Spider-Man head tattoo on a limb

The snow shut the Pass on Tuesday and it has not reopened, so we are seven at the Crown and Sheaf, counting the dog. You will not believe who came up the lane on Wednesday night, half buried and swearing in a voice like a cracked bell. He wore a red mask stitched from some old wool coat, with a web of black thread across it and two lenses of brass-coloured glass that caught the lamp whenever he turned his head. Father wanted him back out on the step, but Mrs Pennick said nobody who looked so frightened of the cold deserved to freeze for the sake of his pride.

He never gave his name. He paid for his room in silver coins with a thumbprint worn smooth, and each morning he went out to the yard before anyone was up. Yesterday I followed him. He was stringing fine cord from the chimney to the barn roof, then to the stable post, then to the gatepost, pulling each line taut with a gloved hand until the whole yard was a net of grey thread furred with frost. Every line hummed when the wind pushed against it.

This morning the cord had gone. Only the knots remained, and in the snow beneath them a single line of footprints led down the lane and stopped at the bend. Mrs Pennick says he was a postman. Father says a thief. I think he was only mending what the weather had torn, and that is why I left the back door unbolted last night, with the lamp lit in the window.