Breathless

Closing his eyes, he could see her. Lying on the edge of sleep, he hoped to dream of her.
    He wasn’t concerned about having a nightmare about Estelle. Her presence guaranteed a dream of great comfort and gladness.

Twenty-two

E ntering the dark kitchen, Grady whispered reassurances to the agitated wolfhound.
    At the French door, peering out, Merlin stopped barking but began whining as though other dogs were at play in the yard and he was eager to romp with them.
    Grady leaned over the table, squinting through the window at which he had earlier sat sentinel. His eyes were by now so dark-adapted that he saw the two creatures at once.
    One of them sat as a dog might sit in the chair that Grady had occupied in the late afternoon, when Merlin had chased coveys of scents around the yard. The other sat on the marble-topped table on which Grady had earlier stacked three reference books about the fauna of the mountains.
    Because the two had their backs to the house, Grady couldn’t see their eyes. Their impossible, inexplicable eyes.
    The meadow had been more than a place. The meadow had been a moment. A moment and a motion, a pivot point and a lever,where and when his life had changed, and not just his life, much more than his life, maybe everything.
    He thought of his mother at another window much like this, after the death of his father, the window through which she saw her past and her future.
    This was a night of windows, upstairs and down, north, east, south, west, past and present and future. He went to the door where Merlin waited, and the door was in fact a window with nine panes.
    On the porch, the animals continued to face out toward the yard, toward the night and the mountains and the moon.
    They had to be aware of Grady’s presence, if only because of Merlin’s barking earlier and his eager entreaties now. Yet they didn’t look toward him.
    Grady switched on the kitchen and porch lights.
    Beside him, Merlin stopped whining and began to pant excitedly. The wolfhound appeared to be neither afraid nor aggressive. His wagging tail slapped, slapped, slapped against the wall.
    Grady hesitated with his hand on the doorknob.
    He thought of the shimmering light as he had moved through the piney woods toward the meadow.
    He wondered who earlier turned on the lights in his workshop, and then in the garage. Who opened the workshop doors, raised the garage roll-up?
    Hesitating with his hand on the knob, he rapped knuckles against one of the panes of the door.
    The mysterious animals sat motionless on the chair and on the table, declining to reveal their eyes.
    He thought of Marcus Pipp, who had given him the nameIguana, who had died violently, killed by the senator. He didn’t know why he should think of Marcus now, in this amazing moment, except that he had thought of him often over the past ten years.
    Once more he raised his knuckles to the glass, but he didn’t rap the pane. He wanted to see their eyes, wanted very much to see them, but he did not rap.
    He took a deep breath.
    He opened the door of nine windows, and where the door had been was a threshold, and where the threshold had been was a porch floor underfoot.
    The animals turned to look at him and at the suddenly shy dog.

Twenty-three

S tanding at the braced door, Henry waited for the knob to turn again, but it did not.
    The hollow-core doors of the bedroom closet and the bathroom had offered little resistance to a blast of buckshot. Had anyone lurked on the other side, he would have been grievously wounded.
    This cellar door, however, was a solid oak slab, hard enough and thick enough to stand up to the 20-gauge. There might even be some ricochets, which Henry chose not to risk.
    Whoever stood on the landing at the head of the cellar stairs must be listening, as Henry listened. For a minute or so, neither of them gave the other anything to hear.
    The mediocre wine had left a less than mediocre aftertaste. Now Henry’s mouth soured further. His lips were dry under the nervous passage of his dry tongue.
    Beyond the door, the tormentor at last spoke in a rough whisper.
“Henry?”
    Low and hoarse, the voice could have been that of anyone. It had no recognizable character.
    “Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry.”
    Three of those four repetitions were slurred, as though the tormentor had a malformed—or damaged—mouth.
    Henry didn’t know anyone with a speech impediment. The man beyond the door could be no one he knew. No one.
    Because his adversary might be