Sergey Lebedev pressed his eye to the pl?ssl eyepiece of his Celestron EdgeHD telescope, adjusting the focus knob to keep track of the alien warship.

  The balcony of his Capitol Hill apartment offered a mediocre view of the cosmos due to the aggressive light pollution of Seattle, so he could not monitor the stars that well. Thankfully, the moon and the ten-kilometer ship looming above it were big enough contrasting targets.

  Inside his apartment, every screen starting with his phone, to his EltiQ tablet, to his old Galasonic TV that has been dead for a few years now collecting dust in the closet, to his smart fridge, to his modem and router, all blared the same distorted and resonant voice.

  "...I'm going to bend you over my knee and… teach ALL OF YOU to love humanity!"

  The Emperor of Earth was speaking to everyone.

  The same corroded voice spoke through every car radio outside, pulsed from every apartment window, somehow, inexplicably buzzed from everything electronic.

  The Astrophysicist had no idea who the Emperor was, but he enjoyed the jibe of his words, loved the idea that humans were space orcs that somehow outwitted, fucked over the far more advanced Wendigos and their animal-predator invasion force.

  Sergey admired the jagged silhouette of the ten-kilometer warship against the gray expanse of Mare Tranquillitatis. He watched the thrusters flare, the ship accelerating.

  "He's de-orbiting," the astrophysicist muttered to himself. "Holy shit. He's actually doing it. Terminal velocity vector locked.”

  How was the Emperor going to survive this?! Was this a suicide run? It couldn't be, the words weren't that of a martyr. The Emperor sounded like he was going to keep going, to further screw with the aliens, as if flying their capital ship into the moon wasn't enough…

  Sergey watched as the massive warship dove into the lunar surface like a dagger.

  The impact was silent and the brilliant flash blinded him momentarily, making off-colored stars and fractals dance in his eye, his head throbbing.

  Sergey recoiled, blinking away purple spots, then jammed his eye back to the lens. The thermal bloom was massive, but as it faded, he saw the aftermath.

  The crash site was a burning crater of liquid plasma and…

  "That's definitely not normal regolith displacement," Sergey muttered. "The ejecta pattern is wrong. It’s moving... organically. What… what the hell is that?"

  He watched on, his migraine intensifying.

  "It’s not dissipating," Sergey whispered. "The debris cloud isn't following ballistic trajectories. Whatever it is… it’s… spreading out."

  From the burning crater, a gargantuan, freakish other-ness bloomed.

  It looked like a tree, yet it was wrong, less like a physical thing and more like a shadow-inverse silhouette. It was darker than the black of space and also burned bright, making him squint, screwing with his eyes and head.

  The explosion-born thing sucked in the ambient starlight and the sun’s reflection off the regolith. It was a jagged fractal, and in parts… looked aggressively biological in its geometry.

  The longer Sergey stared at the inverted tree, the worse the sharp, needle-like pain spiked behind his eyes.

  Stop looking. His brain warned him. This is probably an information hazard. Look away.

  He couldn't.

  The inverted "tree" grew in real-time. Massive and nebulous roots lashed out across the grey plains of the Mare Tranquillitatis. They moved like oil spilling through water as they sought purchase on the vacuum itself.

  Sergey adjusted the declination, moving the telescope to the edge of the unnatural bloom.

  His heart hammered against his ribs. He knew the map. He knew the terrain of the moon by heart.

  Sergey knew the limits of his equipment. He knew that even with the best atmospheric conditions, the diffraction limit of his aperture meant he couldn't resolve anything smaller than a crater a kilometer wide.

  He couldn't see the American flag. He couldn't see the descent stage of the Eagle. The Apollo 11 landing site was just a set of coordinates to him.

  0° 40′ 26.69″ N, 23° 28′ 22.69″ E.

  The black and inverted roots raced on, spreading close to the sacred site.

  "No," Sergey hissed. Bile rose in his throat. "Don't go there. Don’t eat our lander!"

  The writhing inverted darkness crept across the craters. It ignored the lack of atmosphere. It ignored physics, moved with unnerving leaps.

  It headed straight for the coordinates of Tranquility Base.

  He imagined the historic site. The spindly gold-foil legs of the LEM. The TV camera. The footprints left in the dust since 1969. He couldn't see them. He felt their impending decimation. The shadow-roots reached the approximate area. They curled around the site like fingers closing over a marble.

  The pain in Sergey's head intensified as he squinted at the coordinates of the lunar lander. The headache shifted from a spike to a roar. It felt like static was being injected directly into his optic nerve. The geometry of the unnatural tree was wrong. It radiated colors that he had no name for. It folded in on itself with angles that shouldn't exist and branches that went in instead of out.

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  "What the fuck are you?" Sergey gasped, concerned that the contamination from the destruction of the alien ship would consume the entire moon at this rate.

  The black and not-black infection pulsed. A dark and necrotic bruise spread across the moon’s face. It beat with a faint rhythm that made Sergey’s vision swim, his eyes watering.

  The sheer scale of the event overwhelmed him. Humanity had just punched a god in the face only to have something eldritch crawl out of the wound.

  Had the Emperor of Earth just awakened Cthulhu sleeping inside the moon? Were they all fucked now?

  He was unable to tear his eyes away from the eyepiece until he felt ill, broken, sheared by the roots of the inverted tree that somehow reached out to him, infested his thoughts.

  Sergey slumped back into his plastic patio chair, finally looking away from the telescope.

  The night sky spun overhead. The inverted tree seemed to expand through him. It filled his mind and pressed down on him.

