The kitchen smelled fresh and clean. No crumbles of dry soil on the floor, either.
She was almost disappointed. She was loath to think that she’d imagined everything, but the facts justified no other interpretation.
Imagination or not, she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that she was under observation. She closed the blinds over the kitchen windows.
Get a grip, Heather thought. You’re fifteen years away from the change of life, lady; no excuse for these weird mood swings.
She had intended to spend the rest of the night reading, but she was too agitated to concentrate on a book. She needed to keep busy.
While she brewed a pot of coffee, she inventoried the contents of the freezer compartment in the side-by-side refrigerator. There were half a dozen frozen dinners, a package of frankfurters, two boxes of Green Giant white corn, one box of green beans, two of carrots, and a package of Oregon blueberries, none of which Eduardo Fernandez had opened and all of which they could use.
On a lower shelf, under a box of Eggo waffles and a pound of bacon, she found a Ziploc bag that appeared to contain a legal-size tablet of yellow paper. The plastic was opaque with frost, but she could vaguely see that lines of handwriting filled the first page.
She popped the pressure seal on the bag—but then hesitated. Storing the tablet in such a peculiar place was tantamount to hiding it. Fernandez must have considered the contents to be important and extremely personal, and Heather was reluctant to invade his privacy. Though dead and gone, he was the benefactor who had radically changed their lives; he deserved her respect and discretion.
She read the first few words on the top page—My name is Eduardo Fernandez—and thumbed through the tablet, confirming it had been written by Fernandez and was a lengthy document. More than two thirds of the long yellow pages were filled with neat handwriting.
Stifling her curiosity, Heather put the tablet on top of the refrigerator, intending to give it to Paul Youngblood the next time she saw him. The attorney was the closest thing to a friend that Fernandez had known and, in his professional capacity, was privy to all the old man’s affairs. If the contents of the tablet were important and private, only Paul had any right to read them.
Finished with the inventory of frozen foods, she poured a cup of fresh coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and began to make a list of needed groceries and household supplies. Come morning, they would drive to the supermarket in Eagle’s Roost and stock not only the refrigerator but the half-empty shelves of the pantry. She wanted to be well prepared if they were cut off by deep snow for any length of time during the winter.
She paused in her listmaking to scribble a note, reminding Jack to schedule an appointment next week with Parker’s Garage for the installation of a plow on the front of the Explorer.
Initially, as she sipped her coffee and composed her list, she was alert for any peculiar sound. However, the task before her was so mundane that it was calming; after a while, she could not sustain a sense of the uncanny.
In his sleep, Toby moaned softly.
He said, “Go away…go…go away…”
After falling silent for a while, he pushed back the covers and got out of bed. In the ruddy glow of the night-light, his pale-yellow pajamas appeared to be streaked with blood.
He stood beside the bed, swaying as if keeping time to music that only he could hear.
“No,” he whispered, not with alarm but in a flat voice devoid of emotion. “No…no…no…”
Lapsing into silence again, he walked to the window and gazed into the night.
At the top of the yard, nestled among the pines at the edge of the forest, the caretaker’s house was no longer dark and deserted. Strange light, as purely blue as a gas flame, shot into the night from cracks around the edges of the plywood rectangles that covered the windows, from under the front door, and even from the top of the fireplace chimney.
“Ah,” Toby said.
The light was not of constant intensity but sometimes flickered, sometimes throbbed. Periodically, even the narrowest of the escaping beams were so bright that staring at them was painful, although occasionally they grew so dim they seemed about to be extinguished. Even at its brightest, it was a cold light, giving no impression whatsoever of heat.
Toby watched for a long time.
Eventually the light faded. The caretaker’s house became dark once more.
The boy returned to the bed.
The night passed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday morning began with sunshine. A cold breeze swept out of the northwest, and periodic flocks of dark birds wheeled across the sky from the forested Rockies toward the descending land in the east, as if fleeing a predator.
The radio weatherman on a station in Butte—to which Heather and Jack listened as they showered and dressed—predicted snow by nightfall. This was, he said, one of the earliest storms in years, and the total accumulation might reach ten inches.
Judging by the tone of the report, a ten-inch snowfall was hot regarded as a blizzard in these northern climes. There was no talk of anticipated road closures, no references to rural areas that might be snowbound. A second storm was rolling toward them in the wake of the first; though expected to arrive early Monday, it was apparently a weaker front than the one that would hit by evening.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, bending forward to tie the laces of her Nikes, Heather said, “Hey, we’ve gotta get a couple of sleds.”
Jack was at his open closet, removing a red-and-brown-checkered flannel shirt from a hanger. “You sound like a little kid.”
“Well, it is my first snow.”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
In Los Angeles in the winter, when the smog cleared enough to expose them, white-capped mountains served as a distant backdrop to the city, and that was the closest she had ever gotten to snow. She wasn’t a skier. She’d never been to Arrowhead or Big Bear except in the summer, and she was as excited as a kid about the oncoming storm.
Finishing with her shoelaces, she said, “We’ve got to make an appointment with Parker’s Garage to get that plow on the Explorer before the real winter gets here.”
