Eve – Chapter One
“They is t’ Devil’s footmarks, ah say,” the woman shouted. The people standing in the small group outside the church stared at her. “‘E wor ‘ere last evenin’ all right,” she insisted. The group of people remained silent, fidgeting nervously, each trying hard not to draw the woman’s attention to them. “An’ tis plain t’ see whose ‘ome ‘e paid visit to an’ all,” the woman shouted again, determined not to be ignored. “Tis t’ Devil. ‘E came ‘ere to take care o’ one of ‘is own.”
It was Christmas morning and as cold a day as it had been all winter. The snows had come early that December and the temperature had not risen much above freezing for some weeks. The gathering of people who came to worship that holy morning did so with something of a heavy heart. Christmas Eve it had snowed again which, although making their walk to church more difficult, was not the reason for their uneasiness. No, it was the tracks that could be seen entering their village in the night, then circling one of the cottages before leaving again, which was the source of their anxiety.
The people in the small village of Elmsley had woken up Christmas morning to find that they had been visited by what they believed to be an ‘unnatural being’. Unnatural, because it left strange footprints in the snow. Unexplainable footprints. The gentle snowfall of Christmas Eve night gave witness to a visitor, whose large, deep, clear tracks showed it was an upright-walking creature with two legs, a creature however, with horny covering of foot. In other words, it had cloven hooves.
“We must not allow old superstitions to get the better of us,” the pastor told his flock during the Christmas day sermon. “Those tracks could have been made by any number of different kinds of animal.” Pastor Bell was doing his best to give guidance to the good people of Elmsley sitting before him in the cold, candle-lit church. But who amongst them would believe the man?
Joseph Locke, the baker, had informed the pastor very early that Christmas morning of the strange footprints left behind the night before. Knowing of the deeply irrational fears and beliefs that some Elmsley folk still held on to, Joseph thought the pastor should know of the event, so that he could talk to them about the tracks before their imaginations and fright overtook common sense. But few amongst his flock believed the man.