attraction when he was eighteen.
When Stanley Quartermass died in a private-plane crash, Eduardo and
Margaret had been surprised to learn that the ranch had been left to
them, along with sufficient funds to allow immediate retirement. The
producer had taken care of his four ex-wives while he was alive and had
fathered no children from any of his marriages, so he used the greater
part of his estate to provide generously for key employees.
They had sold the horses, closed up the caretaker's house, and moved
into the Victorian-style main house, with its gables, decorative
shutters, scalloped eaves, and wide porches. It felt strange to be a
person of property, but the security was welcome even--or perhaps
especially--when it came late in life.
Now Eduardo was a widowed retiree with plenty of security but with too
little work to occupy him. And with too many strange thoughts preying
on his mind Luminous trees ...
On three occasions during March, he drove his Jeep Cherokee into
Eagle's Roost, the nearest town. He ate at Jasper's Diner because he
liked their Salisbury steak, home fries, and pepper slaw. He bought
magazines and a few paperback books at the High Plains Pharmacy, and he
shopped for groceries at the only supermarket. His ranch was just
sixteen miles from Eagle's Roost, so he could have gone daily if he'd
wished, but three times a month was usually enough. The town was
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
