Voodoo doll devil with bat wings on a foot

Nineteen winters ago this crossing had a barrier that stuck and a guard called Pavel who kept a jar of sour cherries under the desk. A boy came through on a Tuesday wearing his mother's coat, far too big for him, with a lump in the inside pocket. Pavel asked what was in it. The boy said it was his brother. Pavel, who had no brother, took the lump out and found a grey stitched thing with one black button eye and a mouth turned down like a boiled sweet gone wrong. It had bat wings folded against its back, a tail that curled round the boy's wrist, and two red horns fixed to its head with a bit of thread. The boy said it was a voodoo doll. Pavel said it looked more like a devil who had been sewn together by someone in a hurry.

It was homesick, that devil. Every time Pavel tried to stamp its papers it shed grey sawdust across the desk and tugged its tail toward the fence. The inspector who came after him wrote it down as contraband. Pavel wrote beside it that the contraband was unhappy, and nobody ever checked his notes.

On the last night of the year the barrier stuck for good, and the wind came down off the hills smelling of pine. Pavel woke to find the desk empty but for a three-pronged mark in the frost on the window, and one red thread caught on the latch. Out past the wire, something with wings was going home, and it was not sad any more.