The Last Christmas On Earth

James immediately realized that it would take weeks for the garden to get back on its feet. Although in those days of December the climate was practically the same as in the summer, there were no ideal conditions for gardening. In fact, lately the wind was blowing mainly from the sea, making the air too salty, as well as hot and humid, and from day to night, there were really consistent temperature changes. At least two-thirds of the plants he had already checked up had definitely gone, he looked doubtfully at the few that he had mercifully splinted the trunk and judged that if he managed to make half of them survive, it would be a true miracle. He was thinking resignedly that year he would have to find a different location for the fir tree when suddenly he felt an intense gaze pointed at the back of his neck. An alarm bell rang in some remote corner of his consciousness giving him a shiver down his spine. Looking at the ground he spotted the shadow of the person silently appearing behind him, the blood shuffled in his veins because his arm was suspended in mid-air just above his head, ready to hit him with his own spade. James promptly rushed forward with a somersault to get out of the path of the spade and jumped to face the enemy, but instead, astonished he found Harry. The boy was staring at him with a piercing gaze, but completely blank. James had the impression that he was into a kind of trance. A slight tremor shook his lower lip, a thin trickle of blood had come out of his right nostril and was dripping onto the yellow t-shirt.

"Harry ..." he tried to call him gently, but he kept staring at him.

"Harry," James repeated, troubled. He moved to his side to talk to him in the ear, raising his voice a little, but the boy's eyes didn't follow him. While staring off into space, his lower lip leaned further and began to tremble a little harder, an intense shudder began to shake him from head to toe as his father looked at him powerless, unable to decide if and how to intervene.

James recalled that he read that waking up a "normal" person in those conditions could produce disastrous consequences in his psyche, so he thought that doing it on his son could even be more devastating. Unexpectedly, just when he was about to give in to panic, his son was shaken by a stronger tremor and immediately stopped shaking.

"Daddy," he exclaimed, putting him in focus as if he had just woken up, and James started breathing again. "Harry... are you not feeling well?"

"Of course not, I'm fine, why do you ask?"

"So what happened to you?"

"Nothing, what should have happened?"

"You're bleeding from your nose," James informed him, wiping it with a handkerchief, then tipped his head back to stop the bleeding. When he raised his head he noticed a kind of small scar behind his ear and he was surprised, he did not remember that Harry had ever been hurt at that point.

"I didn't notice," said Harry, taking the handkerchief from his hand.

"What do you need the spade for?"

"The spade? Ah yes, you forgot it in the kitchen when you came to drink and I brought it back to you ... "the boy replied letting it fall to the ground," ... but why do you keep staring at me like that?"

"Nothing important, forget it. Have you already finished assembling the model?"

Harry shook his head and became absorbed again, and James had the feeling that he was leaving again.

"... Harry?" He called worried.

"I'm sorry for your creatures, I know how much you care about them," the boy said, calling the plants as his father usually call them. "Do you think you will be able to cure them?" He asked, getting down to lovingly caress a battered plant.

"Trying does not cost anything, does it?" Answered James using what was now their catchphrase. He smiled slightly, but Harry got up without answering and started looking very far away with a very serious expression printed on his face. Harry and James stood there for a few minutes, side by side looking at the expanse of sunflowers that covered the entire side of a nearby hill, then James saw that Harry seemed to be completely recovered and so he picked up the gardener's toolbox moving to the next flowerbed.

"Dad..."

"What's up?"

"I haven't told you a lie, I don't really remember anything!"

"You already told me, and I told you I believe you," James assured him, looking him straight in his eyes to convince him that there was nothing to worry about. "Now I have to continue a little further with the plans, then we'll go and buy your glasses," he added, taking a step.

"Dad, I'm scared!" Harry suddenly exclaimed in a voice so distressed that it shocked James, his hand unintentionally opened, dropping the toolbox.

"And what should you be afraid of?" He asked distressed.

"I don't know, I just know that I had strange dreams. At first, they were fun because I was flying and I could go through things like a ghost, then suddenly everything turned blue and my dreams have become very ugly, but I just can't remember them ... I don't remember anything. I woke up and my knees were scratched, but they didn't hurt and after a while, they were already healed" he said.

"Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you dreamed that too, maybe you were just scared about something and ..." hypothesized James perplexed, but he couldn't finish his speech because the boy started to get excited.

"I wasn't wrong!" He shouted vehemently. "So it's not true that you believe me! Look at my knees!" He added angrily and James obeyed. He noticed that on his knees there were small crusts similar to the ones of a fall of a few days ago, but he knew well that in the previous days Harry did not fall.

