Dark Rivers of the Heart

Spencer began. "It was the middle of July, and the night was warm, humid. I was asleep under just one sheet, with my bedroom window open so the air could circulate. I remember… I was dreaming about my mother, who'd been dead more than six years by then, but I can't remember anything that happened in the dream, only the warmth of it, the contentment, the comfort of being with her… and maybe the music of her laughter. She had a wonderful laugh. But it was another sound that woke me, not because it was loud but because it was recurring-so hollow and strange. I sat up in bed, confused, half drugged with sleep, but not frightened at all. I heard someone asking'Who?" again and again. There would be a pause, silence, but then it would repeat as before: 'Who, who, who?" Of course, as I came all the way awake, I realized it was an owl perched on the roof, just above my open window…"
        Spencer was again drawn to that distant July night, like an asteroid captured by the greater gravity of the earth and doomed to a declining orbit that would end in impact. … it an owl perched on the roof, just above my open window, calling out in the night for whatever reason owls call out.
        In the humid dark, I get up from my bed and go to the bathroom, expecting the booting to stop when the hungry owl taker wing and goes hunting for mice again. But even after I return to bed, he seems to be content on the roof and pleased by his one-word, one-note song.
        Finally, I go to the open window and quietly slide up the double-hung screen, trying not to startle him into flight. But when I lean outside, turning my head to look up, half expecting to see his talons hooked over the shingles and curled in toward the eaves, another and far different cry arises before I can say "Shoo" or the owl can ask "no." This new sound is thin and bleak, a fragile wail of terror from a far place in the summer night. I look out toward the barn, which stands two hundred yards behind the house, toward the moonlit fields beyond the barn, toward the wooded hills beyond the fields. The cry comes again, shorter this time, but even more pathetic and therefore more piercing.
        Having lived in the country since the day I was born, I know that nature is one great killing ground, governed by the cruelest of all laws-the law of natural selection-and ruled by the ruthless. Many nights, I've heard the eerie, quavery yawling of coyote packs chasing prey and celebrating slaughter. The triumphant shriek of a mountain lion after it has torn the life out of a rabbit sometimes echoes out of the highlands, a sound which makes it easy to believe that Hell is real and that the damned haveflung open the gates.
        This cry that catches my attention as I lean out the window-and that sense of the owl on the roof-comes not from apredator but from prey.
        Its the voice Of something weak, vulnerable. The forests and fields are filled with timid and meek creatures, which live only to perish violently, which do so every hour of every day without surcease, whose terror may actually be noticed by a god who knows Of every sparrow's fall but seems unmoved.
        Suddenly the night is profoundly quiet, uncanily still, as if the distant bleat of fear was, in fact, the sound of creation's engines winding to a halt. The stars are hard points of light that have stopped twinkling, and the moon might well be painted on canvas. The landscape-trees, shrubs, summerflowers, fields, bills, and far mountains-appears to be nothing but crystalized shadows in various dark hues, as brittle as ice. The air must still be warm, but I am nonetheless frigid.
        I quietly close the window, turn awayfrom it, and move toward the bed again.
        I feel heavy-eyed, wearier than I've ever been.
        But then I realize that I'm in a strange state of denial, that my weakness is less physical than psychological, that I desire sleep more than I really need it. Sleep is an escape. From fear I'm shaking but not because I'm cold. The air is as warm as it was earlier. I'm shaking with fear.
        Fear of what? I can't quite identify the source of my anxiety.
        I know that the thing I heard was no ordinary wild cry. It reverberates in my mind, an icy sound that recalls something I've heard once before, although I can't remember what, when, where. The longer the forlorn wail echoes in my memory, the faster my heart beats.
        I desperately want to lie down, forget