  He passed out on the balcony with a pained groan, eyes closing as his brain started to boil from within.

  Sergey Lebedev stood on the Moon.

  The silence of space pressed against his ears. The grey dust beneath his fuzzy slippers felt like powdered ash. He had no idea how he was even breathing and realized that this was a dream.

  Just a stupid dream his mind created from staring at the shear in reality for three hours.

  Ahead of him stood the Lunar Module Eagle. Gold foil gleamed in the harsh and unfiltered sunlight. The foil was peeling.

  Something… rotting and wrong lay underneath, like metal fused to wood fused to… writhing flesh.

  "Houston," a voice suddenly crackled inside his skull. "Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has... landed."

  The voice didn't travel through sound waves as there was no atmosphere on the moon. It vibrated directly in Sergey's mind.

  He turned. A figure in a bulky and white A7L pressure suit stood there. The name tag read ARMSTRONG.

  "Neil?" Sergey asked, speaking without sound.

  "The Eagle has landed," the figure repeated, staring at the Earth hanging in the black. The voice slowed down, warped like a record left in the sun.

  “You died in 2012, Neil…” Sergey let out. “You know, I always wanted to talk to you, to wonder what it was like for you to stand out here, to look at every human on Earth above you…”

  "That's one small step for... a ghost. One giant leap for... the abyss,” Neil stated with a static-warped voice.

  The astronaut turned to face Sergey fully.

  The gold visor of his helmet was cracked. Through the fissure, Sergey saw TV static. Glitching digital snow formed the vague shape of a man who had been dead for over a decade. A smile woven from colorful flickers appeared and vanished.

  "The surface is... fine and powdery," the static-voice buzzed. "I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It adheres like... powdered charcoal. Like soot."

  Neil raised a gloved hand and pointed. Sergey turned.

  The dead astronaut pointed toward the horizon behind them where the inverted-shadow-tree loomed. It was infinitely tall. Its branches raked the violet stars out of the sky, dove into elsewhere, reached into the abyss and pulled something ghastly from its innards.

  Sergey’s mind wobbled sideways as he looked at the liminal tree blossoming on the moon with two and five dimensional edges. He looked back at the dead astronaut, blinking tears away.

  "It has a stark beauty all its own," Neil’s voice pulsed in Sergey’s head. "Like the high desert of the United States. But it's changing, kid. Can't you hear it? Magnificent... desolation."

  “Yes,” Sergey let out. “It is pretty freaky, ain't it? What will happen to us next, Neil?”

  "We are not alone in the universe," the ghost said. The static in his visor swirled violently. "There is... kzzzzhhh… an alien fleet in orbit.”

  “I've been watching them,” Sergey agreed. “Will they retaliate?”

  “Not openly…” Neil replied. “Not like… her… kzhhhh… She is coming.”

  “Who?”

  “The Jolly Butcher."

  Sergey blinked, trying to make sense of Neil’s words.

  "The Great Coniferous Conversion looms," The astronaut's static-face shifted, new words stitched together from his famous lunar broadcast. It resolved into an image of pine tree branches covered in decorations and flashing stars. "Unlike the Front… e… na… chii… Wen.. di.. gos… She doesn't want slaves, doesn't feed on fear. She wants to turn us all… into festivus…"

  Neil took a step toward Sergey. The movement was jerky, like stop-motion animation with missing frames.

  "I am at the foot of the ladder," Neil intoned. "The LEM footpads are only depressed in the surface about... one or two inches. But the roots go deeper. The bells go deeper."

  "What bells?"

  "Listen," Neil hissed.

  A low and rhythmic tolling vibrated through the lunar regolith.

  "I'm going to step off the LEM now," Neil said.

  His suit began to bulge from within.

  "Neil?" Sergey backed away.

  "It's a very simple matter to hop around," the ghost said. His voice distorted into a terrifying, eerie carol. "Hop. Hop. Hop."

  The white pressure suit expanded. It stretched like a balloon. Lumpy shapes pushed against the fabric from the inside. They were shaped like… boxes. Wrapped gifts with sharp corners pressed against the material.

  "Beautiful view," the ghost gurgled. "Is that... tinsel?"

  Green needles erupted from the joints of the suit. Red ribbons burst from the life-support backpack.

  "Neil!"

  "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky," the ghost whispered. “It’s up to you now.”

  The visor shattered outward.

  A torrent of silver bells, festive decorations and pine branches and needles poured from within. The suit ballooned to the size of a boulder. Something massive and jolly writhed inside, getting bigger with each passing moment. Roots ripped through Neil’s boots, digging into the lunar regolith.

  The sound of Christmas carols entwined with bells began pulsing through the air. The words being sung by a girl were wrong, praising the Slayer and raving of the Leviathan, chorusing of the ever-watchful Wormwood Star that ended all life and bloomed life anew.

  "Merry... See-Mass… one… and all," the thing inside the suit groaned.

  The suit exploded and massive Christmas tree branches whipped at Sergey, sending him flying backwards, his mind tearing at the seams.

  Sergey woke up with an undignified yelp. He flailed his arms at a pine tree that turned out to be his telescope, nearly swatting the entire thing off the balcony.

  "Bells," he gasped, grabbing the precariously wobbling telescope. His heart felt like it was attempting to escape his chest. "Fucking bells."

  His phone suddenly buzzed against his thigh in his pants. It vibrated with a persistence that pulled the astrophysicist back to reality. He fumbled it out of his pocket.

  It was the "Cascadia Furs & Science Enthusiasts" private telegram group.

  Sergey swiped the screen with his thumb, blinking blearily at the notification.