With effort, I rose to my feet, went to the kitchen, and prepared a makeshift meal of fruit, cheese, and stale bread. I ate it with animal desperation, stuffing the food into my mouth and choking it down with large gulps of water. I hadn’t realized how hungry I’d been. When I was through I fixed another helping, and then another. At last I was sated: time for a bath. I turned the thermostat down and paused at the foot of the stairs, again irrationally unnerved; and after chastising myself for my fear, I switched on the landing light and climbed to the second floor. I threw open the door to each room, to each closet, revealing nothing but stale air. I opened each upstairs window several inches, to let in the spring; then I drew my bath, undressed, and lowered myself into the heat.
I performed a long, indulgent wash, scrubbing my hands and upper arms with extra vigor, making certain that I was clean. When I was through, I dried myself, went to the bedroom, and put on my pajamas. I was exhausted and eager to sleep; and yet unease again crept over me. The bedroom window hung before me, the same I had gazed at from the summit of the rock that afternoon. High and uncurtained, ready to let in the light of dawn, it revealed nothing but blackness now. I went to it. The glass, reflecting the bedside lamp, was creased with age. I threw up the sash as far as it would go and looked out into the moonless night, trying to make out the rock. But it was invisible now, blending with the forest that surrounded it.
At last I closed the window and turned out the light. I ought to have dropped off to sleep immediately, as I had many times under far more stressful, indeed terrifying, circumstances, but instead I lay awake, listening to the silence. Every now and then a car or truck could be heard passing in the distance, but otherwise there was nothing, and the small sounds of the house as it cooled took on ominous significance. The rhythmic tick of the dormant furnace, slowing gradually, would give way at any moment to a deadly explosion; the old timbers settling against themselves creaked like the careful footsteps of an assassin.
And then another sound gradually impressed itself upon my consciousness, so faint at first against the ambient roar of the air in my ears that I wasn’t even certain I was hearing it. It was a whine, as of air escaping through a narrow opening, a kind of keening, which gradually resolved itself into an intermittent animal cry. It was the sound of solitary despair, a high, drawn-out weeping, a noise made by a creature, man or beast, not to draw attention but to console the hopeless self.
I had heard this sound before, in the place I had worked before I came here, the sound of men without hope crushing their misery into a tiny space in the throat, from where they could not prevent it escaping, even in sleep. It chilled me, brought me fully back to wakefulness, and I sat up in bed, the covers falling from my bruised body. Where was it coming from? I held my breath, strained at the sound, but now, as if in response to my motion, it had seemed to stop.
A few moments later, I again lay down, and as the minutes passed, I became convinced that the sound was a product of my imagination. My eyes closed, my breathing slowed, and I felt myself pulled toward sleep. And then I heard it again.
I was certain it was there. I could feel a sympathetic cry gathering at the back of my own throat. It was human, this sound. It was real. I tried to isolate it in my mind, to shut out everything else, my heartbeat, the sheets against my flesh, the ringing in my ears. There was only the sound, and my perception of it. Where was it coming from?
Outside, I thought at first. Something, or someone, was outside, perhaps in the woods, suffering. I got out of bed, willing lightness out of my heavy body, slowing myself nearly to motionlessness. Five minutes until one foot touched the floor, five more for the other. Five minutes to cross the room and another five to open the window. I thanked myself for having sanded down the frame and replaced the sash: the pane slid up smoothly, without rattling or creaking. I leaned forward, poking my head out into the cool air, and listened.
Nothing but the slow and heavy wind, flowing through the trees. Had the crying stopped? I carefully pulled my head back in: no, there it was. It was in the house.
I paced across the room like a glacier, my bare feet sticking to the boards, then peeling off again. I reached the door, turned the knob, and pulled.
There. I could hear it more clearly now. A long, high, mournful wail, followed by a pause, as if to draw breath. I opened the door far enough to admit my body, then lifted my left foot and took a single step into the hall. In the deep quiet of the house, the creak the floorboards made was like a rifle shot. The crying stopped. I froze.
I remained frozen for five, ten, fifteen minutes. The sound did not resume. I let out breath. Where on earth had it come from? It was in the house, to be sure. I repeated my room-to-room search and again found nothing. The house was empty, and against all reason, I was more awake than I had been in days. What was more, I felt dirty again, my mouth sour and sticky, my underarms redolent of sweat. I went to the bathroom and took another bath, then brushed my teeth a second time. Afterward I returned to my bed, anticipating a sleepless night, and even reached out to turn on the bedside lamp. But my hand never made it. My body, evidently, had overruled my mind, and I dropped off to sleep without difficulty, and dreamed of nothing all night long.
NINE
The first thing I found when I came downstairs the next morning was yesterday’s mail, scattered on the floor in the hallway. I remembered now that, frightened by the furnace, I had dropped it there the night before. Raising my eyebrows at my own foolishness, I gathered it up, then went to the thermostat and turned the heat back on. The furnace clanked to life. The sound was identical to the one that had so terrified me, but now of course it was no more alarming than the birds singing outside. I went to the kitchen, put a pot of coffee on to brew, and sat down at the table with my letters.
My credit card bill had arrived, bearing the costs of my home renovation. I was pleased to find them to be below my budgeted estimate. There were some papers from the bank, and tucked with them into the envelope, a promotional refrigerator magnet. I was surprised to see an official-looking letter from out of town, and after examining it for a moment, I chose to set it aside for the time being. There was also what appeared to be a card from my sister, and though I felt my face tense up as I took it in hand, I went ahead and tore it open.
The card bore a fairly innocuous reproduction of a painting of a twelve-point buck, backlit by a rising run, perched on a rock outcropping, majestic mountain terrain all around. As far as I knew, deer did not tend to stand high upon rocks — this was the purview of mountain goats and bighorn sheep, I thought — but the image was pleasant enough and enabled me to take a neutral stance to the card’s contents.
Interestingly, though, it was not the substance of my sister’s message that struck me most powerfully. The message itself was not noteworthy — she apologized for her cavalier attitude during her brief visit to my house and offered her emotional support and friendship for “dealing with your troubles,” whatever that was supposed to mean — but the handwriting made me sit up and pay attention.