Page 11 of Sweet Silver Bells

CHAPTER EIGHT.

“ I hear these,” Olivia said, staring in wonder at the beige-gray faux leather dashboard of Hunter’s parked car. Her eyes were wide, curious, but still sharp, ready to bolt at the slightest threat.

“They have the strangest hum that I could never place before.”

She was some kind of siren; it was the closest story he could relate to her from his childhood.

There was no ocean, no sailors being lured to their deaths.

Instead, it was him, maybe others too, being drawn to her, but also forgetting.

Where memories should be, there was only haze, a cloud that swirled inside him.

He hoped he had broken it, this spell. That whatever it was, now that he knew of it, it would no longer affect him.

That’s a stupid thing to think. You are far from being safe.

“When I step towards the edge of the forest, I can hear these carriages from the roads in the distance, in the quiet of the night. They sound like monsters with strange music, with that hum.”

Hunter followed her gaze, then flicked his eyes down to her bare shoulders. A shiver ran through her, and her arms crossed tight over her breasts. Without thinking, he shrugged off his own coat and draped it around her shoulders, limbs awkward in their intimate space.

“Here,” he murmured. “You’re freezing.”

She flinched at first, then tugged the coat closer, burying her hands in the sleeves.

Hunter turned the key in the ignition. The vibration of the seats and the roar of the engine sent a thrill up his spine as he watched Olivia squeal and throw her hands over her ears. Hunter got that same thrill from rollercoasters that he had no business riding at this age.

Of course, he didn’t have Sarah to drag him on them anymore.

“You’re actually here,” Hunter breathed, disbelief starting to sink in.

“Yes,” she replied as if it were a perfectly normal question.

“You really have never been in a car before.”

“No. My father would ride in one going into the city. It looked nothing like this.”

“You’ve never spoken on a phone before.”

“A phone?”

Hunter pulled his out to show her. She squinted at the blue light in the dark.

“You’re really from 1914.”

“I am.”

Hunter put his foot on the gas, and Olivia gasped at the forward trajectory, headlights guiding the way.

“Why me? Why did you choose to trust me?”

Olivia was quiet for a moment, collecting her answer. “The plants, the forest, the earth, it pulses, it makes music for me, to tell me I’m safe, to tell me I belong. You’re the first person who has ever sung back to me. So perhaps, it told me that with you, I could belong too.”

Hunter’s stomach dropped at the no-nonsense declaration of hope and love. He didn’t know if he was ready for that, ready for anything more than just knowing that she was out of the forest, out of the trees, that she was safe and thriving.

“I might still take you to the police station,” he blurted out.

Idiot.

“You could still be a missing person. You could be injured, and you could not know what’s happened to you,” he tried to reason, mostly with himself.

How can I accept with no question what she’s telling me? What if I make the situation worse?

His memory was fuzzy. Was there something else that had happened? Something he couldn’t remember?

Olivia laughed, a full, outright, guttural laugh that felt like she was spitting out butterflies and woodland faerie creatures. It was a delight, infectious. Hunter couldn’t help but grin like a madman. He could live there, in that laugh, forever.

That’s a crazy thought to have. You are acting crazy.

Rational, he could be rational.

“Right, the police station it is.”

But even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t.

She wasn't from 1914. It was impossible. Some sort of physics law would have to be broken. She had lost her memory, her mind.

So have you.

They drove in silence, and whenever Hunter pulled his eyes off the road, allowing himself seconds of peering at Olivia, the very real woman who sat near naked in his passenger seat, he smiled.

She was enraptured with the world outside her window, looking at every streetlight, every building that they passed with complete wonderment.

With the heater on, color flushed back into her milky-white skin, a porcelain doll that had been lost in the woods, now with a glow, a vibrant pink hue on her lips, her cheeks, and down her neck.

Hunter forced his gaze back onto the road, but it was so hard to look away, so hard not to be enraptured with her. Any control he had was slipping. He would soon be putty under that terrifying gaze that she had—that gaze could control him. Perhaps already had.

No, that's crazy. There's no such thing as sirens.

“What will happen to me?” Her words were soft, hesitant.

She looked at him, her chin turning over her shoulder while she kept her body wound together, her legs tucked into her chest, the seatbelt pushing against her hips, creating cute ripples and pinches in her skin.

“The police will lock me up. I will be in a cage as they poke me, laugh at me. Look at the witch.”

Hunter blinked, not expecting such sad words when her face was still in awe, as she still pointed and whispered to herself when they drove by a Christmas tree farm.

“They call them cells now. Did they use cages back then? Why would they lock you up? They will help you.”

“How? How would they help me?”

Hunter turned left, driving further into town.

“Maybe they could find your family. Find someone that you know.”

“I am over one hundred years old. I don’t have any family. I’ve murdered my own father. I am not a child. They will put me on the street. Then, I walk back to my trees, back to my forest.”

Fair.

Rational decisions were for the weak anyway.

Hunter flipped the car around in a U-turn, the wheels skidding on some ice on the road.

Olivia let out a squeal, one that seemed equal parts thrilled and surprised, judging by the way her hands gripped the ceiling of the car, by the way her face lit up, her teeth dazzled behind her lips.

