My new home is always Christmas. I wrote a bad poem about moving somewhere always Christmas nearly four years ago for my high school poetry club.

"When the boxes are in the trunk
And I'm long gone, tell yourself I'm there
And when your yellow carpets fill your feet
Look at your empty room with some curtains a bed and a table and a chair
There you will find me, believe me, you just can't see me

Right now I'm away to stay forever
Home at last for me, aboded beside the seas
Adorned forevermore in Christmas trees"

We used to call this house the "Herrman house" - we still call this house the Herrman house, too. It's because it's not ours. It belonged to May Herrman, my half-brother's grandmother on the side of his father, the one that isn't mine. The Herrmans were a humble and small family of German descent that me and my mom seemed inexplicably tied to - even though I shared no blood with these people, I would always end up in this house on Christmases and Thanksgivings. I would be here in that dumb naive reverie where you don't know why you're somewhere but because your mother's here and you don't know how you know these people but because your mother knows them. I understood the difference of blood - that lacking common denominator - seperated me from these people. My brother was the only person of Herrman blood my blood knew.

May was a seamstress and her touch is everywhere. Her work is a elaborate collection of crocheted designs on blankets and quilts emboldened with phrases of love and closeness and fondness of Holiday spoken by fable animals. She died months ago still in this house and is now entombed a ghost providing words through the ones etched with string perhaps decades ago. Kitsch pictureframes holding people I never knew and times I was not alive for pepper the shelves and refrigerator. The voice of a family that was last lively so long ago whispers through nooks, speaking via the creak of midcentury wood paneling and that mealish old rug stench where mildew breathes.

She was so frail in her late years and had to be taken care of by that one son of hers that stayed in the house, Stan. I wanna say that in the past decade it was only her and Stan living here, May growing weaker year by year and Stan taking care of both her and this aging house. He was a simple guy who liked fishing and resold junk on eBay. Stan always seemed sort of sick - at some point his bladder had to be completely removed. I do not know how pissing works after you get this procedure. In a bizarre and tragic turn of fate, he died roughly a month before May due to some sort of intestinal blockage. May read the tea leaves and died therefore, her only caretaker, her son, somehow gone before her.

Stan clearly had plans for the house, stopped suddenly by fate's whim. There are signs of unfinished renovations and almost painted walls all over. May expected death - he didn't. Now I sleep in his room. I sleep under some fishing poles of his that the other Herrmans haven't got around to selling yet.

My first night I slept on a mattress on the floor. The room was not particularly clean; the floor was unmopped, some shelves were coated in dust and cobwebs were hanging from the exposed ceiling joists. I was so exhausted, spiritually, physically (actually just literally because it was getting late) that I was apathetic. I laid down on that only familiar thing - my unbedded mattress with my old sheets still on it - and closed my eyes.

I looked up and saw about seven spiders cozying in the corner wall directly above like mausoleum bugs. Here I realized that this place is full of spiders in about every corner. They congregate like families in the dumb and dry corners of this widowed bedroom and spin miserly disorganized cobwebs with half assed gray silk. They're the sort that are so minute and slender that you only notice them when they're in motion engaging their wicked and long legs. Motionless, they are impossible to see, blending into the common wall imperfections and dust bunnies.

Sure, they're cellar spiders - they don't bite - but come on, that sucks. It felt very bad omen-ish. They soon felt the wrath of my broom, so fragile that they were easily skewered by the dull plastic needles. "That sucks. We have spiders. The new house we are living in has spiders," I wisely thunk. I then wisely thunk about the visceral experience of moving, now in an ostensibly spider free corner.

I thought about my old room and pretended that I was still there. I pretended that the first lamp I put in the corner years ago to make it feel like some sort of home was still warmly shining on my bookshelf. I pretended that my cat was leaving his weird fur residue on all of my garments. I pretended all my friends were on their way right now. I pretended the clean central AC air I took for granted was blowing in and pretended my TV was on. I didn't assume a perspective in my own body or in a specific memory; it was more like I accessed this place that isn't there anymore as an formless observer. The windows no longer showcased that familiar tree shaded parking lot, just some sort of ongoing void that this place was in now, this other world I was accessing where things that are gone go. It was a google maps streetview perfect assembly of the place I wasn't at ever again based on my countless old routines and familiar routes to the kitchen that I still felt and understood so deeply like they were etched into my muscles still for future use.

My perspective shifted to that underused patio - an exit landing, if anything - and all I saw was just that empty space. Looking and feeling I realized that my mental apartment will no longer have those trees because they're shared amongst places that still are. Those trees are for paying tenants and I was just a thinking one. Even in my formlessness, I sat down and exhaled. I watched the new view.

Someone else was watching it with me. Someone real and someone there.

I was immediately transported back to my mattress on that cold floor and ceiling fishing poles from absolute shock - my own, conscious daydream interrupted by a third party. A third party that I did not know in the only place of comfort, memory, and secrecy I still had. Some sort of third party inside of my head, and no, not an intrusive thought or a memory of my mother or that mental version of my cat (he was sitting doll-like, unmoving, fat on my rightmost shelf, not allowed outside). It was a real Visitor. I didn't catch a glimpse but it was entirely happening inside of my head - right? In my head? I know what's happening in my head. I know what was there. It was someone else.

I thought this: That's. Crazy. That. Is. Crazy. I am going crazy. Why am I crazy? Why am I insane? Why am I imagining fake people in my cope dreams of my apartment I loved? What happened to me that turned me into an insane person? Is moving that horrible? Is moving, this unbelievably common human experience, this thing I've done, this thing we all do, really so wildly traumatizing that I am making myself haunted? Am I that fragile?

