5. Cold

Mr. Evenoud lives in an old stately mansion in the center of Ottendorp. The house hasn't been painted and cleaned in years and doesn't let much daylight in trough it's dusty windows. The rooms breath out the aura from centuries and are furnished with heavy dark furniture. Evenoud is a somewhat strange, slightly lonely man with a surprising clear way of looking at you. He earns his living by restoring finely made furniture with loving care; he's got a very good reputation in this field of work. His big love is everything strange, exotic, and the grim dark side of life. He owns a very varied collection of objects that can disturb sensitive people very easily. Evenoud also has a respectable collection of oriental weapons, one of them a Cundrik: a gray, unattractive weapon, mounted as a kris in a mother of pearl inlaid Madurese sheath. It is an ugly but very impressive thing.

On a rainy night in the early spring of 1994 Evenoud got a visit from his old costumer Wouters. Wouters is a dull and greedy man with an urge to get access to things that are none of his business. That's why it happened that, after long insisting from Wouters, Evenoud let him into his private rooms. They soon talked about the collection from Evenoud. Charlotte, the young foreign wife from Evenoud, was present with this conversation. The room where it took place, stuffed full, dusty, dark with vague corners, the collections, the unforbidden furniture, all this fed Wouter's fantasy. And thus it came that in the course of the conversation the Cundrik came in the hands of Wouters so that he could take a good look at it.

Up until that moment there had never been any problem with drawing the weapon, it was always loose in his sheath and let itself go easily. Wouters couldn't manage to get it out though; it was stuck and didn't come loose at all. Eventually it was Evenoud who took the blade with ease out of its scabbard and handed it to Wouters. At that moment everything in the room seemed to stop, as if time itself held his breath. And from the old floor, as in an autumn night in the field, a choking and invisible mist came up to the height of the blade. Slowly everyone stiffened from the cold that drifted and felt as sharp as icy water in warm air, and nobody was able for what seemed an endless moment to act or even to move. Suddenly, as awakening from a deep sleep, Evenoud took the blade from Wouters and put it back in its scabbard. Just as unexpected as the cold had come, it disappeared as fog under the sun. The conversation slowly started again. But Wouters, deeply shocked in his trust about the nature of things, didn't want to stay a moment longer then necessary in this damned place and left after vague apologies. The next bright spring-morning made the memory fade and also the knowledge about the amount of wine spent made the whole deal very unlikely. But, around eleven that morning there was a phone call from Wouters who said that in his own house al his flowers and plants, without exception, were fallen down without breaking anything. Wouters never visited Evenoud again since then...