A Visitor on Christmas Eve

The air was thin and stale in the cabin. Dust motes hung in the skinny moonbeams that fell through the slats of the shutters drawn tight over the windows. A faint hiss from the radiator echoed throughout the room, and the soft quiver of a candle’s flame made subtle shadows prance about the walls.

Victor tossed and turned. The covers were stiff and cold around his legs, and his mind was elsewhere as he tried to drift off to sleep. Even an hour’s rest was a triumph ever since the accident.

The memories haunted him. The screeching of tires. The unnerving jolt of the car signaling the loss of control. The strange silence and the weightlessness, the calm before the storm, as they sailed through the air. He could hear and feel all of it, but worse was what he could see.

The trees like spikes rushing up at them. The spider’s web of cracks that spread shudderingly over the bloodied windshield. The panic in his mother’s kind eyes as she frantically tried to comfort him, to promise him everything would be alright.

Then, her final words before the glass shattered: “Goodbye, my love.”

“What the hell were you doing up there!” his father had shouted. Not one to process anything in a helpful manner, he assigned Victor the blame for his wife’s death. But Victor was besides himself.

For the first few nights the vision played in his mind over and over again. The swerving truck, his mother yanking the wheel, the guardrail giving way to the forest a hundred feet below, and their final moments together before everything went black and Victor woke up to see his mothers vacant expression and the pine branch sprouting from her chest.

Victor rolled over again, pulling the covers over his head and scrunching down, making himself small as if to evade the pain, to appear as less of a target.

It was his father’s idea to drive up to Winnow Valley for the break. Victor’s family had spent every Christmas since he was three up in the mountains in the same little cabin near the coast; thirteen wonderful holidays. Victor hadn’t wanted to go because he knew it wouldn’t be the same without his mother there, but his father was hellbent.

Perhaps he thought it would be good for them, maybe get them talking again, mend the bond. Besides, they paid good money for the reservations that year and he would be damned if they let the deposit go to waste.

So there they were, the day before Christmas, in a little log cabin with a little less magic inside than there had been when they had left the year before.

Victor straightened out and threw the covers away from his face, taking a deep breath. He looked over at the candle, the image of Mother Mary on the side. He’d lit it for her, his own mother, not really knowing why. Maybe to bring her spirit into the house, a silent plea for her to come back?

He looked up at the ceiling, tracing the lines in the wood as he had done every year since he could remember. The swirls and swells and parallel lines slowly condensing like cross-sections of pulled taffy. Strange how such minute details stay with you as time goes on.

“I wish you were here” he said aloud in a half-croak.

He felt the tears coming, but before he could succumb to the sobbing, there was a brief screech like nails on glass coming from the window, accompanied by a shadow on the far wall - an interruption of the moonlight sifting through the slats that caught Victor’s eye.

He waited for a moment, and the sound came again, the light on the wall flickering. Caution told him to remain in the bed - what if it was a murderer, or some deranged lunatic trying to get in. Common sense said maybe it was just a tree branch that the wind was pushing against the outer wall. But something else pulled him to his feet.

The sound came a third time as he slowly crept to the window, but when he threw open the shutters and looked through the misty pane, there was nothing of note. No wayward trees, just the wintry landscape stretching down to the treeline from the cabin.

“There had to be something,” he insisted to himself quietly. He put his fingers to the latches and the cold metal pressed into his skin as he shunted the window up halfway, then completely open with another heave. The cold night seeped in, chilling him right through his pajamas.

He leaned out to check the more immediate area of the window, but as he did, he was knocked backwards by a large fluttering creature. It glided around the room, the air from its wings snuffing out the candle, before coming to rest atop the window sill.

From where he was on the floor, Victor looked on at the barn owl, his heart thudding, absolutely frozen to the spot. It was beautiful, regal, and its piercing gaze held Victor in place. He was stunned, but not solely for the mere shock of its arrival.

His mother had absolutely loved owls. Their intelligent eyes, their silent wings, their keen wisdom and command of the night. She had an unquiet fondness for the animals that he didn't share. They always unnerved him, but she would have been ecstatic to see what perched before him now, close enough to touch.

They spent a moment regarding each other, one steadfast, the other terrified.

Then the owl blinked once, slowly and deliberately, and Victor could’ve sworn he saw it bow its head slightly as it did so before turning and taking off.

He got up from the floor and rushed to the window to watch as the owl rose higher and higher. Its every movement was woven with grace as it flew over the trees, gently brushing the top of a pine with its wing. It climbed, ascending so effortlessly, until it eclipsed the moon, in an instant a delicate silhouette before disappearing once again into the night sky.