that had nothing to do with the wintry air.
Annoyed with himself, Eduardo turned back toward the meadow, following
the tracks he had left in the patches of snow and the thick carpet of
dead pine needles. The crunch of his footsteps disturbed a slumbering
owl from its secret perch in some high bower.
He felt a wrongness in the woods. He couldn't put a finer point on it
than that. Which sharpened his annoyance. A wrongness. What the hell
did that mean? A wrongness.
The hooting owl.
Spiny black pine cones on white snow.
Pale beams of sunlight lancing through the gaps in the gray-green
branches.
All of it ordinary. Peaceful. Yet wrong.
As he returned to the perimeter of the forest, with snow-covered fields
visible between the trunks of the trees ahead, he was suddenly certain
that he was not going to reach open ground, that something was rushing
at him from behind, some creature as indefinable as the wrongness that
he sensed around him. He began to move faster. Fear swelled step by
step. The hooting of the owl seemed to sour into a cry as alien as the
shriek of a nemesis in a nightmare. He stumbled on an exposed root,
his heart trip-hammered, and he spun around with a cry of terror to
confront whatever demon was in pursuit of him.
He was, of course, alone.
Shadows and sunlight.
The hoot of an owl. A soft and lonely sound. As ever.
Cursing himself, he headed for the meadow again. Reached it. The
trees were behind him. He was safe.
Then, dear sweet Jesus, the fear again, worse than ever, the absolute
dead certainty that it was coming-- what?--that it was for sure gaining
on him, that it would drag him down, that it was bent upon committing
an act infinitely worse than murder, that it had an inhuman purpose and
unknown uses for him so strange they were beyond both his understanding
and conception.
This time he was in the grip of a terror so black and profound, so
mindless, that he could not summon the courage to turn and confront the
empty day behind him--if, indeed, it proved to be empty this time. He
raced toward the house, which appeared far more distant than a hundred
yards, a citadel beyond his reach. He kicked through shallow snow,
blundered into deeper drifts, ran and churned and staggered and flailed
uphill, making wordless sounds of blind panic--'Uh, uh, uhhhhh, uh,
uh'--all intellect repressed by instinct, until he found himself at the
porch steps, up which he scrambled, at the top of which he turned, at
last, to scream--'No!'--at the clear, crisp, blue Montana day.
The pristine mantle of snow across the broad field was marred only by
his own trail to and from the woods.
He went inside.
He bolted the door.
In the big kitchen he stood for a long time in front of the brick
fireplace, still dressed for the outdoors, basking in the heat that
poured across the hearth--yet unable to get warm.
