Thunderhead

TERESA GONZALES SAT UP SUDDENLY, LISTENING in the dark. Teddy Bear, her giant Rhodesian Ridgeback, who generally slept outside in the summer, was whining at the back door. Ridgebacks had been bred to hunt and kill lions in Africa. He was a very gentle dog, but he was also extremely protective. She had never heard him whine before. He was just back from the vet’s, where he’d been languishing for two weeks, recovering from a nasty infection; maybe the poor thing was still traumatized.

She got out of bed and went through the dark house to the door. The dog came slinking in, whimpering, its tail clamped between its legs.

“Teddy,” she whispered, “what’s wrong? You all right?”

The dog licked her hand and retreated across the kitchen, sliding his huge bulk under the kitchen table. Teresa looked out the kitchen door, down into the sea of darkness toward the old Las Cabrillas ranch house. There were no lights in the draw, and without a moon Teresa couldn’t see the outlines of the abandoned house. Something out there had scared him half to death. She listened, and thought she heard a faint sound of breaking glass and the distant howl of an animal. Definitely too low-pitched and hoarse to be a coyote, but it didn’t sound like any dog Teresa had heard, either. It sounded like a wolf, if you got right down to it. But Teddy would never have retreated like that from a lone wolf, or even a cougar. Perhaps it was a whole pack of wolves.

The muttered low howl was answered by another, a little closer. The dog whined again, louder, and pressed itself back into the darkness under the table. There was a dribbling sound, and Teresa saw he was urinating in his fright.

She paused, hand on the doorframe. Until two years ago, there had been no wolves in New Mexico. Then the Game and Fish Department introduced some into the Pecos Wilderness. Guess a few have wandered down from the mountains, she thought.

Teresa went back to her room, peeled off her nightgown, slid on her jeans, shirt, and boots, then walked across the room and opened the gun locker. The weapons gleamed dully against the darkness. She reached for her current favorite, a Winchester Defender, with its 18½-inch barrel and extended magazine tube. It was a good, light gun, billed as a defensive weapon with unparalleled stopping power. Just another way of saying it was very good at killing people. Or wolves, for that matter.

She slid in a magazine: eight Federal ammo casings of 12-gauge double-ought lead buck. This wasn’t the first time since the attack on Nora that she’d heard sounds from the Kelly ranch. And once, driving back from Santa Fe, she’d seen a low, dark shape skulking around the old mailbox rack. Had to be wolves; nothing else made sense. They’d confronted Nora in the farmhouse that night. Must have rattled her so badly she thought she heard them speak. Teresa shook her head. Not like Nora to wig out like that.

Wolves that didn’t fear humans could be dangerous, and Teresa didn’t want to meet up with them without a gun. Better to deal with the problem directly. If Game and Fish wanted to make a stink, let them. She had a ranch to run.

She tucked the shotgun under her arm, shoved a flashlight into her back pocket, and crept back to the kitchen door, careful not to turn on any lights. She heard Teddy whining and snuffling as she left, but he made no move to follow her.

She stepped onto the back porch and eased the door shut behind her. There was a faint creaking of floorboards as she moved down the steps. Then she angled toward the wellhouse and the trail that began just beyond. Teresa was a large, heavy-boned woman, but she had the natural stealthy movements of a feline. At the wellhouse she inhaled deeply, steadied the gun, then eased down the trail in the inky blackness. She had descended the trail countless times to play with Nora when they were children, and her feet remembered the way.

Soon she was on the flat. The Kelly ranch house stood across the draw, just on the side of the rise, its low roof outlined against the night. In the faintest starlight, she could see the front door was open.

She waited for what seemed a long time, listening, but there was only the susurrus of wind in the piñon trees. The shotgun felt cold and reassuring in her hands.

She sampled the breeze: she was downwind of the house, which meant the wolves couldn’t scent her. There was a strange odor in the air that reminded her of morning glories, but nothing else. Perhaps the animals had heard her and run off. Or perhaps they were still in the house.

She snapped off the safety and gripped the flashlight tight against the Winchester’s barrel. Then she moved toward the front of the house. The building was striped in wavy starlight, looking strangely like a drowned, abandoned temple. She could use the light to freeze any animal that came into view, giving her a stationary target.

And then Teresa heard something, at the edge of audibility, that was not a wolf. She stopped to listen. It was a low, monotonous chanting drone, a hoarse, guttural cadence, dry and faint as parched leaves.

It came from inside the house.

Teresa licked her dry lips and took a deep breath. She stepped onto the front porch and waited for a minute, then two. As quietly as she could, she took two more steps forward, covered the inside of the house with her gun, and switched on the flashlight.

The house was as she remembered it from the previous week: a hurricane of ruin, dust, and old decay. The smell of flowers was stronger here. Quickly, she probed the corners and doorways with the light, seeing nothing. Through a broken rectangle of window, the night wind gently swelled the stained curtains. The chanting was louder now, and it seemed to be coming from upstairs.

She crept to the bottom of the stairs, switching off the light. These were obviously not animals. Perhaps Nora had been right after all: she’d been attacked by men wearing masks, rapists perhaps. She remembered how uncharacteristically frightened Teddy Bear had been. Perhaps it would be better for her to creep quietly home and telephone the cops.

But no—by the time the cops arrived, with their flashing lights and clomping boots, these bastards would have slipped away into the shadows. And Teresa would be left with the nagging worry about when they might show up again. Perhaps they’d try her house next time. Or perhaps they’d catch her out away from home, when she was unarmed . . .

Her grip tightened on the shotgun. The time to act was now, while she could. Her father had taught her how to hunt; she was an expert stalker. She had a weapon that she knew how to use. And she had the advantage of surprise. With infinite caution, she began to ascend the stairs. She moved instinctively, shifting her weight from foot to foot with extreme deliberation.

She paused again at the top of the stairs. The starlight filtering through the windows below was too faint here to make out anything but the vaguest of shapes, but her ears told her that the sound was coming from Nora’s old room. She took two steps, then paused to take several breaths, check her control. Whoever it was, she was taking no chances.

She braced herself, gun in both hands, the flashlight firm against the barrel. Then with one smooth, swift motion she stepped forward, kicked the door fully open, swivelled the gun into position, and snapped on the flashlight.

It took a moment for her brain to register what her eyes saw. Two figures, covered head to toe in heavy, dank pelts, crouched in the center of the room. Their red eyes turned toward the light, unblinking, feral. Between them rested a human skull, its top missing. Inside the skull was a small collection of objects—a doll’s head, some hair, a girl’s barrette—Nora’s old things, Teresa realized, frozen with horror.