Now I lay gazing at that very same moon, grinning full and high in the sky, and I felt that it challenged me—no, dared me—to venture forth with only its cold white light as company. I threw off my covers, slid into my boots, and was out the door before my brother could turn over in his sleep. The sound of his thick breathing followed me as I crept to the kitchen, still and silent as the stars. The crockery, canisters, and bins of flour were alive with moonbeams cascading wantonly through the French lace curtains, throwing their reflected light into every corner of the room. I stopped, struck by the beauty of the moment, and by the knowledge that here, now, I was safe. Once I opened the door and ventured outside, I left the security of my family home behind.
I sucked in a lungful of air, put my trembling hand upon the door latch, and pushed. The door gave, and I stepped over the threshold and into the waiting night. I tiptoed across the small back yard and through the gate. The moonlight settled over the landscape like a cold white hand. Ahead of me the road lay, a ribbon of white stones and packed dirt awash in its pale light. I headed to the corral, whistling softly for my roan pony, Atticus.
I was answered by a gentle neighing and the clop of hooves trotting across the dusty paddock. Soon his head was on my shoulder, prodding gently as he sniffed for sugar lumps hidden in my jacket. I fished around in my pocket and found two, which I held out on my palm. His velvety muzzle tickled my outstretched hand as his lips closed over the sugar. He nickered with pleasure as he munched the cubes, nodding and tossing his head.
“Atticus,” I murmured, “come along.”
I had known Atticus from the day of his birth; it was my arm that pulled him, slimy, stunned, and sweating, from his mother’s body when she was too weak to stand after hours of labor. It was I who washed and dried him and put his mouth to her teat, watching as he found the strength to suck it, pulling life into his spindly body. I was there when he was weaned, when he stretched and kicked up his legs with the other colts in the pasture, and I put the first saddle on him when he was two years old.
Mine was the only body he had borne upon his back, and I knew the feel of my legs around his ribs as well as I knew the touch of my own mother’s hand. He had never thrown me, and I had never raised a hand to him. He knew neither whip nor lash, only the gentle pressure of my legs against his sides; the merest touch of my heels would send him into a full canter.
He sensed my excitement, as horses do, prancing and pawing the ground as I laid the saddle upon his back. When I sprang lightly into the saddle, he took off at a brisk trot, and soon we were cantering down the dirt road in the direction of the Vly. My fear had been replaced by determination to find out what had become of my father—even if I perished in the process.
The night was windless and calm, the pregnant moon overhead lighting my way. The creak of saddle leather blended with the even, rhythmic thud of Atticus’s hooves upon the soft dirt as we ventured deeper into the forest. We stopped at a streambed so he could drink, and I heard the furtive rustling of nighttime creatures in the woods. The liquid woot-woot-wootoo of a barred owl high in the branches above us cut through the stillness of the night.
We continued, the terrain descending as a low-lying mist rose from the ground. As I approached the clearing where we had seen the great hound, I felt the same oppressive dread and nameless terror I had experienced before. This time I resisted, urging Atticus forward with a gentle press of my knees—but he balked and stood still, shivering, his ears pricked sharply forward. I had never known him to disobey a command before. I pressed harder, still with no response. I did something I had never done—I dug my heels deeply into his flanks. Startled, he leapt forward into the clearing.
A great gust of wind tore the hat from my head, and as I reached out to grab it, the sky itself seemed to open up. I was enveloped by an unearthly light, fierce and glowing, pouring from the heavens themselves. I was too astonished to be afraid, and as I gazed upward, a great roar shook the air. I heard the thundering of a thousand hooves, the battle cries of a legion of warriors, and the terrified screams of their unfortunate prey.
The sound, eerie as it was, scarcely prepared me for the sight that greeted my astounded eyes. Pouring from the cavernous rift in the sky, a spectral host on horseback galloped in mad pursuit of its fleeing quarry—a swarm of ghostly bison, deer, and elk. Accompanied by dogs of all sizes and descriptions, some of the hunters were misshapen gnomes with gnarled, demonic faces. Others were fierce-looking, well-formed men and women—some fully clothed, while others rode half-naked astride their charging steeds. Many of the women were bare-breasted, their wild hair flowing out behind them. These Amazons had the same fierce gaze as their male counterparts, clutching spears in their muscular bare arms. In front of the mass of riders was a tall, magnificent woman with long hair of burnished gold, at her side the same gaunt hound I had seen days earlier. I realized that it must be Walpurga herself, leading the chase.
