“Wake up, Ernest Slack!”
Eyes snapped open.
Christmas in Hollis by Run DMC shook through my body, bass thumping like a heartbeat. Bed quaking, walls vibrating.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, blinking in a green haze and the smell of anise, les fées vertes circled. I popped them one by one. Pop. Pop. Pop. In my head, of course, I hadn’t touched a drop of liquor. I peeked from beneath my bedclothes.
“Get up and know me better, man!”
The room had a pulse, ninety-five skips a minute. Fairy lights winked in sync with the beat, colours bleeding like inks in a tattoo parlour on a bad street.
A Christmas tree swayed in the corner, flash and excessive, strands of tinsel dripping like shiny hot metal. Presents spilled out from underneath it, pastel-hued boxes like soft marshmallows, others torn open their contents escaping—plastic toys, designer clothes, aunt Bethany’s green jello.
In the centre of the room, in a circle of light, was a spider, poised ready to fight. Not with fists, feet, poison or web. But deck versus deck, amp versus amp, mano a mano. A titan to rival Godzilla towering over me, its body covered in a thick, furry coat of bright green. Its legs were impossibly long, twitching and tapping to the rhythm of the song. Rhinestones flickered along its body—red, yellow, blue—like a grotesque Christmas display or an Elvis jumpsuit. Its eyes glowed yellow, reflecting the hot mess around it, and its mandibles clicked, clicked.
It grinned at me. Yes, grinned.
“No!” I hissed, clutching at the coarse weave of my blanket. “You’ll wake Mother!”
The Green Spider threw its head back and laughed, booming and warm. “Nah, she’s got her three spirits.” And he counted them off on his legs like fingers. “Jack, Jim, and Jose.”
“Hey!! I interrupted. “She ain’t no alcoholic!”
“Point is, you’re wasting time. She won’t hear jack, Slack.” Its mandibles smacked. “Now, get over her, Ernest Slack! We’ve got a soul to save. Get real! Do I have to spell it out?”
I stumbled out of bed, my feet tangling in the blanket. “What is this? Who are you?”
“Who am I?” The Spider twirled, its legs spinning in a blur, twinkling lights illuminating fur. “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Present, baby! Do you like my fit?” It struck a pose, one leg outstretched, its body tilted like a disco dancer, threw back its Afro.
I blinked. “You’re green.”
“Green for the environment!” it bellowed, throwing all eight legs into the air. “And don’t I wear it well?” It leaned down, its enormous face inches from mine. “Don’t answer that. I know I do.”
The spider’s fur shimmered. Wait—something moved. Beneath the green bristles, something wriggled, alive and restless. “What’s that?” I pointed, my stomach twisting. “What’s under there?”
The Ghost of Christmas Present slapped my finger away. “Ain’t none of your concern, Slack.”
Squatting low, skinny legs splaying wide, the spider’s fur rippling like a grassy hillside. It leaned closer, eyes glinting. “Time is fleeting, Ernest. Let’s not waste it. You’re diminishing by the second. Time for us to beat it.”
I looked down and gasped—my body shrinking. Feet first, then nose, shoulders and toes. I know. That’s not how the song goes. My perspective’s flexing. The room expanding, a jack-in-the-box leaping. The Christmas tree extending, a fishing pole bending, the angel on the top too heavy. The Spider loomed above me, a giant ball of wool, against a glowing green backdrop.
“Let’s go!” it shouted, scooping me up with a prickly leg. “You’re gonna love this, just love it.” Flipping me like an egg onto its back. Knocked the wind from my lungs, but I stuck like a bur, hooked in its fur, though its smell overpowered me, is that Fleur de Peau?
The Green Spider shuddered, shaking out its limbs with a creak and a snap like ungreased hinges. “All aboard!” The Spirit booming. Lights on its bristles reacting—strobing. I’d once lost control at a rave in Eindhoven—firecrackers exploding. Strange that I thought of it now.
Smoke curled out from the ghost’s joints, sour and acidic, twisting my nose. Somewhere, a record spun faster, the wobbling sound of ch-wicken-ch-wicken—a beat-breaking rhythm that shifted into something absurdly festive. Collard greens, rice and stuffing—the smells hit me in feelings, rich and overwhelming.
“Hold on tight!” the spider yelled, and we were off. Cue montage.
The room dissolved, lights low, crashed into Stygian gloom. RUN DMC walking away, until only the hum of wind remained. It started to snow. Eerie notes on a violin bow.
