Wolfsgate

"There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: Twins." (Josh Billings) Night was falling fast and the narrow tarmac road wound its way uphill away from human habitation into the dark forest. The village council had been in an optimistic mood when they authorized the application of a central dividing line. The road was barely broader than a large van. In the village in the valley, the first lights could be seen twinkling through the windows. Any moment, the street lighting would come on. Entering under the first trees, the mood got blacker and chillier as trees closed in on both sides of the road. As if remembering times gone by, the road became a winding meander as it wound around ancient trees that had stood there old and wise when the road had been but a dirt track when well sprung coaches and grooms had passed here. Majestic limbs of expansive oaks soon gave way to straight growing conifers looming black and foreboding on both sides of the little road. A house could dimly be made out in glimpses through the bare lower trunks of the pines. It looked small like the witch's house in the forest of Hansel and Gretel. Drawing nearer, it became obvious that the building was substantial. The sheer number of chimney pots visible behind the understated front facing the road told of twenty or more rooms. And those were just the ones visible from the road. The house seemed to go out of its way to convey the message of 'keep on going, nothing to see here, just a little old house minding its own business'. Tonight, the house stood quiet and dark within a small garden clearing bordered by the blackest of pines. Only a dim little light shone from a single upstairs window at the back of the rambling brick building. The window was grated like a prison or a nursery of old. Inside the house, nothing moved. The quiet was so thick, it could have been cut with a knife if someone had entered. The occasional c***k of wood or stone settling in the ancient walls made the silence an almost sentient breathing being.  The light upstairs couldn't be seen from the hall below. A subdued but elegant staircase led upstairs to a gallery from which several corridors branched off into complete darkness. Except for one corridor, where a faint glimmer could be seen escaping from underneath one of the doors on the right hand side. The light illuminated nothing except a threadbare flowered carpet dating back a hundred or more years. The door was sturdy oak but didn't close snugly enough to keep the light in or drafts out. Inside the room, the temperature was warmer than in the corridor; a small wood fire had been expertly banked to give off a bit of heat without making the room oppressively hot. A shaded lamp stood near the door. A scarf had been thrown over the side watching the room dimming the meagre light even further. Disjointed low breathing could be heard coming from a cot standing near the window. The curtains were only partially drawn, letting in drafts of colder air from outside and showing the pitch black sky over the darker trees. Stars filled the visible sky all waiting for the main player to enter the stage. As the night progressed, the full moon finally made its pale appearance. Its cold light doused the world in a silver glimmer that marked out everything in hard relief made of jet. The shadows of the pines became stone sentinels watching over the house and the being in the cot. When the moon's first ray hit the cot, a surprised snort followed by an ear curdling yowl could be heard through the indifferent house and out on the clearing. If there were living things around, they would have fled while the first yowl was shredding the air. In the cot, two nearly black fur balls were howling like banjees and shredding pillows and mattresses at the same time. Their puppy paws and claws were dealing admirably with the soft materials used to make the cot comfortable for human babies but they were ineffective against the antique wood of the cot. Leaving light colored scratches over older and darker ones, the two wolf pups were effectively imprisoned by whoever had put them into that prison.