The first thing I noticed when I staggered through my living room in search of coffee was that my Christmas tree was all lit up. That was odd. I hadn’t plugged it in the night before because I’d been out late at the office holiday party, and I’d gone straight to bed as soon as I got home. I’d only had a couple of glasses of wine, so I hadn’t been drunk enough to have memory gaps, and I’m not nearly sentimental enough to come home from an office party so full of good cheer that I have to bask in the glow of the Christmas lights before going to bed.
On the other hand, I live alone, and the lights weren’t on a timer, so I was the only one who could have done it. I must have plugged in the tree without thinking.
Once the coffeemaker was doing its job, I went to unplug the tree. It wasn’t plugged in. And the lights weren’t really on, now that I looked at the tree again from another angle. I must have just seen the bulbs reflecting the light. Shaking my head, I made a beeline to the coffee pot and poured a cup. I was sure it would make sense as soon as I woke up completely.
The morning went back to normal as I ate breakfast and got dressed, until I went to find the shoes I remembered stepping out of on my way from the front door to my bedroom, at the same time as I dropped my purse and laptop case. They weren’t where I thought I’d left them. My purse was hooked over the arm of the sofa, and the laptop bag rested against the sofa, below the purse. The shoes were nowhere in sight.
I checked the closet, in case my generally tidy nature had overruled my exhaustion, but they weren’t in there. I was on the verge of settling for a different pair of shoes when I thought to check where the purse and laptop bag were. Sure enough, the shoes were just under the sofa, as though someone had kicked them there to get them out of the way. I supposed I was so obsessive that even when I tried to be sloppy, I just couldn’t stop myself from being neat. I didn’t have time to think about it too much because I had to get to work, and by the time I reached the office, I had other things to worry about, like avoiding my coworkers.
The receptionist was on the phone when I entered, which allowed me to get away with a smile and nod as I passed through the lobby. The hallway was empty, so it looked like the coast was clear and I’d be able to reach my office without having to chat about the party. That was the problem with work social events: they made everyone think we were all friends.
I was almost to my office when Beth popped into the hallway from her office. “Hey, Meg!” she said.
I tried not to wince visibly. She was the worst possible person to run into when I didn’t want to chat because she was the closest thing to a work friend I had. Not that we were really friends, but I managed to tolerate her because she was as detail-oriented as I was and didn’t try to socialize too much. “Hey,” I said, not breaking stride and hoping she got the message.
She didn’t. “Did you have fun last night?”
“Yeah, it was great, but it’s back to the grind today.”
She didn’t push the point beyond that, which was why I actually almost kind of liked her. Most of my coworkers would have kept trying to talk. With a great sigh of relief, I entered my office, set up my computer, and got to work on all those columns of lovely, lovely numbers. Numbers made sense in a way that people didn’t. There were so many jokes about how boring accounting was, but I loved it. I found great joy in putting everything in order.
Once I fell into my zen-like flow, the hours flew, and soon it was the end of the day. I’d even managed to forget about the morning’s weirdness, and when I came home, everything was just the way I’d left it.
I couldn’t say the same thing the next morning. The Christmas tree was lit up. I’d left my purse and laptop in their usual spot, staged on the path from the bedroom to the front door, but they were back by the sofa again. I thought the coffee table seemed to be closer to the sofa, and on closer inspection I found that there were dents in the carpet to back up that impression. My chest tightened with fear, and I glanced around for something I could use as a weapon. Someone had been in my house during the night while I slept. All my valuables were where they belonged, so maybe the intruder was still inside, lurking, waiting for me to leave so he could walk out with all my things.
I took a golf club from the bag in my hall closet and crept through the house, checking under the furniture, behind curtains, and in closets. I didn’t find anyone. I was reluctant to leave the house, though. I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work while wondering who was in my house, so I called in sick, faking a cough and raspy voice, and said I’d work from home.
If someone was lurking, waiting for me to leave, I hoped he now felt trapped. I situated myself on the sofa, the golf club across my knees, and waited. I didn’t hear a sound, saw not the slightest hint of movement. The Christmas lights faded, and I couldn’t bring myself to check whether the tree was plugged in. Eventually, I got out the laptop and did some work, since just sitting there on high alert was boring. By the end of the day, no burglar had fallen out of the closet or tried to creep past me.
