Chapter 1

THE SINNERS' DANCE

"You do realize that if we have an accident, you'll end up killing both yourself and our child?!" Matt Flis said to his wife Magdalena, who was right then resting a foot on the dashboard of their silver Peugeot 307 CC, lazily watching the landscapes passing by as they drove on towards their holiday destination. Matt hated it when she lounged about like that, but Magda was feeling too comfortable to react, so he ranted on, "I heard about some guy whose shin bone pierced his lungs when he crashed his car. They talked about it on some breakfast TV show, to make people think..."

Matt clearly had no intention of shutting up and insisted on keeping the conversation going, one neither Magda nor her massively swollen, eight-month old tummy were interested in. As if to confirm this, their son Milosz (if the USG scans were accurate in showing what sex their unborn child was to be) kicked Magda in the ribs with all the strength the little one had in him.

"Can you hand me the water? Seems Milosz is not happy about us driving with the roof down," she asked.

"There you go." Her husband handed over a plastic bottle of naturally sparkling highland water and Magda took a long sip. The guy at the petrol station who'd sold it to them was right, she thought - the locally sourced springwater really did taste delicious, so much nicer than tap water back in the big city, especially when nicely chilled.

"You gonna take your foot off the dashboard, or do we have to argue about it?" Matt now insisted.

"I'm pregnant, so lay off!"

This excuse was something she had grown used to using of late, any time they both knew she was in the wrong. The power of this single argument left him helpless and closed the gates to all disputes, pleas or complaints. She did of course use it on purpose and knew it was her best card to play. It was a ploy which worked each time, though there were moments when she needed to apply a little weeping in order to make her position even more convincing. A pregnant wife in fits of tears was an answer to all the complex dilemmas any man could ever face and a perfect cure to all relationship problems. Magda did sometimes wonder what would happen once the baby was born and one more little car crash would no longer be easily explained through hormonal imbalances and emotional turmoil caused by the pregnancy. For the time being, this worked, but once the eight month old belly became nine months old and then went back to being its usual size, she would have to admit that instead of watching the road ahead she was checking her phone and looking up gossip websites. The child would be too small to take the blame for any more mishaps, and so the conflict-free relationship based on the rule of "I'm pregnant, OK?" would end.

"What's so amusing?" Matt asked, forcing her to focus on him again.

"I'm just smiling and thinking about how much I love you, you know," she answered, putting her hand on the nape of his neck.

"The traffic jam before Szczyrk is nothing unusual. When I came here for a skiing holiday it went all the way back to Buczkowice, and so today we're in luck."

As if to confirm this wast true, they stopped just after a roundabout in Buczkowice, seeing a line of cars before them stretching in the direction of Szczyrk, a pretty little town dubbed the "Silesian Pearl of the Beskidy Highland Range".

"I read somewhere that they're planning to tunnel through the mountains, from Brenna or somewhere nearby, but knowing how slow all these contracts and construction work take to conclude, it won't happen... If we could take the highway straight there, we wouldn't have these problems!"

Magda looked at her irritated hubby, adjusted the sunglasses on her nose and reached into her backpack. She took out two filled bread rolls wrapped in plastic foil and handed one to Matt.

"Have a steak sandwich, darling, you're becoming a bore," she joked.

"Don't mind if I do. We have about a mile to go, won't take half hour," he said, chuckling bitterly.

"It's no different anywhere else. Matt, think, if we'd chosen Zakopane or Wisla, would we not be stuck in traffic there too?"

"You know I hate Zakopane, so forget that argument! Krupowki High Street now chock full of stalls selling Chinese plastic pap. And there's always too many crowds where too much shit is on sale!" he answered in a flash and made her burst out laughing.

She got as close to him as the gear shift stick allowed and whispered in his ear,

"I promise you'll never forget this holiday. As soon as we get to the hotel, we'll go see if the beds are as big as the Konfederatka website promised."

* * *

Once they got to their destination, they found a snow-white walled mansion with a red tiled roof poking steeply into the sky. Magda instantly realized it had to have been recently renovated, seeing as the facade was spotless and the fencing around the property perfectly even. A cute little alleyway led up to the front door, lined with rose bushes and two white-black lanterns framing the entrance.

"This place looks magical!" she cried and tugged at the small gate which led towards the gardens.

"Watch out for the dog," Matt warned, as he struggled to get their luggage out of the Peugeot's tiny trunk.

"Relax! There's no sign warning of any..."

Magda was interrupted by the sound of barking coming from the back of the garden and so she took an instant step back towards the gate.

"Everything alright, babe?!" Matt asked, carrying a blue suitcase which contained most of the stuff they had brought along with them.

"What a cutie!" she howled with glee as a Labrador pup ran out from behind a flowering bush and began licking her hands hungrily.

"I hope it doesn't have any fleas," Matt groaned and circled the animal cautiously.

"Stop it, darling... He's so cute!"

Magda didn't care one bit what her hubby thought. Any time talk turned to canine things, he became a moaning, relentless critic. His dislike of all animals was so vast she could almost see him hosting his own television show - like the opposite of some BBC wildlife series, only in Matt's case featuring him riding round some rancho with a shotgun, killing anything that moved. Filling the TV studio with trophies he'd bring back from his hunts...

"Today, welcome to Szczyrk and the garden of a certain picturesque hotel where you can find a flea ridden mutt roaming the gardens. Keep well away! Now back to the studio, this is Matt George Flis, over and out!"

Magda was quietly amused by this fantasy, but decided not to share her amusement with her spouse - not everyone had to like sweet, little puppies, wasn't it so?

"Magda, you coming? And wash your hands right now. Who the hell knows where that mutt has..."

Dressed in a pair of short pants a'la Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Matt was already up on the porch of the hotel mansion, saying hello to the lady of the house.

"Did you come from far away? How was your journey?" the middle-aged woman asked with a smile and waved them indoors.

"Yes, not too bad, thank you," Matt answered and brought their suitcase inside. "We got stuck in traffic back at the roundabout, but then I hear that's normal."

The woman smiled as if to show she agreed and Magda realized she reminded her of her auntie Aniela. She had the same gleam in her eyes, a look of curiosity, something she associated with her mother's sister and the visits she'd pay the family home in Pruszewo. It was a friendly sort of gaze, but penetrating too, and quick to question, to probe, like some host on a TV quiz show, hungry for answers.

"Do you smoke, by the way?" the woman asked. "Not that I mind, but I have to tell you the house is over 100 years old and there is no smoking at all allowed inside."

"I don't smoke, and my wife is pregnant so nothing to worry about there."

"Is this house really that old?" Magda enquired, surprised as she went through the door and then onto the verandah the other side of the hallway.

"It was renovated recently. Eh, there's always something more to fix, though... You finish on one side and then the other starts crumbling. Round and round!"

The woman opened the door which led upstairs and handed them a small key attached to an orange key fob.

"Leave your shoes downstairs, so dirt doesn't get around. Here is the front door key and do try not to lose it... Once unpacked, come down so we can sign you in!"

"Of course. My hubby will be down in a second, while we have a lie down. I think little Milosz did not really enjoy driving down here with the roof down and needs a nap."

"If you need anything, all you need to do is knock on the partition," the owner said as she turned to walk towards the glass wall of the verandah which clearly led to the living quarters of Konfederatka.

"Quite a nice place, right?" Matt asked, whispering for effect. She nodded and began climbing the awfully creaky stairs which led up to their room, feeling like nothing now could possibly ruin her mood.

* * *

As Magda Flis lay back on the wonderfully comfy mattress, imagining all the wonderful evenings awaiting them in the town of Szczyrk, a couple of miles away inspector Alexander Dunaj was just finishing his second glass of scotch on ice. This particular brand was not too expensive, but the taste put a rich smile on his face as he absorbed himself in the aroma and flavours emanating from his chilled glass. His friend, Chubby Dave, liked saying that drinking whisky was an almost sacred ritual and after thirty odd years of worshipping at the altar of all sorts of alcohol, Alex Dunaj could agree.

"Oh, that feeling as if Jesus himself was blessing my palate... The son of god dancing all around my tongue!" Chubby Dave would say any time they met in the evenings in his garden on Highland Street and even though the line had become a sort of mantra Dunaj always burst out laughing, as if it was the first time he was hearing it.

