Chapter 7: The Price of a Lie

Chapter 7: The Price of a Lie

“Stay behind me, and don’t make a sound,” Rory hissed, his voice a blade in the darkness of the cellar. The single, urgent toll of the summons bell still hung in the air, a vibration Tamara could feel in her teeth. The casual fear she had witnessed in the Ivanovs' home was nothing compared to the raw, imminent terror that had just seized the town.

Rory moved with a practiced urgency, pulling aside a stack of water-stained ledgers to reveal a low, narrow opening in the stone foundation. It was a tunnel, barely wide enough to crawl through, exhaling a breath of cold, musty air. “The town has its own veins,” he whispered, gesturing for her to follow. “The ones it doesn't know about.”

Tamara hesitated for only a second before scrambling in after him. The passage was claustrophobic, the rough-hewn stone scraping at her jacket. It smelled of damp earth and a century of secrets. Above them, she could hear the heavy, synchronized tread of footsteps on the cobblestones—the entire population of Solenvol, marching to their grim spectacle. They were all going to the town square.

The tunnel ended at a rotting wooden ladder. Rory climbed it silently and pushed open a trapdoor, emerging into the back room of a derelict shop. Dust motes danced in the slivers of golden light piercing through boarded-up windows. The air was thick with the smell of decay. He led her to the front of the shop, to a large window so grimy it distorted the world outside into a wavering, nightmarish painting. It offered a perfect, hidden vantage point of the square.

The scene below was a tableau of organized dread. The entire town was assembled, forming a silent, perfect circle around the central market cross. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their faces pale and upturned, masks of pious horror. They were not an angry mob; they were a terrified congregation, forced to bear witness. Tamara saw the Ivanovs, the father’s arm wrapped tightly around his daughter, her face buried in his coat. She saw the old man from the general store, his eyes squeezed shut.

In the center of the circle stood Marta, her posture rigid with self-righteous authority. Before her, a teenage boy knelt on the cold stones. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, with a shock of blond hair and a face streaked with tears and dirt. His hands were bound in front of him with coarse red string.

“Lev,” Marta’s voice cut through the silence, sharp and clear. “You received a gift this morning. A fine pair of grey woolen socks.”

“I did,” the boy choked out, his body trembling violently.

“And you told your father they were a gift from your mother, to replace the ones with holes in them,” Marta continued, her voice devoid of any pity. “You thanked her, not the Merry Man. You lied about the gift.”

“No!” the boy cried, a raw, desperate sound that tore at Tamara’s heart. “They were from her! She saved them for me! They were hidden in her sewing box! Please, they weren't his gift!”

A collective, horrified gasp rippled through the crowd. Not at the potential injustice, but at the blasphemy. To deny the Merry Man’s generosity was the ultimate sin. It was the same small act of rebellion that had cost Lucinda her legs. A desperate attempt to hold onto a piece of human connection, a thread of love, in a world that demanded total surrender.

“The Merry Man is the giver of all things in Solenvol,” Marta declared, her voice rising to a fanatical pitch. “Every stitch of wool, every scrap of food. To claim a gift as your own is a lie. And the Merry Man does not suffer liars.”

As she spoke, the air in the square grew heavy and cold. The perpetual golden twilight seemed to dim, the light congealing like honey. A low hum vibrated through the floorboards of the shop, a deep, resonant frequency that made Tamara’s teeth ache. The cloying scent of the Christmas Begonias, magnified a thousand times, washed over the square—a smell of sweet decay and fresh blood.

Tamara grabbed Rory’s arm. “What’s happening?”

“It’s coming,” he breathed, his eyes fixed on the center of the square, his cynical mask replaced by a look of grim, familiar horror. “Don’t look away. You need to see this. You need to understand what you’re up against.”

It began as a shimmer in the air above the boy, a distortion like heat haze rising from asphalt. But the air was freezing. The shimmer coalesced, drawing in the dim light, twisting it into impossible shapes and colors. It had no solid form, no body. It was a chaotic, churning vortex of pure sensory information, a whirlwind of festive nightmare.

Tamara saw flashes of glossy red ribbon twisting like entrails, sharp green pine needles swarming like insects, and something pale and slick that she recognized with a surge of nausea as raw, weeping flesh. Scraps of brown wrapping paper, the texture of ugly wool from a hundred different socks, splinters of white bone—it all swirled together in a violent, blasphemous mockery of Christmas morning. It was a living effigy made of every gift it had ever given and every punishment it had ever enacted.

And at its center, for a flickering, sickening moment, a face that was not a face resolved itself: a wide, stitched-together smile, a rictus of joy carved into a canvas of agony.

The boy, Lev, screamed. It was a sound of pure, soul-shredding terror. The vortex descended upon him. It didn’t attack him; it unraveled him. The ribbons, sharp as razors, wrapped around his limbs. The pine needles swarmed over his skin, burrowing deep. Tamara could hear a sound like tearing fabric, like a wet sheet being ripped in two, a sound that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

The entity pulled and twisted, its form surging with colors—the puke green and electric orange of Tamara’s own socks, the bruise-purple of the Ivanov girl’s, the dried-blood red from the father’s. It was reclaiming its property. The boy’s screams were cut short with a final, choked gurgle.

It was over in seconds. The whirlwind of festive gore receded, dissolving back into the air as if it had never been, leaving only the cold and the sickeningly sweet smell behind.

On the cobblestones where the boy had knelt, there was… a thing. A mangled heap of flesh and bone, tangled in red ribbons and pierced with pine needles. It looked like a broken Christmas decoration, a festive centerpiece for a cannibal’s feast.

Tamara gagged, her hand flying to her mouth as she stumbled back from the window, the contents of her stomach rising in her throat.

Below, a chilling sound began. Marta, her face ecstatic, her eyes shining with zealous tears, started to chant. “Thank you for your bounty, Merry Man. We are pleased with your generosity.”

The entire town, their voices trembling but unified, joined in. “Keep us in your festive heart.”

They thanked it. They stood over the shredded remains of a child and offered a prayer of gratitude for the lesson.

Rory grabbed her arm, his grip painfully tight, and pulled her away from the window, back toward the shadows of the derelict shop. His face was a pale, grim mask.

“Now you see,” he said, his voice flat and dead. “It doesn’t just kill you. It turns you into a party favour.”

Tamara leaned against the dusty wall, shaking uncontrollably. The story on the laptop, the black-and-white photos, the faded letters—they were all just shadows. This was the reality. The stench of blood and pine, the sound of tearing flesh, the sight of that impossible, stitched-together smile. Her academic quest for knowledge felt like a child’s game. The grief for her grandmother, the ghost of her great-aunt—it all coalesced into a single, ice-cold point of clarity in the center of her terror.

She finally understood. This wasn't a curse to be studied. It was a monster to be killed.