Winter Moon

packages of frozen foods.
        Twilight had arrived. The time of truth was fast approaching. He had not expected the entity in the woods to put in an appearance in daylight. He sensed it was a creature of nocturnal habits and preferences, spawned in darkness. He got a beer from the refrigerator.
        What the hell. It was his first in several hours. Although he wanted to be sober for the confrontation to come, he didn't want to be entirely clearheaded. Some things could be faced and dealt with better by a man whose sensibilities had been mildly numbed.
        Nightfall had barely settled all the way into the west, and he had not finished that first beer, when he heard movement on the back porch. A soft thud and a scrape and a thud again. Definitely not the crow stirring. Heavier noises than that. It was a clumsy sound made by something awkwardly but determinedly climbing the three wooden steps from the lawn.
        Eduardo got to his feet and picked up the shotgun. His palms were slick with sweat, but he could still handle the weapon. Another thud and a gritty scraping.
        His heart was beating bird-fast, faster than the crow's had ever beaten when it had been alive. The visitor-whatever its world of origin, whatever its name, whether dead or alive-reached the top of the steps and moved across the porch toward the door. No thudding any longer.
        All dragging and shuffling, sliding and scraping.
        Because of the type of reading he had been doing these past few months, in but an instant Eduardo conjured image after image of different unearthly creatures that might produce such a sound instead of ordinary footsteps, each more malevolent in appearance than the one before it, until his mind swam with monsters.
        One monster among them was not unearthly, belonged more to Poe than to Heinlein or Sturgeon or Bradbury, gothic rather than futuristic, not only from Earth but from the earth. It drew nearer the door, nearer.still, and finally it was at the door. The unlocked door. Silence.
        Eduardo had only to take three steps, grab the doorknob, pull inward, and he would stand face-to-face with the visitor.
        He could not move. He was as rooted to the floor as any tree was rooted to the hills that rose behind the house.
        Though he had devised the plan that had precipitated the confrontation, though he had not run when he'd had the chance, though he had convinced himself that his sanity depended on facing this ultimate terror forthrightly and putting it behind him, he was paralyzed and suddenly not so sure that running would have been wrong.
        The thing was silent. It was there but silent. Inches from the far side of the door. Doing what? Waiting for Eduardo to move first? Or studying the crow in the colander?
        The porch was dark, and only a little kitchen light was emitted by the covered windows, so could it really see the crow? Yes. Oh, yes, it could see in the dark, bet on that, it could see in the dark better than any damned cat could see, because it was of the dark.
        He could hear the kitchen clock ticking. Though it had been there all along, he hadn't heard it in years, it had become part of the background noise, but he heard it now, louder than it had ever been, like a softened stick striking a slow measured beat on a snare drum at a state funeral. come on lets do it.
        This time he was urging the traveler to come out of hiding. He was goading himself. Come on, you bastard, you coward, you id Id ignorant fool, come on, come on, He moved to the door and stood slightly to one side of it, so he could open it past himself. To grasp the knob, he would have to let go of the with one hand, but he couldn't do that was knocking painfully against him. He could feel the pulse in his temples, pounding, pounding.
        He smelled the thing through the closed door. A nauseating odor, sour and putrescent, beyond anything in his long lifetime of experience.
        The doorknob in front of him, the knob that he could of bring himself to grasp, round a p and gleaming, began to turn. Scintillant light, a reflection of the kitchen fluorescents, trickled along the curve of the knoll as it slowly l The free-moving latch bolt eased notch in the striker plate with the faintest rasp of brass on brass. pounding in his temples, booming his chest so swollen and leaping that his lungs and made breathing difficult, painful And now the knob slipped back the