A young goldfinch was next – a good thing Deborah hadn't seen! -and then another mouse. Stooping a fourth time, he paused. The one remaining body looked different from the rest.
At first he'd taken it for the remnant of some larger animal – a fox's paw, perhaps, the stump of a severed limb – until, crouching down to get a closer look, he saw four legs, like little sticks or twigs, and exposed along one end, a row of tiny yellow teeth.
The thing was black, burned-looking, with the texture of dirt and dead leaves; it looked like a child's clumsy attempt to fashion an animal. He realized, quite suddenly, what it must be: the dried and swollen body of a shrew. It appeared to have been dragged across the ground, or even buried; no doubt, too, it had been well mauled by the cats, for the mouth was all askew, nearly vertical, in fact, and there was soil and mold still clinging to its fur. He looked in vain for eyes, and for a tail to lift it by. Grimacing, he was forced to grasp the thing tentatively around the middle. It felt odd to the touch, like picking up a crumbling clod of earth.
Suddenly it moved. He felt it twist in his hand and bite him on the thumb. With a yell he dropped it and watched it patter off into the grass, with Bwada and the rest in frantic pursuit.
'Come back here!' he called, but the cats paid no heed. It was nearly the end of dinner before they returned, with nothing to show for their chase.
' 'Twasn't dead at all, you see.' He scooped himself a final helping of salad. 'Must have been just feigning, like a 'possum.'
'Well, I just hope you don't go getting rabies,' said Deborah. 'You never know in the summertime, and it's a death I wouldn't wish on Lucifer himself.'
'I'm not dead yet,' said Sarr, extending his hand. 'See? It didn't even pierce the skin.'
'Looks okay to me,' agreed Freirs. 'I hope you're not going to start foaming at the mouth right here at the dinner table!'
Deborah shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I hear flitter-mice in these parts carry rabies-'
'Bats,' explained Sarr, to Freirs' puzzled look.
'-and who knows what other things might be infected. This is one time I'd feel safer if a doctor were around.' She was still fretful as she began clearing away the plates.
'Hey,' said Freirs, 'do you suppose house mice can get rabies?'
'Why?' Sarr was absently examining his thumb.
'Because I think I've got mice living up in my attic back there.'
'You too?' said Deborah, from the sink. 'This sure seems to be the season for them.'
Sarr nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'we've been hearing them too.' He glanced at Deborah, then dropped his voice. 'Want me to let the cats up there?'
'I heard that,' said Deborah, 'and the answer's no! Jeremy will just have to learn to make friends with them.'
Freirs smiled. 'Sure,' he said, 'I'll fit 'em out with little sneakers.' He turned to Deborah. 'But I hope they're not going to keep it up all summer. It's going to make it hard to get to sleep.'
Sarr was regarding him somberly. 'Just make sure you don't sleep on your back. And if you do, make sure you don't snore.'
'Why's that?'
'So if one of them gnaws through the ceiling, he won't fall in your mouth.'
Freirs laughed, until he saw that the other wasn't smiling. 'I think that'd be a lot worse for the mouse. than for me.'
'Don't be too sure,' said Sarr. 'I once read about a man who was killed by a mouse that ran right up his arm and jumped into his mouth. Somehow it got wedged in the man's throat and almost bit its way right through.'
From the sink came an exasperated 'Honey!'
'What happened?' asked Freirs.
'Both of them suffocated, man and mouse.' Sarr saw the expression of disbelief on Freirs' face. 'It's a true story,' he said. 'There was even a picture. I'll never forget it.' He could still see, in the crude Victorian illustration, the terrified face of the man's wife, and the man's wide-open mouth and staring eyes as the small dark thing leaped toward him.
'I think it served him right,' said Deborah, returning to the table with a bowl of fresh fruit. 'He was probably trying to kill the mouse, when he could have just turned it out of doors.' She nudged Freirs with her elbow. 'Bet you didn't know he was such a one for tall tales, did you?'
'Say what you like,' said Sarr. 'You believe me, don't you, Jeremy?'
Freirs laughed. 'Well, frankly, no. But just the same, I think I'll sleep with my mouth shut tonight.'
There's one of the little bastards right now!
Lying here in bed, listening to sounds above my head. A moment ago it was one of my little friends in the attic; just before that was an airplane, the first I've heard all week. It seemed to pass directly over the farm; I can still hear the roar of its engines receding in the distance. Such a familiar sound, once upon a time – amp; now it seems like something from another world!
Sounds in the, woods, too. The trees really come close to my windows on one side, amp; there's always some kind of stirring coming from the underbrush, below the everpresent tapping on the screens.
A million creatures out there, probably. Most of them insects amp; spiders, I guess, plus a colony of frogs in the swampy part of the woods, amp; maybe even skunks and raccoons. Depending on your mood, you can either ignore the sounds amp; just go to sleep or – as I'm doing now – remain awake listening to them.
When I he here thinking about what's out there, amp; how easily I can be seen, I feel vulnerable, unprotected, like I'm in a display case. So guess I'll put away this writing amp; turn off the light.
Darkness fills the apartment – darkness and the weary droning of an air conditioner, as if the two were coterminous, the droning the sound of the darkness itself as it settles like a veil over floors and furniture, stretching across doorways, masking books on shelves and pictures on the wall. The droning muffles other sounds; the apartment is an isolated cavern, cut off from the world and beyond the reach of time.
Outside, twelve floors down, the weekend has begun. Friday night has reached its zenith, dawn is still five hours away, and the streets are filled with noise: music, voices, distant sirens. The planet rolls serenely into blackness, the stars hidden by haze. Overhead a yellow gibbous moon, one day wide of half, glares down upon the city like a cat's eye.
Within the apartment an occasional band of light reflected from the headlights of some passing car sweeps the high ceiling and slides down a wall, picking out a small framed picture, crude as a child's, done on yellowed paper cracked with age – the picture of a naked girl standing side by side with some tiny black animal. Below it an older hand has written simply, Marriage.
Otherwise the darkness is unbroken, save for a single cone of yellow light, a candle flame within it, falling from the gooseneck lamp upon the table where the old man sits working.
He sits crouched forward, staring intently at the instruments before him on the table: the straw mat, the bone needle, the pliers, the little bowl of amber fluid, the guttering candle in its brass candlestick, the shard of metal. His own face is painted like a savage's, streaks of color emanating from his eyes and mouth and a heavy black line down the center of his forehead where he's rubbed the holy powder. He looks like a lion, a sunburst, a flower as big as a man. Around his neck, on a knotted leather thong, he wears some- thing resembling a pendant, something curved and yellowing and hard: an index finger-human, female-that, one short week before, pressed the buttons of an elevator downtown.
He picks up the metal shard in the pliers and holds it in the flame. His old-man's breath is audible as he waits for the metal to grow hot, smoke, turn red… When it is glowing he places it upon the straw mat before him and, with the bone needle, scratches the first sign into its surface. Picking the shard up once more with the pliers, he dips it in the bowl of amber liquid. The liquid bubbles and hisses; a little puff of foul-smelling steam rises up the cone of light. The old man croons a certain word and smiles.
He smiles because the sign has taken; the ceremony will not be in vain. Counting to himself, he turns toward the window beside him in time to see a single star glimmer in the night sky. He watches it floating just beyond the window, centered in the topmost pane. Then, as the count is repeated, it dims and disappears behind a wave of mist. The old man expels his breath and turns back to his work.
The visitor is out there now, somewhere in the Jersey hills – he can feel it. All week long he has seen the evidence of its arrival, felt the changes, read the signs. Now he can be sure. It has come.
