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The party was advertised as being a week or so away. Delilah and I had spent several days firefighting our baying creditors and trying our best to sort out the dreadful mess Uncle Bob had left us. By the end of it we were more than looking forward to getting a few days away. Of course, that was when we thought it would just be a little hunting and dancing at some run-down country house. If we'd know what we were really in for we'd have been happy to stay at home, neck-deep in bills.

I was starting to get somewhat cold feet about the whole affair. Unlike Del, I'd been to London and had heard some rather disturbing things about Marcell while I was there. Of course there had always been idle gossip about his family, but most of it seemed to be based on the rather gloomy surroundings they came from. That and a supposed inherited ailment that left them with a rather short lifespan and somewhat singular features. The rumours had hung around Will when I had met him as a child. I remembered him at that point as a sickly, pale thing with bad teeth and floppy, over-sized ears. There was always a hint of the mongrel about his family, and more than a little inbreeding too. Not that my family had managed to avoid crossing branches and roots. I always was rather dismayed by how much I looked like some of my cousins... But I digress.

His family home was wedged between some rather gloomy trees and an even gloomier swamp. I drove us down there as we'd sadly had to let the family driver go as one of the austerity measures. The back of the car was packed with clothes for a few days, as well as a few other supplies and a bit of wine as a present for our host. The invitation had mentioned a masked ball, so we both had a costume tucked up in crates. Del was going in a rather elaborate thing that had been mothballed for years with a feathered opera mask, while i was just going to wear my hunting gear and an old fox mask I found in the attic.

We passed through the little village that the Marcell estate bordered and I was rather dismayed by what I saw. The houses were tumbling and rotten with mold, and the villagers looked singularly backward, especially when it came to modern hygiene. I swear half of them had no idea what a motorcar was, either through parochial ignorance or interbreeding-induced cretinism. We had to stop at one point, gently navigating the old car around the corpse of some unidentified livestock that had been left to bloat in the watery sunlight. The cobbles were patchy and rattled our bones as we drove over them. I was glad to be back outside, on the only 'decent' path to the mansion.

Of course when I saw it I was a damn sight less cheerful. If I had thought our place was beginning to run down, then the Marcell estate was positively decrepit! We rattled past two gates that had rusted open, and through a garden that was half hedge maze and half swampy morass. Pale, ropey fungus hung from the dead and dying trees in intestinal ropes wherever I looked. I also spied groups of men and women moving through the mess in the distance, apparently intent on clearing a pass to some stone folly. The view was soon obscured by more of the undergrowth. We soon drew up on the weedy drive to the front of the house. I shot Del a glance and she made a face.

The front of the house was needlessly Gothic and stained with age and a patina of disrepair. Shutters hung away from the arched windows, and not a few of them were boarded up with warped wooden slats. Now that I paused for a breath I could detect a stench of spores and mold, almost overpowering.

"Do you think they'll be offended if we just go?" I asked. At that moment i would have taken pretty much any excuse to turn the car around and leave. This looked like a rather sick joke if we intended to relax here.

"Too late," Delilah noted as she pointed to the front doors. "They've seen us. Besides, if we head back now we're going to get stuck in that ghastly little village for the night." The doors were swinging open, manhandled on rusty hinges by two disreputable looking types in stained work shirts. There between them was a figure staggering down the steps with a cane. It took me a moment to realise that this was William Marcell. Even at this distance I could tell there was something wrong with him. He looked too pale and his gait was awkward and limping. However, before I could say anything further, Del slid out of the car and waved.

"Yoo-hoo!" she called. "I hope we're not too early?"

I missed the start of his reply, but his smarmy, slightly lisping tone carried through the window as I stepped out and slammed the door. I caught the end of his sentence though. "...on time..." he was saying as he saw me. By this time he and his henchmen (I refuse to think of them as anything else) had come close enough for me to get a good look at them.

Whatever ague or blood disease Will carried, it was terrible. Up close I could see that his paleness was not his thinning fur, but instead blotchy patches of mange that had eaten him bald in places. One of his ears was surrounded at the base by swellings and growths that reminded me of the drooping fungus on the nearby trees. His teeth, which I remembered from my childhood as resembling a decrepit fence, now looked like they had been jammed in randomly into too-pale gums. I could see with some horror where some of them were plucking and cutting the flesh of his lips and face from their awful settings. One of his eyes looked misty with cataracts, almost swollen from within by pressure, while the other fixed on me with all the warmth of the barrel of a rifle.

His face fell into a scowl, which was not an improvement.

"Emelia," he lisped, trying to do his best at a smile. "I wasn't expecting you. I thought you were in Kenya still."

I snapped out of my astonishment at his appearance a little quicker than Del, who's jaw was dropped so far I wondered if she'd ever get it back up. "Sorry for dropping in unannounced," I managed, extending my paw. Will paused before offering his own. it felt like shaking a rubber glove filled with custard and sticks, and I had to do my best not to stare at his bloated fingers, or wipe my paw on my trouser leg. "I thought I'd pop along too. We tried to call ahead but apparently you don't have a phone." I turned to Delilah, who was looking distinctly green around the gills. "Isn't that right, Del?"

"Y...yes!" she stammered. "I hope its not going to be too much trouble."

Will looked up at the two men flanking him. They were big bastards, heavy-set and with short fighters muzzles. I saw scarred knuckles and forearms. But I also saw patches of mange and bulging, swollen growths covered over with ragged bandages and tattered work clothing. I tried not to stare. Maybe Will's family had a disease that they had picked up from the local village, or passed onto them through breeding? Who was I, at that point, to judge? I snapped back to maintaining as much eye contact as I could stand with William. "No, my dear," he said with a phlegmy chuckle. "I don't think there will be any trouble." With that he turned and began to limp up the steps with the aid of his knobbly cane. "Please, leave your bags. My men will take care of them," he shot over his shoulder.

With that my sister and I entered the dubious comfort of Marcell House.