I watched transfixed as they charged down from the heavens. My fear was replaced by a burning urge to join the multitude in their crazed dash across the sky. Atticus seemed to sense my eagerness, prancing impatiently beneath me. My gaze fell upon a rider mounted upon a tall chestnut mare, and I realized with a shock that it was my father! My heart fluttered and danced with joy in my chest—my father was alive! I urged Atticus forward to meet him, but my father’s gaze met mine, and he shook his head, a great sadness in his eyes. I hesitated, confused—was I not to be with him, to speak with him once again?
I wrapped my legs around my horse’s sides and squeezed. He sprang forward with a mighty leap, and we sailed, horse and rider, into the midst of the thundering herd of hunters. My ears rang with battle cries, my eyes were pierced with unearthly light, and my breast was flooded with such emotion it left me breathless. I seemed to experience every passion I had ever felt in my life, multiplied tenfold, a rush of feelings so intense it felt as if I must be going mad. Love, rage, jealousy, envy, terror, joy, and sorrow vied for mastery—but as these fell away, I felt the thrill of the hunt, the primal lust for blood. I heard the sound of my own voice shouting, as if very far away, joining the great commotion all around. I tightened my grip on the reins and urged my horse forward—until I caught up with my father. Riding next to him, I stretched out my hand. He hesitated, then reached his hand toward mine.
At that moment a great demon mounted on a black stallion came galloping toward us, a long spear held aloft in his misshapen hand. The stallion tossed his great head, frothing and straining at the bit. Just behind them I saw Walpurga’s Wind Hound, teeth bared, charging toward us.
My father shrank back and tried to let go my hand, but I clutched his all the tighter. The demon rider closed in on us, his face a hideous mask of rage. His eyes were blazing red coals of fury, his skin green as tree moss. He raised his spear overhead, and my father pulled back from my grasp. Though my arm felt as if it was about to be wrenched from the socket, I would not let go, and held on to him with all my strength.
“No-o-o-o-o!” I cried, and closed my eyes.
Blackness descended upon me like a blanket.
When I awoke, the clearing was still and quiet except for the chirping of birds in the meadow. I lifted my head from the damp ground and opened my eyes.
I saw nothing but darkness, and realized I was now entirely blind.
“Atticus,” I whispered. “Where are you?”
I heard the familiar soft whinny, and felt his muzzle nudge my shoulder. Another touch greeted me as well—that of a human hand.
“Hello, Slade.”
Tears dampened my eyes as I grasped my father’s hand in my own.
A good horse always knows the way home. My father insisted that I ride while he walked alongside Atticus. I relented, heaving my weary body onto the horse’s broad back for the long walk back. On the return trip, my father recounted to me that fateful night he joined the hunt, drawn in just as I had been, enthralled by their powerful allure. He was astonished to hear he had been gone fo
r a year; the time for him had passed as if it were a single day. We wondered if any explanation of the night’s fantastical events would satisfy my mother. My father explained that he had tried vainly to warn me away from joining the Wild Hunt—but being a foolish and headstrong boy, I was beyond heeding the warnings of my elders.
I had succeeded in saving him, at the cost of my eyesight. Though it is a price I was willing to pay, I consider it my duty to warn others of the dark and dangerous things in this world. He who would venture into their midst should be forewarned.
The Vly, the Vly is dark inside,
Where strange and fearsome things may hide
Heed my warning, hear the cry—
Don’t go nigh the Vly, the Vly.
HEIRLOOM
BY JOSEPH FINDER
They must think this is Nantucket,” Walter said. “Is that a Range Rover?”
“Oh, don’t start,” Ruth said in her scolding voice. “The wife is lovely. I think it’s wonderful they want to have us over. Give them a chance.”
