Day 4

Chapter 6

(Move to Chapter 3, that is to say switch them)
A shadow grows out on the flats, an old shadow, an ancient shadow. A nameless fear grips the small animals. It hushes or scares away the birds.
Down in the dark places of the earth, the dark places of human consciousness, lurks, not an evil, good and evil don’t apply to such things. This nameless shadow, nameless fear is far older than the concept of good and evil. It would be wrong to say that it is above such petty human constructs. It would also be wrong to elevate it beyond human knowledge: it has been here as long as we have been here, and longer, but really, it has no more to do with us than we have to do with the field mouse. Or a deer, or a bullfrog. It roams outside our notions of morality. It is the protection of family from eminent threat. It is the cat breaking the neck of the sparrow. It is the black bear skinning the salmon while it still wriggles on the rocky stream side.


Chapter 7

(Actually, I think that we should leave chapter six where it is, move chapter 3 to later, and here is a start for chapter 3)
Down in the deep places, out on the land where few ever go, a thought stirs; breath begins anew. A change falls over the rocks and the soil. The insects feel it, the kangaroo mice feel it, even the lizards and the snakes feel it. A heat beat silently thunders like a gong though the surrounding soil. The animals do not tremble or scurry in fear, but it occurs to many, that right about now would be a good time to find a new burrow, a new hunting ground.
At a twitch, as the sun sets, something stirs.


Chapter 8

Hugo sat in the passenger seat looking out the windshield not really seeing anything. Dr. Bonanza bumped them along the dirt track back toward his house.
A myriad of thoughts swirled and plodded through Hugo’s brain. His first thoughts had been that a person must have done this. But why would a person be out attacking Dr. Bonanza’s sheep? A high school prank? Some sort of cult? McLoughlin wasn’t exactly a hotbed of satanic activity, as far as Hugo knew. Why not? He thought. Because it just didn’t feel like that was what had happened here. From what he’d read (and written about) the ritual, if that is what it had been, would include some fire, candles at least, and probably runes, pentagrams, or some other symbol somewhere on the ground. Also, there should have been footprints. That, to Hugo’s mind had been the most perplexing part. Granted, the sheep had been out on the rocks, and it had rained the night before, but Bonanza said that he hadn’t seen any footprints at all: no cougar, no coyote, no human. Nothing.
“What do you think?” asked Dr. Bonanza as they rounded the barn and came up to the house. He stopped the pick-up in the same parking area as before, but didn’t turn off the engine.
Hugo took a minute to register the question. He looked out the passenger side window at the other house, white, two stories, about two hundred yards from Bonanza’s. He slowly shook his head. The clouds started to break up; a ray of sun shown on a large tree in the neighbor’s yard. Hugo thought that it probably was a cottonwood, though it might have been an elm. Whichever, it dwarfed the house.
“I don’t know,” Hugo finally said. He shook his head, still looking out over the fields, across the road and to the other house.
“I just thought that maybe you’d’a had some idea…” Dr. Bonanza trailed off.
“Who lives over there?” Hugo asked, indicating the other house.
“That’s old Olaf’s place,” said Dr. Bonanza. “It’s gone to hell ever since his wife up and left him. He still gets along okay, but the house don’t look like it’s doing to well. I was over there the other day, we were having a cup of coffee, and that yard is all going to seed. He’s lucky that winter’s coming so that those weeds will die down a bit.”
“It almost looks deserted…” Just then a man appeared at the back door and made his way to the barn.
“What about this goddamn sheep?” asked Bonanza. He flicked the truck into park and turned off the engine. “I thought that maybe you might a knowed something about this. I read your book.”
Hugo swung his head around an looked at Bonanza. Hugo had assumed that no one in McLoughlin had read his book.
“It had some of that cult stuff in it. You talked a bit about sacrifice and mutilations.”
“Yes,” said Hugo. “But that was fiction. This is the real thing.” He began to feel a little of the panic from this morning. He looked out at Olaf’s place, wondering how he had ever gotten here. “I need to get home,” he said to Dr. Bonanza, trying to calm his voice. “I have things to do today.”
Bonanza looked at him for a couple of seconds. “Alright,” he said. “I just thought that you might have knowed something about what happened to my sheep. You don’t have to get all uppity about it.”
Bonanza started the pick-up and drove them back to the highway. As they pulled out, Hugo glanced at Dr. Bonanza’s house. The curtain flicked again, but he didn’t even catch a glimpse of the hand what had flicked it.


