Page 27 of Scary & Bright
“Take care of me!?” She cried, yanking a pillow off the bed and throwing it at me. “You mean you were trying to kill me!?”
It was clear she had exactly zero immediate memory of her experience in the snow, and it was likely she had no idea how close she had come to death. She picked up a candlestick off the nearest bedside table and wielded it like a bat, as if that would be enough to protect her in the off-chance I actually did want to cause her harm.
“Holly, please, please calm down,” I begged, keeping myself entirely still as she continued to back away. “I’m not going to hurt you. If I wanted to, I could have. You’ve been asleep for days.”
She paused in her backtracking, but still held the candlestick over her head, ready to strike. “What the fuck are you talking about? How did I get here?”
At least she was giving me the opportunity to speak.
“I don’t know if you remember, but you ran off into the snow,” I began, trying to speak slowly and calmly. The last thing I wanted was to ignite her fight-or-flight response.
“Yeah, to get away from this place,” she spat, looking me up and down with vicious hatred.
“Unfortunately, you were never going to make it far,” I said apologetically. “This place is at the very bottom of the world, Holly. There’s nothing and nobody within… gosh, hundreds of miles, if we’re being generous.”
I watched as the fighting spark in her eyes burned out, and she lowered the candlestick in defeat. More than anything, I wanted to go to her, to hold her, and to praise her bravery before continuing to let her down.
I took a deep breath. “I went to find you and bring you back, but by the time I found you, you were already—”
“You were who I saw,” she interrupted. “I thought… I thought it was…”
“Santa Claus,” I said, filling in the blank for her. “You asked me if I was Santa Claus.”
Remembering that painful moment was probably worse for me than it was for her. At least, I felt terrible enough to suggest that to be true.
Holly didn’t say a word, and the look on her face told me she was in the process of making peace with the pure hopelessness of the situation. A war still raged within me. One side knew there was no winning and to cut my losses early. That same side urged me to lash out and end her life now before she was doomed to more misery. The other side, though, could only hear Mister Bear’s voice assuring me there could be another way, I just had to take the leap and try. Even if I had all the time in the world, I knew I wouldn’t be able to pick a side, but before I could take a moment to think about what to do next, my heart decided for me.
“You can keep running from me, if you’d like. You can hide. You can hit me, kick me, smack me, whatever you want to do. I wouldn’t blame you for any of it,” I said, my eyes focusing on the wall just past Holly, knowing if I looked directly at her, I risked appearing far too vulnerable. “But at the very least, let me explain what’s going on. Let me explain why you’re here, and the full picture of what’s at stake.”
I could see the gears turning in her mind as she chewed on the corner of her bottom lip and flexed her free hand in and out of a fist. This was my chance—my Hail Mary attempt to build a bridge where there was none. Perhaps this was the best way to pick a path on this uncomfortable, forked road.
If she chose to fight, or if she chose to run, that would be enough to suggest she would never come around to know me, or even be open to trying to know me. It would be painful, and I’d live with regret every day, but I would cut her down right there. I already lived with pain and regret as it was, so what was the harm in adding one more tragedy to the endless stream that was my life?
But if she agreed and let me show her my world and tell her my tale, that could be enough. That could be hope. It could be the single ember to ignite a fire of possibility. All I needed from her was a chance, an opening for me to show her that her being here was not an evil of my own doing, and that my actions were done out of pure necessity. I was pressured to be the legendary darkness so that the light could shine through. That same darkness that was fading now with every moment spent near her.
She stood there for another few moments before placing the candlestick back on the table. I dared not move an inch as she finger-combed her hair and blinked hard. I could sense her emotions like the smell of rain on an overcast day, and I knew she was nervous. The walls built around her were tall and strong, but there was something else. Curiosity… an innate wonder of the castle, and the toys, and maybe—just maybe—of me, as well.
I watched in awe of her movements as she waltzed toward an armchair near the fireplace and lowered herself into it. Still, she said nothing as her eyes moved up to the window that had erupted over my bed that first time I fantasized about her.
“Nice window,” she said with a tone that told me she knew more than I assumed she did. I wasn’t sure which of the toys had told her about my connection with the castle, but it was comforting to know she wasn’t entirely in the dark.
She crossed one leg over the other and took a deep breath. There was so much miraculous about this girl. Her posture, her tone, the way she was able to take control of her actions and her emotions in a way that made me feel small in her presence. Holly was the moon, and I was the tide. All the power I thought I had was taken from me the moment she found even the smallest sliver of confidence.
“Anyway,” she said as her green eyes pierced directly into my soul, “I’m listening.”
14
HOLLY
I had watched enough Animal Planet in my youth to tell me that the last thing you want to do when you’re face-to-face with a wild animal is to run away. Now, waking up beside Krampus may have been the most terrifying experience of my entire life, but the moment he began to plead for me to calm down and listen, he rapidly became less and less intimidating. Besides, there was one thing he said that stuck with me.
If he’d wanted to hurt me, he could have. If he’d wanted to kill me, he could have. There was nothing immediately to tell me how many days had passed, but this creature went out of his way to find me in the snow, bring me back to his castle, set me up in his bed, and keep me warm until my body kicked into gear. None of that felt like the actions of a bloodthirsty beast who was waiting to bury his teeth into my flesh. Especially now that he was practically groveling for a chance to speak. Nothing took away the terror of a beast quite like being asked over and over again to “please calm down” while he stood there like he was embarrassed to have been caught doing something bad. He looked more like a chastened little kid than a deep, dark monster, even with the horns and teeth.
Slowly, as we spoke, my memory of my time in the South Pole came back to me. I recalled the hopelessness I’d felt lying in the snow, how I’d accepted that my death was imminent, and how I believed I deserved every second of it. It was something I didn’t want to experience again. There were mistakes I had made in my life that I wished I could go back and change, but that was an impossibility. So, at the moment I chose to take a seat and hear what Krampus had to say, I made the decision to try. To be open minded, even if I didn’t want to be. Even if it didn’t come naturally. Something had to change. If I was doomed to die in this castle, either at the hands of this anti-Santa Claus or out in the ice and snow by myself, what did I even have to lose?
As I sat down in one of the two chairs by the fire, something caught my eye. Above the bed I’d just woken up in was a window. It was shaped like a circle, absolutely massive, and the outermost ring of it was decorated in a mosaic of multicolored glass. I could imagine a rainbow being projected on the opposite wall on the rare occasion the sun shone through with enough intensity. While the window was beautiful, that wasn’t the interesting part. The interesting part was that it was, in fact, a window.
Tuff’s words echoed back in my head, telling me that there were things Krampus struggled to control, and that his inner turmoil was reflected in the state of the castle.