Harmon stood outside the barn, still reeling from this latest violation. It had seemed so real, as real as the devil that consumed him.
As real as the end of the world.
Against the blackness of the sky, a million eyes bore down on him. The moon had not yet risen, yet its subtle glow teased at the horizon. He knew in his heart he did not wish to see it. He imagined it the grisly face of a demon.
He clutched the handle of the gas can. It had never felt so heavy.
He sampled the air. Nothing.
He considered fetching Gentle Ben, but no. He had treated her right, as Papa had learned him, but now it was time to put that good woman to rest.
Time to put it all to rest.
They would find nothing.
The can was half full when he finished. He reached into his pocket and found the matchbox he had scrounged from the top of the Westinghouse. The barn burned quickly. Later, the can empty, he stood out back with the wood, watching his home fall prey to the flames. He felt nothing. Only the creatures eating his brain.
Harmon picked up his splitting ax and carried it through the clearing. He knelt slowly before the cross that marked his lover’s place. The flames from their home made the word scrawled there flicker faintly.
“Soon now,” he told her. Told them both.
He peered into the woods. The trees seemed like beasts, seemed right on top of him. They whispered his name.
“Know who I am,” he whispered back. “I know.”
He moved closer to his wife’s marker. Ran a finger across its letters. Kissed it one last time.
He chopped off the stakes. Come spring, they would find nothing.
Harmon gazed into the forest and let his mind traverse its boundless heart. He saw the old snowmobile, its driver but a passenger, riding north along Dead Man’s Pass … saw a man of wood, heart and soul broken, standing at the maw of a long-forgotten mine.
And when he closed his eyes, saw a bottomless blackness swallow that man forever.