Chuck

Door goes up, door goes down.

It was neat, the whole operation.

He let them descend and then stood there with the flash turned off, trying to see if his eyes would grow accustomed to the gloom.

Somewhere out towards where the birdbath stood, a firefly pricked the wall of blackness momentarily.

He shone the light and picked up the marble path.

Oh, more marble.

You know what's good for that?

Arthur walked a few steps away from the house in the garage, past the birdbath, towards the field, enjoying the freedom of these few steps as someone does who has even the relatively inoffensive restriction that he did.

Things always look different at night, he reminded himself as he torched the yellow beam of the flashlight here and there.

The trees and shrubbery had a particular lifeless aspect, as though they were prop scenery.

From the ridge that crowned the southern horizon of his property, the faraway lights of a speeding car shoveled the gloom back for a few instants.

And then, with the vehicle gone on its dark errand, there was nothing but the little light in his hand and the occasional, very seldom, pinprick of a firefly off to the left or perhaps over to the right.

Anywhere.

Just not in front of him.

Right.

The ground underneath his moccasins had its fine sheen of night dew.

He could feel the taller blades of grass swish damply against his ankles as he walked.

From out of the endless blackness that stretched away from where he stood across the universe, something came that blinked green and red in the sky.

It was the mail plane heading for the state capital 100 miles north, and idly he turned his flash upward and pinched the switch in a staccato series, then, thinking foolishly of the action, flicked it off.

To them, if anything, it would be as a firefly was to him, a tiny indistinct something for an instant against the pall of darkness that covered the earth.