Chapter 19: Thanksgiving under the Oak

The knife slipped through the skin of the roasted turkey with a sound like dry leaves being crushed under a boot, revealing a gush of steam that smelled of rosemary and deep, buried secrets. Julian didn’t flinch at the heat. He kept his grip firm on the stag-horn handle, his eyes fixed on the precise intersection of joint and bone, while the rest of the table fell into an expectant, suffocating hush.

Outside, the great oak of Cypress Bend loomed over the patio, its massive limbs casting skeletal shadows across the white linen tablecloth. The sun was dipping low over the marsh, turning the water into a sheet of hammered copper, but the air here was brittle. It was a day for gratitude, or at least the performance of it, yet every person seated around the table looked like they were bracing for an impact.

"Careful, Julian," Eleanor said, her voice a thin wire of tension. She adjusted the pearl necklace at her throat, the gems clicking together like teeth. "You know how Silas liked the dark meat sliced. Thin enough to see the ghost of the plate through it."

Julian stopped. He looked up, his gaze catching the empty chair at the head of the table. A single place setting remained there—china polished to a mirror shine, silver buffed until it glowed, and a crystal glass filled with nothing but the stale air of the South. Silas wasn't there to demand anything anymore, but his shadow still sat in the seat of honor, dictating the height of the flames in the candles and the sharpness of the knives.

"Silas isn't here to complain about the thickness of the bird, Mother," Julian said, his voice flat. He resumed the carving, the rhythmic *thump-hiss* of the blade the only sound against the backdrop of the cicadas’ dying hum in the trees.

To his left, Sarah gripped her wine glass. Her knuckles were white, the skin stretched so thin it looked translucent. Beside her, Marcus was meticulously arranging his silverware, lining up the salad fork with the dinner fork until they were perfectly parallel. It was a tic he’d picked up since the funeral—a desperate need to impose order on a world that had tilted off its axis.

"It’s a beautiful spread, Eleanor," Sarah said, though her eyes remained fixed on the empty chair. "The oak looks... majestic this time of year."

"It looks hungry," Marcus muttered.

Eleanor’s head snapped toward him. "Don't be macabre, Marcus. It’s Thanksgiving. We are here to celebrate the legacy your father left behind. We are here to show the town that the Cypress Bend line does not break just because the patriarch is buried."

"The line isn't breaking," Julian said, plating a slab of white meat and passing it toward his mother. "It’s just stretching. There’s a difference."

The dinner progressed in a series of clinks and murmurs. Each course arrived like a new piece of evidence in a trial they hadn't agreed to attend. The sweet potatoes were glazed in a syrup so thick it felt like amber; the green beans were snapped with a clinical precision that suggested Eleanor had supervised the kitchen with a stopwatch. 

As the wine flowed, the forced civility began to peel away at the edges. The heat of the afternoon had faded into a damp, clinging chill that rose from the swamp, bringing with it the scent of wet earth and decay—the true smell of Cypress Bend, hidden beneath the rosemary and the butter.

"I saw the surveyors near the north grove yesterday," Marcus said, stabbing a Brussels sprout with more force than necessary. "Moving toward the old burial ground. Bold move, Julian. Even for you."

Julian didn't look up from his plate. "The estate needs to be liquidated in stages to cover the back taxes Silas 'forgot' to pay. You know that. We discussed it in the lawyer’s office."

"We discussed the timber acreage," Marcus countered. "We didn't discuss the grove. That land hasn't been touched in four generations. There’s a reason for that."

"Superstition doesn't pay the inheritance tax," Julian replied. He finally looked up, his blue eyes cold and unblinking. "And neither does sitting around staring at an empty chair. We have to move forward."

Eleanor’s fork clattered against her plate. "Forward is not the same as scorched earth, Julian. Your father loved those trees. He said the roots of the Bend are what hold the family together."

"The roots are rotting," Julian said. He leaned back, the motion slow and predatory. "I went down to the cellar this morning. The foundation is shifting. The house is literally sinking into the marsh, and you’re worried about a few oaks? We need capital. We need to stabilize the house before it swallows us whole."

Sarah took a long, shaky sip of her wine. "Is that what the noise was last night? I thought... I thought I heard someone walking in the halls. But the floorboards were groaning like they were being crushed."

"It’s the settlement," Julian dismissed her. "The house is old."

"It's not just the house," Sarah whispered. She looked toward the great oak, its branches now black against the violet sky. "Have you noticed the birds don't land on it? Not since the funeral. They fly around it. Even the crows."

Marcus laughed, a jagged, unpleasant sound. "The crows have more sense than we do. They know when a carcass is picked clean."

"That is enough," Eleanor commanded. She reached out and touched the rim of Silas’s empty glass. "We will have a civilized dinner. We will speak of the future. Julian, tell us about the proposal from the development group. The one that doesn't involve leveling the north grove."

Julian set his napkin down. He hadn't touched his food. "There is no proposal that saves the grove and the house. It’s one or the other, Mother. We sell the land to preserve the name, or we keep the land and let the name sink into the mud. Silas spent forty years making sure we’d be faced with this exact choice. He didn't want us to succeed him. He wanted us to survive him."

The silence that followed was heavy, filled with the weight of the air. A sudden gust of wind swept across the patio, catching the flames of the candles. They flickered, dancing wildly, casting long, distorted shadows of the family against the brick walls of the manor. For a second, the shadow of the empty chair seemed to grow, towers of darkness rising behind it until it looked like a throne.

Then, the sound came.

It wasn't a loud noise. It was a soft, wet *thud*, followed by a dragging sensation. It came from the direction of the oak.

