A long shadow, barely darker than the dusk, was fighting its way through the gathering storm.

Backlit by the amber glow of the late evening streetlamps, the shadow’s upstanding companion was shielding himself with a battered leather satchel. It was balanced haphazardly above his head, one final attempt at some meagre protection against the hammering rain. Clutched tightly in his other hand was a crumpled letter, folded in two and disintegrating rapidly in the downpour.

With the cautious movements of a man in his later years, the figure ducked under an overhanging maple tree, opened his satchel and delicately placed the letter inside an inner compartment. He lifted the bag to his face, breathing in the smell of the old leather, comforting against the metallic taste of the charged air.

The man had stopped on Crick Road, a short street lined on both sides by large, grand Victorian villas. He was kneeling near one at that moment, sheltering from the rain by the low-rise wall that separated it from the pavement. A glance to his right showed him that he was not alone. A mackerel tabby cat, so named after the distinctive ‘M’ shaped markings on its forehead, was curled up on the wall next to him. She did not seem at all distressed by his arrival, or indeed the torrential weather. On the contrary, she sat watching him intently, her attentive yellow eyes twinkling in the lamplight. Automatically reaching out to scratch her behind the ears, the man cocked his head to the side, attempting to penetrate behind the sound of rain drumming on concrete. He was listening for tell-tale noises concealed within the storm. The scuffling sound of a leather boot against the raised pavement, or the creak of a plastic anorak hurriedly donned in the storm.

Satisfied for the moment that he was not being followed, the man withdrew a small torch from inside of his satchel and switched it on, washing his tired, frowning face in pale yellow light. He was indeed of an older age, with close cropped grey hair complimented by a neatly trimmed grey moustache. His face was handsome, with the kind of embedded lines that speak to warmth and generosity, but his blue eyes had a drawn, preoccupied quality, exaggerated further by deeply furrowed eyebrows. He wore a light brown three-piece suit that was open at the neck, revealing a thin silver chain, the pendant of which was hidden somewhere in the folds of his collar. There was no overcoat across his shoulders, as if he had departed somewhere in a great hurry. Polishing his small, round glasses with a sodden sleeve, the man pointed his torch forward and peered short-sightedly into the semi-darkness.

Rising from under the maple tree and raising his glasses back to his eyes, he returned the satchel to above his head, tussled the mackerel tabby’s ears goodbye and continued onwards. The pavestones were slippery under his feet, making for a hazardous journey in the failing light. The daylight that remained lingered on a partially obscured sign as he turned left: Bradmore Road. He looked up into the rain with narrowed eyes, readjusted his satchel and hurried onwards.

Thunder rolled ominously in the distance, heralding the arrival of the night. Moving forwards, he once again found himself flanked on either side by the shadowy impressions of more grand residential houses, blacker still against the ink saturated sky. He hurried down Parks Road, keeping Norham Park to his left. It was evening rush hour and the steady stream of headlights on the road to his right left the torch momentarily useless. A blurry procession of beating windscreen wipers flashed by, defying the unrelenting rain.

The man’s feet found grass again as he turned off the main road and approached his final destination.

The imposing building sat ahead of him, an angular mass of tan coloured stone. Hundreds of glass panes in almost as many frames glinted above his head, illuminated fleetingly under the light of his travelling torch beam.

At the building’s centre sat a tall, rectangular tower topped with a grey slate roof, tapering vertically into a sharp point. Crouched on the roof’s base were two stone gargoyles, armed to the teeth with the customary epithets: sharp fangs, curled talons and bloodcurdling expressions. Somewhat incongruously, they were carved out of a red stone, at unusual odds with their tan coloured surroundings.

The pair would perhaps have given the man pause for thought had he taken a moment to look up. As things stood, his head was downcast, concentrating intently on the treacherously uneven ground beneath his feet.

At the tower’s base was a large oak door, reinforced with a crisscross pattern of dark metal girders and framed with a carved stone archway. Further archways followed the walls of the building around as it unfolded into two wings on either side of the tower, each with more rows of deep-set windows spanning its two floors. Even more windows decorated their low hanging roofs, twelve in total and triangular this time, suggesting a third floor tucked into the eaves.

He walked towards it, his shoulders drenched and pulse quickening. With all his focus trained on the large oak door, he had failed to notice the small path of sunken stepping-stones embedded in the grass at his feet. With a start, he tripped forward and fell, scraping his palms and jarring his knees against the ground.

