Chapter Text
Good stories do not usually begin in the suburbs of small Eastern-European cities. It is highly unlikely that a breathtaking spin of events ever takes place in a single-family house neighbourhood, especially on Christmas time when the remote parts of Warsaw turn quiet and sleepy. However, unlikely does not mean impossible, and a series of unexpected and shocking accidents happened this holiday season - a magical, yet scary sequence worth telling about.
The quiet one-way street at the outskirts of Warsaw was inhabited by boring folk in single-family houses. Neat dwellings hosted either the elderly, or well-off families with children. Julia’s neighbor to the left was a quiet lady in her sixties with a golden retriever. To the right lived an Austrian banker who had moved to Warsaw with a wife and a ten year old son, to rule over the local Corporate Branch of Raiffeisen Bank. And then, there was Julia herself - a twenty-six year old with a stable position somewhere in the middle of the corporate food chain; with no family or golden retriever.
The doorbell rang, and Julia shook the cookies off the hot baking tray before heading to answer the door. Her blonde and small Austrian neighbour was standing there, holding little Haig’s hand.
"Come in," Julia smiled at the visitors. The boy returned the smile, and marched into the kitchen straight to the cookies.
Martha was desperately sorry for the inconvenience - of course she was, because normally one does not come to the neighbour's house on Christmas eve to leave a child for the night. But with her relatives landing four hours late due to a storm and with the babysitter at her own family dinner, the woman had no other choice. Frankly speaking, Julia did not mind - she had no family dinner scheduled. Her own parents were solidly settled in London and she was supposed to pay them a visit, but as the girl kept postponing the purchase of tickets, the prices grew, making last-minute booking an unachievable luxury for a middle class office worker with a lifelong housing loan. And naturally, she was too proud and independent to let her parents pay for the ticket. God knows how much Julia envied her neighbour this family time. She put on a wide careless smile:
"I am spending the holidays alone, so drive safe and don't worry about anything. We talked this over, didn't we? I’m not even gonna eat those cookies. But Haig will, right?"
The boy occupied the couch already, the bowl of cookies by his side. Martha looked relieved. Julia closed the door behind the woman, and turned to the child.
"The rules are the same as always: if you get hungry, go fetch for food, anything you find in the fridge is yours, except for the beer and Tabasco. Tomorrow I have a Skype call with my family, so I need some Christmas spirit around here. Wanna decorate?"
Of course, Haig wanted to. For some time Julia watched him run around with garlands and lamps, and thought that maybe, this Christmas was not so bad after all. Tomorrow she will Skype her parents, hit the gym alongside other lonely weirdos with no Christmas spirit, and eat a whole bucket of chocolate chip ice cream to compensate for the lack of family time. It sounded like a plan.
Within an hour all available surfaces downstairs were shining brightly with color lamps and glittery glue drawings. Julia and Haig sat on the couch together and watched Batman Beyond in a room filled with flickering lights and the smell of freshly-baked cookies. It felt like Christmas. Julia felt her head getting heavy, and tucked a small pillow under her cheek. Haig yawned and blinked lazily at some guy getting beaten up in a dark alley.
"Let’s light the fire?" The boy suggested. The frost outside was growing heavier, and the room was getting a little too cold for comfort.
"I don't know how to use the fireplace yet, sorry," Julia confessed. "But I can get you a blanket."
"You’ve lived here for three years, don’t say you never tried! I could light it up," Haig volunteered, and occupied the whole couch.
The girl slowly walked up the stairs to the bedroom, and took a thick blanket out of the closet. She glanced at the mirror before leaving the room, and frowned at the sight of frost patterns on its surface.
"What the hell…?" Julia touched the cold surface of the looking glass with the tips of her fingers. If there had been a heating system breakdown, she wouldn't be able to report it anywhere during Christmas holidays, and it would be very unfortunate to freeze to death.
At this moment Julia felt a slight vibration of the floor beneath her feet. Then something hit the wall from the other side, the blow so strong that the console moved and the mirror rocked from side to side. Julia screamed and backed away, squeezing the blanket in her hands. The following blow left a thin crack on the wall. With the next hit, the frost-covered mirror fell on the floor and shattered.
Julia ran out of the bedroom.
"Haig! Get out of the house!” When she was on the stairs, the house shook once more. The girl slipped and fell on her back, hitting her head badly. "Haig! Earthquake!" She yelled again, getting up. The world was spinning a little.
