WATCH OUT

Only one person gets into the grotto, every year. 

The village of Kringle looked forward to The Toymaker’s visit every year. His generosity, talent, and encouragement to the young urged them to demonstrate their inventions, with one selected to visit the Toymaker’s workshop. 

The whole of Kringle turned out to witness the event, stands selling hot cider and warm mash, hawking tree ornaments and nutcrackers, a bonfire was set up and the mayor would give a speech about Kringle and The Toymaker’s history. The children who were not selected each received a stocking - a type of sock filled with sweets and toys and a photograph with The Toymaker to place above their fireplaces.

New to Kringle, Jack and his daughter Cherry had joined the festivities to get to know their new people. Knowing his daughter had a rough time adjusting to their new home and her new peers, Jack gently broached the idea one night at dinner. Despite her initial uncertainty after seeing what the other children had come up with [from a new type of Christmas tree to pullable crackers filled with surprises] Cherry had worked for hours every night to create her idea - a red light at the front of the sleigh allowing the Toymaker to see in the dark. She had refused Jack’s help, determined to do it all by herself. She had sewed the red bulb onto a reindeer toy she had when she was little and proudly displayed it on a tray decorated with snowflakes.

But it had all been for nought.

Cherry had queued for hours waiting in her rose-red coat with her hair done specially, peering through the heads anxiously only to see the mayor’s daughter receiving the prize before she had even reached the front of the line. The same girl who hid pellets in Cherry’s turkey sandwich and got even the teachers calling her Frostbite as if Jack and his daughter weren’t isolated enough.

Cinnamon Brown.

The girl didn’t smile when she was presented to the Toymaker, petting the red coat she had made for the man with cold eyes, not even when her father embraced her did she brighten until she met Cherry’s disappointed gaze and returned it with a cruel smirk stretching to her raven black hair.

The Toymaker himself proclaimed the outfit she had made him to be the most considerate. It would keep him warm during his working hours. He excused himself to change into his new outfit and reappeared head to toe in his new red coat and hat, grinning with all teeth at Cinnamon Brown also decked in red. 

Some of the children cried in disappointment openly but not Cherry, not until they were home and she ran to her room. Jack could hear her sobbing over the fire in the furnace. The guilt rose icily within him. Ever since his wife died he and his daughter had been closer and his attempt to ingrate her with the other reindeer so to speak had failed miserably.

That would’ve been the end of it until the next evening after Cherry was asleep and Jack, seated at his desk was starting to drift off when a high-pitched strangled wail arose outside of his door. It was as though a record was scratching and as the startled Jack rose to his feet, it died off with a gurgling sound that rattled and when he swung the door open, there was nothing there at all. 

No footsteps in the snow, no figures in the distance, was this Cherry’s idea of a joke?

Turning to go back into the house and the warmth, It was then he saw the note pinned with a twig of holly to his door. A silk red coat was hung beneath it. 

Did you like my carol, Mr. Frost?

Watch Out and whatever you do, you better not cry

They’ll all be roasting over the fire unless you succeed

Open the cracker and find the answers to these

What gift would best suit someone as vile as Cinnamon Brown?

And who’s the man with the hearts of the children in his hands?

The note was scratched in scarlet red ink. Underneath was a crude drawing of a snowman. Its grin had an unsettling glee to it as the ink, wet from the ice slid down the paper. Eerily making one think of blood. 

Jack felt a rather uncomfortable warm sensation form in his stomach reading the message, a riddle or a threat. He had to go to the sheriff and the mayor and inform them of this immediately. Yet he smelt something foul, he did suspect the contest’s winner had been pre-chosen and now that he thought about it, he’d been unnerved by the Toymaker’s unblinking stare and teeth-baring smile at Cinnamon as well as the fact despite all the excitement the winners never discussed their visits to the grotto. Come to think of it, he’d never even seen or heard who had been the previous winners. Every child in the village had turned out as though they would be the first. 

He knew the villagers would be angered by his questioning of The Toymaker, a beloved figure who had dined with the mayor, danced with his wife, and treated their children as his own. He had helped chop wood, served food to the poor, and aided the seamstresses in their work. Jack was a stranger to the town, the father to Frostbite, a quiet, reserved man who kept to himself. Who would believe him over the most loved man in Kringle? Over something he had little proof of besides an anonymous note that was likely a cruel joke from one of Cherry’s classmates. He was getting worked up over nothing.

It was then just as he was about to pocket the note that he looked closer at the scarlet fabric also pinned to the door. The same silk red cloak that Cinnamon Brown had been wearing when she was taken to see The Toymaker.