small, three to four thousand souls, however, even in its isolation, it
was too much a part of the modern world to appeal to a man as
accustomed to rural peace as he was.
Each time he’d gone shopping, he’d considered stopping at the county
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