That should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. As horrible as it would have been to have an intruder in my house, at least it would have been an explanation. All I could think was that I must have moved things around without realizing it. Or there was the possibility of sleepwalking—I was getting up, tidying, rearranging furniture, and then going back to bed.
That evening, I very carefully set my shoes and a newspaper in the middle of the living room floor. One last glance before I headed to the bedroom confirmed that they were where I remembered putting them. I also verified that the Christmas tree was off. I hung a string of jingle bells from my bedroom doorknob, which surely would wake me if I was sleepwalking. I moved a chair to the path between the bed and the door, so I’d bump into it on my way out. Just to cover all my bases, I kept the golf club handy.
I woke early the next morning, before my alarm went off. The chair was where I’d left it and the door was still closed. With the golf club in hand, I rushed down the short hallway to the living room to see what had happened and barely stifled a scream.
The tree was lit, the newspaper was carefully folded and set on the sofa, and my shoes had been moved under the coffee table.
Someone had definitely been in my house during the night.
When I got to work and saw Beth heading into the break room, for once I didn’t retreat to my office. I went straight into the break room after her. She was the only person I’d ever given a key to my house, so if someone was getting in without signs of a break-in, she had to be involved.
“You didn’t give my key to anyone while you were looking after my place last summer, did you?” I asked, probably more forcefully than I should have.
She finished filling her mug without spilling a drop—a demonstration of calm I found highly suspicious. “No, why?”
“Things in my house are being moved around in the night. Not stolen, damaged, or anything like that. Just moved.” I left out the part about the Christmas lights because it sounded way too weird. “I know some people have played pranks like that in the office, so I was wondering if someone’s pranking me now.” It sounded absurd when I said it out loud, but it was too late to take it back.
She leaned against the counter and took a sip of coffee. “No, I didn’t give your key to anyone, and I gave it back to you when you got home from vacation. I didn’t tell the rest of these idiots that I had it.” She arched an eyebrow slightly. “Stuff’s been moved around?”
“It’s like they’re clearing space on the living room floor.”
“Your midnight visitors must be having a big dance party,” she said with a laugh. “If they’d been cleaning, I’d say you had a brownie.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected her to say. “A brownie?”
“You know, like in fairy tales. The helpful little creatures who clean in the night. They’re a kind of elf or fairy.”
“I wish. You don’t know how I’d go about getting some of those, do you?”
“You’d make a fortune if you could figure it out.”
I knew she was joking, but still, when I got back to my desk, I did a quick internet search to see what I could find. There were stories about elves who made shoes during the night, brownies who cleaned unless they were insulted, and various kinds of household spirits, but nothing about just moving things around and making lights come on in spite of them not being connected to a power source. It also seemed like I was in the wrong part of the world to have these kinds of visitors. America appeared to be sorely lacking in invisible nighttime cleaning creatures.
Not that I was in any way worried about having elves, fairies, or anything like that in my house, because I am a functioning adult with a firm grasp on reality.
Even so, I couldn’t resist testing the situation that evening. After all, ruling out a possible cause without any evidence was as bad as believing in something without evidence. The scientific method would help me get to the bottom of this, or at least rule out one possibility. I would set up conditions so obvious that I would be certain whether or not anything was changed during the night and see what happened.
Although it tormented my soul to do so, I cluttered the living room, strewing clothes, shoes, and papers not just on the floor but also on every horizontal surface. I left out bags of snacks and a couple of half-full glasses of wine. I took pictures of the whole thing with my phone so I’d know for certain how the morning compared to the night before. I double checked all the locks, including the interior deadbolt and door chain, made sure the Christmas tree was unplugged, and hung jingle bells on the front door.