I smelled the city first—exhaust fumes and garbage. Then fast food and synthetic perfume. A heady cocktail.
When the world came into focus, on a street I couldn’t name, on a numbered block, a city that looked the same as all the other cities I’d only seen from sad American TV shows. And it snowed some more. Falling in wet globs, turning to slush as it hit the pavement. But it was cold, getting colder, soon it would freeze.
“How far must we go?” I asked of the spider. “I want to go home.” I spied a café, an orange glow in the window. “Hot spiced cider! A dash of rum. Please! Can we go inside. Warm our bones.”
“But what about him?” The spider pointed with a leg. A dark lumpy sack up ahead.
At the entrance to an alley, near a trashcan, off the sidewalk, sat a man without a home, head banging a brick wall. A tattered blanket around his shoulders the only source of warmth. A cardboard sign propped against his bony legs: Merry Christmas. Anything Helps.
People passed by, noses dusting the clouds. A woman swashed a mink stole about her neck, almost kicked him, not looking where she was going. Mouth shut up tight, riveted closed.
A man in a cashmere overcoat tossed out a handful of coins, not bothering to slow up. The coins landed in the slush, out of reach, out of sight.
The homeless guy scrabbled. And I bent down to help him.
“A few coins won’t get him a bed for the night. The world’s too far gone. One person can’t fix it,” I said to the spider, dropping the coins into the man’s palm.
Of course, the homeless man’s eyes shot wide open, jaw dropped, as these coins appeared to shake from the heavens. Holding them tight in his grip, he jumped up and ran down the street, and gave a few coins to another helpless soul.
The spider clicked its mandibles, a shake of its green furry head. “Peace on earth? Goodwill to all? Only to those who look like you, walk like you, speak like you. Am I right?”
“The wind’s howling.” I said making conversation. “Whipping up a storm.” It cut through a park, shaking the trees. Splattering wet snow against my purple cheeks. I cupped my hands against my mouth. But I had no warmth to thaw me.
We walked a little further.
The ghost reached out a leg, fist-bumping a busker with a broken saxophone. It squeaked and sighed like an old bed—springs giving out. “One of my brothers,” the spider said, laughing. “The spirit of giving, Ernest!” With a flick of its leg, it magicked a gold coin from behind my left ear and dropped it into the busker’s basket.
The man couldn’t toot, fingers too numb to jive. But he’d eat—he’d survive. “Every little helps,” came the musician’s cheery reply.
Snow drifting. Harder. Colder. Sticking to my clothes. Tickling my nose. Sidewalk disappearing. The city lost to a swirling blizzard.
No. The city was long gone.
I spun on a windswept beach on some exposed coast. A sandstorm shifting. Blowing sideways. Stinging my cheeks. Riding my hide. Still snowing. White horses crashing.
Black sand cold beneath my feet. Plastic bottles, shredded nets, drift wood and broken toys, tumbled with cockle shells, mussels and kelp, picked clean by sandpipers and herring gulls.
Chaotic human footprints, from size four to eleven appeared to walk out of the sea. But the salty tide came quick, such was its custom, the ghostly marks swept like secrets under a rug of flotsam and jetsam.
The sea churned, dark and unsteady, and a small boat rocked on the waves, planks battered, blue paint peeling, too long in the sun that said no more to shining.
Inside, huddled figures clung to one another, faces hollow, clothes wet through. But I heard singing. A French-Haitian song about crossing the sea, and leaving home.
Voices lit their way to me like beacons of fire. “Will they let us stay, Papa? Offer us asylum!” The first speaker was a girl, no older than seven, her cheeks red from the cold, her tiny hands clutching the hem of the old man’s coat, lips chapped and bleeding. A boyish scruff of dark brown tails, sticking-out bits and pink bows.
“Let’s hope so, Agatha,” Papa replied, his voice cracking as he turned to a woman beside him. He leaned in, whispering, “We’re running low on her insulin. Agatha will die.”
The spider stepped forward, its breathing laboured, legs crunching through frosted sand and snow. “They’re running,” the spider said, its green bristles glistening with salt. “From war. From famine. From everything you’ve ignored.”
“But it’s not my fault! I want to do more.”
The boat lurched, water sloshing over the stern. The figures cried for help, “We’re taking on water!”
“They won’t make it,” I whispered, my throat dry.