"Hello, boss! I got some news for you!" he now heard a voice shouting the other side of his office door. Dunaj hid the glass in the lower drawer of his work desk, just as officer Anthony Przybyla burst into his office. Ant was one of the younger faces at the station, and belonged to a new generation of lawmen the commissioner liked calling his "young wolves," while Dunaj preferred calling them,

"My pups! How you doing, Ant? What's new round town? Sex, drugs, kidnappings?" the inspector asked, frowning to make himself look less amused and more business like.

"Stop with the pups! I know I'm new round here, but boss..."

"Young guns are young guns, call yourselves what you will. Have you concluded your patrol of our village yet?" Dunaj asked, getting up out his chair to look out the office window.

"Duty calls, indeed," the young cadet answered and glanced behind the desk at the whisky bottle standing on the floor behind it. "I thought you were working the night shift."

Dunaj was now focused on one of his young pups who was standing in the car park beneath his window, resting against his patrol car and clearly waiting to end his shift and go home. Dunaj was sure the kid was ready to go home, change into skintight pants and sing some Justin Bieber songs, just to make all the old boys at the station laugh... 'The future of the Polish police force for fuck's sake,' Dunaj thought to himself, then turned to look at his subordinate who began his report,

"OK, we had two calls come through and went out to investigate. What do you want to hear first?"

"Best start at the beginning."

"First then, we had a call from Posrednia at the Maliniak place. Someone it seems tried to break in last night and only legged it when they set the dogs on them," officer Przybyla reported.

"Did you visit the crime scene? Establish any leads?" the inspector demanded to know.

"The lock in the back door was broken, but nothing had been taken. I wrote up the report and we'll be working on the case as of Monday. Could be linked to other burglaries, maybe a local crew or out of town thieves."

"Yeah, a professional crew of bandits, just like our army back in 1939," inspector Dunaj grumbled. "I will ask three questions which should help you solve this puzzle before Friday night entertainments begin. Ready?"

"Oh, boss, I'm in no mood for your games..."

"Ready or not?!"

"Ready, chief..." the young cadet sighed.

"Fine. Good boy. First of all - who called it in?"

"Mrs Hanna Maliniak, 78 years of age, lives at..." Przybyla read out from the report in his hand, looking for the relevant details.

"Grand! Mrs Maliniak is well known to our officers who regularly have to attend her family's property as a result of alcohol fuelled excesses they get up to all too often. All sorts of locals call to complain about what that lot get up to, including our local town councillor Kaliciak."

"I've not been working here long enough to know this yet. Boss, can we move on?"

The inspector smelled fear and tiredness on his young subordinate, which only fuelled his whisky aroused ego. He had already made up his mind to give this young pup a lesson he would not soon forget. And not just because the inspector was annoyed to be dragged away from his bottle of Grants, longing to taste its bitter kiss on the back of his throat.

"Question number two. When you got there, what was Ziggy Maliniak up to?"

"You mean the old fellow? Oh, he was asleep. The old lady said he was very tired."

"As pissed as a fart, I suspect!" Inspector Dunaj roared, slamming his fist on his desk. "Sleeping off another binge, his hungover wife conducting the investigation with you."

"Even if it looks odd, there were signs of a break in, especially the forced entrance and bust up door frame..."

"That broken door and beat up doorframe were lying on the inside of the building or on the verandah?" Dunaj asked as fast and deadly as machine gunfire.

The young cadet's face became puzzled, then evidently irritated. It was now dawning on him he had been a victim of a call out which involved a waste of police time and resources and no real crimes.

"They were piled up outside the front entrance," the young cop said, hanging his head.

"Bingo, cadet! Crime solved! Case busted! That Ziggy and his all night drinking sessions, this time ended badly for their front door. Something I bet he broke trying to get out to relieve his bladder in the middle of the night. And our young guns, our future police force stars, sentenced the guilty party to six hours of sleep and more fresh glasses of vodka! Another win for our station and the local police force!"

The awkward silence which descended upon the room was disturbed only by the sound of a wall clock ticking away. The two men faced off like gunslingers in an old cowboy movie, the air between them shimmering with tension. They stood there for some time before Dunaj burst out laughing and said,

"You should have seen your face, boy! You looked as if someone had just told you you'd been fathered by two unmarried drag queens! Quite a laugh..." the inspector surmised, collapsing in fits of laughter.

The young cadet relaxed and smiled eventually. The mood in the inspector's office lightened and the inspector himself thought it was time he did a better job of communicating with his trainee officers. He was sure his sense of humour was going to have one young pup in tears, running to mummy, soon (he could hear the other young gun outside whistling pop tunes to himself), though he was going to have to ensure they learned the tricks of the trade before he was due to retire from the force soon enough.

"You'll need a while longer to learn all about this town and its secrets, especially who to take seriously and whom to ignore. OK? People love telling tall tales, and your job is to check if they are being honest or if there's not a grain of truth in the crap they call through to our desk," Dunaj explained, keeping his voice now low and measured. "As to the other thing you mentioned, assuming we're done cracking the first case of the burglary that never was?"

"We talked to the Dubiel family on Heather Street," cadet Przybyla reported, his voice a little more steady now. "They claim their son Tom vanished the previous night. The kid is sixteen years old and I bet is out camping somewhere, smoking a joint, but the mother is totally freaked out, so we promised to search for him."

"You sure it's Tom we're after?" Dunaj asked, looking a little concerned. "He went to elementary school with my daughter, and he's a good boy as far as I know, never got into any trouble."

"Kids grow up, change, do all sorts of dumb things," Przybyla commented.

"Speaking from personal experience, most recent too, I imagine," Dunaj said and smiled a vicious smile. "Go file your reports and get going. I will go speak to some folks around town, see what I can find out. Get some rest."

"Thanks boss, see you later."

The young cadet shook his boss' hand and turned to start for the door. Before exiting the office, he turned to say,

"You know what else?"

"No, what?"

"We really are doing our best to become the best cops we can be... I hope you can see and appreciate this effort."

"Sure, kid! Part of the learning journey is getting used to my sense of humour. Is that clear? Now, one more thing..."

"Yes?"

"Let your cop partner whistling outside know they just delivered some new pink fashions to Luiza's second hand clothing emporium on the high street."

"You what?"

"Pink will go well with his skinny jeans."

* * *

On the first night of their stay in Szczyrk, Magda and Matt headed for the centre of town to have a look around and grab a bite to eat. Matt instantly noticed that the place had changed a great deal since the previous year. More and more souvenir stands were set up in the streets, as well as brand new eateries opening up on Beskidy Street. And yet, something of its original charm and natural quality remained - something unlike other holiday destinations around the country. "Naturally native" is how Matt liked calling it in his mind, for it sounded nice and said what he needed it to say.

Yeah, the town had changed a lot and become more modern, more cosmopolitan even over the years, but it still had that unique, provincial charm about it. This rural sort of mentality could be felt in the way people interacted with each other, something out of town visitors could pick up on straight away. Fancy hotels and restaurants had not completely taken over from places where you could pay for your drinks the next day and where everyone knew each other not just by sight but by name also. Matt really liked and needed to feel this sort of small town warmth, long gone from the loud and rough streets of Warsaw. He could remember the name of the man who ran ACE, a small pub in town, whereas he never knew the names of his neighbours or those who ran local shops in suburban Warsaw. And where else could one stop in the street to buy some smoked cheese made from sheep's milk and gossip with local street traders?

"Can we finally grab a bite to eat, darling? I think Milosz and his momma need nutrition," Magda asked, making her eyes all big and wide and pleading in a voice an octave or two higher.

"Almost there, darling. I told you I want some lamb, at this one place I've known for years and really need to see again," he said smiling.

"I only wanted to remind you there are now three of us to consider. Your son clearly wanted a hamburger or a strawberry milkshake four restaurants back..."

Matt liked bickering with his wife, especially when as now she seemed to be in high spirits and fine mood. Not only that, but she really was pretty too...

"Just hang on. Tell the little one we're here."

Matt raised his hand, looking at his wife's belly, and pointed at a bar with the word ACE hanging over the door. It was a small building, covered in wood panelling which made it look like a traditional highland tavern. A handful of people were sitting outside on long, wooden benches, while a wood-fired grill belched clouds of white smoke out through a chimney in the middle of the building.

"Real aces stuff their faces right here, my dear," he recited and they went inside.

* * *

Inspector Dunaj turned his attention to a couple of tourists walking past as he drove along the street and noticed the young woman had an attractive behind. It was only once the new arrivals turned into a tavern did he realize she was heavily pregnant.