The next morning, a space had been cleared on the living room floor, like someone had made a dance floor. Everything else was exactly how I’d left it, except the snack bags and wine glasses were empty. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t let myself because I didn’t think I could explain it to my neighbors. Instead, I clapped my hand over my mouth so I could make muffled noises behind it. I felt invaded, violated. Someone, or something, had been in my house. It was like finding mouse droppings in the kitchen and knowing that meant something unseemly was happening in my home when I wasn’t looking. But what? “Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” I said, maybe to myself, and maybe to whatever intruder I had. I knew it wasn’t my imagination, but I had no idea what it was.
It was a Friday, so I decided to stay up that night and see what happened. I settled on the sofa with a pillow and blanket and marathoned episodes of Star Trek, something nice and logical. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because when I woke during the night, things were different. The Christmas lights were on and the floor had been cleared. I could have sworn I heard music, but it sounded distant, like perhaps my neighbors were throwing a party. I could see my furniture clearly, but when I looked at the middle of the room, everything became blurry, as though there was something there, but I couldn’t bring it into focus. Or maybe it was a dream. As much as I’d thought about this problem, there was a pretty good chance it was seared into my subconscious. I’d be surprised if I didn’t dream about mysterious visitors moving things around. In the morning, the floor was still clear, and the tree was still lit, but all was quiet. The tree lights faded when the sun came up.
That day, I went out and bought a security camera setup with night vision. I aimed all but one of the cameras at the middle of the living room, with the last camera pointing at the door, and then I arranged the living room with things on the floor and snacks on the coffee table. I was up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning to watch the footage.
The video showed that there was definitely something in my house. They came across like hot spots on the video, vaguely human-shaped and small, but too bright and blurry for me to see features. I recoiled, jumping away from the computer as though the bright spots might come through the screen at me. What were those things? I felt dizzy and realized I was hyperventilating. I sat down, put my head between my knees, and took slow, deep breaths until the dizziness passed.
When I felt reasonably stable, I looked at the computer again, starting the video from the point where the bright spots appeared. They started out by clearing the floor, and then they danced. The more they danced, the brighter they grew, until the video was just one big bright spot.
I shook my head as if to clear it, but it didn’t help. None of my rational explanations worked. The intruders definitely weren’t human-sized, so it wasn’t a burglar or someone from the office playing a prank. I didn’t think mice would bother clearing the floor or dancing. There was no way to deny that there were small creatures that didn’t show up well on camera dancing in my living room. If the rational explanations didn’t apply, that meant I had to broaden the possibilities I was willing to consider.
So, aliens or ghosts? The images did look a lot like what was shown on ghost-hunting shows—not that I’d ever taken any of those seriously. But why would aliens or ghosts be having a party in my living room? Even I didn’t think of my home as party central. Maybe elves, but this didn’t match the behavior of any elves I’d read about. Then again, were fairy tales valid source material for this sort of thing? Was it absolutely insane to even consider that it might be elves?
I felt like my brain was giving me the “does not compute” signal. I was fairly certain I wasn’t losing it, since I did have video evidence, but I needed a sanity check with another person. I didn’t exactly want to tell anyone that I thought some kind of magical creatures were having nightly raves in my living room, but I’d already told Beth something was odd, and she was the one who’d mentioned elves, so I caught her in the hallway Monday at work. “Hey, you got a minute?” I said, trying to sound casual even though my pulse was pounding.
Her face lit up, like she was glad that I’d approached her. “Yeah. What’s up?”
There was no way to say this casually. “You know that thing I mentioned about what was going on in my living room? Well, you’ve got to see this.” I didn’t wait for her to respond before I dragged her into my office. I pulled up the video that I’d uploaded to the internet and played it for her. I’d seen it before, so I watched her watching it. She frowned at first, then her eyes widened. She leaned forward, her mouth hanging open.
“What is that?” she asked.
“This is what my security cameras caught.”
She leaned her hip on the edge of my desk. “This isn’t a prank, is it? You’re not setting me up?”
“I don’t have that level of technical ability. Or imagination. I don’t know what they are or where they came from, and I don’t know why they picked my living room, of all places.”
“Where do they go in the morning?”
“They just seem to fade away as they leave the dance floor. What are they? What do I do? How do I get rid of them?”
“Are they causing any damage or disrupting your life?”
