It was a stormy Christmas Eve; the whole family was sitting at the embellished dinner table. The table was full of delicious dishes and glasses of wine. The family didn’t seem to mind the thunderstorm roaring outside. The Christmas tree, a few meters away from the table, just next to the door to the terrace, was illuminated with many bright, colourful lights and other decorations. Everyone was happy. The parents were talking about where they could go for the rest of the Christmas holiday; the children were chatting about what presents they thought they were going to get. It was almost midnight and they decided to go to bed so they weren’t too tired on Christmas day.

The following morning, David, the older brother, woke up quite early. He sat up in his bed, still half asleep. When he looked up he noticed that something was wrong: lots of the things in his room have moved; they weren’t at all where he left them. His school books were spread out all over the room, and his bag was lying in the corner, empty. He was absolutely sure that something had changed. He looked at the clock over his untidy desk: 5 o’clock. He knew he couldn’t go to sleep again so he started putting things back to where they belonged. On his desk he found a note saying: “Be warned!” and signed “Z”.

Now he was even more confused. He rushed out of his room, down the corridor, to his dad’s room, who was still sleeping. David woke him and showed him the note. “That’s nonsense! Just put it in the bin and go back to sleep!” was his reaction. David went back to his room and found everything messed up again, books all over the wooden floor and everything from the desk was also on the floor. There was a second note: “I did warn you!” and again, signed “Z”. He didn’t know what to do.

He wanted to run to his dad anew, but he knew he would just say the same thing again, so he sat down and thought about it. How could this letter have come into the room? Who wrote it? Why did that person write it? What should he warned of? There were just so many questions flowing through his mind. Maybe his friend wrote it, he thought, just to scare him and have a laugh. But how would he have gotten into the house? Where did he hide? How did he place the second letter on his desk so quickly without being noticed? He wished it was his friend because that would mean it wasn’t serious, but he knew that it couldn’t have been his friend. It had to be someone else, and he didn’t think that it was a trick. He sat there, on his bed, thinking about it for the next few minutes. He was scared, but he decided not to go to his dad’s room again, so he waited for the endless hours to pass.