“He brought us a necklace and golf clubs,” I replied, pulling two standard gifts out of thin air. “We’re both really excited.”
Bay made a face. “That sounds boring.”
“You’ll change your mind when you’re older,” Landon said, picking up Bay’s hand so he could study it. Resting on his, it looked downright tiny. “What else did you ask Santa for?”
“Peace on Earth and good will toward men.”
I pursed my lips at the rehearsed answer. “Really? How … magnanimous of you.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I really asked for it,” Bay said. “I want people to stop fighting. All people. So, I want peace on Earth. I told Aunt Tillie what I wanted and she said it was possible, and she always tells the truth.”
It seemed little Bay was still a bit naïve. She hadn’t caught on to Aunt Tillie’s shenanigans yet. Still, I knew exactly what she meant in regard to fighting. I shifted my eyes to her father. He was my father, too, of course, but he was more her father than mine.
“Your next Christmas will be better,” I promised, swallowing the lump in my throat. “At the time, you won’t think so. Years from now, when you’re old like us, you’ll look back on it as one of the best Christmases ever.”
Bay brightened considerably. “Do you really think so?”
“I really know.”
“Okay.” Little Bay patted Landon’s knee before hopping off the couch. “I need to go to the bathroom. I’ll be back.”
“Okay,” Landon called after her. “We’ll be here.”
“Not quite,” Aunt Tillie countered, shaking her head. “You have somewhere else to be.”
I furrowed my brow, confused. “And where is that?”
“Another Christmas celebration.”
I opened my mouth to ask what she was talking about, but the room was already shifting, the Christmas from long ago gone and replaced by another. I recognized this one right away and couldn’t stop my smile.
“Oh, now this is a better memory.”
This travesty – or whatever it appeared to be – was officially looking up.
I think being an elf would be a great job. You get to dress up in leggings and cute shoes year round, you can have pet reindeer and there’s never a shortage of cookies. What’s not to like?
– Clove, 10, explaining what she wants to be when she grows up
Five
I recognized downtown Hemlock Cove right away, the overabundance of Christmas decorations serving as a fun reminder of holiday celebrations in my hometown. I slid a look to Aunt Tillie, excited despite myself.
“Are we about to see Sugar?”
Aunt Tillie shook her head. “Not quite yet. You have something else to do first.”
It bothered me – and not just a little – that Aunt Tillie had seemingly cast herself as tour guide in this little fantasy. Our previous interactions with her in these worlds she created hadn’t been remotely like this.
“What are we supposed to do first?” Landon asked.
“Visit an old friend.” Aunt Tillie’s smile was mischievous. “You’re not quite done with the previous Christmas celebration. You need to visit one more person before we move on.”
I was instantly suspicious. “Who? By the way, if you say it’s Mrs. Little and you have something mean we’re supposed to do to her, I’m totally going to find an empty booth in the diner and wait this out instead of participate.”
“If you try to wait it out you’ll never get out.” Aunt Tillie said matter-of-factly. “You already know the rules of the game, Bay. You can’t change them now.”
“Yeah, but we’re not playing the same game,” I reminded her. “Before, in the fairy tale book, we had to make it to the end of the story and learn hard lessons about ourselves before escaping. This is something different. You said this wasn’t about teaching us anything.”
“What I said was that it was about punishing you for being a selfish little pain in my posterior,” Aunt Tillie clarified. “I didn’t say you wouldn’t learn anything.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What is it exactly that you’re trying to do?”
“Save Christmas.”
Aunt Tillie’s answer was so simple I couldn’t stop myself from staring. “Is Christmas in danger?”
“I guess you’ll have to finish playing the game to find out,” Aunt Tillie replied. “As I said earlier, you have to play the game to get credit for the win.”
“You didn’t say it that way,” Landon argued, frowning as he smoothed the front of his coat. “It was bright red, puffy arms making him look wider than should be possible given his muscular frame. “What’s up with the wardrobe choices, by the way? Can we put in requests for something less … tacky?”
“I’ll have you know I only pick out items that flatter,” Aunt Tillie countered. “You, for example, have a puffed-out ego. You need a puffed-out jacket to go with it.”
Landon heaved a sigh. “I should have seen that coming.”
“You definitely should have,” Aunt Tillie agreed. “Now, you two need to take a side trip while I … um … run an errand.”
Run an errand? This was the weirdest Aunt Tillie world yet. “You’re running errands at the same time you’re torturing us in your brain’s version of the North Pole?”
Aunt Tillie bobbed her head without hesitation. “You’re not my only customers.”
Something she said earlier dinged in my head. “Thistle and Clove,” I muttered. “You have them in different versions of this game, don’t you?”
“They’re playing their own games, but they’re no less important than the one you two are playing,” Aunt Tillie replied. “I wasn’t joking about you learning something while you find your Christmas spirit.”
I balked. “We never lost our Christmas spirit. We made a mistake when we thought we wanted to spend Christmas alone. There’s a difference.”
“And yet you still haven’t learned what that difference is,” Aunt Tillie chided. “You need more punishment to do that.”