“Already did,” Jack said. “Ten o’clock Thursday morning.” As he buttoned his shirt, he moved to the bedroom window to look out at the eastern woods and southern lowlands. “This view keeps hypnotizing me. I’m doing something, very busy, then I look up, catch a glimpse of it through a window, from the porch, and I just stand and stare.”
Heather moved behind him, put her arms around him, and looked past him at the striking panorama of woods and fields and wide blue sky. “Is it going to be good?” she asked after a while.
“It’s going to be great. This is where we belong. Don’t you feel that way?”
“Yes,” she said, with only the briefest hesitation. In daylight, the events of the previous night seemed immeasurably less threatening and more surely the work of an overactive imagination. She had seen nothing, after all, and didn’t even know quite what she had expected to see. Lingering city jitters complicated by a nightmare. Nothing more. “This is where we belong.”
He turned, embraced her, and they kissed. She moved her hands in lazy circles on his back, gently massaging his muscles, which his exercise program had toned and rebuilt. He felt so good. Exhausted from traveling and from settling in, they had not made love since the night before they’d left Los Angeles. As soon as they made the house their own in that way, it would be theirs in every way, and her peculiar uneasiness would probably disappear.
He slid his strong hands down her sides to her hips. He pulled her against him. Punctuating his whispered words with soft kisses to her throat, cheeks, eyes, and the corners of her mouth, he said, “How about tonight…when the snow’s falling…after we’ve had…a glass of wine or two…by the fire…romantic music…on the radio…when we’re feeling relaxed…”
“…relaxed,” she said dreamily.
“Then we get together…”
“…mmmmmmm, together…”
“…and we have a really wonderful, wonderful…”
“…wonderful…”
“Snowball fight.”
She smacked him playfully on the cheek. “Beast. I’ll have rocks in my snowballs.”
“Or we could make love.”
“Sure you don’t want to go outside and make snow angels?”
“Not now that I’ve taken more time to think about it.”
“Get dressed, smartass. We’ve got shopping to do.”
Heather found Toby in the living room, dressed for the day. He was on the floor in front of the TV, watching a program with the sound off.
“Big snow’s coming tonight,” she told him from the archway, expecting his excitement to exceed her own because this also would be his first experience with a white winter.
He didn’t respond.
“We’re going to buy a couple of sleds when we go to town, be ready for tomorrow.”
He was as still as stone. His attention remained entirely on the screen.
From where she stood, Heather couldn’t see what show had so gripped him. “Toby?” She stepped out of the archway and into the living room. “Hey, kiddo, what’re you watching?”
He acknowledged her at last as she approached him. “Don’t know what it is.” His eyes appeared to be out of focus, as though he wasn’t actually seeing her, and he gazed once more at the television.
The screen was filled with a constantly evolving flow of amoebic forms, reminiscent of those Lava lamps that had once been so popular. The lamps had always been in two colors, however, while this display progressed in infinite shades of all the primary colors, now bright, now dark. Ever-changing shapes melted together, curled and flexed, streamed and spurted, drizzled and purled and throbbed in a ceaseless exhibition of amorphic chaos, surging at a frenzied pace for a few seconds, then oozing sluggishly, then faster again.
“What is this?” Heather asked.
Toby shrugged.
Endlessly recomposing itself, the colorful curvilinear abstract was interesting to watch and frequently beautiful. The longer she stared at it, however, the more disturbing it became, although for no reason she could discern. Nothing in its patterns was inherently ominous or menacing. Indeed, the fluid and dreamy intermingling of forms should have been restful.
“Why do you have the sound turned down?”
“Don’t.”
She squatted next to him, picked up the remote control from the carpet, and depressed the volume button. The only sound was the faint static hiss of the speakers.
She scanned just one channel farther up on the dial, and the booming voice of an excited sportscaster and the cheering of a crowd at a football game exploded through the living room. She quickly decreased the volume.
When she scanned back to the previous channel, the Technicolor Lava lamp was gone. A Daffy Duck cartoon filled the screen instead and, judging by the frenetic pace of the action, was drawing toward a pyrotechnic conclusion.
“That was odd,” she said.
“I liked it,” Toby said.
She scanned farther down the dial, then farther up than before, but she could not find the strange display. She hit the Off button, and the screen went dark.
“Well, anyway,” she said, “time to grab breakfast, so we can get on with the day. Lots to do in town. Don’t want to run out of time to buy those sleds.”
“Buy what?” the boy asked as he got to his feet.
“Didn’t you hear me before?”
“I guess.”
“About snow?”
His small face brightened. “It’s gonna snow?”
“You must have enough wax built up in your ears to make the world’s biggest candle,” she said, heading for the kitchen.
Following her, Toby said, “When? When’s it gonna snow, Mom? Huh? Today?”
“We could stick a wick in each of your ears, put a match to them, and have candlelight dinners for the rest of the decade.”
“How much snow?”
“Probably dead snails in there too.”
“Just flurries or a big storm?”
“Maybe a dead mouse or three.”
