It had been very kind of him to take us in during a raging snowstorm on Christmas Eve, but I wish Joel would shut up about it. We’d been travelling along the edges of Białowieża Forest, trying desperately to get home to see family, when the car had broken down.
There was no mobile signal, of course, so we’d sat in the car, after the inevitable argument, shivering. Then, like the light of the Angel Gabriel, twin beams of a 4×4 had sliced through the blizzard, and Joel had been out in the road, waving his arms, trying to get a lift. Fortunately, the driver had stopped.
She couldn’t drive us home but was willing to take us to the event she was attending and was sure the host wouldn’t mind us making a phone call. We hefted our bags into the trunk, then thirty minutes later we were before an immense gothic mansion deep in the woods.
The host greeted our saviour warmly, insisting we enter after hearing of our plight.
“His Lordship,” said a butler, who’d appeared from nowhere, “insists you stay the night. He won’t see travellers lost without offering hospitality. A room has been prepared, follow me.”
The bedroom was… well, incredible. A four-poster bed, priceless antiques, and ancestral paintings adorning the walls. Our luggage was already there, and two changes of clothes had been laid out; a tail suit for Joel along with clean pyjamas, and the most beautiful ballgown for me with, now I come to think of it, a worryingly diaphanous nightie.
“You can join the other attendees in say, fifteen minutes’ time? The theme is anagrams, but naturally you are excused from that, given that you arrived unexpectedly. I shall return for you shortly.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of conversation, food, laughter, and fine brandy. Our host reappeared dressed as Santa and handed gifts to the children just before eleven. Once they‘d retired to bed, all flurries of excitement and chatter, the other guests had almost seemed to fade into the walls as our host turned his attention to us, his dazzling grin almost bewitching. I’m not sure how, but we found ourselves in a room with a roaring fire in the grate, three wingback chairs arranged around it, and a fine crystal decanter with three glasses alongside.
“It’s really no trouble,” our host repeated, as Joel expressed his thanks again, and gave us a lopsided grin. “I’m so glad your misfortune allowed you to join our little linguistically amusing soiree tonight.”
I don’t know if it was the heat, the alcohol, or maybe his easy way with words, but something twinged in the back of my mind, and a sense of uneasiness started to creep over me.
“I really should go to bed,” I interjected. “Thank you again, we’ll be out of here first thing.” “Oh no,” he smiled, horns extruding from his skull and a bladed trident appearing in his right hand. “You’ll never leave.”
