Creepmas (Hexes and Fangs- Holiday editions #2)

Chapter 1

NEO

Lights strung like cobwebs make shadows dance like ghosts across my shelves.

Candy cane candles burn with unnatural green and red flames.

Gingerbread skeletons huddle in paper boxes, grinning with icing stitches and licorice bones, long dead and sealed in plastic.

Haunted candy jars rattle when you pass, filled with eyeball gumballs, bleeding cherry lollipops, and marshmallow bats in Santa hats.

A Creepmas tree is the only thing missing.

The store is quiet, too quiet. The kind of silence that makes the jingle of a single ornament sound like a scream.

Amidst the candy cane candles and shadowy shelves, someone lurks.

The person is wearing a long, tattered coat made from old gift wrap and soot-stained velvet.

His boots crunch softly on spilled sugar crystals, leaving faint footprints that vanish seconds later.

A wide-brimmed hat dusted with frost hides most of his face. And I smile.

He pauses near the peppermint skulls, tilting his head as if he’s listening to whispers only he can hear.

His fingers drift along the shelves, leaving behind a faint trail of melted snow and sticky syrup…

which I’ll have to clean. The air tightens when he stops; the temperature drops in warning.

The scent of burnt cinnamon curls through the shop—not sweet, but acrid, like a holiday memory left too long in the dark. Despite that, he doesn’t speak.

"Are you lost?" I take a seat on the counter. He smashes a candy cane with his palm, and shards scatter across the counter. The fragments showed the words “Santa is dead” in red and white. Well… old people die…Oh crap! Did I just decorate for Creepmas in vain?

"They’ve found someone else, I hope?"

Twisted horns curl from his head, looking like blackened branches. His fur mats and tangles with pine needles and scraps of ribbon. The candy shards twitch, crawling across the counter like insects.

"We need someone new. Someone young.

The old monster is tired. Bored. His eyes catch the light as the front door creaks open.

And then, the bell above the door gives a hollow chime.

Nox steps inside, shoulders hunched against the cold, his boots leaving wet prints on the warped floorboards.

The air shifts… like the shop itself is holding its breath.

The monster’s grin widens, its jagged teeth glinting.

He smiles, his tongue slick and serpentine, flicking between teeth.

No fucking way he’s talking about bat boy. My bat boy.

"Evening, nightshade."