Page 5 of Sweet Silver Bells

CHAPTER THREE.

“ H ello?” Hunter called out. “I can hear you. Who’s there?”

The dense trees above him shed snow that melted and seeped into his cotton gloves. His hands began to ache, the joints in his fingers tight and cracking. Winter was severe, unforgiving.

He had heard another crack, too sharp and sudden for a squirrel or small critter.

“You’re getting too far into your head,” Hunter muttered, before he went down on the ground, tripping over a collection of roots that were raised just enough to catch his foot.

His hand scraped against a tree branch, sending crunching leaves flying and creating a sway in the vegetation above his head.

A flurry of wings burst overhead, followed by the angry caws of the ravens he’d disturbed.

Hunter jumped to his feet, adrenaline rushing through him as he kept his eyes down at the glowing map on his phone. He stepped over the creek and kept going, slightly out of breath.

The boys went back. They circled around you somehow.

When he finally stepped out of the trees, he realized he’d gotten completely turned around, now on the opposite side of the manor.

He stared up at the building, perfectly curated, the brick darker, hidden in a winter shadow. Barren rose bushes with threatening thorns formed a fence, a barrier.

Sarah had loved those rose bushes. She used to gush over them in summer, shooing people away if they tried to pick one. “Let them grow,” she’d say. “They want to be beautiful.”

Hunter knew the group was likely near the back gardens. He shivered and began walking, his boots squelching in the wet, muddy grass.

“Mr. Gunnam,” Sadie shouted as he came around the corner. “I was about to send security to find you.”

Hunter walked up to the fence, tall black metal poles connected to a decorated, pointed top.

“Walk around; the entrance is just over there,” Sadie pointed.

“Did the boys come back?” he asked.

“Boys?” Sadie blinked.

“The ones I went after.”

“Yeah, those boys never even went in. They jumped out from behind a gargoyle or something and scared a group of girls.”

Hunter clenched his jaw.

“Of course,” he muttered, throwing his hands up. “You really should pay attention to these tours more. There are no gargoyles.”

“Whatever it was, it was ugly,” she said.

Hunter watched the group behind her move further away, crossing a particularly run-down-looking fountain.

“Uh oh, on the move again,” she said, pointing behind her with her thumbs. “Let’s go, teach. You ditching students now?”

Hunter marched around the fence, finding the gate.

This garden used to be filled with life and color; he had photos of it with her in it. He’d worn a deep blue suit and a brown tie and had been made to press his lips to the underside of Sarah’s jaw in that pose.

When she laughed, he was supposed to throw her veil behind her to create more movement in the picture. He had to hold his lips there, to her skin, and he tickled her with his stubble for several minutes, the photographer’s camera clicking at a rapid pace.

He kept that picture on his desk at the school, framed in gold. Their smiles were both infectious. A year after her death, however, he’d put the photo in the second drawer. It was still there, untouched. That drawer never opened.

Hunter’s heart was somewhere else, with someone else. He had resigned himself never to recover, living as a ghost of his former self. He drifted behind the group, his laughter and smile forced, still tangled in a past he hadn’t moved on from.

The natural light of the day was already fading as he ushered kids and volunteers back on the buses. He sat in the front this time, Sadie next to him, taking out her crochet the moment she saw him pull out a book.

Safety announcements were made, and the bus drove on until they were back at the elementary school parking lot thirty-seven minutes later. The moment the doors folded open, the kids burst out, feral with freedom.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sadie said. “Do you need anything?”

“Need anything?” Hunter smiled.

“Oh, you know, you seemed sad. I’m just trying not to be a terrible person.”

Hunter shook his head.

“Thanks, Sadie, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that, he stepped off the bus and unlocked his car, his dark blue sedan chirping from across the staff lot. Hunter pushed his hair back and habitually held his hand up to his face to check the time, and that was when he froze.

His watch wasn’t around his wrist. His watch was gone. The watch that Sarah gave him.

Hunter's heart sank, guilt drowning him, panic rising in his chest. He couldn’t lose that watch. That watch was supposed to stay, just like she was supposed to stay.

Hunter got in his car, turned on the engine, and stared out the window at the excited faces, freed from the public school system for the day. He needed to retrace his steps. He should run back to the bus.

