Page 5 of Never Kiss a Krampus
She shook her head and moved towards the door. Halfway there, she paused. “Your grandmother used to say that Christmas wasn’t about the decorations or the presents. It was about hope, and about believing in things that seemed impossible.”
“Gran also believed in Santa Claus until she was twelve.”
“And look how happy she was. Don’t lose that hope, Noelle. It’s the most valuable thing you have.” Then she was gone, the jingle bells ringing cheerfully behind her.
Let it go. Let it go.Everyone kept saying it. Mr. Grinchly, the bank, my friends, now Mrs. Haversham. Maybe they were right. Maybe I should just start over somewhere else, without the crushing weight of expectation and tradition and my grandmother’s voice telling me that Christmas magic was real.
My phone buzzed. A text message from the bank.
First National Bank: This is a reminder of your upcoming appointment on 12/30 at 2:00 PM. Please confirm attendance.
I typed back:Confirmed.
Christmas magic. Right. What I needed was a miracle—and I only had three weeks to find one.
I locked the phone and shoved it in my pocket. The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of no customers and busy work. I priced Mrs. Haversham’s ornaments, marking them higher than I probably should have because they deserved it, because they were special. I rearranged the greeting card display. I made a third cup of coffee and immediately poured it down the sink because my hands were already shaking.
At five o’clock, I flipped the sign to “Closed” even though my posted hours said six. Nobody was coming anyway.
I grabbed my keys and headed upstairs to my apartment. My little living room greeted me with its familiar chaos—Christmas decorations on every surface, fairy lights framing the windows, throw blankets in festive patterns covering my secondhand furniture. The fireplace crackled with fake flames because a real chimney would violate about seventeen building codes.
My cozy little home—that I was probably going to lose in the new year. I went to my tiny bedroom with more fairy lights sprinkled in the lace that draped the windows and the canopy of the bed, and changed out of my festive sweater and skirt into leggings and an oversized hoodie, the uniform of the quietly desperate. Jingle Bells, my fluffy white cat, wound around my ankles demanding his dinner, then turned up his nose at the kibble I offered, as if he could sense the cheap store brand.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I told him, stroking his soft fur. “I know it’s us against the world, but we’re broke.”
His only reply was a twitch of his tail before he jumped onto the bed, curling into a disgruntled ball. I wished I could join him. Instead, I returned to the kitchen. The bottle of peppermint schnapps sat in the back of my freezer, a gift from last Christmas that I’d been saving for a special occasion.
Close enough.
I poured a healthy measure into a candy cane striped mug and took a sip. Then another. The peppermint burned going down, but it was a pleasurable burn, and I carried the mug with me as I paced the length of my living room, the faux-firelight flickering over my worn-out rug.
Locked away in some attic…Mrs. Haversham’s words suddenly popped into my head. Her ornaments were valuable. What if there was something similar in Gran’s attic? I’d only been up there a handful of times since she’d passed. It was dusty and cramped and full of the ghosts of Christmases past. It felt like trespassing.
But what did I have to lose? Hope? I’d already run out of that.
I added another measure of schnapps to my mug and carried it out onto the landing, then took a deep breath and opened the narrow door that led to the attic stairs. I climbed them, mug in one hand, already feeling the schnapps buzz at the edge of my thoughts. Dust motes danced in the weak light from the single bulb I pulled on, illuminating a space crammed with too many memories. Too many boxes of Gran’s things I hadn’t been ready to sort through.
I took a long drink of schnapps and set the mug on a relatively stable box. Then I started digging.
Most of it was junk. Old newspapers used as packing material. Moth-eaten linens that had once been beautiful. A truly alarming number of plastic snowmen in various states of decay. I pushed past boxes labeled “Christmas 1987” and “Winter Inventory ‘95,” my grandmother’s neat handwriting making my chest ache.
Boxes gave way to old furniture—a Victorian-era display case missing half its glass panels, a coat rack shaped like a reindeer, a mannequin wearing what appeared to be a Santa costume from the 1950s. The costume was complete with a genuine beard, which was somehow more disturbing than the plastic alternative.
In the far corner, underneath a sheet so dusty it had turned grey, I found a trunk. An actual dark wood and iron trunk, the kind you saw in movies, the kind that looked like it might have sailed across the Atlantic with someone’s great-great-grandparents. I pulled off the sheet—immediately regretting it as dust filled my lungs—and knelt in front of it.
The ornate lock was decorated with embossed designs that looked like… I leaned closer. Vines and holly leaves, but with strange, sharp angles that weren’t quite festive. In the center was a symbol I didn’t recognize—a sort of twisted knot, like an infinity sign having a very bad day.
I tried the latch. Locked. Of course it was locked. Why would anything be easy?
I sat back on my heels and took another sip of schnapps. The trunk sat there, silent and mysterious, probably full of more broken ornaments and forgotten dreams. But Mrs. Haversham’s words echoed in my head.Sometimes magic happens when you need it most.
I really, really needed some magic right now.
I reached out and touched the lock again. It was cold, even colder than it should be in the cool attic. The metal seemed to hum under my fingers, vibrating with something that felt almost alive. And the lock clicked open.
CHAPTER 3
I’ve had too much schnapps,I thought as I jerked my hand back.Locks don’t open themselves.But my hand shook as I carefully opened the lid, releasing the scent of old paper and dried herbs and winter air.
