In her room, perched on her bed, Anne tediously peeled back the layers. Had Rachel really thought this far ahead? She had never been close to her, especially after what happened in July. Why would she decide to leave her a gift now? Was it a final parting, a final remedy for a life that was lived in the recesses of wickedness?
As her fingers pulled back the paper, she knew there was no gift that could assuage her cruelty, could save her soul from the torments she must be facing. Lives are filled with mistakes—but Rachel’s had been filled with fiendish feats performed with remarkable malevolence too filthy to be wiped clean.
When the paper was removed, she studied the metal object in her hands. A bell sat in her hands, a rusty red color. She placed a hand over her mouth, shaking. The bell was familiar. She’d seen it once before but had thought nothing of it. She’d thought it nothing more than her overactive imagination mixing trauma and Christmas together.
But here it was, real in all ways. It was covered in scratches as if someone’s fingernails had dug away until the rusty metal underneath peeked through. She looked closer, leaning in to see a hooded girl carved on the front of the bell, remarkable detail embossed in the surface. She looped a finger through the twine, flipping the ornament between her fingers to examine it closer. As the bell twirled between her fingers, rotating, she noticed that the back didn’t match the front. On the back side of the ornament, a message was carved.
And when she read the words carved in the festive adornment, a foreboding gloom drowned her until she was gasping for air. A dread like she’d never felt swept through her veins, clawing at her skin until she could scarcely remember who she was. She choked on sobs, crumpling to the ground. A ringing in her brain drowned out all her awareness.
As she looked once more at the words, she knew she wasn’t imagining it. For where words such as Noel or Happy Holidays or Good Tidings should have been, a dire warning of the most menacing kind was clawed into the surface of the metal. She knew who it was from. She knew what it meant. She just didn’t know what the consequences would be.
But when her eyes finally unlocked from the carved words, she saw it. Across the bedroom, near the corner. And as her heart beat wildly, words frozen in her throat, she knew that she wasn’t actually safe at all . . . and that the sinister occurrences were probably only beginning.
