Shadowfires

close to them that it
seemed as if their nemesis must be only a few feet away and easily
seen, yet they saw nothing.
    Finally, forty feet in back of the cabin, just inside the tree
line where they were still partially concealed by purple shadows,
they crouched behind upthrusting blocks of granite that poked out of
the earth like worn and slightly rotted teeth. Benny whispered, “Must
be a lot of animals in these woods. That must've been what we heard.”
    “What kind of animals?” she whispered.
    In a voice so low that Rachael could barely hear it, Benny said,
“Squirrels, foxes. This high up… maybe a wolf or two.
Can't have been Eric. No way. He's not had the survival or combat
training
that'd make it possible to be that quiet or to stay hidden so well and so long. If it was Eric, we'd
have spotted him. Besides, if it'd been Eric, and if he's as deranged
as you think he might be, then he'd have tried to jump us somewhere along the way.”
    “Animals,” she said doubtfully.
    “Animals.”
    With her back against the granite teeth, she looked at the woods
through which they had come, studying every pocket of darkness and
every peculiar shape.
    Animals. Not a single, purposeful stalker. Just the sounds of
several animals whose paths they had crossed. Animals.
    Then why did she still feel as if something were back there in the
woods, watching her, hungering for her?
    “Animals,” Benny said. Satisfied with that explanation, he turned
from the woods, got up from a squat to a crouch, and peered over the
lichen-speckled granite formation, 'examining the rear of Eric's
mountain retreat.
    Rachael was not convinced that the only source of danger was the
cabin, so she rose, leaned one hip and shoulder against the rock, and
took a position that allowed her to shift her attention back and
forth from the rustic building in front of them to the forest
behind.
    At the rear of the mountain house, which stood on a wide shelf of
land between slopes, a forty-foot-wide area had been cleared to serve
as a backyard, and the summer sun fell across the greater part of it.
Rye grass had been planted but had grown only in patches, for the
soil was stony. Besides, Eric apparently had not installed a
sprinkler system, which meant even the patchy grass would be green
only for a short while between the melting of the winter snow and the
parching summer. Having died a couple of weeks ago, in fact, the
grass was now mown to a short, brown, prickly stubble. But flower
beds-evidently irrigated by a passive-drip system-ringed the wide
stained-wood porch that extended the length of the house; a profusion
of yellow, orange, fire-red, wine-red, pink, white, and blue blossoms
trembled and swayed and dipped in the gusty breeze-zinnias,
geraniums, daisies, baby chrysanthemums, and more.
    The cabin was of notched-log-and-mortar construction, but it was
not a cheap, unsophisticated structure. The workmanship looked first-
rate; Eric must have spent a bundle on the place. It stood upon an
elevated foundation of invisibly mortared stones, and it boasted
large casement-style French windows, two of which were partway open
to facilitate ventilation. A black slate roof discouraged dry-wood
moths and the playful squirrels attracted to shake-shingle roofs, and
there was even a satellite dish up there to assure good TV
reception.
    The back door was open even wider than the two casement windows,
and, taken with the bright bobbing flowers, that should have given
the place a welcoming look. Instead, to Rachael, the open door
resembled the gaping lid of a trap, flung wide to disarm the sniffing
prey that sought the scented bait.
    Of course, they would go in anyway. That was why they had come
here: to go in, to find Eric. But she didn't have to like it.
    After studying the cabin, Benny whispered,
“Can't sneak up on the place; there's no cover. Next-best thing is a
fast approach, straight in at a run, and hunker down along the porch
railing.”
    “Okay.”
    “Probably the smartest thing is for you to wait here, let me go
first, and see if maybe
he's got a gun and starts taking potshots at me. If there's no
gunfire, you can come after me.”
    “Stay here alone?”
    “I'll never be far away.”
    “Even ten feet is too far.”
    “And we'll be separated only for a minute.”
    “That's exactly sixty times longer than I could stand being alone here,” she said, looking back into the woods, where every deep pool of shadow and every