“Mom?” he said exasperatedly, entering the kitchen behind her.
She spun around, crouched in front of him, and held her hand above his knee. “Up to here, maybe higher.”
“Really?”
“We’ll go sledding.”
“Wow.”
“Build a snowman.”
“Snowball fight!” he challenged.
“Okay, me and Dad against you.”
“No fair!” He ran to the window and pressed his face to the glass. “The sky’s blue.”
“Won’t be in a little while. Guarantee,” she said, going to the pantry. “You want shredded wheat for breakfast or cornflakes?”
“Doughnuts and chocolate milk.”
“Fat chance.”
“Worth a try. Shredded wheat.”
“Good boy.”
“Whoa!” he said in surprise, taking a step back from the window. “Mom, look at this.”
“What is it?”
“Look, quick, look at this bird. He just landed right smack in front of me.”
Heather joined him near the window and saw a crow perched on the other side of the glass. Its head was cocked, and it regarded them curiously with one eye.
Toby said, “He just zoomed right at me, whoooosh, I thought he was gonna smash through the window. What’s he doing?”
“Probably looking for worms or tender little bugs.”
“I don’t look like any bug.”
“Maybe he saw those snails in your ears,” she said, returning to the pantry.
While Toby helped Heather set the table for breakfast, the crow remained at the window, watching.
“He must be stupid,” Toby said, “if he thinks we have worms and bugs in here.”
“Maybe he’s refined, civilized, heard me say ‘cornflakes.’”
While they filled bowls with cereal, the big crow stayed at the window, occasionally preening its feathers but mostly watching them with one coal-dark eye or the other.
Whistling, Jack came down the front stairs, along the hall, into the kitchen, and said, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. Can we have eggs and horse for breakfast?”
“How about eggs and crow?” Toby asked, pointing to the visitor.
“He’s a fat and sassy specimen, isn’t he?” Jack said, moving to the window and crouching to get a close look at the bird.
“Mom, look! Dad’s in a staring contest with a bird,” Toby said, amused.
Jack’s face was no more than an inch from the window, and the bird fixed him with one inky eye. Heather took four slices of bread out of the bag, dropped them in the big toaster, adjusted the dial, depressed the plunger, and looked up to see that Jack and the crow were still eye-to-eye.
“I think Dad’s gonna lose,” Toby said.
Jack snapped one finger against the windowpane directly in front of the crow, but the bird didn’t flinch.
“Bold little devil,” Jack said.
With a lightning-quick dart of its head, the crow pecked the glass in front of Jack’s face so hard that the tock of bill against pane startled him into a backward step that, in his crouch, put him off balance. He fell on his butt on the kitchen floor. The bird leaped away from the window with a great flapping of wings and vanished into the sky.
Toby burst into laughter.
Jack crawled after him on hands and knees. “Oh, you think that was funny, do you? I’ll show you what’s funny, I’ll show you the infamous Chinese tickle torture.”
Heather was laughing too.
Toby scampered to the hall door, looked back, saw Jack coming, and ran to another room, giggling and shrieking with delight.
Jack scrambled to his feet. In a hunchbacked crouch, growling like a troll, he scuttled after his son.
“Do I have one little boy on my hands
or two?” Heather called after Jack as he disappeared into the hall.
“Two!” he replied.
The toast popped up. She put the four crisp pieces on a plate and slipped four more slices of bread into the toaster.
Much giggling and maniacal cackling was coming from the front of the house.
Heather went to the window. The tock of the bird’s bill had been so loud that she more than half expected to see a crack in the glass. But the pane was intact. On the sill outside lay a single black feather, rocking gently in a breeze that could not quite pluck it out of its sheltered niche and whirl it away.
She put her face to the window and peered up at the sky. High in that blue vault, a single dark bird carved a tight circle, around and around. It was too far away for her to be able to tell if it was the same crow or another bird.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They stopped at Mountain High Sporting Goods and purchased two sleds (wide, flat runners; clear pine with polyurethane finish; a red lightning bolt down the center of each), as well as insulated ski suits, boots, and gloves for all of them. Toby saw a big Frisbee specially painted to look like a yellow flying saucer, with portholes along the rim and a low red dome on top, and they bought that too. At the Union 76, they filled the fuel tank, and then went on a marathon shopping expedition at the supermarket.
When they returned to Quartermass Ranch at one-fifteen, only the eastern third of the sky remained blue. Masses of gray clouds churned across the mountains, driven by a fierce high-altitude wind—though at ground level, only an erratic breeze gently stirred the evergreens and shivered the brown grass. The temperature had fallen below freezing, and the accuracy of the weatherman’s prediction was manifest in the cold, humid air.
Toby went immediately to his room, dressed in his new red-and-black ski suit, boots, and gloves. He returned to the kitchen with his Frisbee to announce that he was going out to play and to wait for the snow to start falling.
Heather and Jack were still unpacking groceries and arranging supplies in the pantry. She said, “Toby, honey, you haven’t had lunch yet.”
“I’m not hungry. I’ll just take a raisin cookie with me.”