Winter Moon

"hip" these days.
        Older than the sands of Egypt..He listened to the music for another minute, then switched it off and removed the headphones.
        Wormheart was exactly what he needed.
        By the last day of April, the winter shroud had melted except for deeper drifts that enjoyed the protection of shadows during a large part of the day, although even they were dwindling steadily. The ground was damp but not muddy any longer. Dead brown grass, crushed and matted from the weight of the vanished snow, covered hills and fields, within a week, however, a carpet of tender green shoots would brighten every corner of the now dreary land.
        Eduardo's daily walk took him past the east end of the stables and across open fields to the south. At eleven in the morning, the day was sunny, the temperature near fifty, with a receding armada of high white clouds to the north. He wore khakis and a flannel shirt, and was so warmed by exertion that he rolled up his sleeves. On the return trip he visited the three graves that lay west of the stables.
        Until recently, the State of Montana had been liberal about allowing the establishment of family cemeteries on private property. Soon after acquiring the ranch, Stanley Quartermass had decided he wanted to spend eternity there, and he had obtained a permit for as many as twelve burial plots.
        The graveyard was on a small knoll near the higher woods. That hallowed ground was defined only by a foot-high fieldstone wall and by a pair of four-foot-high columns at the entrance. Quartermass had not wanted to obstruct the panoramic view of the valley and mountains-as if he thought his spirit would sit upon his grave and enjoy the scenery like a ghost in that old, lighthearted movie Topper.
        Only three granite headstones occupied a space designed to accommodate twelve.
        Quartermass. Tommy. Margaret. pecified by the producer's will, the inscription on the first monument read: "Here lies Stanley Quartermass / dead before his time / because he had to work / with so damned many / actors and writers"-followed by the dates of his birth and death. He had been sixty-six when his plane crashed. However, if he'd been five hundred years old, he still would have felt that his span had been too short, for he had been a man who embraced life with great energy and passion.
        Tommy's and Margarite's stones bore no humorous epitaphs-just "beloved son" and "beloved wife." Eduardo missed them.
        The hardest blow had been the death of his son, who had been killed in the line of duty only a little more than a year ago, at the age of thirty-two. At least Eduardo and Margaret had enjoyed a long life together.
        It was a terrible thing for a man to outlive his own child.
        He wished they were with him again. That was a wish frequently made,.and the fact that it could never be fulfilled usually reduced him to a melancholy mood which he found difficult to shake. At best, longing to see his wife and son again, he drifted into nostalgic mists, reliving favorite days of years gone by.
        This time, however, the familiar wish had no sooner - flickered through his mind than he was inexplicably overcome by dread. A chill wind seemed to whistle through his spine as if it were hollow end to end.
        Turning, he wouldn't have been surprised to find someone looming behind him.
        He was alone.
        The sky was entirely blue, the last of the clouds having slipped across the northern horizon, and the air was warmer than it had been at any time since last autumn. Nonetheless, the chill persisted. He rolled down his sleeves, buttoned the cuffs.
        When he looked at the headstones again, Eduardo's imagination was suddenly crowded with unwanted images of Tommy and Margaret, not as they had been in life but as they might be in their coffins: decaying, worm-riddled, eye sockets empty, lips shriveled back from yellow-toothed grins. Trembling uncontrollably, he was gripped by an absolute conviction that the earth in front of the granite markers was going to shift and cave inward, that the corrupted hands of their corpses were going to appear in the crumbling soil, digging fiercely and then their faces, their eyeless faces, as they pulled themselves out of the ground.
        He backed away from the graves a few steps but refused to flee. He was too old to believe in the living dead or in ghosts.
        The dead brown grass and