“Well, no,” I admitted. “All they do is clear their dance floor and eat or drink anything I leave out.”
“Then why are you so worried about them?”
“Because there are creepy little things in my house!” I said, my voice going a bit shrill. Too late, I realized that the sound probably carried throughout the office.
“In some cultures, you might be considered lucky.”
“I haven’t exactly seen luck coming my way.”
“Possibly because you’re so stressed. Maybe you should try keeping the floor clear, and then you won’t know they’re there.”
“But I’ll know. I can’t un-know what I’ve seen. I have to deal with this if I want to ever feel comfortable in my home again.”
“Do you mind if I come over? Seeing it in person might help me think of something.”
“You’re an expert on elves?”
She looked away, and her cheeks flushed slightly. “I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert, but we lived in England a few years when I was a kid—my dad was in the Air Force—and we lived in this really old house. I thought it was cool that our house was older than the United States. But strange things happened there. No matter how untidy I tried to be, my room was always clean in the morning. I had to start keeping things neat for myself or I’d lose anything I left lying around. The old lady who lived next door claimed that we had a brownie that had been with that house for centuries. I’ve been fascinated by that sort of thing ever since. And no, I never caught it, and I didn’t do anything to send it away.”
“Why couldn’t I have got the thing that cleans your house for you in the night?”
“Like I said, it wasn’t all that helpful, other than forcing me to clean for myself if I didn’t want to lose all my stuff.”
She came over that evening after work and surveyed my living room, her arms folded across her chest. “Are you sure it’s not a brownie? Because this is pretty tidy.”
I winced. “This is normal for me. I only noticed something was happening when I came in late and left my shoes out, and they moved them. And they turned the tree lights on—but without plugging them in. There’s no telling how long this was going on before I noticed. Brownies aren’t known to be party animals, are they?”
“No, that’s a different class of creature. What we have here is something different.” She wandered around the room, pausing occasionally to look closer at something, and I felt a bit awkward at her scrutiny of my home. We’d worked together for years, but our relationship hadn’t extended beyond work. She was the one I hung out with at office parties, but we’d never done anything after hours one-on-one. Now she was in my home, looking at my photos and souvenirs from my travels. I wondered if she’d noticed that I didn’t have pictures of people, only places.
Did that have something to do with my discomfort with my visitors? I didn’t really do people. I interacted with people at work when I had to, and then I went home to my sanctuary. I seldom had guests. And now I had a party raging in my house behind my back every night. It was unsettling. I wondered what my visitors would do if I had a party—hide for the night, or join in? Frankly, the thought of having people in was more unsettling than the invisible intruders.
“Oh, this must be from your trip to Iceland this summer,” she said, leaning over to look at the series of photos on the fireplace mantel.
“Yes,” I replied. “I was camping.”
“By yourself? Wow, you’re really brave.”
That wasn’t something I was often accused of. “There were people around. I wasn’t in the wilderness.” Well, except that one time when the official campground had been too full for my taste and I’d set up my tent nearby.
“You know, Iceland has a very strong tradition of fairy-like creatures.” She inhaled sharply, as though being struck by a sudden idea, then she frowned in thought as she continued moving around the room. Stopping by the end table next to the sofa, she picked up the rock sitting there and said, “Is there a story here, or is this art?”
“I got it in Iceland. It was on the edge of my campsite, and I thought it looked interesting—better than the kind of souvenir you get at a gift shop. I know, I probably shouldn’t have taken it—take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints, and all that—but it was just a rock.” I didn’t want to say that the rock spoke to me because that sounded odd, but something about it had captivated me. Even now, I didn’t think I could articulate why. It was sparkly and a funny shape, but not so strange or beautiful that it should have even caught my eye.
“Okay, I think I know what you have going on here.” She got out her phone and pulled up a website. “See, this sounds similar,” she said, showing me the screen. “There are people in Iceland who believe in fairies, or ‘hidden folk,’ even today. There was a big controversy over whether a road should be rerouted to avoid interfering with the rocks where some people thought fairies lived.”
“You think I brought a fairy house home with me in a rock?”
