Winter Moon

view of his fellow men and women, uncomfortably close to

sentimentality. But he was warmed as well as astonished by it.

He was convinced that whatever had come through the doorway was

inimical to humankind, and his brush with it had reminded him that all

of nature was, in fact, hostile. It was a cold and uncaring universe,

either because God had made it that way as a test to determine good

souls from bad, or simply because that's the way it was. No man could

survive in civilized comfort without the struggles and hard-won

successes of all the people who had gone before him and who shared his

time on earth with him. If a new evil had entered the world, one to

dwarf the evil of which some men and women were capable, humanity would

need a sense of community more desperately than ever before in its long

and troubled journey.

The house came into view when he was a third of the way along the

half-mile driveway, and he continued uphill, approaching to within

sixty or eighty yards of it before realizing that something was

wrong.

He braked to a full stop.

Prior to leaving for Eagle's Roost, he had turned on lights in every

room. He clearly remembered all of the glowing windows as he had

driven away. He had been embarrassed by his childlike reluctance to

return to a dark house.

Well, it was dark now. As black as the inside of the devil's bowels.

Before he quite realized what he was doing, Eduardo pressed the master

lock switch, simultaneously securing all the doors on the station

wagon.

He sat for a while, just staring at the house. The front door was

closed, and all the windows he could see were unbroken. Nothing

appeared out of order.

Except that every light in every room had been turned off. By whom?

By what?

He supposed a power failure could have been responsible--but he didn't

believe it. Sometimes, a Montana thunderstorm could be a real

sternwinder, in the winter, blizzard winds and accumulated ice could

play havoc with electrical service. But there had been no bad weather

tonight and only the mildest breeze. He hadn't noticed any downed

power lines on the way home.

The house waited.

Couldn't sit in the car all night. Couldn't live in it, for God's

sake.

He drove slowly along the last stretch of driveway and stopped in front

of the garage. He picked up the remote control and pressed the single

button.

The automatic garage door rolled up. Inside the three-vehicle space,

the overhead convenience lamp, which was on a three-minute timer, shed

enough light to reveal that nothing was amiss in the garage.

So much for the power-failure theory.

Instead of pulling forward ten feet and into the garage, he stayed

where he was. He put the Cherokee in Park but didn't switch off the

engine. He left the headlights on too.

He picked up the shotgun from where it was angled muzzle-down in the

knee space in front of the passenger seat, and he got out of the

station wagon. He left the driver's door wide open.

Door open, lights on, engine running.

He didn't like to think that he would cut and run at the first sign of

trouble. But if it was run or die, he was sure as hell going to be

faster than anything that might be chasing him.

Although the pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun contained only five

rounds--one already in the breech and four in the magazine tube--he was

unconcerned that he hadn't brought any spare shells. If he was unlucky

enough to encounter something that couldn't be brought down with five

shots at close range, he wouldn't live long enough to reload, anyway.

He went to the front of the house, climbed the porch steps, and tried

the front door. It was locked.

His house key was on a bead chain, separate from the car keys. He

fished it out of his jeans and unlocked the door.

Standing outside, holding the shotgun in his right hand, he reached

cross-body with his left, inside the half-open door, fumbling for the

light switch. He expected something to rush at him from out of the

night. downstairs hallway--or to put its hand over his as he patted the

wall in search of the switch plate.

He flipped the switch, and light filled the hall, spilled over him onto

the front porch. He crossed the threshold and took a couple of steps

inside, leaving the door open behind him.

The house was quiet.

Dark rooms on both sides of the hallway. Study to his left. Living

room to his right.

He hated to turn his back on either room, but finally he moved to the

right, through the archway, the shotgun held in front of him. When he

turned on the overhead light, the expansive living room proved to be

deserted. No intruder.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then he noticed a dark clump lying on the white fringe at the edge of

the Chinese carpet. At first glance he thought it was feces, that an

animal had gotten in the house and done its business right there. But

when he stood over it and looked closer, he saw it was only a caked wad

of damp earth.

A couple of blades of grass bristled from it.

Back in the hallway, he noticed, for the first time, smaller crumbs of

dirt littering the polished oak floor.