“Give me a drink, I say. Though they’re probably the white-wine spritzer types. Hoity-toity.”
“For heaven’s sake, please, stop.”
Walter grumbled something inaudible as he parked the truck and turned off the engine and, heaving a long sigh, got out. Something crunched under his boots, and the air smelled fishy. They’d recently put down crushed oyster shells over the dirt driveway. All the rich summer folks seemed to do that. They probably thought it made their places look more authentic, more Cape Cod, somehow. Like hydrangeas and split-rail fences and wind chimes and fairy roses. They had no idea what a pain in the butt crushed shells were, how you had to lay more down every year because of the erosion, how the shells got caught in your lawn mower, how the weeds always sprouted up through the bare spots and then you had to spray Roundup, which could kill your dog. They never thought about how it hurt your knees if you had to crouch down to work on your car. Then again, people like that probably didn’t know how to fix their own cars. They probably didn’t even wash their own windshields.
Walter cast a shrewd eye on the sweet old house, probably one of the oldest on the Cape. An eighteenth-century Colonial with a steep gable roof and doghouse dormers and small-paned windows with shutters that actually worked. A big fat central chimney, painted white. The clapboard siding had been gussied up with a fresh coat of white paint, the shutters with black semigloss. The cedar roof shingles were weathered silver gray. Looked like the roof needed replacing, though.
“Will you wait for me?” Ruth said. Walter scowled but stopped and waited for his wife to catch up. She needed a hip replacement sooner rather than later. “Can you hold this, please?” She handed him the festively wrapped jam jar and clutched his right wrist for support.
“Welcome,” a woman called. “Welcome!”
As soon as the screen door opened, a dog came hurtling out like a guided missile, heading right for Ruth, yapping, jumping up on her. A toy dog: a Jack Russell terrier with a small snow-white body, a tan face, and perky ears. Ruth gasped but then laughed with delight. “Why, look at you, poochie!”
The dog kept yapping shrilly. “Anís!” the young woman shouted. “Down! Down!” She ran across the lawn toward them and grabbed the dog by the collar, a band of Madras plaid. “Bad girl! Bad! Anís, no! Stop it! I am so sorry!”
“Nothing like a hearty welcome,” Ruth said.
“I’m Morgan. It’s so nice of you to come over.” She was tall and blond and wore pink Capri pants, a lime-green alligator shirt, a pearl choker necklace. They all shook hands and exchanged the usual pleasantries.
“Hutch is out back tending the grill,” Morgan said. “He won’t set foot in the kitchen, but put the fire outside and all of a sudden he’s Mario Batali or something.”
“Anís is an unusual name for a dog,” Ruth said.
“That licorice-flavored liqueur? We drank it constantly in Marbella, on our honeymoon. It’s in that Hemingway novel, which one was it? The Sun Also Rises, I think. Anís del Toro—anisette of the bull? Hutch was an English major at Yale and never lets you forget it.”
They entered the house, leaving the dog outside, and Walter handed Morgan the jam jar. She exclaimed over it as if she’d just won Mega Millions.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Ruth said. “Wild blueberry preserves. Those wild blueberries grow like weeds on our property.”
“I adore wild blueberries!” Morgan exclaimed.
Walter noticed they’d replaced the aluminum screen door with one made from mahogany. Bogus, he thought. Pretentious. At least they were taking care of the flooring. He’d always loved the old wide-board floor, creaky and uneven after years of settling, scarred by centuries of boots and shoes, the pumpkin pine having mellowed to an amber that polyurethane stain could never imitate.
“So you let your dog run loose outside, huh?” he said. “I guess you got one of them invisible fences put in.”
“Oh, where you put that funny collar on them and it shocks them if they cross a certain line on the property or something like that? No, we’d never do that. But she’s not going to run away. We feed her too well! She loves being off-leash, though. If only I could stop her from digging!”
“Oh, dear,” Ruth said.
“We think she buries her bones and then digs them up later.”
“What a shame,” Ruth said. “Your lawn is so beautiful.”