“Maybe. These fairies are known for coming out at Christmas. Typically, it would be Christmas Eve, while the family’s at church, but since you already have the decorations up, they might think it’s Christmas.”
“This is crazy!” I said, throwing up my hands.
“Look!” she showed me her phone again.
I took the phone from her and scrolled through the article. “They had machinery breakdowns?” I said, shuddering.
“They must not be too mad at you for moving their home if you haven’t noticed anything breaking. They might even have made you want to take that rock so they could move. Let’s stay up and see what happens.”
“I tried that, and I didn’t see anything.”
“But did you believe in them then?”
“I’m not sure I believe in them now.”
She wagged a finger at me. “Oh, you believe. It’s the most logical explanation, really. It’s the only thing that fits the evidence. And I believe, so even if you don’t see anything, I will.” She plopped down on the sofa, making herself at home.
It would have been far too awkward to try to get her to leave, so I asked, “So, uh, can I get you anything?” I wasn’t sure what I had to offer her. The fairies had eaten all my snacks, and I so seldom had guests that I didn’t keep party supplies on hand.
“We can just order a pizza.” Which she proceeded to do.
I wasn’t sure which was worse, tiny invisible invaders who only made their presence known while I slept, or a full-sized human making herself comfortable in my living room. Worse, a full-size human who wanted to make conversation that wasn’t about work. She asked me about my travels, my family, my relationships, and told me all about hers. When the Christmas tree lit up at midnight, it came as a massive relief.
Now I could see them, little people wearing red and green outfits that looked like something out of the tourist brochures at historical sites, and they swarmed around my living room. I couldn’t help but pull my feet up onto the sofa, the way I would if I’d seen mice. “Oh my, they’re real!” I whispered.
Beth’s eyes shone. “They are,” she breathed.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again, hoping maybe they’d go away. They didn’t. Elves were real. My brain gave me that “does not compute” message again, so I stared at the creatures until I had no choice but to accept that these things right out of a fairy tale were as real as I was. This entirely changed the way I saw the world. I’d always focused on concrete things, on science and reason. I’d never been all that keen on fairy tales. I’d questioned the existence of Santa Claus at a very early age and had never bought into the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. My idea of a flight of fancy was imagining a future with spaceships that could travel between stars. Now I had to face the fact that tiny elves were far more realistic than faster-than-light travel.
“What else that’s supposed to be imaginary is actually real?” I asked, my voice shaking. “Ghosts? Magic? Is there really a Santa Claus?”
Beth’s smile was enigmatic. “Maybe. We do have to consider the possibility.”
“Are all these magical things all around us, all the time?”
“There are tiny insects around us all the time that you don’t see. How often do you think about dust mites?”
“More often than is probably healthy,” I admitted.
“Still, you know they exist even if you can’t see them. You may see pictures of them under a microscope, and maybe that makes you want to keep a cleaner house, but it doesn’t change the world. It just changes your knowledge of the world. You’ve learned something.”
That I could deal with. I’d learned something, which was good. I liked learning. And knowing this one new thing meant there were so many other things out there to learn. I could feel my mind expanding, my sense of the universe shifting as I adjusted my parameters.
But that didn’t mean I wanted tiny elves in my house any more than I wanted dust mites. “What do I do about them? Should I just get rid of the rock?”
She glanced at her phone, where she’d been researching the folklore about the hidden folk of Iceland. “Well, they often move to new places on New Year’s Eve.”
“But that’s weeks away!”
“I have an idea, but we should probably discuss it elsewhere because we don’t know how much English they understand. Do you want to come over for dinner at my place tomorrow night? I don’t think we want to talk about this sort of thing at work.”
I reluctantly agreed, but this whole thing was starting to feel suspiciously social. Still, one dinner after work wasn’t nearly as bad as an Icelandic elf infestation. I could get through this, and then I could get back to normal.
It looked like the fairies were going to party all night, so Beth went home, and I went to bed. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep, knowing what was going on elsewhere in my house, but I drifted off right away and woke more refreshed than I would have expected after staying up so late.
