Page 69 of Sweet Silver Bells
The tree branches whipped at the crowd, catching their victims and wrapping them from head to toe in silken webs spunof pine and pressure. He could see red pooling, blood a dark crimson mixed with the green.
He could not tell if the pine was driving into his skin or if the branches were simply wrapped too tightly around him. The haze pressed harder against his throat and swelled inside him like something alive and angry. It wanted to choke out any words he might have left. It felt like a punishment for daring to speak at all.
He thought her name as if she could hear it.
Olivia. Help. Please.
She was still crying. Her body shook so violently that her knees hit the ground. Something inside her had broken open. She was not ready for this. She was not ready for any of it. And now, the world cracked beneath the weight of her unraveling. He would carry it if he had to.
Is this how it all ends, Sarah?
He knew he had moved on too fast. He could see it now with painful clarity. The blame belonged to him and him alone. He had dragged Olivia out of the forest when he should have left her to its shadows and silence. There had been a terrible comfort in the darkness back then, a quiet promise that wherever his wife had gone, he could follow and disappear alongside her.
But he had refused that surrender. He had insisted on pretending to be a hero because he needed to matter to someone living. He’d needed someone to save so he would not drown in the memory of saving no one at all.
Now, Sarah was not the only one whose soul had tangled with his. He had allowed it to happen again, and he could not decide which shamed him more—wanting it or lying to himself that he did not.
He would fight for his life now because of Olivia. She needed him in ways he did not fully understand. She was a monster, something wild and untamed, maybe even dangerous enough tokill him without meaning to. Yet she was real. She made him real, too.
The thought cut through him, sharp and cold, but it did not leave. He was tired of being the broken man that people pitied and spoke around. He wanted to be something steadier, something good, the way his father had always been for his mom. But Olivia was not his mom. She was not soft laughter in a safe kitchen or quiet weekends spent folding laundry. Olivia was a storm. She was a beast that no one could hold down.
The haze began to lift from his chest. Air filled his lungs again, rough and cold but precious. Around him, the low hum of panic rose into clearer voices. The crowd was waking up. He was still here to hear it.
Was she stopping? Was she pulling back?
“Olivia,” Hunter growled out, but he still couldn’t reach out his hand, the haze still gripping his body despite feeling like each stitch of an invisible binding fabric was individually breaking open, one at a time.
The garland that hung between the streetlamps slithered down to the pavement, taking over the ground and tugging on ankles so that people fell face-first into asphalt, wrapping them in vines like children’s paper chains, tightening but not yet tearing.
“You have to stop. Olivia, you’re killing them all.”
Her face was buried in her hands. Hunter wasn’t sure if she even knew what was happening.
A branch from the Christmas tree thwacked past him, and his stomach leapt.
Fear.
That was good; he could feel fear. His body had the instinct to survive through the haze.
Fog poured into the square without warning, as if someone had dumped dry ice into every storm drain at once. It carrieda strange, unnatural weight that pressed against Hunter’s chest and rooted him in place. Whatever force crackled in the air around him made it impossible to feel the fog on his bare skin. It moved in slow, greedy waves from every corner of the square, thick and wet, clinging to clothes and creeping into hair like the smell of rot.
Within the dense mist, the town’s lights burned with a sickly yellow-green glow, their shapes distorted by something that did not want to be seen. Every strand of Christmas bulbs along the storefronts flickered in fits and starts, struggling to stay alive. Their colors had turned dark and swollen, bruised like dead flesh left too long in the cold.
The garlands coiled tighter around a man’s legs as he screamed for help. They dragged him across the street, his body scraping over the rough pavement. His fingernails caught on the asphalt, tearing away and leaving jagged red smears behind him.
A few people lunged forward to help, but no one reached him in time.
But the vines paused, shivering in place as if confused. The garlands trembled with Olivia’s wavering will, squeezing, but not shredding. His screams turned to sobs. He was still breathing. The spell was shifting.
Hunter stumbled back and nearly fell as his boot caught on a rogue vine that had broken through a storm drain. The air buzzed around him, not with insects but with a kind of electricity, a hum that resonated in his bones and teeth. It felt static, like the anger and wrath his TV would express after its unfortunate burial.
Olivia knelt in the middle of the street, her shoulders trembling. Around her, the asphalt cracked and heaved. From those ruptures, green things were blooming. Not the soft green of spring, but a sickly, hungry color—glossy leaves slick with sap that dripped like saliva.
“Olivia,” Hunter said again, quieter this time, as if volume might shatter her more. “Look at me. Please.”
She didn’t, but her sobs were calming down, her shuddering less violent.
To his left, the Christmas tree at the center of the square stood tall and glittering, a beautiful icon wrapped in delicate silver tinsel. It let out a deep, creaking groan that cut through the quiet night. A second groan followed, louder and more strained. The trunk began to bulge in uneven swells, as if something hidden inside was struggling to push its way out. Without warning, the bark split open—not in a clean line down the center, but in a jagged, pulsing wound that seemed to breathe in the cold air.
