Rose Creek: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

IV: Ornament

Photo by mkupiec7 from Pixabay

IV. "Ornament"

Camden

Daniel Zhang - 2013

I moved to Rose Creek during Thanksgiving to pursue my love of coffee and to start up my dream business. I am twenty-six years old and a recent graduate from a pretty respected business school. I decided on a whim to pack up and move from my home-city of Windsor and towards a small municipality called Rose Creek. I had never heard of the place until this year when I was browsing the internet to find where the cheapest places in Canada were to start a business. City life was never for me, and the price of property in Rose Creek was surprisingly low, so it didn't take much convincing for me to pack up and leave everything behind. I secured a storefront in a small town named Camden in northern Rose Creek, and quickly bought a small house just outside of the town for even cheaper. I had only toured the house once to fall in love with it, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it yet it was so affordable, I inquired on the low price several times to the realtor, but they always seemed to avoid the question whenever brought up, so I eventually dropped it.

I officially moved into Rose Creek on the Thanksgiving weekend, my parents wanted me to spend the weekend in Windsor to celebrate the holiday with them, but my young entrepreneurial self wasted no time in starting my new life and I drove out to Rose Creek as soon as the house was ready. Call skipping out on a family Thanksgiving selfish, but nothing was going to hold me back from pursuing my dream job, even if it were only for a few days. The first couple of months living in Rose Creek were absolutely amazing, everything went smoothly for me and I was beginning to lead a very comfortable and stress-free life as a modest coffee-shop owner, something I've dreamt of doing since I was a teenager. Business was going pretty well, and I met a really beautiful girl in my town just after a few weeks of living there. Her name was Anita, she was two years younger than me and still lived with her mother and sister, she was an aspiring author who spent most of her days sitting at home trying to publish her books. Anita and I got close very fast, and by the end of November, I genuinely felt like she was "the one" for me, everything about her was so alluring, her long and wavy dark hair, her grey eyes that seemed to bring more warmth than cold, and her rose gold necklace that she wore everywhere. That necklace acted as the cherry-on-top for her beauty, I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but it made her so much more attractive; every time I saw her my heart seemed to skip a beat.

The month of December approached, and with it, the festivities. I had spruced up my coffee shop to the brim with everything to do with Christmas. I had gotten so into decorating my shop that I had almost forgotten about my own home. So, I went out and cut down my own Christmas tree to place in my living room; it was the perfect size, not too big for my small living room and not too small to look awkward. I bought a few things for my house, but compared to my shop, my house was conservatively decorated. I had made sure to buy Anita the nicest jewelry I could afford, and I got her a ring to compliment her necklace. However, it hadn't occurred to me during all of the Christmas shopping I did that I'd forgotten to buy any Christmas tree ornaments. Not wanting to return to the store and also wanting to save what little money I had left, I decided to explore the attic in my house for some potential decorations – perhaps the old owners left a few decorations behind. My attic was mostly full of cobwebs and dust and the stereotypical useless things you'd find in an attic. Although despite all of the disappointing things I found during my venture into the unknown, I noticed something that caught my eye, a trunk stuffed away in the corner of the attic. I got closer and examined the chest, a bible sat neatly on top of it and it looked as if it had been sealed shut a hundred years ago. Seeing no way to get it open, I turned away in defeat, but just as I turned, I noticed a key sitting on the floor right behind me that I could've sworn wasn't there just a minute ago. I picked the key up with caution and instinctively tried to open the trunk, I slowly turned the key in the hole until I heard a click. I removed the bible from the top and opened the chest with care to be met with exactly what I was looking for, an angel tree topper, sitting by itself at the bottom of the trunk. The angel was porcelain and as I picked it up and studied it I could feel how weighted yet delicate it felt, it looked very old and I didn't want to break it, it was painted only one tone of grey, it had small wings that sprouted from its back, and its hands were pushed together in a praying position; for some reason its face was filled with melancholy rather than any resemblance of happiness, but I still felt as if it would make a great tree topper.