The boy started walking back and forth repeating that same sentence obsessively, James was silent because he knew from his experience that he had to let his son calm down alone.

And in fact, after a couple of minutes Harry calmed down, stopped and looked at his father. "I'm afraid that it will happen again!" He confessed with a voice so frightened as to inspire terror and tenderness in his father at the same time. Too often he forgot that despite being almost sixteen, Harry was a little more than a child, and like all children, he had his fears.

"It won't happen again, I promise," he whispered firmly in his ear, hugging him tightly.

Eve opened the door of the clinic and Toby ran wagging his tail to lick Dr. Parker, intent on studying a map hanging on a wall, the atlas was painted in china ink on sheepskin and was so old and discolored that looks like an ancient treasure map. It was a representation of the world dating back to a long time ago, the outlines of the sourfaced lands were painted unusually and in the center of the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans the mythical islands of Atlantis and Mu stood out. Eve locked the door with three turns.

"You're late, patients will be coming soon," Adam pointed out as he pulled away from the map, then he rewarded the dog's impetuous request for affection with a couple of careless caresses and he rolled happily on the carpet to show his belly. Eve did not answer, hung her bag and her coat on the coat rack and let herself fall, sighing on a chair in the waiting room. She stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, then began turning a velvet jewelry box between his fingers.

"You're late," Dr. Parker repeated, waiting for her justification, he was nervous because, in the end, he had to deal with Mrs. Murphy, his rotting Kit Kat stink was still lingering in the clinic.

"I'm very sorry, but today the daily argument with James lasted longer than usual," Eve argued. Without replying, Dr. Parker sat down on the chair in front of her and questioned her, staring at her, deeply. In response, she handed him the velvet pouch and encouraged him to open it. He rummaged inside with two fingers and pulled out a metal ball, looked at it against the light and smiled because in what had begun as a really bad day at least one thing seemed to be going right.

"I keep wondering how you could have been right even this time," Eve said.

"We simply got lucky," the doctor taunted, adjusting his bow, which matched with his shirt.

"Don't be humble, luck is not part of your repertoire."

"You also know how many people come here to be treated for sinusitis or chronic headaches without the slightest suspicion that they are caused by these little objects, which the Greys graft into their cavities and people doesn't even know about it.Getting one was easy, and once we applied it to the boy the game was done. Considering that the Greys always return to visit the same abductees, it was foreseeable that with this transmitter on him sooner or later Harry would have fallen into their hands," he explained, pleased with his genius.

"Sooner or later? We had only this one occasion, and almost those two in the woods didn't..." Eve began to mutter. Knowing where she was going to finish, he immediately interrupted her. "Cut it out! I already told you a thousand times that I only came up with this plan in order to have a way out in case something goes wrong. We have all the credentials to get close to the end without any problem, and you know it well, but if we need them now thanks to Harry we have all their knowledge available. As for the unwelcome presence of the Men in Black, you must instead thank Abel, "he replied, annoyed by her complaints," she has not been able to keep them away."

"Then you also believe that those two were agents ..." she asked with surprise.

"I see no other explanation, and in any case, I prefer not to think about it. Whoever they were, now they are no longer in a position to harm us," he cut short. "How is it going with your husband?" He then asked in a slightly accommodating tone to change the subject.

"It gets worse every day," she informed him.

"You have to wait a little longer," Adam encouraged, taking her face in his hands in a rare movement of affection. She returned with a tender, fleeting glance and immediately snatched back. "You speak well, but you're not the one who lives in that house. Every day spent there gets heavier and heavier, and the more time passes, the more futile the reason we are doing this seems to me... so much that sometimes I'm afraid I almost forgot about it," she murmured, becoming thoughtful.

"So I am going to remind you what's the reason: what do you think would be our fate if someone discovered who we really are?" Replied the doctor, changing his expression.

"Don't treat me like a fool, do you think I don't know?" Eve replied annoyed.

"Anyway, at this point it is also useless to discuss it, whether you want it or not, we are at the last crossroads ... and in any case, it is not said that all this will really matter."

"What does it mean?"

"I just spoke on the phone with Abel, he told me that scientists are very pessimistic. In this remote village we live like in a cocoon, but nature has begun to rebel against mankind a long time ago.

Every day there is a new catastrophe and it seems that time is running out, and even though we have played our cards well up until now, we have nothing concrete in our hands yet."

"But what will happen to the Earth? And when will this happen?"

"I don't know, Abel couldn't be more precise. There are probably only a few days left, after which there will be no payback or second chances."