Jonas

Still smelled like wood smoke and dried herbs.

She had strings of what I thought were old beanpots hanging from the ceiling and jars of pickled vegetables lined up like trophies along every windowsill.

A horseshoe hung above the door, nailed in with three big iron spikes.

She pointed me to the front room.

It had the big cast iron stove, a quilt-covered couch, and that old Winchester rifle over the fireplace that no one ever touched.

The kind of place where you notice the silence more than anything else.

No hum of appliances.

No distant traffic.

Not even wind through the trees.

Just stillness.

The kind that presses in on you.

I didn't fall asleep easily that first night, but I must have eventually dozed off.

What woke me was the sound.

It was a feeling.

The kind that gets you before your brain catches up.

I opened my eyes to see the door cracked open.

Just a hair.

Moonlight spilled across the floor, and something was moving out in the porch.

I couldn't see it clearly, just a shape-shifting behind a curtain.

But what really got me was the window.