The spider turned to me, its mandibles clicking once, twice.
It didn’t respond.
“It’s horrible… but I can’t stop the storms.” I muttered, kicking at a lifeless football. “Or their wars!”
“No, Ernest! But you can choose to care!” The spider’s eyes flashed, all of them glaring at me. “That don’t cost nothing!”
With a roar, the spider pounced on my back, pinning me face down in the grit. “Get off!” I barked, when I came up for air, coughing up sand and spit.
Then it plucked me up, wound me like a bobbin, birling me in a green thread. “For the betterment of all!” The spider cried with a skip in its step. I near blacked out—giddy. I wept.
Well, then it twisted and grunted and swung me about. Without warning, let me go, cast me out like a decoy. Horizontal I travelled, a blur of blue and green ocean, the sun rising in the east. When with a whump, I crashed into the boat, square at Agatha’s feet.
But she didn’t see me. And I was right there. She didn’t look scared. But I was. My face all gritty and pink at the cheeks, eyes wide, a hapless fool. Satisfactory at school, but I didn’t have the backbone that she had.
A tall grey wave rolled up out of nowhere. Agatha pointed. A wall of water. Speeding up, curling over, disintegrating into a fine spritz of salt and iodine, algae and melon.
“Take hold of the rope. Tie yourself off.” The little girl hollered. It startled me, and for a second I thought she’d called out to me.
Could it be?
Bam—the sea hit!
Late to the rumble. A riled-up prizefighter. Wise-cracking. Thumping the little blue boat into next week. It groaned and it creaked. Down on the canvas. Had it holed us? Were we sinking? What was the ghost thinking? Drowning me?
Agatha lifted her head from a huddle, still locked in her parents’ bosom. I reached for the gunwales, white knuckles glistening, half-hitching myself to a cleat. The saltwater stinging my nose, eyes, and throat. I prayed for my bed. I prayed for the boat. The squall kept on banging, a clatter of thunder, a lightning bolt. The blizzard an afterthought. Still snowing, though whipped up in a frenzy.
“I’m sorry,” I shouted, “I’ll try to do better.” And I lifted my fists to the storm, eyes wide open.
Agatha’s face lit up at that exact moment. Did she see me? Are we dead already?
I ducked for shelter, under a heavy green tarpaulin praying for Christmas morning. The waves unrelenting, battering with the force of fists, a boxing leviathan awakened.
A gust snatched up my tarred canvas, and I sprawled on the splintered deck. My skin turned a whiter shade of pale. It got me feeling kinda seasick. And I couldn’t see the horizon.
And where was the Spider? He’d abandoned me. The eye of the storm above us. Salt water sloshing about my festive socks. Sea levels rising higher and higher.
But I did see the Spirit, smiling unaffected, a verdant fire of light. The Spider met the storm at the bow of the craft, seven legs braced wide, one searching for land. Its green fur plastered flat against its body. “Feel that, Ernest?” it shouted, its voice biting. “That’s the weight of it. The fear. The cold. The dying.”
Agatha spoke. She lived inside me now, her words clutching my heart with an iron grip.
“Will they let us stay, Papa? Or send us back to die?”
She plucked at my ribs, her tiny hands squeezing my guts. We’re running out of insulin. Agatha will die… if nothing changes.
The boat swung to the port, throwing me aside and beating the breath from me. Every inhale burning, every want, to survive.
“Do something!” I shouted at the Spider.
The Spirit laughed, its mandibles clicking. “Do something? Do what, Ernest? This is your mess. Your world. You made the storm. You fed the waves.”
The rope I had tied slipped through my fingers, white and pruned like ten tiny cabbages. The boat lurched again, and Agatha shouted, “Grab anything! Hold on to it! Something that floats!”
I slipped, fell hard, my knees slamming into the planks. Call it a moment of insanity, but I snapped my head back, forced myself to see. The grey mass of ocean. My watery shroud. Its bony fingers of salt reaching out for me.
Agatha’s heart beating inside me, louder now. Deafening drumming. Whistling and howling.
“Papa! Please!”
The boat pitched further, the sea rising to swallow it. My hands clawed for something—anything—to hold onto, but a watery grave awaited me.
The boat upended. Here is the end of me.
The cold was instant. It wrapped me, pulled me under. Salt filled my mouth, my nose, my lungs. My arms flailed, useless against the weight of the water. The storm roared above me, muted and distant, as the sea dragged me down.