No. I'm not. I could be a VAGRANT if I wanted. I could BACKPACK for a YEAR if I wanted to. I could LIVE in a STUDIO APARTMENT if I wanted to. This is easy stuff. This is BABY stuff. BABIES move all the time. I am NOT weaker than a baby. I'm NOT letting this one thing, this one past fantasy, this one dream get ruined by a "third party". There's no "someone else". I'm not letting myself convince myself I'm crazy like that. I can ALWAYS return there.

So I did, dozing back into that comfortable dream.

He was waiting for me teeth bared in a yellow and black gingivitis smile and eyes already fixed on mine with pupils screaming the wild cry of a desperate gambler or an opioid addict or a feral animal watching clumsy prey make a fatal slip, sclera capillaries gushing nearly purple as those crimson balmy cheeks seemed almost broken from smiling. He was bearded and fat in a jolly farmer's red flannel and jeans, tattered and soiled, almost decomposed he was, smiling but not alive, gripping a rust skinned pitchfork. There was a second of pure and complete shock that did not wake me up.

Spoken clearly. "Ze ceiling."

He extended his arms far to his sides preparing a dramatic clap and quickly his hands convalesced upon where my head would be and as they connected in the region that felt like could be my jaw or my mind or my eyes they shouted loud and I violently awoke on my feet, like a domino falling in reverse, as if an electromagnet inside my head was switched on, the roof pulling on me and making my mind ring and scream seeing bright things, stars, the ceiling it was pulling, pulling, calling, pulling.

It was so dark inside, dark, like I was still there in that nothing place where things that were go, but an old light flickered on in the hallway, beckoner, casting feeble doorway light through to me. I was still in a dream but somehow here. There were Christmas ornaments spilled on the floor and thick stagnant dust convecting like egg drop soup in the air. My sight panned to the upper wall towards the door where there were dozens of spiders making some same pilgrimage outside the room highlighted by the ancient flicker. I followed them and saw them crawl into a sole piece of drop down ceiling in the hallway - the rest of the rooms sporting exposed ceiling, this one single spot somehow insulated. I was compelled to follow, compelled. I put my arm in first. Another arm gripped onto it and with unruly strength hoisted me into the space.

It was Stan but he was hollow and not there. Maybe him in body only. After pulling me up he barely regarded me, his eyes orange tinted, he was entirely naked, skinny and sick looking. The room was a surprisingly large and regal feeling attic covered in Christmas decorations and tinsel. In the leftmost corner was a pile of dead rotting fish that Stan returned to like a bed and as he slumped into the wet oily pile an outside layer of flies were disturbed and began to fly over him like vultures before returning to pick at the fish, it had to be hundreds of fish, some flies choosing to settle and pick on him too. The smell was violent and offensive, that air of dead seafaring thing being decomposed by alien ocean microorganisms, death salt and mercury haunting all around.

The spiders made their way to the center of the room where that same farmer man sat throned. They crawled all around him, crawling in and out of orifices, peeking out of his eyelids and nostrils as if hiding shy from me. Little elves, alcoholic carpenters of that clumsy silk. Candles were arranged in a ritualistic fashion, lighting the below, the above sparkling with Christmas lights. Cobwebs.

"Welc - *brp* - welcome, child,"

Drunk.

"Welcome to your - *brp* - place of reunion, Holiday, child, we have been closely watching, yes, watching you. A spirit lacking ze Holiday! Yes! Lacking in ze Holiday!!! Zis is ze right house. You must give gifts, yes, we love ze gifts. Stan loves ze gifts too."

Stan was rolling in fish. He was sucking on an empty carton of egg nog like a wild animal.

"It is a place of family, zis place. Watched over only by ze sickly, my sickly children - *brp* - you are a sick one too, child. Sick, sick. Lacking Holiday. Raised without Holiday, I know. Raised in ze clean squalor, you were. Sick. You are in Salvation, Sick One... Sick with ze blood. Sick with ze blood, it is in you. With ze blood and without ze holiday, it is wild to see, yes, without ze holiday, but you will learn - *brp* - it is ze family way, you know. A curse if you will, ha, a curse, but not so bad as your sick. I know your thinking, your, 'I share no blood' ramble, your, your, disconnection, it is part of ze sickness - *brp* - ze SICKNESS that consumes you. You are living ignorant, sick. Your father is a part of ze family. Your great great grandmother was pure Herrman. I am quite serious when I tell you child zat we share a line of blood. You are in your home. You - *brp* - are finally here, and ze sickness that Kills you will leave, yes, if you gift, if you gift. You fucking thing, you, you despise us, you, you fucking - *brp* -,"

A saliva glazed spider flew out.

"- SICK ANIMAL, you SICK ANIMAL, you see only ze sickness here because it is in YOU, you SICK ANIMAL. We must bring you to - *brp* - to ze VETERINARIAN, you SICK ANIMAL. You are thinking you are sad because you have moved? I read you, read you like a fable, child, SICK THING, it follows you, you know it. It follows you and you know. Who is cursed, child?? Who is really cursed?? Fucking animal. Fucking - *brp* - fucking tripping animal. Gift, animal. You will finally learn how to give."

There was a pause as his eyes slowly detached from me. He was retching. He laid back and milky brown bile fell onto his chest. A spider was caught in the waves.

"Ohh, ze yule tide. Ohh. Ohh," he sputtered. "Ohh, ze yule tide. Watch her, Lord, ohh Lord, watch her."

Light from the big star shone in when I woke up. I thought about my dream with the drunk ghost and I considered Holiday. I considered Giving. I found a new picture on my phone I didn't remember taking.