| It wasn’t too long after dawn that she awoke and made her rounds of the house, but she found nothing of conclusive evidence. She determined that she might have just imagined the sound and went on with her daily activities. That night she heard the scratching again, this time accompanied by sniffing sounds. Later she thought she saw the shadow of a large animal. Sleep eluded her as the sounds retreated then returned, repeating this pattern until morning. The next day was occupied with trying to find the animal that bothered her. Again she found nothing. She tried to convince herself that it was nothing but something in her mind refused to let it go. Night came again and with it the same sounds; only they had coalesced into grunts and snorts. Shadows wavered just beyond the candlelight, while claws scraped against the door. Retreating upstairs, she heard the creak and moan of the old house as the animal assailant forced its weight against the wooden frame. The sheriff started out on his patrol as dawn’s first rays fanned out across the waters of the marsh. He was still working on damage assessment from the earlier floods. Noticing a car in front of an unoccupied house, he decided to check things out. Searching through the rooms, he found a young woman curled in fetal position in one of the back closets. She stared straight ahead yet seemed to see nothing, or at least nothing that existed in reality. He tried speaking to her but to no avail; she was lost into whatever had happened to her. Gently he picked her up and carried her back to the patrol boat. What had once been a beautiful morning was now tainted with a mute mystery. |