6

I choked out a scream and staggered backward. We were way off script now.

A big, solid tree branch hit me hard from behind, knocking the wind out of me and sending me sprawling forward into the tree’s face. The branch was one of the mechanical arms which were programmed to wave and bounce in time to the Christmas carols that the tree sang. It swiftly wrapped around me and held me pressed up against the horrifyingly animated trunk, which snickered at me as I was shoved against it.

The blow had stunned me, but I was so frightened that adrenaline flooded my system, working wonders. I quickly regained my senses, took a noisy gulp of air, and started screaming my head off.

This set off a chain reaction of gasping and shrieking among the gathered crowd, who by now realized something was wrong.

The tree’s mouth, already stretched in a vicious snarl, sprouted long yellow fangs. I didn’t want to find out if they were as sharp as they looked, so I struggled with all my might against the dense synthetic branch that was trying to force me closer to that mouth.

“No, no, noooo!” I was screaming.

“Dreidel!” Twinkle shouted. “Dreidel!”

I heard the mad, musical screech of his accordion as he wrestled his way through the crowd, hollering frantically for maintenance, for help, for security, for someone!

With my arms trapped by the encircling branch, I lifted my feet and braced them against the tree trunk, fighting the mechanical branch’s effort to drag me closer to the snarling, fanged mouth. I was panting hard with fear and exertion, struggling for air as the thick, twining branch tightened around me like a python, bruising my arms and squeezing breath from my body.

Some shoppers grabbed frantically at the branch and tugged on it, trying to release me. Another animated branch swooped down and knocked them away, throwing them into the crowd with industrial strength and power. I heard more screaming and, out of the corner of my eye, could see people falling and tumbling.

“Nooo!” My voice was thin and shrill. I was starting to feel lightheaded.

More people approached the tree, trying to help me. Through the blur of my misting vision, as I fought my terrifying captor and gasped for air, I could see elf outfits, reindeer antlers, the bright red of a Santa suit . . . two Santa suits . . .

“Esther!” Jeff shouted, bounding toward me.

Pow! A long tree branch whipped through the air like a catapult, knocking Jeff off his feet. He flew backward into Satsy, and the two of them tumbled out of my fading vision.

“Cut the power!” a man shouted.

I heard the ear-piercing squeal of children screaming and the heavy thunder of feet stampeding.

“Cut the power!” the same voice repeated.

A huge man in a parka hurled himself at the tree, screaming, “Yaaaagggh!”

Two snakishly animated branches scooped him up, working in unison, and tossed him aside like a rag doll.

The tree’s menacing mouth started drooling, and I recoiled from the foul odor that started to pour out that orifice.

“Help!” I croaked, dizzy and weak by now. My bells jangled as I kicked ineffectually at the trunk with my dainty boots.

“Dreidel! I’ll save you!” Twinkle cried.

I kept kicking weakly as the encircling branch that was squeezing the life out of me forced me closer to that foul-smelling, drooling, snarling mouth.

“What are you doing?” a man shouted. It was the man who wanted the power cut—as if electricity were the problem here.

“I’m saving her!” Twinkle cried.

Through my swimming vision, I saw the elf wave an ax near my head, and I found the breath to shriek, “No!”

“Give me that!” the same man shouted, his voice starting to sound familiar through the haze of my suffocation and terror . . .

The tree’s animated eyes glowed red while it growled softly to me, “Kill . . . kill . . . I want flesh! And blood.”

I hoped I would faint before this thing took a bite out of me. I didn’t want to be conscious for that.

There was a sudden, powerful reek of sulfur. Black smoke clouded the glowing red eyes; one of the orbs cracked, and pieces of plastic fell to the floor. The drool pouring from the fangs seemed to freeze in mid-motion. The whole tree went rigidly still. Sensing my opportunity, I tried again to free myself. But I was weak, and the python-like branch, though motionless now, wouldn’t release me. It was frozen in position, as if it had mechanically seized-up.

Then I heard a loud whack! nearby, like an ax hitting wood—and the oppressive branch dropped me like a hot rock. Startled, I staggered away dizzily, tripped over the synthetic tree roots, and hit the floor with a thud.