Hunter’s erratic driving, his discovery of Olivia’s hidden need for thrill-seeking so close to the police station in the dark hours of the morning, attracted a flash of lights, blue and red, in his rearview mirror.

Of course. I guess the police will find us.

Hunter could imagine the texts from Sadie now.

What did you do on the first day of winter break?

I spent it in a jail cell because I was driving like a psychopath with a nude, battered woman in my driver's seat.

Getting out of this seemed pretty unlikely.

“I have to pull over. That is the police.” Hunter said.

“You’re upset,” she said.

“This isn’t good,” he said, putting his foot on the brake, his tire hitting the curb on the sidewalk.

“I can kill him,” she offered as the policeman got out of his vehicle, the sound of his boots crunching on ice and slush.

“Please don’t,” Hunter said, reaching over Olivia, who watched his hand like it was a snake that could bite her. He opened the glove compartment, taking out his registration.

“Why not?” Olivia was undoubtedly offended that he didn’t take her up on her generous offer, crossing her arms in front of her chest, her bottom lip pouting.

He paid too much attention to that bottom lip, remembering what it felt like against his.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound of knuckles against his window pulled Hunter out of his trance, his eyes pulled away from her pouting, juicy lip, and toward the cop on the other side of his window, shining a flashlight down at him.

“Because it’s too close to Christmas,” Hunter answered Olivia, and he rolled his window down.

That’s the best you could come up with?

“Son, do you know why I pulled you over?” the cop asked, shivering in the snow, his head bobbing a little.

He shone his flashlight at Olivia, who cowered away from the attention.

“Would you believe me if I told you I was heading to the police station?” Hunter asked nervously. He was no outlaw. He didn’t do bad things; he was a goddamn elementary school teacher, and this . . . this looked very bad.

“I’m going to need you to step out of the car, sir,” the officer said. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

Hunter obeyed, the click of his seatbelt loud in the quiet. The cop’s badge read Mason. Hunter knew that name. He’d taught so many Mason kids over the years.

“Hunter, let’s go,” Olivia called softly. He looked back. She had one knee hiked onto the dashboard, showing them everything.

“Take me home now.”

“I have to make sure you’re not in danger, ma’am,” Mason stammered, mouth hanging open. “I see bruises and cuts under that jacket. Where did you get those?”

“Do you ask your wife the same questions when you’re staring at another woman?” Olivia giggled.

Mason recoiled, face flushing red.

“I’ll be taking you both back to the station. There are clothes there to get her covered up,” he said, hand on his radio mic.

Olivia lunged forward, crawling across the seats, her face going void, empty. Then she changed, alive with rapture as her mouth opened. Her voice poured out, a hum that tangled around Hunter’s mind. A lullaby, a death promise, a black hole.

This didn’t happen last time.

Jump in.

Her song lured him toward that darkness. Hunter stepped forward, eyes locked on the void, blind to the car, the cop, the world.

Vines, black and purple, unfurled around him. Thorns pulsed at their tips, begging him closer. He wanted to touch them. I wanted to feel the prick on his skin.

Metal clanked against his watch. Hunter’s hand hit the car frame and snapped him out of it. His vision cleared. The police car engine roared, tires squealed. Snow and slush sprayed up his legs as Mason fled, disappearing into the night.

Hunter turned to Olivia. She sat back in the passenger seat, calm as a queen.

“What do you see?” Her song was gone. Her scent, earth and rain still overwhelmed him.

Why am I standing here?

“I’ve never seen it before, someone resisting my song. What did you see?”

I resisted her song?

A crash cracked the night—glass, metal, a sickening pop. Hunter ducked behind the door. Down the street, the patrol car had plowed through a general store’s front window. Mason’s body lay half on the hood, half inside, unmoving, a dark pool spreading under his hand.

“What did you do?” Hunter’s voice shook, small and stunned. His brave self, his rational mind, was gone. “We should call someone. He needs help.”

He noticed that there were no other witnesses. It was just them and the midnight silence interrupted by the shrieking alarm.

Your phone. Get your phone.

He crawled into the driver’s seat, slammed the door.

“Finally.” Olivia clapped her hands. “It’s new, you know, not getting my way. I was a child running from a ball. Since then, no one says no to me.”

“I didn’t say no,” Hunter said, the glow of his phone blue on his face.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Help was coming. Too late for Mason. Too late for Hunter’s old life.

Get her out of here.

If he’d stayed away, convinced himself she wasn’t real, Mason would still be alive.

Guilt slithered through him. I could never have left her. Who could?

Hunter put the phone down. Help would arrive. Now he had to finish what he’d started: protect her, save her—whatever that meant now.

“I didn’t exactly kill him,” Olivia mused.

“What do you mean by exactly ?”

“I gave clear instructions. Get back in his car and drive as fast as he could.” She flicked her hair like it was nothing.

Hunter turned the key and eased the car off the curb. They coasted past the wreckage. Neighbors spilled from a nearby hotel, shrieking as they realized how narrowly they’d been spared.

Blue and red lights flickered in the rearview mirror, fading behind them. Olivia sprawled back, legs up, dirty feet pressed to the window, humming happily, her knees bouncing with each note.