December 20, 2025

They used to say the old spruce at the edge of Coldwater Pass had magic in its roots.

Every winter solstice, children would whisper wishes into the narrow hollow in its trunk. Small things—new sleds, a puppy, a snow day. Most didn’t come true. But sometimes… one did. And when it did, someone else always disappeared.

This year, Dr. Eleanor Grage came to study the tree. Not for wishes or magic, of course—but for an ancient fungal infection she believed caused the hollowing. Her assistant, Ben, was less convinced. “It’s humming,” he whispered as they approached it under a sky smeared violet with early evening. “Trees don’t hum.”

She dismissed it. He stayed ten feet back.

They set up a sensor on the bark and inserted a probe into the hollow. The temperature dropped immediately. Frost blossomed across Eleanor’s lenses. Inside the tree, something shifted—like a breath drawn inward.

She pulled the probe out and peered inside. The wood spiraled down into blackness, much deeper than it should’ve gone. And somewhere down that spiral, something glittered. A locket? A button? An eye?

Then came the voice. Small. Innocent. Childlike.

“I wished to be seen…”

Eleanor stumbled back. Ben grabbed her arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

But as they turned, Eleanor felt the pull. The tree was remembering her. From long ago. When she had been six. And lonely. And left a note inside a knot in the bark.

“I just want them to come back.”

The tree had answered. Her parents had come back from the crash. Cold and wrong. And they’d died again weeks later, differently.

Ben didn’t notice she was gone until he reached the car.

He returned, heart pounding, to find only her boots at the base of the hollow. Her footprints ended at the trunk. His breath smoked in the air like a warning.

From inside, something whispered:
“One wish, one soul.”

And then, very softly, his own voice:
“I wish she never found this tree.”