by Jeff Fleischer
My short story “The Midnight Tree,” is out today in the 2021 annual issue of Sandstorm. I have a few more coming out soon.
An excerpt:
I don’t know when people started calling it the midnight tree, but throughout my childhood I never heard it called anything else.
It was an oak tree, one thicker around the middle than any other I’ve seen. Its base spread out like melted candle wax, and some of the lines in the bark looked like they’d run uninterrupted for centuries. The branches were strong enough to hold any of the kids who climbed the tree on warm summer days.