"Lucky man," he said to himself and turned down the radio, a Dawid Podsiadlo song about waves "floating by and by and by" playing once more that day.

"All the waves gone by because we're in the highlands, Dawid, and there's no boats either although Red Fred looks like a storm is about to sweep him off his feet!"

A man with bright red hair, and an equally fiery temper, was clearly struggling to keep walking in a straight line as he passed by along the pavement. Known all over town for his love of booze, the drunk spent whole days going from one beer can to another without going very far at all, especially not when taking regular naps. The boys back at the station called him "Lagerman" and inspector Dunaj realized there really was something heroic about how much alcohol the man could consume each and every day of his life. As soon as he was able to beg a few coins out of unsuspecting tourists, he'd be off in search of the nearest store which could sell him a can of some superstrong brew. Considering how many tourists were around in high season, Dunaj imagined that begging could net Red Fred a larger income than an ordinary cop working hard most days of the week.

He parked the patrol car outside a souvenir store and exited.

"Hello! Earth to Red, Red Fred!" he called out in the direction of the swaying drunk. The red haired man reacted with his head, but the rest of him failed to adjust for the direction the voice was coming from and Fred fell against a statue which stood in the very center of St Jacob's Square.

"Be cool, Fred!" Dunaj shouted and ran up to help keep the drunk from falling down. "Can you stand by yourself?"

Lagerman mumbled something which sounded like agreement, then burped loud enough to make the policeman wince.

"Do you ever eat anything, Fred? Or only drink from morning to night time?"

"Well... Buy me... Something... To eat..."

"Oh, I pity that cute wife of yours. Bet you've spent all the money you had on booze, huh? I should take you down to the drying out tank, but what good is it putting you in a cell again? Your old woman would only worry."

"Give me... A bread roll... Alex?" Red asked, being escorted by the inspector to the nearest bench.

"Sure, you fool. Just sit here and don't move, you bloody piss head."

"Alright..."

The Mill Tavern was the nearest one to the town square, so Dunaj went inside to order two portions of fries and a cup of tea. The young woman behind the counter took his order and then gave it to the boys in the kitchen.

"Take away, ok?" he mentioned, then waited to pick up a plastic tray covered with deep-fried potatoes, covered in ketchup, then grabbed a paper cup filled with raspberry flavoured tea with his free hand and went outside.

"Special delivery for Red Fred, eat up, you bugger," he growled, approaching the man waiting for him on the bench.

Fred was already curled up in a foetal position, snoring away and emitting a stink which was a mix of sweat, booze and piss - enough to spin the inspector's head.

"Wake up, you bum!"

The cop shoved the drunk aside and sat down on the bench next to him as the drunken man came to and sat up.

"Fank you, Al, you a star... Top cop, and all that..."

Fred grabbed a handful of fries from the plastic plate and covered his face in ketchup wolfing them down in an instant. Half the fries ended up in his lap and down by his feet, but the ones which hit the mark clearly pleased the hungry wino.

"You gonna sit still today, or are we gonna have to take a little trip, Fred?" Dunaj asked, once the other man was sipping on the tea.

"Gotta get home, Al, but if I all alone... Home, alone, it rhymes, right? I got talent, man."

"You know what rhymes? Booze and the blues? You sip, I whip? You drink, end up in the clink?" Dunaj barked and took out a cigarette. "So if you don't want to cause me any more trouble, get home right now and go to sleep and say night night to good old Beata before you do..."

"Al, Alex, man, please... She's gone off again, don't know where!" Fred pleaded, seemingly embarrassed by the confession.

"You drink, she leaves, that's how it is with men and women! I don't want to see you round town no more today, Fred, and don't make me take you down to the station, just for old times' sake."

The old times were long gone... Times when Dunaj, Red and Starling were a team. Three friends from school, always hanging out and having fun, before things moved on and they went their separate ways. Dunaj studied criminal reform and offender management at a college in Lublin, then moved to the east part of Poland where he joined the uniformed corps. Starling kept his old nickname when he became a chef in a restaurant in Bielsko Biala, but then developed a tumour and died. As for Red...

Red only had the one love he always stayed true to and that was the bottle. Then another friend from the old days joined in that union -

Beata, who for reasons never quite grasped by inspector Dunaj decided to marry Red and even give the wastrel a son. When in 2008, Alexander Dunaj decided to end his roaming days and settle back in his home town, his old pal Red looked like death warmed up and pretty little Beata had turned into a miserable looking Cinderella. A story suffered by so many in that particular part of the world, but sad all the same. Small town life, highland hardships and so on and on...

"Do I need to drive you or can you walk on your own?" Alex asked, seeing his old pal getting to his feet.

"Better... Feeling better. Officer... Thanks for the meal."

"Don't take the piss, Fred. Don't make an old pal mad!"

"I'm going. Relax..."

Red turned away without another word and set off in the direction of the high street. If he could walk straight and extend his back he would look not much different to the young friend inspector Dunaj could still remember from their school days.

"Fred!" he shouted out and the slouching man paused, then turned round slowly.

"What is it?"

"You hang around town all day long, maybe you can help me with something... Listen, a kid's gone missing. Tom Dubiel."

"Joseph's boy, from Heather Street?"

"Correct. You didn't happen to see him last night or maybe later? Today? His folks are worried sick, he went missing last night."

Red stopped, smiled and pointed to what few teeth remained in his mouth.

"Maybe he listens to whispers, who knows... Whispers sometimes muddy waters."

"Fred, I'm asking seriously. Come on!"

"Oh, but the problem is that you don't know how to listen, Al. You never done! You can't hear people screaming, what then if they whisper, eh?"

"You see Tom around town, you call me. Right away... And drink less else you'll not last long."

Dunaj got up off the bench and headed back to his patrol car. Sick of what was turning into a crazy little conversation.

"Dunaj! Listen! You don't know! How to listen! Right! You never fucking did!"

Dunaj did not turn around before leaping into his car and driving away, so as not to see his old pal sliding into the abyss....

"I tell you all! If they fall silent, the stones will scream! Hear me, cop?! Dunaj!" Red roared, frothing at the mouth.

His old friend heard him through the patrol car windows, but drove away without replying, tyres spinning, indicator lights flashing angrily.

* * *

"Christ almighty, does he have to scream so bloody loud?!" Magda Flis asked, plugging her ears with her fingers, leaning back from her meal.

"Every town has its own Jim Morrison, darling," her hubby assured her, between mouthfuls of succulent lamb.

Magda watched the police patrol car driving off and shook her head in disbelief at the local bum hanging around the town square.

"Did you see that cop? Talked to that man there who can barely stand, and then just drove off. You'd never see that back home..."

"Can we just for a few days forget about Warsaw and its perfect, concrete streets?" Matt pleaded. She looked at her husband who held his hand up, holding a fork as if it were a spear or a dart.

"Sure, as long as you get me a strawberry cream dessert, covered in white chocolate, freshly grated and not that stuff they get from a packet."

"You think they have things like that round here? I know you're pregnant, but..."

"Well then bring me something equally delicious."

"Pickled cucumbers coated in milk chocolate?"

"Get on with it, your son and I are famished!"

As soon as her husband was out of sight, she took a packet of slim cigarettes and a lighter from her handbag. She lit one and drew on it intensely. It was her first smoke of the day and spun her head. She glanced at the bar, but Matt seemed absorbed in his conversation with the man behind it. He had never liked her dirty little habit, and if he ever found out she smoked while pregnant all hell would break loose. In the years they'd been together, she'd learned how to smoke in sneaky ways and places he didn't notice. She did so quickly and always making sure her tracks were covered. Her favourite ploy was rubbing pine tree needles into the tips of her fingers, making them smell of wild woodlands and not cigarettes. Smoking at the ACE, she had nothing to work in the way of a smoke screen (a phrase she found amusing), so she smoked as fast as she could.

As soon as the cigarette had been sucked and burned down to the very tip, she moved towards a table in the furthest corner of the beer garden to get rid of the filter.

"Psst..." a voice whispered to her from behind some bushes, almost making her scream in shock.

"Is someone there? Hello!" she said and began poking through the flower beds which grew around the bar and its garden.

"Here, madam. Here I am."

This time the voice was coming from deep inside the garden which grew around the bar. It was female and seemed rough, old and made Magda squirm a little.