Had he lost it on the bus? Outside on the lawn?

That moment when he tripped in the forest—that had to be it. It was sitting in the dirt and debris, or hanging off a bush or a branch.

Hunter nursed the scrape on the inside of his forearm. It didn’t matter if it was dark or cold. He would search all night, and he wouldn’t stop until security threatened to have him arrested.

He sped off back into the cold.

It was silent, aside from the gentle hum of the engine, the windshield wipers sweeping in their slowest setting as drops of rain softly tapped on the glass.

He didn’t focus on the road. Instead, he saw the police officer knocking on the small see-through pane on his classroom door.

He saw his hand pressing it open; the man staring back at him with a grim look on his face.

The principal was standing behind him, hands in his tweed pockets, as the officer took off his cap, holding it against his chest.

“Hunter Gunman,” he said, “there has been an accident at your wife’s lab.”

Pulling out of the memory, Hunter turned into the dark, mostly empty parking lot of the manor. He slammed the car door behind him, the sound too loud in the silence. Birds nearby flew into the air at the shocking thud.

The daylight was completely gone, and Hunter moved up the pathway, tripping on the ascending steps to the grounds.

He pulled out his phone, using the flashlight to illuminate the frosted-over grass under his boots as he walked around the estate, past the red brick that now haunted him with the memory of love, of what used to be.

He would live with that because it meant he’d been able to know Sarah, hear her dreams, and learn what made her laugh. He’d loved her laugh; it rang through his memories, so light and beautiful. He didn’t think there could ever be a sound more capable of cracking him open.

Hunter walked into the trees wrapped in pitch black, a darkness that he imagined rivaled hell. He was desperate, unwilling to relent. He would not give up despite the unease that flitted through him, his throat suddenly dry, knowing that he was a moving target with his light.

There was nothing in these trees. This forest was completely uninhabitable unless you were a squirrel or a bird.

Hunter kept his head down, light shining from his phone in hopes of catching his watch glimmering.

He couldn’t imagine that he’d miss it; it would be too obvious, stick out too much.

Branches twisted against the blackness that haunted his soul, swirling around him like a vortex of nightmares, disorienting him, though he tried to walk the same path he had when searching for those students.

Whatever he’d heard earlier, it hadn’t been the boys. It hadn’t been anything explainable.

There is no one here , he reminded himself.

There is no one here.

Fallen leaves on top of frosted dirt and dying grass were the only things that gleamed in the light.

He continued to move forward, wishing he could see the sky, thinking that the light of the moon, even covered by thick clouds, would be as bright as a spotlight compared to the abyss that welcomed him, and promised to consume him.

You're not looking hard enough. Focus on the ground.

His boots splashed as he accidentally stepped right into the creek, too lost in his head to hear the sound of the gentle movement of the water. He’d fallen right around here somewhere; his watch had to be right nearby. He felt something flicker, recognition, maybe even hope.

Hunter bent down, shoveling around anything movable on the ground around him, studying branches off of bare bushes that were at his eye level and below, still nothing. He was empty-handed, but he wouldn’t stay that way. He would find the watch.

You have to find it for Sarah.

He couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t let her go. That version of himself, when he was with her, was someone else long gone. Now, he didn't know who to be, or what version of himself still existed.

Hunter moved past the creek, now unsure which side he had fallen on. Either way, there was no glint of gold in his light.

The light on his phone flashed, and Hunter’s stomach dropped.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, pulling the device up to his face as the screen turned black, an empty red battery sign flashing before the device turned off entirely, leaving him in lost in the Berkshires, lost in a special kind of darkness that promised never to let go, to wrap him and envelop him so entirely that it wouldn’t matter what type of grief or loss he would endure.

You shouldn't have come.

He had followed his heart, and his heart had promised him to a world that seemed intent on eating him alive, never letting him go.

His parents, coworkers, and neighbors would always wonder what had happened to him, why he had disappeared. If his car were found, would they even bother to come this deep into the trees? Would they look for him as long as he’d been looking for his watch?

He doubted it.

No one was that passionate about him other than maybe his mom. He was an average guy.