As I lay there on my back, panting and staring up at the star-studded solstice sky, I heard footsteps. Then that familiar voice said: “Esther?”

I didn’t answer. Just lay there. Breathing hard and savoring the feel of air in my lungs.

“Esther.” Holding a big wood-handled ax, Detective Connor Lopez of the New York Police Department stood looking down at me. He was breathing fast. “Of course. I should have guessed. I mean, who else could it be?”

“Lopez?” I croaked, looking up at him in bewildered surprise.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Do you need a medic?”

“Why are you holding an ax over my head?”

He looked at the ax as if surprised to see it in his hands. “Oh. I used it to sever the power cable to that . . . that thing. What is that thing?”

Still, breathing hard, I gaped at him in amazement. “Wow. The slogan is true. At Christmas, everyone comes to Fenster’s.”

“Actually—”

“Dreidel!” Twinkle was at my side, his accordion still strapped to his torso. It groaned noisily as he sank to his knees. “Are you all right?”

“I thought you were going to behead me,” I panted, recalling the sight of Twinkle waving the ax near me.

“No, I was saving you! I was attacking the tree!”

“I didn’t mean,” I panted, “that I thought you’d behead me on purpose.”

“I didn’t think so, either,” said Lopez, shifting the ax to one hand. “Either way, though, it seemed like a good idea to take it away from him.”

“Fuck me,” said Candycane. “Twinkle, you could have killed her with that thing!”

Still lying flat, my heart racing in reaction to the attack, I glanced around and saw numerous anxious elf and reindeer faces looking down at me.

“I think that thing could have killed her.” Prancer pointed to the tree. (Or maybe it was Dancer. Or Comet. A big, fuzzy, brown sock-puppet with antlers, anyhow.) “What the hell happened?”

“I’d say it was the mother of all mechanical malfunctions,” Lopez said in disgust. “Don’t they do maintenance around here? Safety checks?”

“No,” said several employees in unison.

“For chrissake.” Lopez shook his head. “What do they think will happen if they neglect proper maintenance on a thing like that—that . . . What is that thing, anyhow?”

Jingle’s face hovered directly above me. He must have clocked in recently, since I hadn’t seen him before.

“Dreidel! Are you okay?” Without waiting for my reply, he turned around and made the general announcement, in a loud voice, “Dreidel is all right!”

I heard a faint—very faint—cheer sweep through the Enchanted Forest in response to this news.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Twinkle asked me.

“I’ll live.” I was profoundly grateful to be able to say those words.

“That was scary,” said Jingle. “We nearly lost a good trainee!”

Lopez said, “Okay, everyone please take a step back and give Esther—uh, Dreidel—some room to breathe. Come on—back, everyone.”

My co-workers complied. People often complied when Lopez gave orders. Not me, really, but lots of other people.

Born to a Cuban-immigrant father and Irish-American mother, Lopez was in his early thirties, slightly under six feet tall, with a slim, athletic build. He had straight black hair, dark golden-olive skin, and long-lashed blue eyes. The strength in his attractive face kept it from being pretty, despite his full, lush mouth. And although patience was one of his virtues, he wasn’t someone you’d want to mess with.

“Where’d that ax come from?” Candycane asked. “We have axes here?”

Jingle said, “There’s an emergency station next to the North Pole. This was covered in your training, Candycane. Fire extinguisher, first aid kit, ax, and so on. And getting that ax was good thinking, Twinkle!”

“Actually, I took it from a kid who’d gotten it,” Twinkle admitted. “He could barely lift it, but he had the right idea.”

“No, stupid idea,” the Russian elf said brusquely. She added to Lopez, with grudging approval, “But you were cool-headed. Using ax to cut power. Much more intelligent than whacking tree.”

“He’s supposed to be cool-headed in a crisis,” I said, still breathing hard. “He’s a cop.”

“A cop?” Twinkle bleated. “A cop?”

“Yeah, I’m a cop. But we’re cool about the ax, so calm down.” Lopez asked me again, “Esther, are you sure you’re all right?” He knelt beside me and put his hand on my wrist. I thought this was an affectionate gesture until I realized he was checking my pulse.

