Winter Moon

the keening wind. "I think Eduardo was holding out on me. Those coons

were doing something stranger than what he said."

"Why would he hold out on you?" - "Hard to say. He was a sort of

quirky old guy. Maybe ... I don't know, maybe he saw something he felt

funny talking about, something he figured I wouldn't believe. Had a

lot of pride, that man. He wouldn't want to talk about anything that

might get him laughed at."

"Any guesses what that could be?" "Nope."

Jack's head was above the roof of the Rover, and the wind not only

numbed his face but seemed to be scouring off his skin layer by

layer.

He leaned back against the vehicle, bent his knees, and slouched,

mimicking the vet. Rather than look at each other, they stared out

across the descending land to the south as they talked.

Jack said, "You think, like Paul does, it was something Eduardo saw

that caused his heart attack, related to the raccoons?"

"And made him load a shotgun, you mean. I don't know. Maybe.

Wouldn't rule it out. More'n two weeks before he died, I talked to him

on the phone. Interesting conversation. Called him to give him the

test results on the coons. Wasn't any known disease involved--"

"The

brain swelling."

"Right. But no apparent cause. He wanted to know did I just take

samples of brain tissue for the tests or do a full dissection."

"Dissection of the brain?"

"Yeah. He asked did I open their brains all the way up. He seemed to

expect, if I did that, I'd find something besides swelling. But I

didn't find anything. So then he asks me about their spines, if there

was something attached to their spines."

"Attached?"

"Odder still, huh? He asks if I examined the entire length of their

spines to see if anything was attached. When I ask him what he means,

he says it might've looked like a tumor."

"Looked like." The vet turned his head to the right, to look directly

at Jack, but Jack stared ahead at the Montana panorama. "You heard it

the same way I did. Funny way to word it, huh? Not a tumor. Might've

looked like one but not a real tumor." Travis gazed out at the fields

again.

"I asked him if he was holding out on me, but he swore he wasn't. I

told him to call me right away if he saw any animals behaving like

those coons--squirrels, rabbits, whatever--but he never did. Less than

three weeks later, he was dead."

"You found him."

"Couldn't get him to answer his phone. Came out here to check on

him.

There he was, lying in the open doorway, holding on to that shotgun for

dear life."

"He hadn't fired it."

"No. It was just a heart attack got him."

Tnafr the influence of the wind, the long meadow grass rippled in brown

waves.

The fields ref rolling, dirty sea. Jack debated whether to tell Travis

about what had - happened in the graveyard a short while ago. However,

describing the experience was difficult. He could outline the bare

events, recount the bizarre exchanges between himself and the

Toby-thing. But he didn't have the words--maybe there were no

words--to adequately describe what he had felt, and feelings were the

core of it. He couldn't convey a fraction of the essential

supernatural nature of the encounter.

To buy time, he said, "Any theories?"

"I suspect maybe a toxic substance was involved. Yeah, I know, there

aren't exactly piles of industrial sludge scattered all around these

parts. But there are natural toxins, too, can cause dementia in

wildlife, make animals act damn near as peculiar as people. How about

you? See anything weird since you've been here?"

"In fact, yes." Jack was relieved that the postures they had chosen

relative to each other made it possible to avoid meeting the

veterinarian's eyes without causing suspicion. He told Travis about

the crow at the window that morning--and how, later, it had flown tight

circles over him and Toby while they played with the Frisbee.

"Curious," Travis said. "It might be related, I guess. On the other

hand, there's nothing that bizarre about its behavior, not even pecking

the glass. Crows can be damned bold. It still around here?" They

both pushed away from the Rover and stood scanning the sky. The crow

was gone.

"In this wind," Travis said, "birds are sheltering." He turned to

Jack.

"Anything besides the crow?" That business about toxic substances had

convinced Jack to hold off telling Travis Potter anything about the

graveyard. They were discussing two utterly different kinds of

mystery: poison versus the supernatural, toxic substances as opposed to

ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. The incident

on the cemetery knoll was evidence of a strictly subjective nature,

even more so than the behavior of the crow, it didn't provide any

support to the contention that something unspeakably strange was going

on at Quartermass Ranch. Jack had no proof it had happened. Toby

clearly recalled none of it and could not corroborate his story. If

Eduardo Fernandez had seen something peculiar and withheld it from

Travis, Jack sympathized with the old man and understood. The

veterinarian was predisposed to the idea that extraordinary agents were