a physical resonance that buckled the other walls. Nicholas gripped his head. The sound banged inside his skull. Roar. Roar.

  “Stop it! Stop it, demon! Satan!” Emerging on either side of the sneering ape-head, two arms stretched forward. One massive fist slammed down beside him. The floorboards split. Nicholas rolled away, landed against the couch. Fingers like tree limbs opened for him.

  The weapon was in his bedroom. He sidestepped and ran. Before he reached the doorway the tip of the monster’s fingers brushed his back. The darkness of the bedroom rolled under him. He landed on the edge of the mattress, then squatted into a defensive posture on the floor.

  The ape’s gargantuan head filled the door’s frame. The mouth twisted with another angry shout. Everything twisted in response. Reality buckling under the nightmare. Nicholas reached under the bed. It was there. Unfold the blanket. Check the clip. Everything an instinctive motion. No clip. Another roar. Something lifted the end of the bed.

  Nicholas whispered, “C’mon.... Where the fuck are - yes!” The clip rolled out of the blanket and into his lap. Slap it in. Roll. Aim.

  No sound. The bed crashed to the floor. Nicholas’ finger cocked the trigger halfway. He wanted to spray the room blindly and decimate everything in front of him. He did not. Do not fire without the target in view. Don’t kill your own men out of fear.

  The rectangle of light from the living room was deserted. It must have seen the rifle. Nicholas moved in jerky motions, stopping beside the doorway. The weapon was light in his arms. Adrenaline. Makes a man stronger. Time to move in.

  In silence he dove into the light. Roll away. Weapon raised the instant he righted himself.

  Nothing. The intruder was gone. Intruder. The left corner of his mouth twitched. Monster. The monster was gone. Nicholas breathed quickly, not wanting the rush to drop into the crash he knew waited. Bad trip. Bad trip. That’s all.

  On the television screen, the unnatural bulk of the ape returned to its steady rotation around the towers. When Nicholas saw it, he knew it was not a trip.

  * * *

  “Return to your home, ma’am.” The trooper kept both arms folded across his chest, a solid human wall. Kimberly glanced at the other two policemen. One stood at the opposite end of the barricade, the third tried to convince the driver of a blue mini-van to turn around.

  Kimberly said, “I don’t have a car.” She knew that made no sense. Her voice had the whispering lilt of a madwoman. It didn’t matter. She felt more peaceful than she ever remembered and didn’t want to lose it. Like hanging on to sleep while closing the windows against a midnight rain.

  “Do you live around here?” the trooper asked.

  “Just a couple of houses back,” she lied.

  The man nodded. “Please return to your home, ma’am.” It was a mantra he’d likely be repeating the entire night. Some of her inner calm dissipated. She looked down, then back along the road behind her. Quiet, tree-lined street. Middle class homes painted white. A suburban utopia sitting only five miles east of downtown Manchester.

  “Maybe I should go.” She said it to herself more than to the trooper, who gave no response.

  The further down the road she walked, the more people she passed going the other way. Up the down stair case, she mused. “They won’t let you pass,” she said to one person. Either the man didn’t hear or she’d spoken the words only in her mind. Either way, she was not important in the lives of these people. Kimberly stopped in front of a darkened colonial and leaned on the fence. What’s wrong with me? Where’s Tom?

  She remembered the hand, large, suffocating in its embrace. Trying to breath against its palm. Arousal at the memory of her body pressed further and further inward. It was waiting for her. She needed to get to it. She ran through the darkened yard of the colonial and disappeared into the woods beyond.

  * * *

  It was dark between the trees but Kimberly knew that if she kept in the same direction, she’d come out somewhere near the towers. She was past the road block. They were too busy with the beaten-path travelers to think of looking her way. Maybe they didn’t care. She sensed there was at least one other person behind her. No fear. She would be safe. Just keep walking. It was close. The ape’s presence reached through the dark shadows, pulling her along.

  * * *

  Every couple of minutes Nicholas checked the rifle strapped to his back. It was tight against him, but situated so he could swing it ready when the time came. His heart beat with the caffeine of adrenaline. The woman hadn’t noticed him, and she wouldn’t. No one would. Nicholas Ecklesbury was too well-trained. It’d been decades since he’d concealed himself fully-armed through the woods, but no matter. The act came as naturally as shitting. His eyes tracked the white blur like some surreal beacon, knowing the woman was moving in the right direction. He needed to hurry. The monster had to die soon.

  * * *

  She remembered letting Tom hold both her hands in his. She remembered thinking that her dress needed to come off soon, not because of any sexual urge but to rid herself of the starched seam that incessantly dug into her back. When the priest made the official pronouncement of their marriage, a thought occurred to her which lingered in her memory. I’m married. As the two bent to kiss, her lips dry as they pressed into his Kimberly thought, Now what do I do?

