"C'mon Cecil. We'll be late!"
"Ok my love. I just need to find the big umbrella. It's in the shed."
"Well hurry up. The carol service starts at seven and we're both reading."
"I know sweetness. I'll be two minutes."
Cecil wandered into the outside shed through the rain. He turned on the weak light and in the murk fumbled for the brolly on the hook. A large spider looked at him with irritation.
The light was so bad he groped in semi-darkness and got hold of something else by mistake.
"Cecil. What are you doing?" Ada shouted from the back door.
"Coming dear!"
He unhooked whatever it was and brought it under the lightbulb. Even in the gloom he could see what they were.
A pair of old horns held together by a bit of skull.
"Well I never! How did you get there!"
Sensing a long-forgotten union, Cecil held the ancient object and remembered how he had come by them on the moor above the house after ploughing the top field. That was fifty years ago!
His daughter had the farm now. He thought of her and her family safe and snug this Christmas. He was glad the horns weren't on the farm.
Still clutching them he was sure he'd thrown out the horns years before. In the bin. He'd forgotten. Somehow they had been here all along.
"Cecil!"
"Coming darling!"
For some strange reason, which he couldn't explain, the old man placed the horns on top of his head and balanced them there for a time. They scratched his temples, inflaming old scars.
He shut his eyes, swallowed and opened them again. He found his shaking hand gripping a large pitchfork leaning by the wall. He felt terrible.
He rehung the horns and wiped his face with his hanky. He stared silently into the black night beyond the shed door.
"I couldn't find the brolly darling."
"We'll have to take the car. It's not going to stop."
Cecil reversed out of the yard and the couple drove to church in rain which seemed to grow stronger with every mile. It flayed the car like a lash and the wind groaned in the trees.
Cecil was unusually silent as he drove slowly along the five mile lane with the wipers thrashing at the water.
Ada didn't really notice. She was thinking over her Christmas reading about the hot breath of animals warming the Christ child in the byre. She wanted to make an impression at the lecturn.
The car pulled up and with coat collars high the elderly pair hurried into church. Cecil hesitated at the threshold. He stared intently at the sacred space beyond. Tentatively he entered.
"We're at the front dear."
"Don't you think I know!"
"You'll need a kneeling cushion."
"For God's sake woman, stop your damn fussing!"
Ada looked at Cecil. He'd never scalded her before. Not since the farm. He must be getting a chill she thought and ambled up the aisle to the first pew. She smiled at the Priest who smiled back.
Cecil stomped over and sat down next to his wife. The Priest nodded to him. Cecil simply stared past him toward the statue of Christ above the altar. He glared at it.
The carol service began and the congregation started to sing. In the Bleak Midwinter and Silent Night. The Priest joined in, his vestments sparkling in the tallows of the altar.
An air of candled peace descended upon the assembly and Ada felt settled for the first time since they arrived.
She looked at Cecil but he wasn't settled.
Not at all.
He was rubbing his temples, scratching the spots where the old horns had rested. He turned to face her and his eyes flashed with pain and ..... something else ....
Malevolence!
Ada winced but she had to stand up to recite her reading. Nervously she spoke of the coming of the Lord in the dead of night that first Christmas.
When done it was Cecil's turn. She passed him the bible, which he snatched, grunted something and shambled the few feet to the dias.
Gripping the lectern Cecil began to shudder. The wooden pedestal quivered and he raised his head toward the people, frantically scratching at his temples all the while.
Suddenly, he blurted out his first words with such a rasp that the candle by his book went out.
He looked ahead and his eyes burned crimson.
The audience gasped.
Cecil raised the holy book aloft and howled.
"The horns. The old horns. I've missed them so!"
He threw the Bible high into the air and a silence fell upon the company as it arced slowly towards the door.
The Priest stared at the bible as it fell to the floor.
Someone whispered,
"He's here!"
At once there was a cacophonous pounding on the wooden doors of the biulding. They blew open and a gust of frigid sulphuric air swept across the space like a tidal wave of bat wings, extinguishing all the candle-flames and plunging the church into total darkness.
Except for one.
The lecturn candle had re-ignited.
It illuminated a scene which froze the stilling blood of those believers that infernal December night.
Cecil was no longer a man. The old horns were fused to his head and his skin was cracking open in huge smoking rents.
With taloned hands he mauled it all off to reveal a red glistening face, smoldering yellow eyes and a mouth bristling with fangs.
Thin blue lips curled into a knowing smile.
"Well hello again!"