"Hello? What is going on?" Magda asked, but only the wind replied. She discarded the cigarette butt and went further into the garden to see who was hiding there. Her flip-flops were not the best sort of footwear for exploring gardens, but she couldn't help herself. Curiosity won over. The garden seemed larger than she'd at first imagined and was clearly not managed by any hard-working gardener. To the left she saw a rotting fence and some old planks piled up along a rock-lined pathway.

"Hello! Is anyone there?" she asked again, stopping on the rocky path.

"Yes, dearie. I only wanted to see you up close," the voice answered and now she had the impression it was coming from the other side of the house nearest to her. She kept creeping along, not expecting to see any ghouls or local serial killers, but the setting seemed spooky enough and her mind flashed with all sorts of horrid images she'd seen in horror flicks and late night TV movies.

"Come closer, darling. Let an old woman get a good look at ye," asked the elderly woman seated on a wooden bench in a little leaf-covered gazebo.

"You scared me a little," Magda whispered.

"No need to be frightened, none at all. I don't invite folks in here often, but today I saw you're all expecting and so..." the old wench said and took a set of brightly coloured spheres wrapped in some netting out of a wooden container.

"You sit here, making butter?" Magda asked and entered the gazebo.

"Oh, not at all. These are my cheeses. Beloved little things, smoked in the night and are now drying," she said and dipped the net containing the little spheres back in the wooden vessel.

"I've never seen how sheep's cheese is actually made. Glad to meet you, I am."

"Do you have a name picked out yet?" the old woman asked, pointing a finger at Magda's belly.

"Milosz. If all goes according to plan, a month from now two become three."

Magda watched the woman sitting inside her leafy hideaway and added,

"If you're all ok, I need to get back to my husband. He was getting some food and will now be worried, I imagine."

"Now you, dearie, do you worry and panic a lot, do you?"

The question was odd, but Magda kept on smiling when answering,

"Depends on what there is to worry about."

"So tell me, which do you fear more - spiders or frogs?"

Magda looked at the old woman more carefully now, trying to work out of the old crone was sane or perhaps suffering from dementia.

"I think they're all interesting. It's people who worry me the most. Thank you and bye."

Magda turned to go, but then felt the woman's cold hand gripping her by the wrist.

"You're right. People sometimes don't understand that what they should fear the most they can see any time they look in a mirror," the wench said, gripping ever tighter.

"Yes, interesting that, but I really have to go."

She wrenched hard enough to free her hand and exited from the gazebo, moving down the path to where she could see Matt waving from a little way off.

"When these little babies are smoked and ready I will invite you to the shepherd's hut, dearie, to try some," the old woman said in parting.

"Did you need some fresh air, darling?" Matt asked as she wandered back to the beer garden.

"No. Still... Old age can be depressing sometimes," she answered and sat down at their table with a moody look on her face.

* * *

Inspector Alexander Dunaj also thought old age was no picnic, though he felt time advanced for everyone around except for him. Even now, driving down Heather Street in order to talk to the Dubiel family about their missing son, he did all he could to stop looking in the rear view mirror. The man hiding in it looked a lot older than the boy he wanted to remember. Hair thinning, and what was left of it was covered in a silvery glow some nasty people liked to call "grey hair". Dunaj himself liked to think of it as a moonshine glow and silver, not grey, no matter what some idiots might think.

"This is Radio Bielsko. Latest news coming your way. All the best local reporting in the region!" the in-car radio announced and the inspector turned up the volume. "The mayor of Żywiec, Mr Anthony Szlanort, has opened an exhibition titled MASKS IN CULTURE AND HISTORY featuring historical exhibits from places such as Gabon, Brazil and even the Easter Islands. This will be a prestigious event for the Museum in Żywiec, something its director Barbara Rys will now tell us about..."

"Masks..." the inspector sighed. "I wonder if Jim Carrey is invited?"

"The masks on display come from all over the world and some are hundreds of years old. They allowed those who wore them to become conduits for contact with ancestors and spirits in the afterworld. What amazes us today is how masks all over the world were used with the same purpose in mind, one which was seen as essential to the wellbeing of communities and their cultures," the authoritative voice on the radio concluded.

Dunaj thought to himself that it would not be a bad idea to have a mask made of the way he looked at present and then to wear it to work for the rest of his days on duty. The mask of what a real lawman should always look like... With what was left of his hair dyed dark brown of course.

"And now a newsflash from a caller who just rang into the station... If anyone knows of the current whereabouts of a young resident of Szczyrk please ring the nearest police station and help in their enquiries. Tomas Dubiel, sixteen years old, last seen on the twenty fifth of July on Heather Street. Wearing a blue Nike shirt and khaki coloured camouflage pants. His family are desperate to hear from anyone who might know where young Tom is now..."

"Bloody fantastic!" Dunaj roared, slamming his fist into the steering wheel. Any time a family got in touch with local media and broadcasters it spelled trouble... And that they'd given up hope of the missing person returning of their own volition, which hinted at criminal activity or some tragedy being involved. Now, the police would have to answer reporters and ordinary people who'd become interested, which distracted from the work they never had not enough of on their plates.

"Well done, you fools," Dunaj thought, pulling into the driveway of the Dubiel property. "You just couldn't wait and let us handle this without letting the whole world know!"

As soon as his car had stopped and the engine was off, the lady of the humble house ran out the front door.

"There you are, inspector! Tell me, any news of my Tommy? What do you know, anything at all?!" she demanded, tugging at Dunaj's shirtsleeve through the open car window.

"Not yet, no, Mrs Dubiel, we're working on it," he said, avoiding her gaze and moving his arm away to tear it free of the woman's panicked grasp.

"Something had to have happened! Our Tom is such a good kid. He'd never stay out all night without letting us know where he was going!" the woman howled.

"Calm... First of all, please keep calm. Kids at times have their own reasons for trying to get away. Believe me, I know, try not to worry too much..." he asked, but seeing the woman's terrified gaze and pale white face, he decided to lie some more, "It will all be fine, I promise."

"Tom and your daughter went to school together. You know how much this hurts..."

He knew all too well, but was in no mood to talk about this now. He looked around the property with its humble house and garden, hoping the missing kid would just show up out of nowhere, but nothing like that happened, nor did he expect it to.

"Has Tom been struggling with anything of late? That you know of? That you can tell us to help us think and work?"

"No, nothing comes to mind... He had his off days and his up times, but nothing was troubling him! Nothing I know of, no..."

"What about school? Any new friends or sports or girls he was hanging out with?"

"Nothing like that, no! You don't think he got into any trouble, do you? It's really not his fault!"

Dunaj watched the woman break down and start crying, saying nothing until a man's voice joined in the conversation from behind the woman's back,

"He's been spending a lot of time in the woods recently."

Dunaj looked round the woman and recognized her husband, who was not often seen around town. The gossip in Szczyrk was that he was not doing well in terms of mental health, but this might just have been the kind of things people in small towns make up to keep themselves from dying of boredom.

"Tomek kept wandering off into the woods with that wild girl from Podmagura. I told the stupid boy that there's plenty of other fish in the sea, but what son listens to his old man when it comes to such things?" the old man Dubiel mused and came closer to the patrol car.

"Oh, you're always going on about the same old, same old," the woman complained. "Kids his age like hanging out together. You can't keep them under lock and key, they gotta live, gotta learn."

"That girl from Podmagura is a witch, I tell you inspector! Her whole family is mad and cursed!" the man barked, sounding rather desperate.

"Now who wold that be, precisely?" inspector Dunaj asked, grabbing the notebook from the cubby hole next to his seat.

"Zuzka of the Wilczynski clan. All them great artists, sculptors, whatnot. If they're not painting or waving chisels about, they're doing tarot card readings. And now they've gone and made my boy vanish."

"George, shut up!" the woman howled. "What are you talking about?"

"Did your son meet up with Zuzanna Wilczynska the day he vanished?" the inspector asked, making notes as he spoke.

"Who the hell knows... I went to see them a week ago and told them what I think of this puppy love. They are a bad influence on my boy, that is a fact!"

"Fact, Mr Dubiel? What do you mean by that, precisely?"

"Well, just go over there and see what is going on inside that house. I saw them once on their knees, the lot of them. The old woman, the old man and Zuza with my Tommy. Kneeling like some flower children, in a circle with a devilish figurine in the middle!" the man howled and inspector Dunaj was starting to suspect there might have been some substance to the gossip going round town about Mr Dubiel's mental health.

