Accompanying that pulse had been a sense of presi A cluster of ten to
twenty pines had been involved.
Like a glowing shrine in the otherwise night-black fastness of
timber.
Unquestionably, the mysterious source of the light was also the source
of the sound. When the former had begun to fade, so had the latter.
Quieter and dimmer, quieter and dimmer. The March night had become
silent and dark again in the same instant, marked only by the sound of
his own breathing and illuminated by nothing stranger than the silver
crescent of a quarter moon and the pearly phosphorescence of the
snow-shrouded fields.
The event had lasted about seven minutes.
It had seemed much longer.
Back inside the house, he had stood at the windows, waiting to see what
would happen next. Eventually, when that seemed to have been the sum
of it, he returned to bed.
He had not been able to get back to sleep. He had lain awake ...
wondering.
Every morning he sat down to breakfast at six-thirty, with his big
shortwave radio tuned to a station in Chicago that provided
international news twenty-four hours a day. The peculiar experience
during the previous night hadn't been a sufficient interruption of the
rhythms of his life to make him alter his schedule. This morning he'd
eaten the entire contents of a large can of grapefruit sections,
followed by two eggs over easy, home fries, a quarter pound of bacon,
and four slices of buttered toast. He hadn't lost his hearty appetite
with age, and a lifelong dedication to the foods that were hardest on
the heart had only left him with the constitution of a man more than
twenty years his junior.
Finished eating, he always liked to linger over several cups of black
coffee, listening to the endless troubles of the world. The news
unfailingly confirmed the wisdom of living in a far place with no
neighbors in view.
This morning, though he had lingered longer than usual with his coffee,
and though the radio had been on, he hadn't been able to remember a
word of the news when he pushed back his chair and got up from
breakfast. The entire time, he had been studying the woods through the
window beside the table, trying to decide if he should go down to the
foot of the meadow and search for evidence of the enigmatic
visitation.
Now, standing on the front porch in knee-high boots, jeans, sweater,
and sheepskin-lined jacket, wearing a cap with fur-lined earflaps tied
under his chin, he still hadn't decided what he was going to do.
Incredibly, fear was still with him. Bizarre as they might have been,
the tides of pulsating sound and the luminosity in the trees had not
harmed him.
Whatever threat he perceived was entirely subjective, no doubt more
imaginary than real.
Finally he became sufficiently angry with himself to break the chains
of dread. He descended the porch steps and strode across the front