I died.
Agatha’s voice, a whisper. “Will they let us stay?”
I can’t say how long I was dead, but it felt like I’d turned a page.
Either way. I wasn’t dead now. Just cold.
The right side of my head numb, but my ear worked. Footsteps, more than a couple, coming my way. Scraping and cracking.
Something prickly pinched the back of my neck, yanking me upright—then tossed me, like I was nothing but dust.
I flew, bowled across a frozen lake—a spherical bullet, spinning wide, hooked to the right. No pins. Just me, streaking over the ice, a blur of black and white chasing some phantom strike.
I slammed into a tree stump—a spruce, pine, or fir, newly felled.
One of many.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
Crows. I heard crows.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
Hundreds of them. Thousands. More.
Blotting the sky, a tornado of wings, black against a low December sun—a beating heart fireball sinking into the horizon.
The birds circling, chaotic patterns on the wind. No branches to land on. No trees left to roost.
Ash inked the hard ground beneath me, snow crusting the scarlet wounds of a once-grand wood. Crooked stumps jutted up like ribs of drowned galleons, their naked branches reaching out to me. Smoke rose like hungry, curling spectres, muttering curses, fleeing the wreckage.
The wind howled. Cutting through me, glueing to me the smell of scorched wood and rot. It carried something else, too.
A growl. Low, guttural. Machines. Rumbling. Still distant.
I staggered to my feet, cracking brittle ice. Frost burned my nose and cheeks, stung my blistered lips, pricked at my eyes.
Caw. Caw. Caw. More urgent.
“What is it now? Where’s your master?” I shook my fists in anger. “The Spider. The Green Fiery Spirit. Conjuror of visions. Is this my reality, the fate of humanity?”
Caw. Caw. Caw.
“Give me more!” I groaned, pressing a hand to my ribs. “What do you want from me?”
They answered.
Skaaa!
Twisting in flight, their black beady eyes marked me.
Swooping low. Beaks rattling. Tails fluttering. A barrage of black arrows. Diving towards me. Scattering feathers. They came upon me. A roar. No. A cacophony.
I spun and cowered, shielding my head.
Whipping me, beating me, raking me with their wings. One after another. Pecking, clawing, circling.
“Alright! Alright!” I yelled, swatting at them, staggering backwards.
Circling tighter, they forced me to turn, wheeling me like a carnival attraction. I lost my bearings and crashed to the ice.
When the spinning stopped, I saw it.
The last copse of trees. Green. Sunlit.
The crows screamed and scattered, stacking up like smoke, their shadows twisting over the snow.
And then I heard it.
A low rumble, rising from the earth.
Ahead, animals ran.
Reindeer. Rabbits. White foxes. Wolves.
Tearing through the wasteland, white fur bristling, hooves clattering, claws scraping. Their breaths burst into clouds of steam, their eyes wild and bulging. They ran as though the ground were on fire.
They ran towards me.
I froze.
They came faster—reindeer antlers carving and dicing, rabbits darting low, wolves snarling, snapping at nothing. The thundering of hooves and paws battered my ears, my chest, shaking the ground beneath me.
“Move!”
The voice boomed—not from behind me, not from anywhere I could see—but inside my skull.
The Spider.
“Run, Ernest!” it roared, loud enough to rattle my teeth, “Run!”
Too late.
The stampede swallowed me.
A blur of white fur, kicking legs, bristling tails. They scraped past me, their bodies slamming into mine, spinning me around, knocking me sideways. Hooves clattered against ice, claws tore through snow. A reindeer’s flank hit me hard, throwing me to my knees. A wolf’s tail whipped across my face. A rabbit skittered beneath my legs, its fur streaked with blood.
And they kept coming—panicked, desperate, running for their lives.
I stumbled, hands plunging into the ice. The cold biting me, blueing my fingers.
They ran on, past me, over me. Snow sprayed into my face, sharp and stinging. My ears were alive with the sound of their panting, their grunts, their high-pitched yelps.
And then, just as quick as it began, they were gone.
The air was still, but for the growl of machines in the distance.
I stood, my legs trembling, my breath clouding in front of me.
Ahead, the tiny copse of trees remained.
I ran towards it.
The machines roared louder, as I sped alongside the procession, clanging their grapplers, their harvesters on booms. Claws grubbing bedrock, engines snarling like articulated dinosaurs. Smoke billowed from their exhausts, a choking brown gas. Bunchers, skidders and swinging contraptions.