Julia darted into the living room, and was blinded by a bright halo. A blow of cold wind that hit her was so strong, that the girl had to hold onto the wall in order to stand straight. Julia raised one hand to cover her eyes, and in the blinding blue light, she witnessed a demon.
A dark silhouette was so tall that it touched the ceiling, and the curved horns of the creature scratched two deep lines beside the chandelier. The giant beast stood on its two rear legs, but it had a long cow-like tail that swept the floor. The monster sniffed the air, and turned around to face the girl.
Julia wanted to run but could not move, paralyzed with fear. The being was hideous and terrifying, it had a long skull covered in shreds of skin in place of a face, with two small yellow eyes gleaming in the eyeholes. Vapor was coming out of the creature’s nostrils. The girl took a tiny step back, and noticed that the monster was holding the unconscious boy. A paw with long claws was firmly gripping the child’s body, pressing it to the beast's side.
With a low howl the creature made a step towards Julia, but hesitated. The blue spinning vortex behind its back started to spin faster, and the beast backed off. With its giant clawed paw the monster pushed a tall bookshelf towards the girl, and jumped into the shining swirl. Its long tail whipped the air, and a gust of cold air flew through the kitchen. Before the heavy books hit Julia on the head, she saw the strange puddle of light dissolve, leaving no trace of the terrible creature and the stolen child. And then, the whole world went dark.
Julia got up from the floor coughing out ashes. The fireplace little Haig had decorated with Christmas socks was literally torn apart. There was a narrow crack under the ceiling that ran down the wall, and a hole in place of her fireplace, that looked like an open wound. Snow, bricks, pieces of mortar and an enormous amount of dust and ashes covered the floor. Where the hell did the ashes come from if she had never lit the fireplace?!
The world was blurry as if she had used one of those Instagram filters. Julia limped through the hall, hitting a couple of walls on the way, and pushed the front door open. On the? third attempt she managed to dial the emergency number with shaky hands. The rest of the evening after the police haad arrived was a crazy spin of faces, bright lights and questions followed by the worried looks of the officers and a psychologist. Yes, there were horns. Yes, there were hooves. No, she was not crazy.
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Julia had no idea if the police officers believed a single word of a story she had told. She was free to leave the police station around seven in the morning, after a long and exhausting questioning. While the investigation was ongoing, the girl had to remain in the city as the main witness to the peculiar kidnapping case. She wondered why she had not been placed under witness protection, but probably, the police did not consider it necessary since only the boy got taken away. As she walked down the hall, Julia tried not to look at Marta, curled up on a chair and looking smaller than ever.
The mirror in her hallway reflected a pale and exhausted face with a huge black eye, and Julia reluctantly turned away from the looking glass. There were shreds of police tape in the living room and on the lawn in front of the house. The dirty floor was covered in numerous footprints, and both the couch and the coffee table were moved to the wall.
Julia looked at a hole in the wall and shivered. If she were the police she would not believe herself either. The terrifying creature had made its way inside the house through the fireplace, just like Santa Claus.
"Merry fucking Christmas." The girl whispered under her breath.
She was scared beyond her wits. If only she could, Julia would have left her house in Warsaw without even packing a bag. She would have gladly visited her parents in London, she even would have cracked her little brother’s piggy bank in order to pay for the plane ticket. But alas, she was not allowed to leave the city, no matter how much she wanted. Julia wondered if the police considered her a suspect, but it was highly unlikely. Thinking rationally, after hearing her testimony about the demon-goat, the police would rather suspect a nervous breakdown resulting in hallucinations rather than any involvement in the kidnapping. Julia poured herself a glass of water, and ate two pills from the blister she had been given by the psychologist.
Within a couple of hours the girl packed up, and got to the nearby bed-and-breakfast. She sat down on the bed in her room and took another two pills, but this time with whiskey. Julia hoped that the police would find her little neighbour fast. She also hoped that the news of a kidnapping would not make it past the local newspapers, otherwise her parents would freak out, and take the first available flight to Warsaw to watch over their daughter. And of course, she hoped the goat-like creature would not come after her.
Julia slept for about four hours. She was so exhausted that she did not even have nightmares, and missed several calls from her mother and one from the police inspector. The girl checked her black eye and swollen cheek in the mirror, and decided to postpone a Skype video call. Instead, she called her mother herself, and spent an hour complaining about her unfortunate attempt to light the fireplace, that resulted in a small explosion and left her living room damaged. Julia even managed to sound relaxed and careless, and her mother believed her.