  A branch slapped her face. She stumbled backward and fell, face stinging. The monkey’s hand wrapped tighter around her. Kimberly took in a breath, wondering if she could ever exhale. She did, and rose to her feet. A hundred yards ahead, lights like stars blinked between wind-blown branches. She saw an occasional figure in the wood fading in and out of the light. They paid her no heed, moving as she now did towards the glow ahead. Earth-laden moths struggling forward, pushed by a blind instinctual urge. A twig snapped. Someone was close behind. She didn’t look back, but kept her eyes on the flashing trees.

  The honeymoon was in Hawaii. The warm water wrapped around her body. The chartered boat advertised the freedom to swim naturally (a safer word for ‘naked’). Kimberly, clothes on the port-side bench, was in the water before Tom had his shoes off. Blurred figures bobbed around her. Too close. She swam out further. Below, the bay darkened to a soft, green opaqueness. They were moored far from the corral reefs to keep others from choosing this spot. Nevertheless, large colorful fish appeared as if from a heavy fog. They circled and inspected her. Kimberly followed one as it swam down. Perhaps, if she followed it far enough, a new fanta
stic world of color and light would open before her, bright cities hidden below the sun’s reach.

  Too far. The glittering surface of the water like spilled mercury, out of reach but brilliant in its motion. Too far. She paddled and kicked, the exertion expanding her lungs. Any moment they would explode. With every stretch of arm it seemed her fingers would shatter the surface. With each stretch, the distance became too clear. Bubbles drifted ahead, carrying her life away forever. She stopped swimming, tried to grab the globes of air with her fingers. Drifting down. Tom’s naked body, arms under her shoulders. There were no bubbles left to escape. His hand over her face, water racing into her mouth from the canyons etching his palm. Too late. I’ve left you. The fog swallowed her. She awoke, vomiting salt water across the bow of the chartered boat. Never since could she decide whether those final sensations as she sank, or the painful realities of the boat’s deck, were the actual hallucinations in death. But the deck was cold and real. Life-giving.

  The final tree fell away behind her. Crowds. Cars and police and men and women, in bathrobes and uniforms and suits. Lights shone across the muddy bog of bodies, into each other’s eyes, across the massive, swinging body of the monkey on the towers. She stepped into the throng, moving ahead as if each human around her was no more than a tree branch, or a multicolored fish.

  A tall, black policeman looked at her, obviously preparing to recite the standard “go home” song. Behind his head, less than fifty yards away, the preternatural ape swung tower to tower. The head pivoted with the grace of a trapeze, keeping its gaze on her. The expression neutral.

  “Excuse me, ma’am...” the officer began.

  Stop. The command came not from the police officer but from every pore in her body. She stopped.

  * * *

  The demon was massive, much more than he expected from the images on the television. Nicholas felt a surge of joy. Yes, this was his mission. His life until now was only a vehicle carrying him to this moment. The monster was such only to him. To the rest it was a God. Deceiver. The vision in the apartment showed the truth. A message from the True Creator. The world was in peril, prostrating itself before the Beast.

  The woman was his unwitting shield, the first thing anyone would notice as the couple emerged from the woods. Now he sidled off three steps to her right. Swinging the rifle from his back, he raised its barrel towards the heads and backs of the human wall. Do not fire. Not until the path between your weapon and the enemy is clear. Someone grabbed his shoulder, released it just as quickly. The wall parted in screams as one then another saw the assault rifle and the blinded glow on the face of its owner.

  The path was clear. Nicholas squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  Go.

  Kimberly stepped forward. The officer moved out of the way. He began shouting at someone behind her. Something popped and cracked. Her world filled with the ape. It no longer traveled the figure eight above the crowd, but swung its dark body by one arm and one foot around and around the tower before her. Now and then something buffeted against its body, an almost imperceptible reaction. Was someone throwing rocks?

  The monkey kept swinging, around and around, lower and lower. The free arm extended away from it like the whirling spindle of a carnival ride. She was ten feet away. Eight feet. The wrinkled palm was open, more inviting than the mental images drawing her here. It offered the quilted comfort of home. As she stepped across the final distance, she opened then let fall the white dress. She moved naked onto the grass where the massive hand had just passed. She watched it circle away, knowing it would come again. An arousal, more deep and wet than in her most lurid of dreams, floated within her. She took in a breath and did not exhale. The hand came around, raced towards her above the grass.