Everyone froze. Marcus’s hand hovered over the gravy boat. Sarah’s glass stopped halfway to her lips.

"It’s just a branch," Julian said, though his voice lacked its usual iron. "The wind."

*Thud. Drag.*

The sound was closer now. It wasn't the sound of wood on grass. It was the sound of something heavy and saturated being pulled across the stone pavers of the patio.

"Julian," Eleanor whispered, her eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the circle of candlelight. "Look."

At the edge of the light, where the grass met the stone, something was moving. A pale, curved shape emerged from the shadows. At first, Julian thought it was a snake, or perhaps a stray root that had somehow broken the surface. But as it slid into the light, he saw the texture. It wasn't skin or bark. It was a grey, porous material, slick with swamp water and tangled with threads of black mold.

It was a finger. A massive, elongated digit that looked like it had been carved from the very wood of the oak, yet it flexed with a sickening, muscular fluidness.

Sarah let out a choked sob, backing her chair away from the table. The legs of the chair screeched against the stone, a sound that seemed to provoke the thing in the shadows.

Another finger appeared. Then a palm. A hand the size of a man’s torso hauled itself onto the patio. It was followed by an arm—a gnarled, twisted limb that looked like a branch but moved like a snake. The "skin" was a transition of textures: where the elbow should be, the bark was thick and protective, but at the wrist, it was translucent, showing the pulsing dark veins of the marsh beneath.

"What is that?" Marcus hissed, stumbling to his feet. "Julian, what the hell is that?"

Julian didn't answer. He couldn't. He watched, mesmerized by the sheer impossibility of the thing, as more of the creature dragged itself out from under the roots of the great oak. It didn't have a face, not in the traditional sense. It had a mass of knot-work and hollows that suggested a head, with two deep, black indentations where eyes should be. 

It moved with a slow, agonizing deliberation, its body a grotesque fusion of human anatomy and ancient flora. Every movement was accompanied by the sound of cracking timber and the squelch of mud. It smelled of deep earth and the sharp, metallic tang of old blood.

The creature reached the edge of the table. Its massive wooden hand gripped the linen cloth. With a sudden, violent jerk, it tore the fabric away. 

Plates shattered. Wine spilled like an arterial spray across the white cloth. The roasted turkey tumbled onto the pavers, forgotten and filthy. 

Eleanor didn't move. She sat perfectly still as the creature loomed over the head of the table. The "head" of the thing leaned down, the black hollows of its eyes inches from her face. It didn't attack. It didn't roar. It simply existed in her space, a physical manifestation of the debt she’d been trying to ignore for thirty years.

"Silas?" she whispered, her voice breaking.

The creature’s chest—a ribcage of interwoven saplings—expanded and contracted with a wheezing sound. It reached out a single, wet finger and touched the empty crystal glass. The glass didn't break. Instead, it clouded over instantly, frosted with a rime of black ice.

"Get away from her!" Julian finally found his voice. He grabbed the carving knife from the floor, his knuckles white around the stag-horn. 

The creature turned. Slowly. Its neck creaked like a ship’s mast in a storm. It looked at Julian, and for a terrifying second, Julian didn't see a monster. He saw the calculation in those black pits. He saw the same cold, proprietary hunger that had been in his father’s eyes every time he’d looked at the estate.

The creature didn't strike at Julian. Instead, it reached for the center of the table, its long fingers wrapping around the silver candelabra. It squeezed. The silver buckled and groaned, the candles snuffed out by the pressure of the damp wood.

Darkness swarmed in, thick and absolute.

"Run!" Marcus yelled. 

Julian felt a hand grab his arm—Sarah—and he surged backward, pulling her with him toward the French doors of the house. He looked back once. In the dying light of the moon, he saw his mother still sitting at the table. She hadn't moved. She was looking up at the creature as if she were receiving a long-lost guest.

"Mother!" Julian screamed.

The creature’s hand descended, not in a blow, but in a caress. It laid a heavy, bark-covered palm on Eleanor’s shoulder. 

They reached the doors and slammed them shut, Julian fumbling with the heavy iron bolt. He leaned his back against the wood, his chest heaving, the carving knife still clutched in his hand. Through the glass, he could see nothing but the shifting shadows of the oak’s branches. 

The patio was silent. The dragging sound had stopped. 

"Is it gone?" Sarah whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of Marcus’s frantic breathing.

"I don't know," Julian said. He looked down at the knife. The blade was coated in a dark, viscous sap that seemed to be eating into the steel, hissing softly.

Suddenly, a rhythmic tapping started on the glass.

*Tap. Tap. Tap.*

It wasn't a branch. It was a heartbeat. The entire house began to vibrate with it—a low, rhythmic thrumming that came not from the air, but from the floorboards beneath their feet.

Julian looked down. Between the cracks in the mahogany threshold, thin, black tendrils were beginning to curl upward. They weren't roots. They were hair-fine filaments, reaching for the warmth of their skin.

"It’s not outside," Julian realized, his horror dawning in the dark. "It’s the house. The house is the tree."

From the dining room, they heard the sound of a single chair being pushed back. 

A woman’s footsteps approached the door. They were heavy, uneven, and wet.

"Julian?" It was Eleanor’s voice, but it sounded like it was being filtered through a throat full of silt. "Open the door, dear. Your father wants to know why you haven't finished your dinner."

The iron bolt moved. Not from Julian’s side. 

The metal groaned as it was turned by hands that no longer possessed the frailty of flesh, and as the door began to creak open, Julian realized that Thanksgiving at Cypress Bend wasn't a dinner—it was a harvest.

The door swung wide, and the scent of rosemary was gone, replaced entirely by the smell of a freshly dug grave.