When he had been a younger man the fall wouldn’t have cost him a second thought, but these days something as simple as a gentle trip would leave his bones rattled and his body bruised. It was not that he wasn’t strong for his age. In both body and mind he maintained remarkable stamina (in his line of work it never really went away) but with the many blessings of getting older came an inevitable wind down, a steady loosening of the tight mechanisms that keep a person ticking.

The man did not hold any real grudge against this natural passing of time, but it certainly made late night subterfuge a great deal more complicated.

Registering the sudden absence of light, he looked down in dismay to see his torch in pieces on the grass in front of him, the bulb now a jagged kaleidoscope of broken glass shards. Cursing quietly, he considered his predicament for a moment. Taking care to avoid the shrapnel, he knelt on the wet grass.

Reaching into his inside jacket pocket, he withdrew a small bronze container, roughly the size and shape of a tin of shoe polish. Prizing the lid off, he dropped it to the ground. Inside the tin was a handful of what looked to be round, shiny black pebbles, nestled amongst a small heap of grey ashes. Rifling through the collection, the man retrieved the largest of them and raised it up to his eyes. Glowing steadily at its centre was an amber light, warm and inviting in the surrounding darkness. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, raised a hand up to his mouth and popped it straight in. Holding it momentarily between two molars, he crunched down on it with as much strength as his chattering jaw would allow. There was a sharp cracking sound and, after a beat, a quiet sputtering noise like the stalling of a miniature car engine.

The man’s cheeks were suddenly ablaze with that same warm amber light, like paper-thin walls of a Chinese lantern. He coughed slightly and a few curling whisps of white smoke escaped between his lips. Forming his mouth into a neat letter ‘O’, he proceeded to blow a neat procession of perfectly formed smoke rings. They meandered skywards, eventually drifting out of sight.

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He then reached into his mouth and produced a tiny fireball, roughly the size of a marble. Smiling gently at the object’s simple beauty, he rolled it from his fingers to his palm, where it sat snugly at its centre, emitting its bright amber glow.

The fireball held many of the characteristics recognisable in a typical flame, with a few unusual caveats. The immediate difference was that it did not appear to be radiating any sort of heat. In fact, the flame was entirely cold to the touch. His skin registered nothing more than a mild tickling sensation, as if it were only an ice-cube flickering and crackling in his hand. Despite its warm amber colouring, the light that spilled out of the pocket-sized flame was also tremendously bright. Where a candle flame of a similar size may have struggled to dimly light a small desk, this tiny flame could have brightened the entire study where it sat, perhaps also illuminating the adjoining bathroom for good measure.

Energised by the satisfaction of a problem solved, the man climbed back onto his feet, retrieved his fallen satchel and finally took the last few steps towards the door. Tentatively, he approached its right-hand side, looking specifically for a smaller rectangular opening within the larger arch. As he walked, small white sparks occasionally flew from the fireball, sizzling against the falling rain. Upon reaching the familiar doorway, it grew bolder and brighter, as if somehow more self-assured than before.

Placing the flame between his feet, the man placed his right hand on the polished oak. It was cold to the touch and covered in a sheen of oily raindrops. He possessed a detailed knowledge of the varied techniques needed for opening even the most troublesome of doors. However, infallible as this one seemed, in truth its solution was unusually uncomplicated, as long as you possessed the right tools. Placing his satchel back on the ground, he withdrew a heavy iron key from his trouser pocket and slotted it into the keyhole. On its way in, the key caught slightly on a ridge somewhere inside the lock, as was common in mechanisms of its age and complexity, but offered no further resistance. He turned the key one full rotation to the right until he heard a soft click, withdrew it slightly and then proceeded with two full rotations to the left and was rewarded with a heavy ‘clunk’. There was a whirring of gears and an oak panel slid aside, revealing a polished brass knob that had been concealed somewhere within the door.

Reaching around his neck, he unclasped the silver chain and held up its pendant to the light. It was a second key, roughly the size of his fingernail. Without removing it from its chain and with extreme delicacy, he picked up the key between his thumb and forefinger, placed it in the direct centre of the doorknob and pushed. The key slid smoothly into a concealed lock too small for the naked eye to see. There was another click, louder this time. He slowly turned the doorknob. A faint whirring was followed by the protesting creak of ancient wood as the door swung open.

Standing silently in the doorway, the man stared into the building’s shadowy interior, willing himself to continue. Curiously, the light of his pocket-sized flame was unable to reach beyond the line of the doorway, which seemed determined to remain impenetrable.