"And I assume you collected your son then and brought him home?"

"No chance of that! As soon as I tried to grab poor Tommy by the shoulders, that old wench leapt at me like a harpy!"

"You mean Mrs Wilczynska or her mother?" the lawman asked, continuing to make notes.

"The old witch, yes! Though I didn't recognize her at first... Her face," Dubiel paused, struggling to recall some details. "Her face was very odd, not like hers at all. She looked like someone, as if she was..."

"OK, relax now, take your time, try to remember as many details as you can."

"It was her, but looking so weird, so scary! I'd never seen anything hellish like that ever before in my life, inspector!"

"And I take it she attacked you personally?"

"Well, no. She only said one word and my own son told me to get out of there! Screaming at the top of his voice, shoving me towards the exit as if some demon had gotten into him. My... Tommy had never raised his voice at me before, not ever!"

* * *

The hands of an old wooden grandfather clock showed it was exactly half past seven in the evening, which was when Magda Flis noticed a rather large spider creeping across the ceiling. She sat up, shoved her pillow to the right hand side of the bed and watched the intruder with distaste.

"Matt... Can you come in here a minute?!" she called towards the living room, but no one answered. She thought he must have gone out to the garden, all the time keeping her eyes on the beast now weaving a web in the corner of the bedroom. "Tell me dearie, do you fear spiders more..." she recalled the old woman asking, and realized she did not suffer from arachnophobia, but did not like little creepy crawlies all the same. When she'd been little, her brother liked scaring her by catching spiders and playing a terrible game called "ARENA". He'd scour the garden looking for the biggest spider he could find and then drop it inside an empty jar, then he'd catch some other insect and drop it in there. This would most often be a wasp or a bumblebee, but at times these would be ants, crickets or beetles. Once the combatants were trapped, he'd seal the jar and make holes in the lid so air could get in. He'd then run back to the house, all excited, and make little labels for the jars, such as

ARENA 32 - SPIDER VS WASP

In time, of course the creatures would begin doing battle, her older brother observing them with glee. Magda Flis was a five year old child at the time and loved her Barbie dolls, fearing more and more her brother's ever growing collection of experimental jars. From time to time, he'd sneak up on her and shake one of the jars in her face, which is when the spiders would begin coming awake and attacking their prey, dancing in a deadly fashion she found horrifying. These experimental Arenas were for the little five year old girl so traumatizing she could still feel panicky thinking about them now, lying back all comfy and safe in the bedroom of their apartment at the Konfederatka. The story of these Arenas found their continuation in the way her brother grew up - becoming a biologist who had long been employed as a school teacher and shared his passion for natural sciences with kids who loved learning all about amphibians, reptiles and arthropods... She was sure he'd forgotten all about his childhood games with the creepy crawlies in their garden, or if he did remember them it was not as intensely as she still could.

"D'you want to have supper or rather record a new episode of Animal Planet for the BBC?" Matt asked, appearing on the doorstep out of nowhere.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Long enough to notice you staring up at that tiny critter with a very sour look on your face."

Matt then brought a stool in from the kitchen and climbed onto it in order to cup the spider in his hands.

"Eek! Get that thing out of here!"

"Poor little spidey. They don't want you in here..." he sighed and opened his hands to allow the spider to wander up his wrist.

"Can you get that bloody thing out of here?!" she screamed so loud she scared herself a little.

"OK, calm down, I didn't realize you'd be this mad," he groaned, evidently surprised by her reaction.

"I am a little bit pregnant, in case you hadn't noticed," she barked back.

Matt climbed down, opened the window and let the spider leave, once again trumped by his wife's ace card argument.

"So, shall we supper or not?" he asked, a little upset now.

"I don't feel all that hungry. Think I'll just brush my teeth and get off to sleep."

"OK, fine," he sighed and left, closing the bedroom door behind him.

Magda lay back for a while, trying to muster up the energy to go to the bathroom. Little Milosz kept kicking her insides as if in a fury, as if responding to her feelings of frustration. She placed her hand over her enlarged belly button and stroked the spot where his foot kept on kicking.

"Come on, darling... Let's just go to sleep, shall we?" she whispered, nodding at her tummy.

The boy was awake, however, and kicking as if he wanted to go outside already. For a moment which seemed to last an eternity, Magda had a vision of her son as a little, hairy spider trying to get out of the glass jar Arena through a yellow, metal lid. This vision made her feel all faint.

* * *

At this very same moment, inspector Alex Dunaj was about to enter the Wilczynski household and was swearing to himself. Some inner voice told him to wait until the following day before speaking to the suspicious family, but there was no choice - the missing boy had to be found. If all he'd been told about their influence on the missing lad was true, they may very well know of his current whereabouts. He was still convinced the whole thing was just a youthful adventure and that days from now Tom and Zuzanna Wilczynska would turn up in a tent somewhere on a flowering meadow in the Beskidy Mountains, but for the time being he had to keep on investigating. Most teenage love affairs hurt the heart, leaving no traces of damage on the skin and bones... With some exceptions, such as the infamous star crossed love affair between Romeo and Juliet, of course.

The inspector used the brass knocker fitted to the door to bang on it, but nothing happened. Dunaj took this time to wonder about how odd it was to have such a device, instead of a simple electric bell, fitted to one's door. He then took out his torch and made to go around the house to search the property in the absence of its owners.

The house was at least 100 years old and built to standards expected of the time. A wooden verandah had been erected around the crumbling stone patio, and covered with glass panelling. The walls had been made of timber logs insulated with straw. It was clear the place hadn't been redecorated in decades, most of the wood evidently worn away and rotting in places, the moulding straw now home to all sorts of bugs and crawlies.

Dunaj was most interested in the garden, something Jerzy Dubiel had mentioned already. He opened a squeaking gate and went around the back of the property hoping the Wilczynski's didn't have sleeping guard dogs hiding about. Just in case they did, he left the gate open.

As out front, the back was in dire need of attention and repair. The grass was waist high and the plot of land riddled with molehills which in the semi-darkness looked like woodland gravestones.

"As to Lucifer's altar, that is still nowhere to be seen," he said out loud, a little bit to amuse himself and a little bit to disrupt the eerie silence hanging over the place.

To the left, he noticed some apple and some dried-out plum trees no one had evidently thought to prune or even cut down. A rough path led through the uncut grass towards what appeared to be some sort of primitive gazebo. It was made of wicker, some canvas sheets and wooden stakes driven into the earth. A sheet of tarpaulin had been stretched over the top, and nailed to some tree stumps next to it. Dunaj shook his head, whistled and then whispered,

"One hell of a shack, m'lord, well well..."

There was nothing that he could see which would arouse his suspicions or make him wonder if Tom Dubiel was concealed hereabouts. He noticed some beer bottles scattered around a burnt out bit of ground, evidently used from time to time as a campfire spot. He was about to return to his patrol car and shut the gate behind him when he turned round and pointed his flashlight beam into the falling darkness.

"And what is that? Some wizard's cauldron?" he asked out loud.

Next to the gazebo was a massive, cast iron pot, the sort used to boil meats and even laundry in. Which would not in itself be unusual if it weren't for the fact that the cauldron was filled to the brim with greenish leaves. Did the flower children Dubiel Snr. mentioned use this spot to grow marijuana? Dunaj came closer and pulled some of the leaves out, along with largish pieces of tree bark. He didn't know the name of the plant they came from, but it smelled rank and toxic. All the leaves, along with bits of bark and wood, had been sliced and chopped by a blade, that much he could see and surmise this had been done on purpose.

"We'll take you down to the lab and see what they're cooking up round here," he uttered into the darkness, grabbing a handful of the mixture and stuffing it into a string sack he had in his pocket. He then returned to the patrol car and drove off back to the valley.

* * *

"Is it much further?" Tom Dubiel shouted, but only the wind answered him as it shook the trees and branches which towered over the road to Klimczok Peak in a most particular fashion.

Tom was slowly starting to wish he hadn't allowed Zuzanna to talk him into running away from home. He suspected his father was going to give him a proper hiding when he got back and every hour he spent wandering in the wild was only going to make matters worse.

"Where are we going to, exactly, babe?" he asked as soon as he saw a scrap of her blue raincoat through the thick bushes they were pushing through.

"Be quiet, else you'll wake him," Zuzanna Wilczynska whispered dramatically, then slowed a little so he could catch up. She then gave him a mysterious smile, little dimples appearing in the corners of her mouth, something he adored above anything else in the world.

