Page 70 of Sweet Silver Bells
From that wound, thick red vines spilled out. They were wet, veiny tendrils tipped with spines and dripping with a crimson secretion that steamed as it touched the ground.
Hunter gagged.
The vines lashed out, striking faster than he could track. One pierced the undercarriage of a car, lifting it off its wheels and flinging it like a toy. Another impaled a man in a Santa suit, pinning him to a light post where his body twitched and bled into the snow-dusted ground.
People scattered in every direction. Some ran screaming down narrow alleyways, their footsteps lost beneath the rising roar of the shifting trees. Others stood rooted to the spot, eyes wide, trapped in a terror they couldn’t look away from.
A woman grabbed her toddler’s arm and pulled, but the vines had already begun to creep up the child’s boots. They coiled, but hesitated, then slowly unwrapped and recoiled into the earth. The child sobbed but was thankfully unharmed.
The entire town square was transforming. The quaint buildings lining the streets, brick cafés and boutiques with wreaths in the windows, were being overtaken. Ivy brokethrough walls. Thorned vines crawled through shattered glass and pulled mannequins from displays like corpses from coffins. One of them dangled, spinning slowly, a red scarf now coiled like a noose.
The law enforcement vehicle crash seemed so innocent, a dream, compared to this. How the town would ever recover, he didn’t know.
Hunter crouched low and ducked behind a ruined bench, heart pounding. Something brushed his neck. He swatted it away and saw a sprig of holly on his shoulder, its leaves gleaming like metal. Blood oozed from three fresh puncture wounds in his skin.
He bit back a scream and pressed forward. He had to get to Olivia.
She stood now, with her arms resting loosely at her sides and her head tilted back toward the dark sky. Each breath escaped her mouth in soft clouds of steam. There was something different about her expression, something calmer yet distant. Her lips moved in a steady rhythm, forming words meant for something or someone no one else could see. The lights that surrounded her no longer flickered unpredictably. Instead, they pulsed in and out, steady as a heartbeat, perfectly in time with her own.
The garlands and vines moved around her like dancers. Or worshippers.
"Olivia!" he yelled again.
Her head turned slowly, and some recognition finally appeared in those dark eyes. Hunter felt like he was looking into a black hole that he had fallen into and would never be able to come back out of, even if he wanted to.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said, voice dreamy, distant.
“These are people, Olivia. They're dying!”
“No killing during Christmas,” she whispered and nodded, like a child who remembered something that had been forgotten.
A new sound slithered through the cold air, a low and steady creaking that rose and fell like the grinding of ancient wooden gears. Behind Olivia, the Christmas tree shuddered once, then began to move again. This time it did not crawl. It rose. The roots at its base tore free from the frozen soil, unfurling like dozens of crooked legs searching for balance. The trunk swelled and twisted, growing thicker with each groan of wood and snapping branch. One by one, the delicate ornaments burst apart, falling away to reveal what they had hidden: pale bones tangled in dried flowers, shards of brittle hair, and rows of human teeth embedded deep within the bark.
It had a face.
Not a real face, but something that mimicked one—branches bent into eye sockets, strands of tinsel clumped together into a grinning, jagged maw. And it was watching.
Hunter took a step back. “What the hell is that?”
Olivia didn’t answer.
The tree screamed.
It was not a sound meant for ears. It was deep and shrill at once, like every dying animal on Earth screaming from one throat.
Windows exploded.
Light bulbs burst in their sockets.
People clutched their heads, blood running from their noses and ears.
Hunter dropped to the ground. The air was too loud to breathe.
Shhhhhhhh.
There was a hush.
He opened his eyes, and the square, once a cheerful holiday celebration, was now a garden of blood. The fog cleared, and Olivia smiled, radiant, a goddess.
