Winter Moon

retiree with plenty of security but with too little work to occupy him. And with too many strange thoughts preying on his mind Luminous trees…
        On three occasions during March, he drove his Jeep Cherokee into Eagle's Roost, the nearest town. He ate at Jasper's Diner because he liked their Salisbury steak, home fries, and pepper slaw. He bought magazines and a few paperback books at the High Plains Pharmacy, and he shopped for groceries at the only supermarket. His ranch was just sixteen miles from Eagle's Roost, so he could have gone daily if he'd wished, but three times a month was usually enough. The town was small, three to four thousand souls, however, even in its isolation, it was too much a part of the modern world to appeal to a man as accustomed to rural peace as he was.
        Each time he'd gone shopping, he'd considered stopping at the county sheriff's substation to report the peculiar noise and strange lights in the woods. But he was sure the deputy would figure him for an old fool and do nothing but file the report in a folder labeled CRACKPOTS.
        In the third week of March, spring officially arrived-and the following day a storm put down eight inches of new snow. Winter was not quick to relinquish its grasp there on the eastern slopes of the Rockies.
        He took daily walks, as had been his habit all his life, but he stayed on the long driveway, which he plowed himself after each snow, or he crossed the open fields south of the house and stables. He avoided the.lower woods, which lay east and downhill from the house, but he also stayed away from those to the north and even the higher forests to the west.
        His cowardice irritated him, not least of all because he was unable to understand it. He'd always been an advocate of reason and logic, always said there was too little of either in the world. He was scornful of people who operated more from emotion than from intellect.
        But reason failed him now, and logic could not overcome the instinctual awareness of danger that caused him to avoid the trees and the perpetual twilight under their boughs.
        By the end of March, he began to think that the phenomenon had been a singular occurrence without notable consequences. A rare but natural event. Perhaps an electromagnetic disturbance of some kind. No more threat to him than a summer thunderstorm.
        On April first, he unloaded the two rifles and two shotguns. After cleaning them, he returned the guns to the cabinet in the study.
        However, still slightly uneasy, he kept the.22 target pistol on his nightstand. It didn't pack a tremendous punch but, loaded with hollow-point cartridges, it could do some damage.
        In the dark hours of the morning of April fourth, Eduardo was awakened by the low throbbing that swelled and faded, swelled and faded. As in early March, that pulsating sound was accompanied by an eerie electronic oscillation.
        He sat straight up in bed, blinking at the window. During the three years since Margaret had died, he'd not slept in the master bedroom at the front of the house, which they had shared. Instead, he bunked down in one of two back bedrooms. Consequently, the window faced west, a hundred and eighty degrees around the compass from the eastern woods where he had seen the strange light.
        The night sky was deep and black beyond the window.
        The Stiffel lamp on the nightstand had a pull-chain instead of a thumb switch.
        Just before he turned it on, he had the feeling that something was in the room with him, something he would be better off not seeing. He hesitated, fingers tightly pinching the metal beads of the pull.
        Intently he searched the darkness, his heart pounding, as if he had wakened into a nightmare replete with a monster. When at last he tugged the chain, however, the light revealed that he was alone.
        He picked up his wristwatch from the nightstand and checked the time.
        Nineteen minutes past one o'clock.
        He threw off the covers and got out of bed. He was in his long underwear. His blue jeans and a flannel shirt were close at hand,.folded over the back of an armchair, beside which stood a pair of boots. He was already wearing socks, because his feet often got cold during the night if he slept without them.
        The sound was louder than it had been a month before, and it pulsed through the house with noticeably greater effect than before. In