Christmas has never been my favorite holiday. Yeah, I love free stuff, but it feels like the amount of money I spend always out values the gifts I get. Other than that, I just don’t prefer to hang around a large part of my family, especially for large gatherings. A large part of my family sees our gatherings as a perfect excuse to get black out drunk and talk angrily at each other over politics and all other manner of controversial topics. My family’s Christmas gathering 5 years ago was no different.
I’d flown down to my grandmother’s house in southern Florida as the plan was for everyone to meet there and get their fill of food and liquor before finding their way home. I only stayed at my grandma’s house for an hour or so the previous year, so my mom asked that I stay longer this time. According to her, everyone loved seeing me. Although, I’d debate they were too busy arguing what current trend was ruining the world. I ended up staying until about 10 before asking my mom if she could give me a ride back to my hotel since I’d Ubered there originally. She told me that she wanted to stay for a couple more hours, and suggested I try taking the bus to save money instead of ordering another Uber.
Honestly, anything to get me out of that house would have come off as a good idea. I remembered seeing the bus stop on my way to my grandmas, and the walk to it didn’t seem like it would be too far, so off I went. At the time it seemed like a perfectly good idea. I didn’t know the bus schedule or how long they even ran but I was willing to take my chances. While walking back to my dorm in the middle of December would cause me to freeze my ass off. Luckily winter in Florida rarely drops below 70 degrees. It was honestly a relaxing walk, taking in the nighttime air and quiet. I’d started daydreaming about my class schedule next semester before I realized I could make out the bus stop about 30 feet in front of me.
I swore under my breath as I realized someone was sitting there. As much as I hated being around my drunken family, I hated awkward stranger small talk even more. The closer I got, the easier it was to make out the person sitting there. She appeared to be a kindly lady in her mid to late sixties. Her hair was a large ball of silver and dark brown, with a large pair of thick rimmed glasses on her face. I have to admit it took me a good while to make out anything other than the bright pink coat she was wearing. For me, 70 degrees was shorts and T-shirt weather, but I suppose it wasn’t unheard of to see an older person wearing a sweater anywhere that wasn’t 90 degrees. I got within a couple steps of the bus stop bench, before the lady turned to acknowledge me.
She gave me a very warm ‘Hello and Happy Holidays’ that I returned, along with an awkward smile. I tried not to stare, but what I thought was a pink sweater was actually a thick pink fur and feather coat. I’d honestly never seen anything like it. A majority of the coat was made of pink fur, but the collar sprouted enough feathers to cover five or six birds. Dangling from her neck was a long pearl necklace, with some sort of elongated bird skull in the middle of it. In my head I wondered if she was into exotic fashion, or perhaps a huge bird lover. The sound of her loudly blowing her nose made me jump and shook me from my own thoughts.
“How is your evening, sweetheart?” Her voice was dry but friendly, with an accent I couldn’t quite place. I told her it was fine and returned the question, to which she launched into a wordy recollection of her entire day. I zoned out somewhere around her getting to the middle of her day and kept eye contact while randomly nodding.
“Where is your family now?” Surprised by the sudden change of topic, I responded by jokingly telling her that they were at my grandmother’s house drunkenly singing Christmas carols. She laughed and muttered something about how charming that was. I checked my phone and saw only a couple of minutes had passed and didn’t hear or see any signs that a bus was coming anytime soon.
I remember my eyes starting to feel really heavy. I shook my head, trying to wake myself up, but the feeling stayed.
“Excuse me? Have you seen my bird?” I looked at the lady again and she had a look of panic and confusion on her face. Honestly, I probably did too. “My bird was in his cage, but now he’s gone.” I looked on the ground and a large old-fashioned birdcage sat between the woman’s legs. How long had it been there? I was pretty sure I hadn’t noticed a big iron bird cage before. It was hard to remember or even think because the tiredness I’d started feeling morphed into a slight feeling of vertigo. It felt like the ground around me had begun to slowly spin.
“Ah, I see him. There’s my darling.” The lady was on her feet now, pointing across the street. Her voice sounded raspier, as if at some point in the last 2 minutes, she had turned into a chain smoker. I followed her finger and saw she was pointing at something standing in the tall grass across the street. I couldn’t make out what the figure was, but I was positive it wasn’t human. It had wide blocky shoulders, and a long, wiry neck, attached to a large circular head. The area of tall grass the figure stood in was covered in shadow, so I couldn’t make out any other details. Through the shadow I could swear the figure was staring directly at us.
“Could you please go grab him sweetheart?” The lady’s voice seemed to be coming from inside my own head, and without even realizing it I felt myself moving toward the figure covered in shadow. As I got closer to the thing it shifted so that its entire body was facing me. It twitched and shook as if electricity was coursing through it. The closer I got, the faster my heart would beat. The more some kind of instinct inside me screamed that I was making a bad decision. But I couldn’t stop myself. It was almost as if I had developed an obsession with reaching whatever this thing was.
I was halfway across the street and a sudden shift in the moonlight illuminated the creature enough that I got a look at something that could only have been born from a nightmare. It spread its arms like it was stretching a pair of wings. Its skin a pale blue and stretched tight over its thin frame. Long stringy pink feathers sprouted from all over its body. Its long snake-like neck waved and slithered through the air, a head that resembled a pink human skull never broke eye contact with me. It’s tiny eyes that glowed a bright purple.
I couldn’t stop myself from walking forward, I couldn’t break my focus away from the glowing purple eyes of whatever thing stood in the grass in front of me. Its neck stretched outward towards me, shortening the distance until we were face to face.
The loud and long blare of a bus’s horn caused me to trip and fall backwards. The horn split me from whatever trance I was in, and I looked around to see the bus stopped and waiting behind me at the bus stop. I hadn’t heard it pull up; I didn’t even know how long it had been there. I twisted myself around and didn’t see the old lady in the pink feather coat. Remembering the creature, I turned and was met by a tall man standing just outside the tall grass. He wore tattered clothing covered by a hood adorned in writings and pink feathers. Several large bird skulls hung from a thick rope necklace and several straps across his chest. I’d slowly started backing away before the man lunged at me, a curved knife in one hand. I scrambled to my feet, and sprinted to the bus, struggling not to trip.
The driver looked at me with confusion and worry on her face. Asking several questions. ‘Did I take something’ and’ ‘Did I know that man’, among the first. I stuttered and rambled spitting out a bunch of random words, eventually she simply waved me to the back. I was the only one on the entire bus. Still no sign of the old lady.
The bus dropped me a block or so from my hotel and thankfully I made it to my room without any more incidents. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look of that thing standing in the grass. Something that haunts me as much as that creature, is the fact that 3 people in that area disappeared that night. I always wonder if maybe those 3 people weren’t so lucky as to break that creature’s gaze.