  * * *

  Sullivan moved in unison with a hundred other police officers toward the gunman. He couldn’t risk firing without hitting a screaming civilian. A man with a news camera stepped in front of him. Sullivan slammed into him, then walked over both man and camera without breaking stride. He shouted for everyone to get down, but the words only saturated the air with a hundred other voices. The madman continued shooting towards the ape. From a quick glance Sullivan saw some rounds hit their mark. Most passed over the target as the creature lowered itself to ground level. The stray bullets landed in the faces of police and spectators lining the highway.

  Less than two yards from the shooter Bennie Powers held his own weapon level with the man’s head, shouting as uselessly as Sullivan. Just then the absurd smile on the madman’s face twisted into a grimace of rage. Both Sullivan and Powers understood what was coming next and caution didn’t play into things anymore. The lunatic was about to fire into the crowd.

  “Wake up!” The shooter yelled. “I’ll wake y-” One side of his head exploded with the impact of Powers’ bullet. The half-decapitated body squeezed the trigger for a moment, sending three rounds into the chest of a prostrate reporter.

  With the perfect timing of an hysterical crowd, everyone fell to the ground in time with the shooter’s body. Sullivan dropped to one knee, not wanting to lose his line of sight in case there was another madman waiting. It was then that he and a handful of others saw the naked woman standing at the base of the tower.

  From head to knees the beast’s hand closed around the woman’s pale figure. The momentum of such a weight, plus what looked like the sudden, tight squeezing of the fingers, liquefied her body. It was the only word Sullivan could think of, either at that moment or later in his report. From every crack and orifice in the tight ball of the ape’s hand came red and cream-colored bile. The lower portion of her legs dragged across the ground in motion with the animal’s swing. One thin slipper broke free and tumbled away. As if merely squishing a bug, the ape casually wiped its now-open palm against the grass. The circular trail, wiped carefully and methodically around the tower, resembled nothing of the woman aside from the disembodied calves.

  Sullivan’s finger pulled the trigger. After the second shot, others joined in. Angry and desperate from their impotence to stop the madman sooner they sent round after round into the ape. Those bullets missing the mark landed in explosions of dust in the hillside beyond. Just as quickly, the shooting stopped. The monkey had raised itself higher on its steel-girded tree.

  Black hair glistening with what might have been rivulets of blood, it moved slowly, deliberately to the top of one tower. The narrow peak screamed from the sudden weight, then started to bend. Toes gripping the crisscrossed supports, the ape extended its arms in a crucifixion parody. It stood for a moment above the faces of those screaming, dying, or nervously silent. Black eyes blinked once. The ape fell forward like the Hollywood icon it would forever be associated with.

  Sounds of a hundred sudden gasps. Perceived weight falling into the throes of tripping, squirming bodies. Then nothing. No nightmare monkey. One moment it existed in their world, the next it did not. It simply disappeared. The only impact was the silent acknowledgment that nothing more would happen that night.

  * * *

  Tom stared at the bed. The light from the living room fell across rumpled, vacant sheets. Behind him, the news anchor repeated his report of the mysterious woman, her death, and the sudden disappearance of the monkey on the towers.

  Tom turned, walked past the computer, and sat slowly on the couch. A discarded candy wrapper crinkled beneath him. He felt the wrapper through his pants, saw with slowly emerging clarity the disarray of his house. Alone. The reality, the inevitable truth of his wife’s death sank into him, like a lost treasure over the side of the boat.

  — — — — —

  About “Feed The Birds”

  We come now to the first original story in this collection. Original meaning it was newly written and previously unpublished when this collection originally was published in print. I had to save it from a year-long wait in the slush pile of an anthology so I could include it here.

  I can’t say a lot about this story without givi
ng too much away, except that I came up with it while standing in the kitchen looking across the house to the bird feeders we’d established outside the windows. Seeing the happy birdies flutter about, I wondered... well, when you read the story you’ll know what I wondered.

  No, I don’t know why I think these things sometimes. I really don’t.

  But, between you and me, I’m really glad I do.

  Feed the Birds

  As usual for a Friday, Doctor John and Doctor Regina arrive home within minutes of each other.

  Regina waits beside the garage, tries to concentrate. John ducks below the lowering door and embraces his wife. Regina pulls away, pecks her husband’s cheek. The weight of the past five days wears her down. He knows it, feels it himself. Both see in the other’s eyes their lassitude reflected. They turn, hands loosely clasped, and walk into the Tudor’s side entrance.

  Regina whispers, "We have to feed the birds."

  Empty plastic bird feeders swing in the breeze beside the row of hemlock lining the driveway. The feeders knock lightly against the house front, calling those inside, wanting to be filled. In the green of the trees beyond, one or two birds have alighted, lost from sight among the leaves. They sing songs and wait. It is not yet time.