Winter Moon

kitchen, more than elsewhere.
        His unfinished dinner of rigatoni, sausage, and butter bread was on the table, for he'd been interrupted in mid-meal by the intrusion of the raccoon-and by its spasmodic death. Smudges of now dry mud marked the rim of his dinner plate. The table around the plate was littered with pea-size lumps of dry earth, a spadeshaped brown leaf curled into a miniature scroll, and a dead beetle the size of a penny.
        The beetle was on its back, six stiff legs in the air. When he flicked it over with one finger, he saw that its shell was iridescent blue-green.
        Two flattened wads of dirt, like dollar pancakes, were stuck to the seat of the chair. On the oak floor around the chair was more detritus.
        Another concentration of soil lay in front of the refrigerator.
        Altogether, it amounted to a couple of tablespoons' worth, but there were also a few blades of grass, another dead leaf, and an earthworm.
        The worm was still alive but curled up on itself, suffering from a lack of moisture.
        A crawling sensation along the nape of his neck and a sudden conviction that he was being watched made him clutch the shotgun with both hands and spin toward one window, then the other. No pale, ghastly face was pressed to either pane of glass, as he had imagined.
        Only the night.
        The chrome handle on the refrigerator was dulled by filth, and he did not touch it. He opened the door by gripping the edge. The food and beverages inside seemed untouched, everything just as he'd left it.
        The doors of both double ovens were hanging open. He closed them without touching the handles, which were also smeared in places with unidentifiable crud.
        Caught on a sharp edge of the oven door was a torn scrap of fabric, half an inch wide and less than an inch long. It was pale blue, with a fragmentary curve of darker blue that might have been a portion of a repeating pattern against the lighter background..Eduardo stared at the fragment of cloth for a personal eternity. Time seemed to-stop, and the universe hung as still as the pendulum of a broken grandfather clock- until icy spicules of profound fear formed in his blood and made him shudder so violently that his teeth actually chattered. The graveyard… He whipped around again, toward one window, the other, but nothing was there.
        Only the night. The night. The blind, featureless, uncaring face of the night.
        He searched the upstairs. Telltale chunks, crumbs, and smears of earth-once moist, now dry-could be found in most rooms. Another leaf. Two more dead beetles as dry as ancient papyrus. A pebble the size of a cherry pit, smooth and gray.
        He realized that some of the switch plates and light switches were soiled.
        Thereafter, he flicked the lights on with his sleeve-covered arm or the shotgun barrel.
        When he had examined every chamber, probed to the back of every closet, inspected behind and under every piece of furniture where a hollow space might conceivably offer concealment even to something as large as a seven- or eight-year-old child, and when he was satisfied that nothing was hiding on the second floor, he returned to the end of the upstairs hall and pulled on the dangling release cord that lowered the attic trapdoor.
        He pulled down the folding ladder fixed to the back of the trap.
        The attic lights could be turned on from the hall, so he didn't have to ascend into darkness. He searched every shadowed niche in the deep and dusty eaves, where snowflake moths hung in webs like laces of ice and feeding spiders loomed as cold and black as winter shadows.
        Downstairs in the kitchen again, he slid aside the brass bolt on the cellar door. It worked only from the kitchen. Nothing could have gone down there and relocked from the far side.
        On the other hand, the front and back doors of the house had been bolted when he'd driven into town. No one could have gotten inside-or locked up again upon leaving-without a key, and he had the only keys in existence. Yet the damned bolts were engaged when he'd come home, his search had revealed no broken or unlatched window, yet an intruder definitely had come and gone.
        He went into the cellar and searched the two large, windowless rooms.
        They were cool, slightly musty, and deserted.
        For the moment, the house was secure.
        He was the only