Winter Moon

sheriff's substation to report the peculiar noise and strange lights in

the woods. But he was sure the deputy would figure him for an old fool

and do nothing but file the report in a folder labeled CRACKPOTS.

In the third week of March, spring officially arrived--and the

following day a storm put down eight inches of new snow. Winter was

not quick to relinquish its grasp there on the eastern slopes of the

Rockies.

He took daily walks, as had been his habit all his life, but he stayed

on the long driveway, which he plowed himself after each snow, or he

crossed the open fields south of the house and stables. He avoided the

lower woods, which lay east and downhill from the house, but he also

stayed away from those to the north and even the higher forests to the

west.

His cowardice irritated him, not least of all because he was unable to

understand it. He'd always been an advocate of reason and logic,

always said there was too little of either in the world. He was

scornful of people who operated more from emotion than from

intellect.

But reason failed him now, and logic could not overcome the instinctual

awareness of danger that caused him to avoid the trees and the

perpetual twilight under their boughs.

By the end of March, he began to think that the phenomenon had been a

singular occurrence without notable consequences. A rare but natural

event. Perhaps an electromagnetic disturbance of some kind. No more

threat to him than a summer thunderstorm.

On April first, he unloaded the two rifles and two shotguns. After

cleaning them, he returned the guns to the cabinet in the study.

However, still slightly uneasy, he kept the .22 target pistol on his

nightstand. It didn't pack a tremendous punch but, loaded with

hollow-point cartridges, it could do some damage.

In the dark hours of the morning of April fourth, Eduardo was awakened

by the low throbbing that swelled and faded, swelled and faded. As in

early March, that pulsating sound was accompanied by an eerie

electronic oscillation.

He sat straight up in bed, blinking at the window. During the three

years since Margaret had died, he'd not slept in the master bedroom at

the front of the house, which they had shared. Instead, he bunked down

in one of two back bedrooms. Consequently, the window faced west, a

hundred and eighty degrees around the compass from the eastern woods

where he had seen the strange light.

The night sky was deep and black beyond the window.

The Stiffel lamp on the nightstand had a pull-chain instead of a thumb

switch.

Just before he turned it on, he had the feeling that something was in

the room with him, something he would be better off not seeing. He

hesitated, fingers tightly pinching the metal beads of the pull.

Intently he searched the darkness, his heart pounding, as if he had

wakened into a nightmare replete with a monster. When at last he

tugged the chain, however, the light revealed that he was alone.

He picked up his wristwatch from the nightstand and checked the time.

Nineteen minutes past one o'clock.

He threw off the covers and got out of bed. He was in his long

underwear. His blue jeans and a flannel shirt were close at hand,

folded over the back of an armchair, beside which stood a pair of

boots. He was already wearing socks, because his feet often got cold

during the night if he slept without them.

The sound was louder than it had been a month before, and it pulsed

through the house with noticeably greater effect than before. In

March, Eduardo had experienced a sense of pressure along with the

rhythmic pounding-- which, like the sound, crested repeatedly in a

series of waves. Now the pressure had increased dramatically. He

didn't merely sense it but felt it, indescribably different from the

pressure of turbulent air, more like the invisible tides of a cold sea

washing across his body.

By the time he hurriedly dressed and snatched the loaded .22 pistol

from the nightstand, the pull-chain was swinging wildly and clinking

against the burnished brass body of the lamp. The windowpanes

vibrated. The paintings rattled against the walls, askew on their

wires.

He rushed downstairs into the foyer, where there was no need to switch

on a light. In the front door, the beveled edges of the leaded panes

in the oval window sparkled with reflections of the mysterious glow

outside. It was far brighter than it had been the previous month. The

bevels broke down the amber radiance into all the colors of the

spectrum, projecting bright prismatic patterns of blue and green and

yellow and red across the ceiling and walls, so it seemed as if he was

in a church with stained-glass murals.

In the dark living room to his left, where no light penetrated from

outside because the drapes were drawn, a collection of crystal

paperweights and other bibelots rattled and clinked against the end

tables on which they stood and against one another. Porcelains

vibrated on the glass shelves of a display cabinet.

To his right, in the book-lined study, the marble-and-brass desk set

bounced on the blotter, a pencil drawer popped open and banged shut in