Chapter 9

Bonanza angled into a parking place in front of Hugo’s house. The sun had fled behind the clouds and they seemed to be lowering. The truck clanged into park as Hugo opened the door. He had regained some calm on the ride back to town, though his hand shook as he grasped the door handle. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. They hadn’t spoken on the way home. Hugo regretted that he hadn’t been offered another beer. That will calm me down, he thought.
“Hell, that’s all right, you were shook up, just like I was when I saw it for the first time.”
“Do you know anything about the other animals that were found dead? Did they have their…brains removed like this one?”
“I don’t know,” said Bonanza. “I talked with Olaf about it and the goat on his property had been torn up pretty good. I don’t think that he looked at it too close.”
“What about the deer on the refuge?”
“I don’t know anything about them deer. I saw something on the news last night but I was too drunk to understand it all. Some ranger was talkin’ and pointin’ up toward the hills.”
“I saw that too,” Hugo said. “I didn’t hear any of it, though, the sound was turned way down. Have you talked to the police?”
“Hell no,” Bonanza practically spat. “They won’t do a goddamn thing for me out there. And I ain’t callin’ the goddamn ODFG. They’ll just list it as a cougar attack and then they can go out and hunt down another one of those poor bastards.”
“Listen, I’ll think about it and maybe see if I can do some reading on it.”
“That’s okay then. I’ll see you later.”
Hugo shut the door and Dr. Bonanza pulled out of the space. He turned around in the driveway of the vacant house as Hugo went inside. He stared at the sidewalk as he walked in, too involved to wave as Bonanza drove off.
“Did you see about those deer that got killed out on the refuge?” a voice called to Hugo just as he had pulled the screen door open. He froze at the sound of Mrs. McGreggor’s voice. What a coincidence that she should say something about that right now.
Hugo slowly turned, his hand holding the screen door ajar. “I did see about that, Mrs. McGreggor.” He closed the screen door, not letting it bang, and took a step back down the walk.
“Well, I don’t know nothing about that,” she said.
Hugo, taken aback, started to ask her a question, but then stopped as she turned and marched to the back of her house, probably to do some gardening.


Chapter 10

I need a beer, he thought. He went in and opened the refrigerator. No beer. There seemed to be plenty of nothing else as well. He thought about a cup of tea, or a cup of coffee, but decided that only beer would do. He glanced at the clock on the mantel: 2:46. That clock hasn’t worked for months, he thought. He didn’t have the money to get it fixed, but it was too nice to get rid of. Plus it had been from his mother. He searched through a pile of books, magazines, and mail on a table near the door until he found a watch, 9:56. Astor’s didn’t open for another hour and a half. The Third Street Market would have to do.
He walked out the door and down the walk. His boots had dried a bit, though his socks still silently squished with each step. He thought about changing his shoes, but the clouds threatened rain anyway and the Third Street Market was only a half mile away. After the first block, he regretted the decision.
He squished his way along, and it began to rain again. He passed under a big leaf maple that had lost almost all its leaves. The piles stood eight inches thick on the sidewalk. The leaves hadn’t been walked on yet, or so he imagined. He remembered a childhood that rushed by. One memory that he had tried to hold on to had been autumn under the maple trees. The grove where he went stood far enough from the house, and his stepmother, that he could neither hear her, nor she see him. He would lay down amongst the leaves, sometimes they wetted him with long held rain; sometimes they crackled like fireworks under his back. He would lay there for hours on Sunday watching the sun flit between the remaining leaves overhead. He watched the birds, and he felt the insects going about their business under his shoulders. He never cringed at being so close to nature. He reveled in it, literally.
Always, though, the dark pall of having to return to the house would enter his consciousness. Questions would spring to mind, most often, Why?
He shook his head as he neared the market, clearing away the darkness.
Sally, if that really were her name, sat behind the counter again.
The bells on the door jingled merrily. “Still here, huh?” Hugo asked as he came in. Immediately he regretted saying anything: she looked at him blankly, as though she had never seen him before. Ye gods, he thought, why do I even talk to anyone. He ducked his head and walked through the aisles to the beer cooler. I pulled out a twelve pack and took them back to the counter.
“Weren’t you here last night?” he asked. He had grown tired of the weirdness and that made him bold.
She looked at him, sizing him up, then glanced down at the beer. “No,” she said.
“Do you have a sister, or something?” he asked. She looked at him. He continued, “It’s just that, last night I came in and I could have sworn that we talked about what was happening on the TV.” He turned to look over his right shoulder for the TV, but instead he only saw a rack of candy.
“Never mind,” he mumbled as he paid her for the beer and walked out of the store. The bells seemed less merry on the way out. He turned to stomp home when he noticed a paperbox. He reached in his pocket and, with a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to go back in the store and ask for change, found the exact amount. He put in the money and extracted a paper. The front page didn’t have anything about the animal killings, and the teasers didn’t mention it either. He tucked the paper under his arm, along with the beer and walked back home.