Page 16 of Sweet Silver Bells
Hunter growled before he dove under Sarah’s legs and stood. She screamed and then playfully slapped him on the side of the head a few times.
“Give a girl some warning.” She laughed as he stepped closer to their noble fir Christmas tree. She had a habit of breaking off little tufts of needles and pressing them to his nose.
“Smell this. Is there a better smell in the world?”
At that moment, he was between her thighs, so he felt that the question was unfair.
Another branch cracked, this time unmistakably, taking Hunter out of the comfort of his past home life and bringing him back to reality. It was so close, like it was right behind him.
“Hello?” he called out. “Who’s there? I can hear you.”
But there was no answer.
There was no noise.
There was nothing but the darkness pressing tighter with every breath.
“Silver bells,”he sang, terrified, tears welling in his eyes. “It’s Christmastime, in the city.”
Crack.
Hunter jolted up and got to his feet. It was right behind him.
He turned, trying to make out what was there in the dark, but all he could gather was an enormous tree, its branches twisted and wrapped around it. Moss protected its bark like a cocoon.
“Is someone behind that tree?”
Nothing.
I’m going crazy, he thought.It’s time for me to resign and become a forty-year-old man who moves in with his parents.
A psych eval would land him in a seventy-two-hour hold, minimum.
Hallucinations due to grief, a failure to thrive.
He looked up at the branches and greenery clinging to the canopy, defiant trees refusing to die or fall. He laughed before the sound turned into a ragged, heavy sob.
“And on every street corner, you hear,” he sang in a whisper.
That’s when he heard another crack. He focused his eyes on the enormous tree, the source, he was convinced, of the sound. Eyes strained, he watched, he listened.
It could have been the darkness playing tricks, but Hunter watched the trunk move, the moss fall, taking tree bark with it, like someone was inside, trying to claw their way out.
4
CHAPTER FOUR.
Hunter was too scared to breathe. Dread seeped through him like a frozen river swallowing the earth beneath it. If this were a movie, he would be staring at the screen, yelling for the main character to run, and Sarah would be screaming right along with him. Now he understood them; he was frozen, useless and helpless.
Not ten feet in front of him, the thick old tree wrapped in vines and moss was shedding its skin. There was no one there, no one hacking away at it with a mallet or a hatchet, but bark was flying out violently, hitting him, cutting into the exposed skin of his face.
Still, he didn’t move.
His mind screamed.
Get out of here, Hunter. Go now!
Instead, he watched. He watched as something broke through the middle of a tree. It looked like a branch, twisting around in a spiral, a drill burrowing through from the inside of the trunk. A crack, a crevice, formed from above and below that branch, growing deeper, the pitch black of horror andhopelessness seeping out, greeting the forest like an old, ancient friend.