“Oh, but it’s not. It looks good, but the grass is just awful. It’s this terrible, coarse-bladed, wiry stuff that hurts when you walk barefoot on it. Like you’re walking on a Brillo pad! Hutch wants to have it all dug up and replaced with, I don’t know, whatever they use in golf courses. You know men and their lawns!”
“It’s zoysia grass,” Walter said coldly. “Drought-resistant. I put it in for the Murdochs ages ago because they didn’t want to waste money on an irrigation system.”
Morgan looked stricken. Her hand fluttered over her open mouth. “Oh my God, that’s not what I meant at all. I mean, it’s exactly what you want if you’re not going to have an irrigation system. It’s so much hardier. The thing is, we’re going to have a swimming pool put in back there, and you know how all those trucks and tractors and things are going to chew up the lawn, so the whole yard’s going to have to be reseeded anyway.”
Walter gave her a quick, hard look; then his face seemed to relax. “Just don’t use hydroseed. You’ll be yanking out weeds for years. The soil’s nice and rich, and I should know. I tilled in truckloads of Canadian sphagnum peat moss.”
“Walter, remember how the Murdoch boy used to dig holes all over their lawn and you’d have to come back and reseed?”
He shrugged.
“Sure you do. It looked like they had a family of moles. He used to bury things, just like your dog. He called it his pirate treasure. Once he buried the Murdochs’ television remote and he could never remember where he’d put it. And remember that box of cigars Tom bought you one Christmas and how it just disappeared one day and it turned out that poor Paulie had buried it in the yard, only he didn’t remember where?”
Walter shrugged again. “Wouldn’t have been any good if I found ’em anyway. The damp would have ruined ’em.”
Ruth lowered her voice to a confiding whisper. “He was what we used to call feebleminded. Not quite right in the head. He looked like a strapping teenager but he had the mind of a five-year-old. Such a handsome young man… He always wore this funny red-and-black hat—you know those plaid hunter’s caps? I call it an Elmer Fudd cap?”
Morgan nodded and smiled.
“Night and day, he was never without that hat. Winter and summer, no matter how hot it got. And of course he always had the earflaps down.” A troubled expression crossed her face. “Walter was like a father to that boy. And then…” She fell silent and looked sad.
Walter said, “I’d be careful letting a dog that little run around outside at night.”
Morgan looked at him quizzically.
&nbs
p; “You know about the coyotes, don’t you?”
She gasped. “Coyotes?”
He nodded. “Sure. At night you’ll hear them howl and laugh. They roam around here in packs like wolves.”
“They do no such thing,” Ruth said. “Coyotes are loners.”
“I guess you forgot what happened to the Costas’ poodle,” Walter said. “And he was even on one of them retractable leashes.”
“Oh, that was such a terrible thing,” Ruth said.
“Coyote came and grabbed it and ate it for dinner,” Walter said.
Morgan turned abruptly and opened the mahogany screen door. “Anís! Anís, come! You get in here right this minute!”
The dog came scampering in.
“Now, I haven’t seen the Pamet Puma, as they call it, but I’ve heard tell there’s a big cat roaming around and feasting on small game and domestic animals. It ain’t no legend, I hear. There’ve been sightings. When they can’t find game, they get awful hungry…”
Morgan put a hand on Walter’s shoulder. “Thank you so much for the warning. No one told us anything about that.”
“Well, that’s what neighbors are for,” Walter said.
“What can I get you to drink? We have red wine and white wine—a wonderful Sancerre—and Hutch can make you martinis or just about any mixed drink you like.”
“Just a glass of ice water for me,” Ruth said.
“You probably don’t have bourbon,” Walter said. “I do like my Jim Beam.”
“Are you kidding? Booker’s is all Hutch drinks! Hutch! Come on inside and meet the Colemans.”
A tall, gangly young man with tortoiseshell glasses entered from the other side of the low-ceilinged living room, the screen door clattering shut behind him. He was wearing a long black apron that said STAND BACK! I’M GRILLIN’ on the front and he smelled of woodsmoke. He gave Walter an unnecessarily firm handshake. Hutch Whitworth, his name was. Hutch and Morgan, Walter thought. What kind of names were those?
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