If having someone in my house had felt odd, it was equally weird to visit someone when I only knew her from work. “I made soup,” Beth said when she greeted me at the door. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Um, yeah, that’s great,” I said, fighting the urge to flee. I wondered if I should have brought something. It had been so long since I’d been to someone’s home that I’d forgotten the protocol. As I followed Beth to the kitchen, I noted that her home was far quirkier than I’d have expected before a few days ago. It didn’t at all fit the straitlaced persona she maintained at work. If I’d known she was the sort to go in for paintings of unicorns, I might not have made the connection I had with her. Now, though, it seemed her love of fantasy might be my saving grace—if it even was fantasy. What if she had a clearer and more realistic view of the world than I had? A few days ago, I might have dismissed her as an airhead, but maybe she was really just wise and open-minded. I felt something click in my brain as my view of the world shifted yet again. Maybe my view of reality, as logical as it seemed to be, hadn’t ever been the most realistic one.
“What was the idea you had?” I asked while she stirred the soup. Only after I’d spoken did I remember that small talk was generally expected before diving into the main topic.
Beth didn’t seem to mind. “I was thinking maybe we could trick them. If you took down your Christmas stuff, they might think it was time to move on. Supposedly, leaving a pathway of candles from your door will guide them away. If they leave on their own, then they might not take it out on you the way they might if you just evicted them.”
“No fairy revenge sounds good to me.”
“But we need to think about where to guide them to.”
“Anywhere outside my house.”
“But I was thinking, we may be able to kill two birds with one stone here. Is there anything near you that you wouldn’t mind disrupting?”
“You mean like that road they were building in Iceland? Put the fairies there, and if they like the place, they won’t let their home be destroyed?”
“Yeah. Is there something you don’t want to have built?”
I thought about my neighborhood. There was a vacant lot nearby, and I’d noticed the zoning change signs on it. I liked it the way it was, almost like a park. I didn’t want the office building they were proposing. “I have an idea. You think it would work?”
She shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. We might as well have some fun with this. Worst-case scenario, you get rid of your invaders.”
Actually, I thought that the worst-case scenario was that they wouldn’t leave, but I figured we’d worry about plan B when the time came. We strategized over soup, and that turned into chatting, and before I knew it, I was carrying on a conversation—and liking it. Was this what friendships were like? It wasn’t like what I’d experienced growing up, when I just got picked on for being good at math and sat alone in the cafeteria. I felt safe and warm. My face hurt from smiling so much, and I was in no rush to go home and be alone. When I did leave, I found myself looking forward to the next time we got together.
That Saturday, Beth came over to help me take down all my Christmas decorations. “Normally, people have tree-trimming parties, not tree-dismantling parties,” she said with a laugh as we worked. We hid the decorations in my bedroom before setting up a line of luminarias on my front walk. Then all we could do was wait.
At midnight, the fairies emerged from their rock. They milled about, as though looking for the Christmas tree and other decorations. That was my cue to fling open the front door. They saw the candlelight outside and followed the line of lights. I ran ahead of them, setting out and lighting more candles to lead them down the block and across the street. Beth came after them, holding the rock. She settled the rock on the vacant lot, under a shrub that probably would be bulldozed when construction began.
The fairies moved around the lot, as though trying to figure it out. While they were occupied, Beth and I ran back to my house, snatching up the candles as we went, so they wouldn’t be able to find their way back. “Do you think it worked?” I asked once we were inside.
“You’ll find out in the morning,” she replied. “And then we’ll see what happens about that building.”
“Maybe they’ll make it a park, instead.”
After Beth went home, I set out my shoes and a newspaper on the floor before I went to bed, and they were still there in the morning. The house was also untouched on Monday morning. When I got to work, I headed to Beth’s office. “I think it worked,” I said.
“Awesome! So, do you need help putting your decorations back up? I’ve got some friends who might be up for pitching in. We could make it a party.”
My first instinct was to decline, but then I thought, why not? I’d had fun with Beth, so maybe more people would be even more fun. And then there were other things I wanted to explore. “Sounds great,” I said. “And if you don’t have plans for Christmas Eve, I was thinking about staying up and investigating Santa. You’re welcome to join me. I’ll make the cocoa.”