Otherworldly Maine Read Online Free Page B

never spoke unkindly of Leda, said that the tiny west room across from Harp’s and Leda’s bedroom was fixed up for a nursery, and Harp wouldn’t allow anything in there but baby furniture. Had been so since they were married seven years before.
    Another hour dragged on, in my exasperations of sleeplessness.
    Then I heard Longtooth.
    The noise came from the west side, beyond the snow-hidden vegetable garden. When it snatched me from the edge of sleep, I tried to think it was a fox barking, the ringing, metallic shriek the little red beast can belch dragon-like from his throat. But wide awake, I knew it had been much deeper, chestier. Horned owl? —no. A sound that belonged to ancient times when men relied on chipped stone weapons and had full reason to fear the dark.
    The cracks in the stove gave me firelight for groping back into my clothes. The wind had not calmed at all. I stumbled to the west window, buttoning up, and found it a white blank. Snow had drifted above the lower sash. On tiptoe I could just see over it. A light appeared, dimly illuminating the snowfield beyond. That would be coming from a lamp in the Ryders’ bedroom, shining through the nursery room and so out, weak and diffused, into the blizzard chaos.
    Yaaarrhh!
    Now it had drawn horribly near. From the north windows of the parlor I saw black nothing. Harp squeaked down to my door. “Wake, Ben?”
    â€œYes. Come look at the west window.”
    He had left no light burning in the kitchen, and only a scant glow came down to the landing from the bedroom. He murmured behind me. “Ayah, snow’s up some. Must be over three feet on the level by now.”
    Yaaarrhh!
    The voice had shouted on the south side, the blinder side of the house, overlooked only by one kitchen window and a small one in the pantry where the hand pump stood. The view from the pantry window was mostly blocked by a great maple that overtopped the house. I heard the wind shrilling across the tree’s winter bones.
    â€œBen, you want to git your boots on? Up to you—can’t ask it. I might have to go out.” Harp spoke in an undertone as if the beast might understand him through the tight walls.
    â€œOf course.” I got into my knee boots and caught up my parka as I followed him into the kitchen. A .30-caliber rifle and his heavy shotgun hung on deerhorn over the door to the woodshed. He found them in the dark.
    What courage I possessed that night came from being shamed into action, from fearing to show a poor face to an old friend in trouble. I went through the Normandy invasion. I have camped out alone, when I was younger and healthier, in our moose and bear country, and slept nicely. But that noise of Longtooth stole courage. It ached along the channel of the spine.
    I had the spare flashlight, but knew Harp didn’t want me to use it here. I could make out the furniture, and Harp reaching for the gun rack. He already had on his boots, fur cap, and mackinaw. “You take this’n,” he said, and put the ten-gauge in my hands. “Both barrels loaded. Ain’t my way to do that, ain’t right, but since this thing started—”
    Yaaarrhh!
    â€œWhere’s he got to now?” Harp was by the south window. “Round this side?”
    â€œI thought so . . . Where’s Droopy?”
    Harp chuckled thinly. “Poor little shit! She come upstairs at the first sound of him and went under the bed. I told Led’ to stay upstairs. She’d want a light down here. Wouldn’t make sense.”
    Then, apparently from the east side of the hen-loft and high, booming off some resonating surface: Yaaarrhh!
    â€œHe can’t! Jesus, that’s twelve foot off the ground!” But Harp plunged out into the shed, and I followed. “Keep your light on the floor, Ben.” He ran up the narrow stairway. “Don’t shine it on the birds, they’ll act up.”
    So far the chickens, stupid and