"Your friend, is he waiting for us at the highland shelter on Klimczok? I don't know if they'll let us in there at this late hour."

"No. We're getting close, Tom, really..." she sighed and smiled even more broadly, "You'll be back home before they get the whole town out looking for us."

He nodded and carried on walking, even though he was not at all certain this is how things were going to turn out. He suspected his father was even more furious than the last time when he decided to visit the Wilczynski residence and drop in one of their barbecues. He had never before vanished from home for this long, without telling anyone a thing, mostly not to upset his mom whom he thought a nice enough human being. Thinking about how worried she must have been around now, he felt guilty and almost ready to tell Zuzanna he was ready to quit their adventure.

As if sensing his wavering doubts, she said all of a sudden,

"Here it is. The entrance is on the other side of this rock!" she announced with glee, as if the opening in the slope of a mountainside was the entrance to some fairground attraction.

They were about to enter Ali Baba's cave. It was on the south-western slopes of Klimczok Peak, and was discovered relatively recently - around 1987 - by a couple of local cave explorers called Czarnecki and Polanski. Tom had heard about it from the boys he liked hanging out and riding skateboards with. His best mate Slim had told the story of how their dog had gone inside last winter and never emerged since. Tom didn't know if Slim's story was true, but the cave did not look all that imposing from the outside.

"You're not trying to tell me that the party is gonna be inside of that hole in the middle of nowhere? " Tom asked, his voice clearly hinting at disappointment.

"Just wait until you see it," she said and kissed him on the lips both passionately and suddenly. "Now, you gonna help me?"

He loved the taste of her lips the same as any teenage boy loves the taste of his first ever real girlfriend's soft flesh.

"Help me with the rope, we'll tie this end to that tree there! I've used it to abseil before, don't worry, we'll manage," she assured.

Though the whole plan seemed absurd, Tom was just then not thinking straight at all, all the blood his brain needed to make rational decisions being redirected to the nether regions of his body. Only a mixture of testosterone and adrenaline could cause the lad to silently help the girl prepare a solid length of mountaineering rope and then attach a carabiner clip to it.

"You put your legs in here. Just like so," she instructed and a moment later he had the rope wrapped round his midsection, which pinched his inseam a little.

"If I die, tell my mom her chocolate filled pancakes really were the best in the world," he said to lighten the mood, and to give himself a little dutch courage.

"I will, darling, but now move aside, I will clip in first! I know how to get down and not get hurt."

The girl gave him a seductive wink and then stood right over the dark opening in the side of the mountain.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked, but she just waved and vanished in the darkness. He heard her feet bouncing off the walls of the cave until the sounds vanished completely. "Is everything alright?!"

Silence.

"Honey, are you OK?!"

Nothing.

"Zuza?!"

"No more Zuza down here..." A grim sounding voice answered. "You failed to save her in time, knight in shining armour."

"Stop messing around!" he cried into the black opening.

"Come on down, silly! You should have heard yourself... Hahaha!"

The girl's laughter filled the dark well which was the entrance to Ali Baba's cave, as she stood at the foot of a descent which led to several dark tunnels at the bottom. Tom estimated the drop was a good ten feet or so and imagined his buddy's dog was still lying down there somewhere, nothing but bones left of him now.

"Clip your harness into the guide rope and lower yourself slowly. It's a little cramped at first, but then it opens up!"

Tom had no desire to go potholing in the middle of the night, but there was no going back now. If Zuza was to be his girl, he had to act as if he wasn't scared, even if the descent into the darkness made his head spin and his belly go all light and queasy.

"I'm coming down!"

He clambered inside the opening, scratching his knees and using his boots to feel around the inner walls. The air inside the cave was warmer than that outside, though he could feel how humid it was down there. The further he descended, the more he was reminded of times when he was sick and mother would cover his head with a towel and make him inhale the steam rising from a pot of boiled water.

"Put your right foot there. Like that," the girl instructed as he began getting nearer the cave floor.

"I never knew we had such wonders hiding just a short hike away from home..." he said, trying to keep his voice and nerves steady. "And that ghost dog nowhere to be seen."

"The what?"

"Forget it. Tell you another time... Now lead us to this treasure trove! I've no idea who the hell would want to stage a party in this mad place, but let's assume I still trust you."

"Adventures, here we come!" she called out and slowly edged through a cave wall opening. It was tight, but by turning her body to the side she was able to squeeze through. Tom followed and soon enough they were both about to turn right.

"If we turned left, we'd get to the gallery," Zuzanna explained. "This is the lowest point in the cave complex, but he doesn't like it all that much."

"He, meaning who?"

Tom's question went unanswered. They walked on and reached a cavern lit by eight symmetrically arranged flaming torches. A large clay vase had been set up inside the spacious opening. Markings and symbols had been etched into the floor around the vessel, which Tom thought resembled old hieroglyphics.

"Wow, what a place! A wild setting..." Tom sighed and glanced about the space which seemed more and more mysterious the longer he stared at it.

"Do you have the coin I told you about?" she asked and only now did he remember the metal disc concealed in his pocket. "Now toss it into the vase!"

Shaking his head a little, wondering what the payment was meant for, Tom did as told. He lifted the lid covering the vase and felt a sour-sweet smell emerging from it. He carefully dropped the 5 zloty piece into it and almost instantly a low, humming noise began filling the cavern. The overwhelming melody, trapped within the claustrophobic space, caused bits of rock to collapse from the ceiling.

"What is that music?" he managed to ask just as two slim women emerged from the back of the cavern.

"We have been waiting for you, Zuzanna. Is your candidate ready?" the older of the two women asked.

"May our ritual decide that, Ancient Mother."

"May it be so."

The two women bowed simultaneously and handed the young couple a pair of clay cups.

"What's this? Zuza? Is this what you always get up to?" Tom asked as the woman she'd addressed as Ancient Mother used a ladle to spoon some greenish liquid from the central vase and poured it into their cups.

"Yeah, this is our ceremony, darling. If you want to join this family, you have to go through with it," she answered in a soothing tone of voice.

Tom was not at all certain he did want to go ahead with joining whatever family this was going to be, but things had gone too far to back out now. He'd heard about all kinds of odd associations and interest groups, but even so he hadn't been expecting this sort of weird evening. The choice before him was simple - either stay and find out how this very spooky seeming ceremony was going to pan out, or run back home and face the inevitable ass whipping his father was going to deliver the moment he got back.

"Well, we only live once..." he said and gulped down the contents of the clay cup. It tasted bitter and left a foul aftertaste in his mouth.

"What next?" he asked, coughing a little.

"Now we dance," Zuza said and he looked into her blue eyes which seemed deep and dark enough to drown in.

A moment later, the humming roar he'd heard before started up again, distant drums joining in to fill the cavern with hypnotic noise.

* * *

That same night, the 100 year old building the Konfederatka Hotel was housed in came alive. At first slowly, as if muscles of timber and straw were beginning to flex after decades of stillness and tension, stretching like the spine of an old cat. The ancient chimney groaned, wind sneaking in through it down to a whitewashed stove which was the central feature in the salon on the ground floor.

Magda Flis then heard a regular knocking sound coming from the timber ceiling supports, the toys and mementoes stored up in the loft by the owners of the hotel slowly waking and coming to life. The house creaked, groaning constantly, disturbing the sleep of those who did not know its unruly nature. Erected in the early decades of the 20th century, the man who'd built it imbued the construction with his own characteristic qualities. Pawel Cierniak had been a man of many talents. In his relatively short life he'd become a carpenter, set up a local library and played the clarinet at countless weddings. On top of that, he was a writer and his poem Spirit was still remembered by the eldest residents of Szczyrk. The mansion at 123 Beskidzka Street was imbued with a musical, poetic soul, something Magda was now starting to experience. The house played melodies of old through the pipes and nooks and crannies all around her, the attic acting like a drum as drops of rain fell upon the red roof tiles. It told stories of the children raised in its rooms and corridors, their hair slowly turning grey over the decades to then turn to ash and rest in a cemetery visible through the windows of the hotel. It whispered tales of the Germans who'd lived round these parts once, turning Pawel Cierniak and his wife Maria into prisoners in the years their armies had occupied this part of the world. Those who knew how to listen properly might have heard the gentle tones of an accordion the owner's husband kept stored down in the basement.