Only one blessing. A slow death march.
They took no notice of me, and I passed them.
I breached the edge of the copse.
The trees stood tall, their branches heavy with snow. The air shimmered beneath, quiet, untouched, as though they’d been spared by some divine hand.
But at the centre of the copse, the Spider was waiting.
No. I had no idea of its plan.
I’d mistaken its legs for eight giant redwoods towering over the canopy. Its green fur glistening with frost, its rhinestones catching the pale light of the setting sun.
When it saw me it shrank to its usual proportions. No evidence of its bohemian swagger.
“You’re too late, Ernest Slack,” the Spider said, its voice low, and it growled. “This is the end of it.”
“What are you doing?” I gasped, my knees weak, my limbs nothing more than frozen cuts of meat.
In one long leg, it held a lit match, the flame trembling in the wind.
The spider tilted its head, its mandibles twitching. “It’s not me, Ernest. It’s all of humanity. This is what you’ve chosen.”
Its body trembled, and for the first time, I saw what lay beneath the spirit’s coat.
From beneath the green bristles, two figures emerged.
“Meet Ignorance.” The Spider shuddered.
“Meet Want.” The Spider shuddered again.
Children, their mouths frozen in silent screams, their eyes wide with terror, their skin stretched tight over their bones. They were pressed against the Spider’s skin, macilent hands reaching out, clawing at me.
“Wait!” I said. “There’s another!”
Keeping my hand close to my chest, I pointed at the squirming shape beneath the Spider’s fur. My stomach twisted and gurgled.
The Spider laughed, a dismissive wave of a leg. It lifted its tail and shook it.
“Oh, meet Apathy. The most dangerous creature of all.” The Ghost of Christmas Present pinched its jaws tight, the colour draining from its cheeks.
“Apathy is everywhere. But it’s hard to pin it down. It’s got a nasty habit of bringing people down. And when it gets its hooks in you, kiss goodbye to your passion and drive. Say sayonara to your curiosity for learning. Don’t get me started on meaningful relationships. For sure, Apathy’s a killer.” The spirit recoiled, its vibrant pea-green hue fading to pale flecks.
“Hell, the most animated of us,” the Spider continued, “can hide Apathy beneath the surface.”
I searched for it now, like a tiger in long grass to an antelope. The ability to move in and out of focus. Was that it there?
“I see it!” The Spirit yelled. And a fine train of gossamer shot out of its spinneret, trapping Apathy in a sweet-smelling web.
Compelled, I drew nearer, hands trembling, reached out my finger to touch it. “Why is it so dangerous?”
The Spider slapped my hand away, its mandibles clicking. “Because it doesn’t care, Ernest.”
It yanked at its thread, green hackles pricking, resisting the pull of Apathy. “It doesn’t care about the planet, its creatures, the forests, the storms, the wars, the people drowning at sea. It doesn’t care for humanity. And when you carry it, you don’t care either.”
“It’s awful!” I blurted, averting my gaze, hand to my mouth, then I spat out, “pray tell me Spirit, why do you show me such wickedness, such depravity?”
“Why?” the spider spat back at me, “it’s your legacy.”
It threw the match.
The flame caught instantly. Fed, by no doubt, Apathy.
The trees ignited, branches curling into blackened fists. Sparks shot into the sky, the heat searing my face.
“No!” I shouted, stumbling forward, but the fire was too fast. It roared through the copse, devouring the last of the forest.
The spider didn’t move. It stood still, fur igniting, its body curling inward as the flames consumed it. “It’s what you wanted, Ernest,” it said, its voice crackling like the fire. “Allowed it to happen.”
Hide blistering. Its body shrinking. Fur falling away in clumps. Scraps of green fur replaced by white ash. The stink of its polyester jumpsuit burning. Its legs grew thin and brittle, its final movements slow and jerky. The rhythm had left it.
“Do you like my fit now?” its voice croaked.
I stared at it, my chest tight. “I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t realise.”
“No,” the spider said, its eyes dimming. “You didn’t want to.”
It burst into a puff of emerald smoke, the green ash floating away.
I dropped to my knees, the fire closing in on me.
An unbearable heat, fumes choking me, filling my lungs. I wheezed, gasping for air, clawing at the snow.
“Stop,” I whispered, my voice rasped. “Please… stop.”
All I could see was green smoke.
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