“Yeah, I think I’m okay,” I said, pulling away from his hand. I knew my heart was still racing. I didn’t see that it would help matters for him to know it, too. “Just really shaken. And . . . ouch.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Bruised.”

Well aware, it seemed, of why I had rejected his touch, Lopez firmly put his hand on my wrist again, kneeling beside me in silence while he checked my heart rate. I noticed he was wearing a dark wool coat over a navy blue suit. The formality of his attire made me suspect he was at Fenster’s as a detective, not a shopper.

He let go of my wrist, then slipped his hand into mine. Now that was an affectionate gesture. I felt the suddenly intent gazes of Santa’s helpers on us as he said, “I want an EMT to look at you. They should be here any minute.”

“When did you have time to phone in an emergency?” I asked.

“Someone else has done it by now.” Confirming the suspicion that was forming in my mind, he said, “There are other cops here.”

“Because of Jonathan?” I blurted. That kid’s mom must have been really mad.

“Who’s Jonathan?” he asked.

“A little boy who had a bad scare here this morning.”

“Oh. Well, that’s not hard to believe.” Lopez glanced up at the tree. “But, no, that’s not why we’re here.”

No, of course not, I realized. Lopez was a detective in the Organized Crime Control Bureau. I didn’t think anyone was worried that Jonathan had encountered loan sharks or witnessed a professional hit in Solsticeland.

“Cops? There are cops in the building?” bleated Twinkle. “Why?”

Lopez said to him, “When the EMTs get here, ask them to come see Est . . . Dreidel. Go to the entrance of this place and wait for them. Go now.”

Twinkle rose to his feet—assisted by two reindeer, since his accordion made the process awkward. “I won’t fail you!”

“Good to know.”

As Twinkle departed, I said to Lopez, “I really don’t think I need an EMT.”

“And I hope you’re right. But humor me, okay?” he said as he set down his ax.

“Don’t put down that ax!” I shrieked.

The elves and reindeer collectively fell back another step.

Lopez blinked. “Okay. I won’t. Stay calm.” He picked up the ax again. “I’ve got it. See?”

“I just mean . . .” I took a long, deep breath, trying to calm myself. “I mean, don’t leave the ax lying around.”

I had no doubt that what had just happened was a mystical incident, not a mundane one. And whatever force was animating that tree had dissolved before I heard the ax hit the floor and cut off the electrical power. The overloaded mechanics of the paralyzed tree had relaxed and released me when it was severed from Fenster’s system; but it had already been abandoned by whatever Evil had caused it to act with such menacing violence.

I didn’t know what had incited the tree to attack, or why it had stopped attacking. And I didn’t know whether—or when—it might attack again. So I was emphatically against leaving a deadly weapon lying around within reach of its long branches.

Jingle said, “That’s a good safety tip, Dreidel. I’ll go put this ax away in a safe place. You can hand it over to me, officer.”

Lopez looked at me to check my reaction to this.

I nodded my assent, adding to Jingle, “Stay away from that tree.”

“It can’t hurt anyone now,” Jingle said soothingly.

“Oh, yes, it can,” I said grimly.

Putting this incident together with what Satsy had told me about the freight elevator, I realized that the drag queen was right: There was something at Fenster & Co. that didn’t belong here; something evil.

As I started to get up off the floor, I had a feeling I knew what I would see when I looked at the tree.

“Esther,” Lopez said, trying gently to prevent me from rising, “I want you to wait until an EMT has had a chance to—”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Help me up.”

“I really think that . . .” He blew out his breath on a resigned sigh as I placed a hand on his shoulder to steady myself and rose to my feet. “. . . you should just ignore whatever I say and act as if absolutely nothing dangerous has just happened to you.”

I took a few more deep breaths to steady myself, then cautiously approached the tree. As I had expected—as had been the case with the freight elevator—it looked normal now. It was completely dormant, severed from its power source, and one of its eyes was still ruined. But there was otherwise no sign at all of what had just happened. No fangs, no remnants of drool, no odor. Nothing.

I turned around and said to my colleagues, who were all watching me examine the tree, “Did anyone else hear the voice?”

“The voice?” asked the Russian.

“What voice?” asked Lopez, who was also examining the tree now.

“There was a voice saying it would kill me,” I said.

