When I looked closer and after I followed the trail for a few yards, I corrected myself and added an "s" to the noun: aliens. Clearly, there had been at least two of them, probably three.
Numbed, I went back into the barn and turned off the heaters in order to keep the dead horse from decomposing. When I left I locked the door, although that was a pointless gesture now.
I looked at the tracks for a long while. Nightmarish thoughts passed through my mind like a magician's swords passing through the lady in a magic cabinet: Blueberry hadn't been supper, but lunch. Kate was their supper. What would they want for breakfast?
Me? Connie? Toby? All three of us?
No.
Ridiculous.
Would the first encounter between man and alien be played out like some simple-minded movie, like a cheap melodrama, like a hack science fiction writer's inept plot: starman the gourmand, man the hapless meal?
We had to make sure that it did not go like that. We had to establish a communications bridge between these creatures and ourselves, a bridge to understanding.
Unless they didn't want to understand, didn't want to bother, didn't want anything from us except the protein that we carried in our flesh and blood I went back to the house, wondering if I were, indeed, out of my mind.
9
Connie and I agreed to take turns standing guard duty during the night.
She would sleep-or try to sleep-from ten o'clock until four the next morning, and then I would sleep-maybe-from around four until whatever time I woke up. We also agreed that we were basically a couple of real ninnies, that we were being overly cautious, that such an extreme safety measure as this was probably not necessary- yet neither of us suggested that we forget about the guard duty and just sleep together, unprotected, as we would have done any other night.
I helped her put Toby to bed shortly before ten, kissed her goodnight, and went to sit at the head of the stairs, in the precisely precribed circle of light from a tensor lamp. One table lamp was burning down in the living room, a warm yellow light that threw softly rounded shadows. The loaded pistol was at my side.
I was ready.
Outside, the storm wind fluted under the eaves and made the rafters creak.
I picked up a paperback novel and tried to get interested in a sympathetic professional thief who was masterminding a bank robbery in New
Orleans. It seemed to be an exciting, well told story; my eyes fled along the lines of print; the pages passed quickly; but I didn't retain more than five percent of what I read. Still, I stayed with it, for there was no better way to get through the next six hours.
The trouble came sooner than I had expected.
Twenty-three minutes past eleven o'clock. I knew the precise time because I had just looked at my wristwatch. I was no more than one-third of the way through the paperback novel, having absorbed little or nothing of it, and I was getting bored.
Gentle, all but inaudible footsteps sounded in the second-floor hallway behind me, and when I turned around Toby was there in his bare feet and fire engine-red pajamas.
"Can't you sleep?" I asked.
He said something: an incoherent gurgle, as if someone were strangling him.
"Toby?"
He came down onto the first step, as if he were going to sit beside me-but instead of that he slipped quickly past me and kept right on going.
"What's up?" I asked, thinking that he was headed for the refrigerator to get a late-night snack.
He didn't answer.
He didn't stop.
"Hey!"
He started to run down the last of the steps.
I stood up.
"Toby!"
At the bottom of the stairs he glanced up at me. And I realized that there was no expression whatsoever in his eyes. Just a watery emptiness, a vacant gaze, a lifeless stare. He seemed to be looking through me at the wall beyond, as if I were only a spirit drifting on the air.
One of the aliens had control of him.
Why had it never occurred to me that the aliens might find a child's mind much more accessible, much more controllable than the mind of an adult?
As Toby ran across the living room, I started down the stairs, taking them two at a time, risking a twisted ankle and a broken neck. As I ran I shouted at him, hoping that somehow my voice would snap him out of the trance.
He kept going.
Bones bones a horse's bones, a complete skeleton bones in a forest clearing
I almost fell coming off the steps, avoided disaster by a slim margin, and plunged across the living room. I reached the kitchen in time to hear the outer sun porch door slam behind him: a flat, solid, final sound.
Bones in a forest clearing white bones lying in white snow
I didn't stop for my gloves, boots, or coat.
A horse's bones, a skeleton picked clean
I ran across the kitchen, striking a chair with my hip and knocking it over in my wake.
Toby's bones, Toby's skeleton picked clean
I crossed the sun porch in three long strides, bounding like an antelope.
Picked clean
I tore open the door and went out into the black and snow-filled night.
Bones
"Toby!"
The cold slammed into me and rocked me badly, as if sharp icicles had been thrust deep into my joints, between muscle and sheath, through arteries and veins. That was the "one" of a one-two punch that Nature had for me. The "two" was the wind which was seething up the hill at better than fifty miles an hour: a mallet to drive the icicles deeper.
"Toby!"
No answer.
For four or five or six seconds, as I desperately searched the bleak night ahead, I couldn't see him. Then suddenly I got a glimpse of his bright red pajamas outlined against the snow and flapping like a flag in the wind.
"Toby, stop!"
He didn't obey, of course. And now he was nearly out of sight, for visibility was just about nil.
Bones
In the knee-deep snow-which was more likely hip-deep for him-I was able to make much better time than he did. Within a few seconds I reached him and caught him by the shoulder and pulled him around.
He struck me in the face with one small fist.
Surprised more than hurt by the blow, I tumbled backwards into a drift.
He pulled loose and turned and started down toward the woods once more.
Hundreds of big bear traps began to go off all around me: snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap! And then I realized that I was only hearing my teeth chattering. I was half-frozen although
I had spent no more than a minute in these sub-zero temperatures, lashed by this ferocious wind. Toby would have to be in even worse shape than I was, for his cotton pajamas offered less protection from the elements than did my jeans and thick flannel hunting shirt.
I pushed up and went after him, weaving like a drunkard in anxious pursuit of a rolling wine bottle. In a dozen steps I caught
Toby by the shoulder and stopped him and pulled him all the way around.
He swung at me a second time.
I ducked the blow.
As he pulled back to swing again, gazing through me with lifeless eyes, I threw both arms around him and lifted him off the ground.
He kicked me in the stomach.
The breath rushed out of me like air exploding from a pin-pricked balloon. I lost my balance, and we both collapsed in a heap.
He pulled loose and scrambled away.
I went after him on my hands and knees, which felt like four blocks of ice. I saw him, closed the gap, lunged, and brought him down with a tackle. I rolled with him, holding him close, holding him tightly so that he couldn't get hurt-and so he couldn't kick and punch.
He bit me.
Hard.
But that was all right with me because I pretty much had been expecting it and had steeled myself against both the pain and the surprise of it. As he chewed viciously at my shoulder, surely drawing blood but making no sound whatsoever, I clambered laboriously to my feet, still holding on to him.