Winter Moon

Ordinarily he never locked doors.

Though it was time for lunch, he had no appetite. Instead, he opened a

bottle of Corona.

He was a three-beers-a-day man. That was his usual limit, not a

minimum requirement. There were days when he didn't drink at all.

Though not lately.

Recently, in spite of his limit, he had been downing more than three a

day.

Some days, a lot more.

Later that afternoon, sitting in a living-room armchair, trying to read

Thomas Wolfe and sipping a third bottle of Corona, he became convinced,

against his will, that the experience in the graveyard had been a vivid

premonition. A warning. But a warning of what?

As April passed with no recurrence of the phenomenon in the lower

woods, Eduardo had become more-- not less--tense. Each of the previous

events had transpired when the moon was in the same phase, a quarter

full. That celestial condition seemed increasingly pertinent as the

April moon waxed and waned without another disturbance. The lunar

cycle might have nothing whatsoever to do with these peculiar

events-yet still be a calendar by which to anticipate them.

Beginning the night of May first, which boasted a sliver of the new

moon, he slept fully clothed. The .22 was in a soft leather holster on

the nightstand.

Beside it was the Discman with headphones, Wormheart album inserted. A

loaded Remington twelve-gauge shotgun lay under the bed, within easy

reach. The video camera was equipped with fresh batteries and a blank

cassette. He was prepared to move fast.

He slept only fitfully, but the night passed without incident.

He didn't actually expect trouble until the early-morning hours of May

fourth.

Of course, the strange spectacle might never be repeated. In fact, he

hoped he wouldn't have to witness it again. In his heart, however, he

knew what his mind could not entirely admit: that events of

significance had been set in motion, that they were gathering momentum,

and that he could no more avoid playing a role in them than a condemned

man, in shackles, could avoid the noose or guillotine.

As it turned out, he didn't have to wait quite as long as he had

expected.

Because he'd had little sleep the night before, he went to bed early on

May second--and was awakened past midnight, in the first hour of May

third, by those ominous and rhythmic pulsations.

The sound was no louder than it had been before, but the wave of

pressure that accompanied each beat was half again as powerful as

anything he had previously experienced. The house shook all the way

into its foundations, the rocking chair in the corner arced back and

forth as if a hyperactive ghost was working off a superhuman rage, and

one of the paintings flew off the wall and crashed to the floor.

By the time he turned on the lamp, threw back the covers, and got out

of bed, Eduardo felt himself being lulled into a trancelike state

similar to the one that had gripped him a month earlier. If he fully

succumbed, he might blink and discover he'd left the house without

being aware of having taken a single step from the bed.

He snatched up the Discman, slipped the headphones over his ears, and

hit the Play button. The music of Wormheart assaulted him.

He suspected that the unearthly throbbing sound operated on a frequency

with a natural hypnotic influence. If so, the trancelike effect might

be countered by blocking the mesmeric sound with sufficient chaotic

noise.

He raised the volume of Wormheart until he could hear neither the bass

throbbing nor the underlying electronic oscillation. He was sure his

eardrums were in danger of bursting, however, with the heavy-metal band

in full shriek, he was able to shrug off the trance before he was

entirely enthralled.

He could still feel the waves of pressure surging over him and see the

effects on objects around him. As he had suspected, however, only the

sound itself elicited a lemming-like response, by blocking it, he was

safe.

After clipping the Discman to his belt, so he wouldn't have to hold it,

he strapped on the hip holster with the .22 pistol. He retrieved the

shotgun from under the bed, slung it over his shoulder by its field

strap, grabbed the camcorder, and rushed downstairs, outside.

The night was chilly.

The quarter moon gleamed like a silver scimitar.

The light emanating from the cluster of trees and the ground at the

edge of the lower woods was already blood red, no amber in it

whatsoever.

Standing on the front porch, Eduardo taped the eerie luminosity from a

distance. He panned back and forth to get it in perspective to the

landscape.

Then he plunged down the porch steps, hurried across the brown lawn,

and raced into the field. He was afraid that the phenomenon was going

to be of shorter duration than it had been a month before, just as that

second occurrence had been noticeably shorter but more intense than the

first.

He stopped twice in the meadow to tape for a few seconds from different

distances. By the time he halted warily within ten yards of the

uncanny radiance, he wondered if the camcorder was getting anything or

was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of light.