“I heard a voice, but I didn’t hear that,” said Eggnog, the prince of Princeton, giving me a peculiar look.

“What did you hear?” I pounced.

“Well, to be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention to what it said. I was mostly, you know, trying not to get clobbered by a branch,” he said. “But I thought it was reciting reindeer names.”

“That’s eerie,” said one of the reindeer.

“No,” said Candycane, “that’s just part of its programmed patter.”

“Did anyone hear it saying it wanted to kill? That it wanted flesh and blood?” I asked impatiently.

The elves and reindeer all looked at each other in perplexity and shook their heads.

“I only heard screaming,” said the Russian.

“There was a lot of screaming,” a reindeer agreed. “It’s all I could hear, too. Well, that and the smack! of branches hitting people.”

“I did hear Twinkle shouting that he’d rescue you while he waved that ax around. It was like his dungeons-and-dopes game had finally come to life for him.” Candycane pointed to Lopez. “And I heard this guy shouting to cut the power, but I don’t know where the power switch is.”

Eggnog said, “I don’t think that was covered in our training.”

I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. The screaming had indeed been loud (especially my own, until I couldn’t breathe anymore), and the tree’s voice had been soft—intended only for me, the victim, I thought.

“Did anyone see the fangs or the drool?” I asked, ignoring the way Lopez was looking at me now.

“Fangs?” Candycane shook her head.

“Drool?” The Russian made a face. “Who drooled?”

I felt frustrated, but I knew this happened all the time on Crime and Punishment and The Dirty Thirty. Police and prosecutors on C&P shows were always questioning witnesses who all gave them different accounts of an event, none of which tallied with each other or with the physical evidence.

I looked again at the tree and realized that, trapped as I was by a large branch trying to feed me to that drooling, toothy mouth, I had probably masked the tree’s face from view for most people. Add in the screaming, the confusion, and the fear, combined with people getting hit by flailing branches . . .

Lopez put a hand on my arm. “Esther, you’re still shaken up. Maybe you should—”

“Did you notice the odor?” I asked him. “A really foul stench.”

He sniffed the air. “There’s no odor now. And I think it would be a good idea for you to—”

“Did anyone notice the odor?” I asked my colleagues, raising my voice.

Jingle returned from his errand in time to hear this, and he piped up, “Oh, yeah, that smell. Somebody messed his pants, for sure.”

“No, that wasn’t the smell,” I said. “It was more like . . .”

“Like what?” Lopez asked.

“I don’t know. Indescribable. Like nothing I ever smelled before.” And I hoped never to smell anything that revolting again. “There was also sulfur, I thought. Did anyone else smell that?”

Eggnog said, “I thought I smelled something burning, maybe. But I wouldn’t say sulfur.”

“You probably did smell something burning,” Lopez said with a glance at the tree. “It’s lucky that thing didn’t start an electrical fire.”

“No one else smelled anything?” I prodded.

“We were a little preoccupied,” Candycane pointed out. “Oh! But now that you mention it, I did smell something foul.”

“Yes?” I prodded eagerly.

She nodded. “Like, um . . . mothballs.”

“Mothballs?” I repeated, feeling deflated.

“Mothballs,” she said with conviction.

“Oh! I think that was me,” said Prancer (or whoever). “My costume I mean.” He held out one fuzzy arm for Candycane to sniff.

She did so and made a face. “Oh. It was you.”

Oh, well. I sighed in resignation. My friend Max had told me any number of times that when confronted with mystical phenomena, most people interpreted the events in terms that made sense to them—such as a massive mechanical malfunction—and ignored that which they could not make sense of within conventional boundaries. And I had by now seen him proved right quite a few times about that.

“Well, I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson here,” Jingle reflected.

“Oh? And what would that be?” Eggnog asked.

“Training pays off,” said Jingle. “The outcome of this incident might have been very different without our training. And I’m sure Dreidel agrees!” He concluded, “Very glad you’re okay, Dreidel. Now I’ve got to get back to my station. Those toy army tanks won’t just sell themselves, you know!”

As Jingle trotted off, I looked after him in bemusement, unable to see any way in which my elf training had helped me survive this brush with arboreal asphyxiation.