I blew out a sigh, frustrated. “Fine. Will we eventually meet Thistle and Clove in this world?”
“Anything is possible.”
I opened my mouth to bark at her, something harsh on the tip of my tongue. Landon stopped me with a hand on my arm and an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“Where do you want us to go?” he asked, wrapping his fingers around my wrist to keep me still.
“You need to visit Terry,” Aunt Tillie replied. “He’s part of your Christmas story, although you won’t see why right away.”
I knit my eyebrows, confused. “This is the same Christmas we saw in your house, right?”
“Yes, but like you, not everyone had a merry Christmas that year.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I pressed.
“Then I suggest you visit Terry and find out,” Aunt Tillie suggested. “Don’t forget, he lives in a different house now. Do you remember his old house?”
I racked my brain and nodded. “On Plum Street, not far from the playground.”
“That’s right.” Aunt Tillie tilted her head to the side, as if listening to something only she could hear. “I really need to check on your cousins. Apparently Thistle isn’t taking things nearly as well as I expected.”
“How well did you expect her to take them?”
“Let’s just say I searched high and low for a Christmas story to fit her needs and the only thing close I could come up with is Black X-Mas,” Aunt Tillie replied. “I had to make some … tweaks … for her. I don’t think it’s going over well.”
I feigned amusement. “Well … have a good time.”
“I definitely will.”
Aunt Tillie blinked out of existence, as if she’d never been there, and I couldn’t stop myself from scanning the empty town square for a sign of her before speaking.
“This is weird.”
“Really?” Landon arched a confrontational eyebrow. “What was your first clue?”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” I warned. “This isn’t my fault.”
“Which seems to mean you think it’s my fault,” Landon said. “I’m not sure how you can pin this one on me.”
“You’re the one who suggested we spend Christmas alone,” I muttered under my breath, pointing myself in the direction of Chief Terry’s former house.
“Hey, I didn’t know how important Christmas was to Aunt Tillie. I never would’ve suggested it had I known. You did know, but you didn’t say anything. I think that means this is your fault.”
“Oh, well, good.” I huffed. “I’m glad to see that we’ve finished the blame game for the day.”
“You started it.”
“And I didn’t mean it,” I shot back. “It slipped out. I’m simply … frustrated.”
Landon’s expression softened as he captured my hand and fell into step with me. “Bay, we’re in this together. This isn’t the first time we’ve been trapped in … well, whatever we’re dealing with here. We’ll get through it. We always do.”
His words warmed me even as something he said tripped my recognition. “Except this isn’t the same as before, at least not all the way,” I noted. “Aunt Tillie said that Thistle and Clove were trapped in their own stories.”
“I heard her. What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know. We were living multiple stories in the fairy tale world.”
“If I turn into a beast again I’m totally going to melt down.”
I squeezed his hand, amused. “That turned out okay. I recognized you.”
“Yeah, which still dumbfounds me,” Landon admitted. “But let’s go back to what you were saying. Do you think Clove and Thistle are trapped in this story with us?”
I gave the question serious thought before answering. “No. I think Aunt Tillie is running parallel punishments. You heard her. She said she wanted to send Thistle into Black X-Mas.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a terrible horror movie set at an old house – I think it was a sorority house, if I’m not mistaken – and all these weird things start happening,” I explained. “Eventually you find out the former owner’s son is still hanging around, only he’s yellow from lack of exposure to the sun and living in the walls of the house. He only pops out at night to kill people.”
Landon blinked several times in rapid succession. “Do you really think Aunt Tillie sent Thistle there?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I replied. “The thing is, Aunt Tillie never makes up anything from scratch. She always incorporates bits as inspiration. Even though she wrote her own fairy tale book, she used other stories as a basis and then twisted them to express whatever message she was most interested in that day.”
“Okay, by that rationale, you’re saying we’re probably stuck in some version of a Christmas story or movie that Aunt Tillie enjoys,” Landon said. “How long of a list is that?”
“Surprisingly long. She loves Christmas. She will watch any Christmas movie, even if it’s bad.”
“I figured that out when you told me what Black X-Mas was about,” Landon said. “Still, she must have some favorites.”
“She does.” I searched my memory. “Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Elf, Love Actually – oh, too bad we couldn’t get that one, because then we could just hang around talking to one another in front of a tree – It’s a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, Scrooged, Bad Santa.”
“Bad Santa?” Landon was understandably horrified. “If you start sniffing around a filthy Santa carrying a pickle we’re going to have a huge fight.”
“I’ll try to refrain,” I said dryly. “I’m not sure which story she’s dropped us in. So far we’ve seen only one Christmas memory and it wasn’t exactly something that induced fond memories. That has to be deliberate.”
“So why would she send us to Terry’s house if that’s the case?” Landon asked.
I shrugged, genuinely confused. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.” I pointed at the non-descript ranch house across the way. “He lives there.”
“Okay, let’s see what he’s doing.” Landon kept a firm grip on my hand as he led me across the snowy lawn. Instead of knocking, we planted ourselves in front of a window and peered inside. Landon was keen to keep our interaction with past versions of people we knew at a minimum, and I couldn’t help but agree. I didn’t think we were really in the past. It was more likely we were in a mirror version of the past so we wouldn’t risk changing events. We still had to be careful, though.
