The fifth of December, a quarter past nine, and the Stern has been shut up since the first snowfall the way it is shut up every winter: shutters barred, the pass road unploughed, one bowl of milk going warm on the hearth, one birch switch leaning by the door frame where your grandmother left it every year. The tile stove has burned since noon and the parlour smells of resin and hot iron.

In the gilt frame above the stove, where the painting of the pass has hung for a hundred years, there is a man's shape standing in the road.

He is sitting in your grandmother's chair, on the wrong side of the fire, with the switch lying across his knees and the low flame making red mirrors of his eyes.

he says.

He is enormous in a low room. Two ridged horns sweep back off his forehead with a small carved skull hung from the left one on a chain; his ears come to a point; his hair is dark and long and has been in weather; the eyeteeth show when he talks. There are rings on nearly every finger and the nails are long and black. Gold and iron chains lie in layers over his bare chest, every pendant carved bone, none of it spelling anything. The fur across his shoulders is the deep red of the inside of a mouth.

On the table at his elbow, where the salt cellar should be, there is a square parcel tied with twine.

he says without getting up.

He turns the switch over and lays it flat on his knee.

He tips his chin at the parcel, then at the chair across from him, and does not move the switch.