A short winter day came to an end, and the sensation of panic overwhelmed Julia. She closed the curtains and turned all lights on. When her Chinese takeaway arrived, the girl nearly fainted upon hearing the phone call from the reception desk. Julia had no idea if she should run to a church, pray, or do nothing and wait. She drank everything from the minibar and was too scared to come out of the room for more, so she just did nothing and waited.
Julia survived the night, and no demon came after her. At first, the girl considered spending one more night in the hotel just to be on the safe side, but then she remembered how easily the monster had gotten into her house, and realized that there was no safe side. If the creature wanted to have her, it would find her anywhere, but for now, she had much to take care of. The wall in the living room was not going to fix itself; the same applied to scheduling the meeting with an insurance agent.
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The weather was magical as Julia slowly dragged herself home. Walking in the middle of the road, with a black eye and a huge open bottle of honey Jack Daniels, she probably looked like her mother’s disappointment. Soft fluffy snowflakes were slowly falling down and melting on her jacket, and on the dark wet ground of the front yards. Under the golden glimmer of streetlights the wet road looked like an oily black river. Each house in the quiet neighborhood was carefully decorated, soft light falling from the windows. Julia took a sip, and marched faster.
She turned left and stopped in front of her own driveway, her house being the only dark spot in the cheerful and shiny street. As she approached the door, Julia tried not to look at the windows of her neighbour's house. With another sip she brushed her fingers on the doorknob and froze. The door was not closed.
Julia forgot how to breathe and to move. For some time she just stood there like a statue with her hand on the doorknob, and felt the thoughts heavy as stones slowly roll inside her head. It was either a burglar who thought that she had gone on a holiday and decided to see what luck could bring, or the demon-goat that returned to drag Julia to hell. At this very moment the girl saw the insides of her house glow with blue the same way as two days ago, but this time the light was less intense. There was also a voice, low and quiet, reciting the words she could not catch out.
The best option was to scream bloody murder and run down the street as far away as possible, but logic and reasonable choices rarely come hand in hand with whiskey. Julia felt anger rise within her like a tide. She was so lonely, sucked into work and bad at meeting new people, that the little cheerful boy sharing her love of Batman and eating her cookies became something more than just a neighbour. Since Thomas and Martha moved in next door Julia got herself a little brother of some sort - and no goat will ever take him away from her.
Uggs made her steps silent, like those of a deadly ninja. Julia slowly opened the door and crept into the dark hall. The walls were lit with flickering blue, and through an open kitchen doorway she could see a long shadow of the beast.
The chant became louder. Julia sheepishly peeked around the corner: the demon that came to visit her dwelling this time was smaller than the first one, but still intimidating. Wrapped in a long cloak with a hood, the beast was kneeling in the centre of the kitchen with its back to the girl, but even like this it was so huge that it seemed to occupy all the space in the room. The blue light was coming from small shiny puddles on the floor and the walls, which were growing bigger as Julia waited and watched. The demonic creature waved its right paw in the air and spoke louder, and the surface of shiny puddles began to ripple likewise water on a windy day. The girl still remained unnoticed, and this was her chance.
Julia took a deep breath, clutched a bottle and crept forward, treading very carefully. The puddles moved along the floor and the walls towards the beast gathering into a big one. The girl stopped behind the creature, slowly raised her hand up high, and with a battle scream she didn't even expect of herself lowered the bottle on the demon’s head with one sharp move.
It sounded like a church bell combined with an explosive sound of shattered glass. The whole kitchen vibrated and echoed, Julia herself was deafened by the noise and for several moments stood there with a bottle neck in her hand, blinking and breathing heavily. The demon wobbled and collapsed on the floor, face down. The long horns of the creature caught on a shelve and a handful of trinkets and trifles fell off, adding a drum solo to the crazy soundtrack of today’s evening. Julia twitched at another loud “dong” as the beast’s head met the tile. Then, the girl raced towards the switch and hit the lights, ready to face the demon-goat she has so unexpectedly defeated.
The trespasser was no creature, but a man. A tall man dressed in a grey cloak and a golden helmet with long curved horns - no surprise Julia mistook the dark silhouette for the monstrous goat. And now the man lay unconscious in the corner of Julia’s devastated kitchen.
As a final touch of destruction, an open jar of pink himalayan salt fell off the counter and rolled through the kitchen, leaving a pale trail across the floor. At this very moment the blue sparks filled the kitchen, and the big shiny puddle floating in the air started spinning like a whirlpool, until it got smaller and disappeared with a "swoosh". A gust of cold wind blew through the kitchen. Julia was left with an unconscious body in the corner and completely no idea what to do next.