“There he is,” Landon said, pointing.
I followed Landon’s finger and frowned when I saw Chief Terry – who wasn’t the chief at this time, but I couldn’t wrap my head around calling him something different – sitting in a chair by himself watching television. “What is he doing?”
Landon shrugged. “Chilling.”
“But … it’s Christmas.”
“And?”
“And he’s alone.”
“Oh.” Realization dawned on Landon. “I’m starting to think this Christmas thing isn’t just Aunt Tillie. It’s you, too.”
“I didn’t do this to us.”
“No, but you’re freaking out about a Christmas that was a good twenty-some years ago,” Landon pointed out. “I’m sure Terry is just killing a few minutes before he leaves for a Christmas party or something.”
I wasn’t so sure. Chief Terry looked depressed. “We should talk to him.” I moved to walk away from the window, but Landon stopped me.
“What are you going to say to him? Hi, I’m Bay from the future. You don’t know it yet, but I’m going to complicate your life in ways that will regularly cause you to want to cry. Merry Christmas.”
I scowled. “Was that your imitation of me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t sound like that.”
“That’s exactly how you sound,” Landon argued. “There’s nothing you can say to him to make things better right now, Bay. This already happened.”
“He’s not wrong,” Aunt Tillie said, popping into view. She wore the same outfit – a bright green coat, although it looked as if it had a fresh tear around one of her elbows that I was certain wasn’t there a few minutes before – and her hair looked disheveled.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Checking on your cousins. They’re fine, by the way. Clove sends her love and Thistle, well, Thistle blames you and sent you a big middle finger salute. I have a feeling it’s going to take her the longest to work through her story.”
There it was again. That word. Story. “What ‘story’ are we in?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Aunt Tillie replied. “Are you ready to see something else?”
“I’m still trying to figure out why you showed me this,” I replied, glaring at Chief Terry’s house. “This makes me sad.”
“Christmas isn’t always about being happy.”
“It should be.”
Aunt Tillie grinned. “I couldn’t agree more. That’s why we’re moving this show along a bit.”
Landon instinctively grabbed my hand as the background began to blur, but unlike our last trip through Aunt Tillie’s mind we didn’t land with a thump. Instead we magically appeared in the middle of the town square.
“We’re back where we were a few minutes ago,” Landon replied, glancing around. The square was packed with people. “It must be later in the day or something.”
“No, it’s a full year down the road,” Aunt Tillie said. “Bay knows what will happen next. She thought that’s what she was going to see when we first landed. Instead she got a detour.”
“A depressing detour,” I grumbled.
“Yes, and Terry is clearly fine now,” Aunt Tillie said. “He’ll be at the inn for Christmas, even if you two won’t.”
“I told you we were going to the inn for Christmas,” I growled. “What more do you want?”
“I can’t answe
r that. You need to figure it out for yourself.” Aunt Tillie pointed when the sound of jingling bells and a loud “ho, ho, ho” pierced the air. “Here comes your favorite part.”
Even though I was angry with Aunt Tillie I couldn’t stop myself from snapping my head in that direction. Chief Terry, decked out in Santa’s finest rented suit, made his way through the middle of town. Instinctively I flicked my eyes to the spot where I knew little me stood with my cousins. Landon grinned when he saw us, gripping my hand tighter.
“Look how cute you girls were.”
“They weren’t all that cute that Christmas,” Aunt Tillie countered. “They were all pouty messes, especially this one.” She jerked her thumb in my direction. “She wouldn’t stop whining.”
“I stopped whining eventually,” I countered, my eyes misting when my younger counterpart approached Terry’s sleigh. “Now shut up. I want to hear this.”
Landon indulged me, slinking forward so we could listen to interaction from a Christmas long past.
“You must be Bay,” Terry said, deepening his voice. “I hear you think Christmas is ruined this year.”
Landon slid me a questioning look. “You thought Christmas was ruined?”
I waved off his question. “It’s a long story.”
Younger Bay stilled. “I … who are you?” She had trouble putting a real face with the voice and beard. “I know you.”
“Of course you know me,” Terry said. “I’m Santa Claus! You don’t believe in Santa Claus, though, do you?”
“No … yes … maybe … .” Bay didn’t know how to answer. “If you’re Santa Claus, does that mean you brought me a gift?” She was testing the big man.
“I did.”
“Even then you had him wrapped around your finger,” Landon teased, grinning at Chief Terry’s outfit.
“What is it?” Little Bay asked.
“You can’t have it until I’m sure you believe in me,” Terry replied. “Those are the rules.”
Little Bay narrowed her eyes. “Who makes these rules?”
“My elves.”
“Aren’t you the boss of your elves?”
“I’m not the boss of anyone,” Terry replied, his eyes landing on Aunt Tillie for a moment and then returning to young Bay’s dubious face. “It seems everyone tells me what to do and I do it.”
A Witchmas Carol Page 5
