Shadows And Charades

As if CERN had built a steam engine powered by pulsing pistons, Uncle Mulligan could talk, driving a verbal trench through the sleepy, tipsy consciousness of the room. The turkey had been a triumph; the potatoes a roasted revelation; even the token dish of brussels sprouts now bore nothing more than a few soggy green remnants of past glories. The conversation had worked. Trump had been trounced by Angela Davies' affair. David Bowie had bowed down to the new housing estate on the south side of town. No one had even dared to broach Brexit. They had moved into the sitting room and over a glass of sherry and a roaring fire, Mrs. Porchester had had the absence of mind to bring up immigration.
Tommy Porchester, in his high chair, had giggled and thrown a lego brick at his grandmother's cleavage.
Emma Porchester, who had been allowed her first glass of sherry, rolled her eyes and scrolled her Instagram feed.
And Mulligan Porchester got a head start.
'This, I'm afraid is going to be one of the great problems of our age. You see, diaspora has never truly been a problem, except when-'
'Well-' Aunt Mary glared at her brother.
'-except when it has been coupled with hate on the other side. But - and I know this is an unfashionable view - the discomfort that comes in the face of increased migration has a protectionist function-'
'I don't-'
'And anyway,' Uncle Mulligan continued, legs wide apart in an orator's stance, a tiny bead of sweat trickling down his brow. 'If we span back over the centuries-'
He carried on, and I'm afraid I can't set down exactly what he said, because I heard this from Emma Porchester and this was the moment Miles Clarke put up a topless selfie from a beach on Bali. She didn't hear what her uncle was saying.
Mr. Porchester was glancing meaningfully at his wife, and Tommy continued to giggle. I'm not sure anyone really heard what Mulligan Porchester was saying. We all know the gist.
The fire crackled merrily in the hearth and his words were washing over the family like smooth plainchant and gravy. Grandpa Jones had fallen asleep, his wife stroking the rim of her sherry glass and twinkling at an unobservant Emma. Outside the wind raged on and the snowless town sparkled with the lights of a hundred houses using up the national grid.
'Charades!' Cut in Mrs. Porchester, too aware of the mistake she had made.
Caught off-guard, her brother-in-law's pistons slowed down. 'Charades?'
Mrs. Porchester smiled and even Emma looked up. 'I haven't played charades in forever,' she grinned.
'Yes, charades, excellent idea,' said Mr. Porchester.
'Right - Emma? Why don't you go first?' Her mother beckoned her over. 'I've got a good one for you.'
When narrating this story to me a while later, Emma could not remember the subject her mother had given her. It might have been a book, she thought. A boring one? Perhaps one of the classics on her GCSE literature list. It would not have been hard to act out, she assured me.
But she was not to perform her charade that night. For as she straightened out from where her mother's lips had touched her ear to whisper the name of that forgotten book, the fire blazed wildly and began to crackle like sparklers on Guy Fawkes night. The flames turned into fine lights, and the lights turned into dust, and the dust became a thick silver-black smoke that seeped through the cracks in the stove door and into the room, waking Grandpa Jones up in a startled coughing fit. The glass door to the fire swung open with a heavy iron creaking sound and the smoke enveloped the room. Mrs. Porchester cried out. For once, Mulligan Porchester was silent.
The smoke drew them in and as it did, it seemed like a thousand fingers curling around them, motioning them to come closer to the fire, or a thousand mouths breathing at them in some forgotten language. And bit by bit, furl by furl, the fingers did become fingers, and the mouths did become a mouth, only one, a sly mouth that pulled up in a knowing smile.
In front of them stood a man, thin and clever, in a three piece suit made of black smoke and silver sheen, glittering in the light of the Christmas tree and the candles. He had silver skin but a black smoke moustache and black smoke hair, black smoke smart shoes and even fine black smoke eyebrows.
Mr. Porchester drew an arm around his wife. Tommy's eyes were wide. Emma would not tell me how she reacted.
The man clothed in black smoke pulled out a shining silver pocket watch that seemed to dance with the fairy lights. He saw the time and smiled with that sly, knowing mouth.
'I am the games master,' he said, in a silvery sheen of a voice. 'And tonight we play with Shadows.'
The word Shadows was so pronounced it dripped with importance, said Emma. He caressed it with his sly, knowing mouth.
'Who are you?' Mulligan asked, finding his pistons once more.
The games master only smiled a little more and leaned on the arm of the sofa next to Grandpa Jones, who looked at him with curiosity rather than alarm.
'Tell me, Mulligan Porchester,' the games master smiled. 'What do you fear?'
And as Uncle Mulligan looked bemused and another bead of sweat attempted his brow, the man clothed in black smoke waved a silvery hand and the fire raged golden. In the blaze of the grate figures formed of black smoke and silver, wailing children, desperate women, shapes that Emma could not make out, goblins, sounds beyond this earth. And Mulligan Porchester looked into the fire and more beads appeared and was entirely silent.
The games master smiled as, with another wave of his silvery hand, the images changed.
'Tell me, Mrs. Porchester,' he turned marginally to his right. 'What do you fear?'
Black smoke shadows again appeared in the fire, calling strange sounds and figurines from some fantasy world, horrors and expectations and always shadows.

With a sly, knowing smile, he was gone.