"Do not sleep. Watch. Watch and listen if you care to hear my stories..." Old houses are possessed by the souls of our ancestors and their character emerges from the experiences of those who lived beneath their rafters. This particular place was stately, mysterious and unruly enough to keep Magda Flis awake for the rest of the night.

Around three in the morning, she got out of bed and as quietly as she could she walked towards the living room which was covered in white panelling. The house did not allow her to get away so easily or quietly and its floorboards squeaked with every step Magda took. She looked back at the bed her husband was in, but he just turned over and carried on snoring in the semi-darkness. Thankfully, his snoring was not too bad, not worse than other husbands Magda had heard of.

Making sure he really was sound asleep, she reached into the inner pocket of her light jacket and took out a rather crumpled packet of slim cigarettes. She frowned once the packet was open to reveal only a single cigarette was left inside it. 'Better that than nothing...' she thought to herself and put the jacket on, then slipped her feet into the pair of highland slippers she had bought at a street market stall earlier that day and descended down the stairs towards the front door.

As she passed the landlady's apartment door, she heard the noise of a TV set playing behind it. Some reporter's voice talking about the dangers of a new mutation of a virus which had been spreading across Europe. Magda ignored these warnings of the coming end of the world, and decided not to worry about preparing for Armageddon yet (the reporter's voice threatened "For the worst case scenario, ladies and gentlemen! The worst case!"), opening the door to allow herself entry into the dark garden.

The night was cool for this time of the year, and she wrapped the jacket more tightly around herself, then headed for the wooden gazebo next to the hotel building. She was sure the little Labrador would soon enough appear, but it seemed the dog was sound asleep somewhere in the dark.

"Where's that light switch..." she groaned quietly, fumbling it the dark across the wooden gazebo walls. Finally, she found the right spot and a bare lightbulb flooded the night with bright light. Magda Flis screamed and almost fell over a green stool set up in the corner - if she hadn't managed to grab the walls, she would have fallen over onto her back.

"I'm ever so sorry! I was sure you noticed me here earlier," said an elderly man with milk white, slightly-wavy hair. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes, of course... Well... I shouldn't have come out here alone, sorry."

She tried smiling at the man and noticed there was a pile of notes and books on a little table next to his chair, mostly crime novels, as she guessed judging by their titles. She thought it was a rather strange thing to see in the middle of the night, but said nothing about it.

"Magdalene Flis. Pleased to meet you, sir."

"Jan."

The gazebo light dimmed for a second, a crackling noise coming from its fitting. The grapevines wrapped round the wooden construction cast all sorts of incredible shadows.

"I haven't been able to fix the light, the electric cables connected to the local store, you see..." the man sighed.

"So you live here? I haven't seen you before, but we only arrived last night."

"Well Miss, you might say I used to live here and now I look after the house from time to time... Anyway, I assume it is not by accident that we meet here in the middle of the night?"

"No, indeed... You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"

The man smiled when she pulled out the crumpled up cigarette packet.

"My wife smokes two packs a day. I think I can manage... But will the little one inside your belly be pleased?"

An awkward silence fell over the gazebo. Magda decided to take the last cigarette out of the packet anyway and lit up. The man watched carefully from behind the thick frames and lenses of his eyeglasses, but said nothing. It seemed obvious he did not approve of what she was choosing to do, but had decided to say nothing about it.

"Do you often come out here and read in the dark?" she asked, exhaling a cloud of smoke and trying to smile as genuinely as she could.

"People like me have nothing else to do at night. Everything in our world has its time and place, dear lady..." Jan answered, his voice deadly serious.

"I hardly ever get time to read, though I do wish I did."

"When you were little, did you have more?" the man asked, picking up a book by Katarzyna Bonda, a name Magda saw on the cover, but could not make out the title.

"When we were little we had more time for everything. There was no work, no papers to deal with, no rushing about after deadlines..."

"And then you had time to read a lot?"

"Well, actually... Reading has never been one of my favourite pastimes."

"Oh, I can tell at last you're being honest with me," he said and she saw him smiling for the first time. He then got up and came closer to her to say, "I have a couple of pieces of advice for you. You should start reading at the beginning, starting with Snow White. This will help you and your child and maybe even avoid that which is otherwise inevitable... Snow White, remember."

"You're scaring me a little..."

"No need to be frightened," he answered as Magda took a step back towards the exit from the gazebo. "Second of all, in books you will find answers. To all questions at all times. They are real gates to immortality, and the only righteous way towards it. And do remember that the greatest treasures tend to be hidden in places you might not think of looking at first."

"Yeah, that's really interesting," she whispered and noticed as the cigarette fell from her hand.

"Please put that out, we don't want to be starting fires here. There are better times and places for such things," he said and walked around her onto the lawn outside the gazebo.

"Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked, in the way of parting.

"I doubt it. Today is what matters, not yesterday. May god watch over you."

"See you later, Mr Jan!" she sighed as he left through the garden gate.

"Mind yourself, Magda!"

She walked straight back to the house, climbed the stairs and once back in their rented apartment looked out the window to see the elderly gentleman walking down the street below her, carrying a pile of books. The street lamps seemed to dim a little as Jan passed by a set of automated parcel delivery and collection boxes, and then vanished out of sight.

She slept soundly for the rest of that night.

* * *

Distant horns roared, turning the cavern into a giant boom box, the noise amplified by the sound of drums being played close by. Tom was starting to feel more and more out of sorts as he walked down the narrow tunnels which branched away from the cavern. Although at first he felt scared of the place and the people in it, he was starting to relax a little. He could feel a pleasant tingling sensation spreading across his shoulders, more and more colourful designs painted on the cave walls appearing out of the dark, illuminated by flaming torches. He could not make out what the designs represented, and they moved and shimmered before his eyes like the kaleidoscope toy his mom had bought him at a country fair when he was little.

'I wonder if anyone still makes such things?' he asked himself, unaware of whether he was just thinking that or if he'd spoken out loud.

'And anyway, do thoughts belong to us or do they not?' he wondered next, his mind floating across galaxies of fantasies, time slowing down, allowing him to juggle matter and energy and to sip yin and yang from cups shaped like colourful little elephants. 'Dumbo the Elephant would make a great biology teacher in primary school in Szczyrk, right?' he thought, realizing he was no longer inside any sort of cave and the breath emerging from his lips had turned into some sort of golden cloud of butterflies. He blamed it on the strange potion he'd been drinking and felt perfectly fine, as right as rain...

"Are we in paradise, Zuzanna?" he asked, struggling to speak for once.

"Not yet, darling. We have to create, to craft paradise the way one weaves wicker baskets," she answered and he noticed her face was undergoing a very odd sort of transformation. The girl's pink and oh so pretty lips seemed to be growing and now appeared to take up half the girl's face. He swallowed and closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again she was back to looking like her old self.

"Am I dreaming, Zuza? Is this just an illusion?"

"I promise you that even if it is you will not want anything to wake you out of it," she said and kissed him passionately.

Next, she grabbed his hand and led them into another cavern. The first thing he noticed were naked women lined up against its walls, some holding leather bound drums and banging them slowly. Tom looked at their perky breasts without any sort of shame and felt himself becoming more and more aroused. Whatever it was he'd been given to drink was causing him to feel less inhibited than ever. Moths floating about the cavern appeared to be pointing towards the centre of the cavern and swirling round it.

"Welcome to the Hall of Winds, Tomas," the one Zuzanna called Ancient Mother said to him.

"Good evening..." he said and heard his own voice as if it was coming from outside his body.

"You shall be His vessel. You will be the cup we shall drink of."

When she said those words, the naked women which surrounded them seemed to go into a frenzy, leaping up and dancing while giving off whooping shouts such as Tomas remembered from watching cowboy movies on TV.

"Shall we dance?" Zuzanna asked in a tone of voice which made it clear she was not going to be refused. His feet began moving all by themselves, and moments later he was swirling together with his girlfriend on the edges of reality and fantasy. He could see the women around him, their breasts bouncing, their hips swaying, all of it to the rhythms of the hypnotic music of the night. He was now in paradise, there was no more doubting that.

The women came closer and rubbed up against him, touching his body all over through his clothes. Before he knew what was happening, they had stripped off everything he was wearing and he was now moving among them in an orgiastic frenzy. He forgot about Zuza, but when he did turn back towards his girlfriend he saw her kneeling before Ancient Mother who was sprinkling soil on top of the girl's head. The women's cries and shouts were incomprehensible to him, and he could not make out what Ancient Mother was saying to Zuza, but he didn't care. A red-haired woman grabbed the back of his head and shoved his face into her bosom. All of his senses aroused, he kissed her sweating flesh, grabbing her behind with both eager hands.