He delved back into his satchel and pulled out the folded letter. He unfolded it and began what would be his final reading, holding it up to the warm glow of the flame:

J.W,

Proceed tonight and meet alone,

Those forged in fire, sealed in stone.

Four winds as one have come to sense,

Their ancient need for recompense.

Now rightly step, pulse elevated,

Through the door your blood and sweat curated.

Be not deceived by the grand exterior,

We wait beneath the pig’s posterior.

- V.

J.W. was accustomed to receiving encrypted messages like this. White chalk symbols appearing outside his front door in the dead of night, or blank postcards arriving in the mail from obscure locations halfway across the world. It wasn’t often that he received poetry and it was certainly not his specialism. Nevertheless, it hadn’t taken him long to extract the message placed within its couplets. While reasonably confident that he had decoded everything of importance, his well-practiced philosophy was that one could never be over-prepared, and it hadn’t seen him wrong yet.

His eyes lingered on the image printed in pride of place at the top of the page. It was a sigil, hand-stamped in dark grey ink; a dual-headed hammer striking the flat head of an anvil, sparks flying from the heavy collision of metal on metal. He knew that the sigil deserved more attention than he had been able to offer. It belonged to a family that were authentically ancient, in a way that ‘ancient’ very rarely accurately describes. They were fiercely proud of their heritage and to enter inside the building without acknowledgement of this would be interpreted as a severe insult, ceasing the evening’s discussions before they had even begun. He was confident in his own understanding but knew that there was a power in such symbols that should not be underestimated.

The man adjusted his glasses to give the sigil one last look. Then, he froze. He had heard a sound that didn’t belong. A faint crunch from somewhere behind him, almost imperceptible against the sound of rain hitting soil and stone. Someone, or something, had stepped on the remains of his shattered torch.

Letter in hand, he turned around, slowly and deliberately. As the cold chill of fear crept into his thoughts, the fireball began to and dim, as if it shared the man’s uncertainty. Stepping out of the doorway, he peered wide-eyed into the dark folds of the night.

At once, he was set upon by the rain. It streamed down his face, creeping into his eyes and seeping through his skin.

His sharpened ears picked up another strange noise somewhere behind him, a clattering sound, as if someone had thrown a handful of jacks from a great height.

And then, everything happened at once.

With the sound of stone being torn from stone, something dark and heavy came plunging down from the eaves of the building, rapidly picking up speed as it fell. For a fleeting moment, he thought it was a piece of loose rubble, dislodged from somewhere high above him. This illusion was shattered when, with a noise like gravel in a coffee grinder, the falling object unfolded a pair of giant, moss-covered stone wings. Concealed by the night, the gargoyle had uprooted itself from its lofty height on the building’s roof. Adjusting its course, it flew straight at him. Its eyes, empty sockets gouged into its weather-beaten face, exuded malice. Its mottled hide was covered in a spiderweb network of hairline cracks, pockmarked with small holes and crevices. Pointed ears lay flat against its skull as it dived, long fangs piercing the wind and making way for its muscular body and hobnailed tail. The stone effigy may have been the size and shape of a small child, but its violent, single-minded intent was clear.

The man stumbled backwards, his heel hitting the oak door’s raised threshold. Falling through, his shoulders slammed against the hard flagstones beyond. There was a resounding crack as his head followed suit. He groaned loudly, dazed.

Temporarily blinded, he heard the gargoyle land nearby. He shook his head frantically attempting to clear his eyes. His head was spinning, and his vision blurred. He watched in horror as what now seemed to be two identical gargoyles, swaying in and out of focus, clattered through the doorway, their front talons scrabbling horribly against the stone floor. The ground beneath his feet was spinning as he tried to shuffle away, frantically propelling himself by the rubber of his shoes until his back hit a wall and he could go no further. He could see the night sky beyond the open doorway, the stars contorting and stretching. Fiery rivers of intense pain swept up his back, through his spine and burst into his brain, exploding like small fireworks behind his eyes. He blinked rapidly, desperately trying to clear his vision.

The gargoyle arrived, silhouetted against the light of the fireball which lay abandoned and forgotten at the building’s entrance. The man could almost taste the petrichor sharpness of damp stone as it moved in for the kill.

For a brief moment, the abhorrent creature surveyed the man one last time through its cold, cavernous eye-sockets, its chasm of a mouth curling up at one side in a hideous imitation of a crooked smile.

Then, with an ear-splitting screech, the gargoyle leapt towards the man’s unprotected throat.