"Enough!" Ancient Mother roared in a low, commanding tone of voice, and all the women around Tom scattered and returned to their standing positions by the walls of the cavern.

Horns began roaring through the cavern tunnels and walls, the women around the space murmuring threateningly. Zuza got up off her knees and turned to smile at her boyfriend. She was now naked, like everyone else, except for a wooden, carved mask which made her appear much taller than usual.

"You are... An angel..." Tom whispered when she came closer.

She smiled at him and pulled back her long hair which was partly covering her small breasts. Her body was perfect, and colours and shapes he could see floating about her in the air made her look like a goddess. Their lips joined in a long and hungry kiss. He then moved lower, caressing her neck, stroking her breasts, bringing her closer to his own body which was glowing with untamed desire. The women around them were whooping once more, the drums beating more and more intensely. He only had eyes for the one woman now... His dream love... His goddess.

"Take me," she whispered into his ear and they fell to the rocky floor.

She turned him onto his back and mounted the boy. Warmth filled every single cell of his teenage body, and he seemed to disappear into his own delighted mind with every move her hips made. Two naked women now approached and took his hands, one either side of him, holding him firmly as if he were their prisoner.

He finally became a fully fledged man and gasped in ecstasy, and the sound of drums and howls from the women around them ended in a split second.

"And now kiss me," Zuzanna whispered and pulled the mask from her face.

"I love you so much..." he said, his mind still foggy with psychedelic haze.

"Let's weave a web!" Ancient Mother demanded.

"Let's weave..." the women around them sighed and fell to their knees.

Sixteen year old Tommy, high on his first love and first taste of drugs, watched as his lover bent forward to once again pleasure her man. Their mouths met and tongues clashed in a feverish kiss. At first, he thought this might just be another hallucination. When he tried to pull his lips away he was unable to move. He tried again, and again, and nothing. Her tongue was like that of a chameleon, one which had caught a tasty little fly. A sensation he found funny at first, then a little freaky, then finally frighting.

He kicked as hard as he could against the rocky ground, trying to tear free, but the grip the guardswomen had on his wrists and now also his ankles was too strong to break.

The lips of the girl he had just been deflowered by now opened to an extraordinary extent. Her face transformed into something resembling an alligator's maw, her tongue extending outwards and slithering towards him like a wild, pink highway which was to keep the two of them connected forever.

This is when he saw him. He emerged from her throat on eight unsteady, hairy legs and moved towards his lips. Tom wanted to scream, but only a little growl bubbled up from his throat. The creature cocked one of its three monstrous heads and tears began streaming down Tom's cheeks. He next felt the spider's legs on the roof of his mouth, as these felt around as if testing its surface. It seemed the beast was happy with what it found, because next it crawled down his throat with brutal efficiency. The girl's tongue withdrew and the boy let out a howl which shook his whole body with pained convulsions.

"Weave a web!" Ancient Mother roared.

"Weave! Weave!"

* * *

The inspector once again smelled the plants he had found behind the Wilczynski residence. It was an odd sort of species, which in no way resembled cannabis, a weed his team found on youths hanging about Szczyrk high street from time to time. Then again, there were all sorts of new synthetic highs and stimulants which made it hard to tell what sort of drug was what these days.

The year before last, he had to intervene when some young kid became loud and aggressive on a football pitch belonging to the high school in Upper Szczyrk. The lad kept harassing people walking past and Dunaj at first thought he was dealing with someone high on amphetamines, maybe some pills which were more and more easy to order online, easier even than pizza. To his surprise, the boy's behaviour had been caused by liquid used to clean alloy car wheels, something the young man discovered made him hallucinate and gave him feelings of euphoria whenever inhaled in small doses.

The world was going to hell and stories he'd previously only see and hear about on television and cinema screens were now migrating from the Bronx down the Beskidy Highlands and making small town life as hard as that in any large city in the world. The young and not so young residents of Szczyrk all too often liked partying with all sorts of legal and illegal highs. From time to time, local law enforcement confiscated small supplies of various illicit substances, but Dunaj knew this was just the tip of the iceberg. On top of its 5000 regular residents, Szczyrk was visited by several times that many out of town visitors and tourists each and every year, driving the local economy and providing more and more jobs not just for the older generation, but for young people who would otherwise have moved away. Dunaj was all too aware of what these droves of out of town visitors often brought with them. Some of the "more enterprising" locals (as he liked to jokingly refer to them) and kids looking for illicit adventures made some money out of all these hungers, doing their best to stay out of the hands of the local police force. Then there were the out of town strangers, who often brought the latest inventions right from the dance floors of Warsaw and other big Polish cities. Dunaj knew they had no chance of beating this trade head on, but he knew if the Wilczynski crew were involved in brewing up some sort of local specialty and were selling it to kids on the streets of his town they would be made to pay for it.

"The police are attending to the City Museum in Żywiec to investigate an overnight break-in and burglary at the property," Dunaj heard announced on the radio and turned up the volume on the in-car speaker system. "Museum officials are trying to ascertain the scale of the damage and anything which might have been taken. What is even more worrying is that the break-in took place the day of the opening of a new exhibition which was due to attract lots of visitors."

"Four in the morning and the bad news just keeps coming," the inspector growled to himself and pulled up at the bus depot in Szczyrk Biła. This was the last stop on the way out of town and the place local cops working night shifts liked taking their breaks around. Once the town was asleep and resting after servicing the tourist trade, here one could wind down and make a drink strong enough to see a tired official through till morning. Dunaj had been at it for years and was used to making his drinks back at the office, then bringing bottles along on his patrols. He'd pour a solid shot of Scotch into a thermos filled with coke and go for a ride. He'd bought several such thermoses cheap online and thus now equipped stopped at the bus depot. This solution was both practical and safe, especially in recent times when being caught drinking behind the wheel of a police patrol car would have been the end of his long-running career. Not to mention the presence of microphones and cameras inside patrol cars, something Dunaj knew was a new sort of reality he had to be watchful of.

It was coming on for five in the morning when a local band came on the radio, playing some sort of brand new hit. This mixture of singing and rap at least had some proper instruments being used in the background, something which made Dunaj stomach rap for once, a genre of music he otherwise detested. Almost as much as he detested those who liked listening to it in the first place. They were the ones who gave Dunaj and his crew the most problems most of the time in and around the streets of Szczyrk.

The song ended around five, just as the inspector took the last sip of his Scotch mixture from the thermos flask.

"Now what the hell?!" he said, almost spitting the dark drink all over his shirt, as a hooded figure appeared out of the dark woods.

A young lad was approaching his car, his arms twisted at unnatural angles, his spine arched backwards, barely able to walk straight. He wobbled from left to right, clearly unable to coordinate his movements properly.

"Zombies or what? What the fuck is going on?!"

FROM THE TRANSLATOR

Talking to the author of the book you are holding I asked myself: Why did I enjoy translating it so much? Was it the setting - the highland landscapes around Szczyrk the book so wonderfully evokes? Or the story filled with cults and crimes and cruel twists of fate which literally shake this little town to its rocky, mountainous foundations? It was much more than that. First of all, I loved the characters - teenagers, adults, beings from parallel dimensions, video game avatars - they were all so well drawn, so memorable and likeable. Then there were the lives they led - filled with all sorts of troubles and challenges - loss of loved ones, sexual desires, addictions to various substances and odd passions, always moving in search of answers and adventures. There is trauma too - complex histories which shape the lives of the people we meet in the book, as well as international explorations and intrigues, topped with time travel to wondrously dreamy and magical parallel dimensions. For some, young love was the biggest worry. For others, lack of money or domestic violence. Then there were those either contemplating or investigating murders - yes, this novel is a wonderful mashup of genres - love story, science fiction, historical drama, crime thriller and archeological adventure in search of great treasures with the future of our world at stake! Anyone who loves reading will find something to love in it - I personally cannot wait to get down to Szczyrk and explore a region I only know through the pages of this wonderfully twisted and troubling tale... Powerful beings and cosmic forces affect the lives of local people, of tourists from far off, of those in the past, present and future of our world - a truly epic and wildly exciting tale!

MJ Kazmierski