Dan Simmons - A Winter Haunting

>Hrot-garmr. Si-ik-wa UR.BAR.RA ki-sa-at. Wargus sit.

Dale rubbed his cheek, feeling the beard there. He was very tired, and his headache had grown worse rather than better. He found it difficult to focus his eyes on the screen. “Howling dog”—as if for fire. “He shall be a warg .” But what the hell was the middle part? After another moment of thought, during which he half dozed, Dale typed—

>What the hell is the middle part?

A moment later he snapped awake, realizing that he had dozed off in his chair while waiting for an answer. The screen never answers when I’m here. Aching everywhere, his head and lacerated scalp throbbing, Dale pulled himself out of the chair and walked out to the kitchen. He peered through the glass—the deputy was still there—and then locked the door and went back into the study.

>It is Hittite.

Dale sighed and rubbed his cheek again. He had to try twice before he could type out his next question without misspellings.

>What does it mean ?

This time he walked to the bathroom, holding himself upright with one palm against the wall as he urinated into the bowl. Flushing the toilet, washing his hands, staring at his pale and red-eyed image in the mirror, he felt as if he were observing and feeling everything through a waterfall of red pain. He walked back into the study.

>zi-ik-wa UR.BAR.RA ki-sa-at means “thou art become a wolf.”

Dale felt a surge of rage through the pain and fatigue. He was so fucking tired of games, he could throw up.

>Why the hell do you send me these messages in code if you’re just going to translate them for me?

Even before he had walked back from the kitchen, he knew he had wasted a question. This was absurd. The computer screen seemed to agree with him, since there was no reply. He hurriedly typed—

>Who has turned into a wolf? Me?

This time Dale walked to the head of the basement stairs and paused. Big band music was coming from the console radio down there. Hadn’t it been off when he and the deputies had been down there? Wishing that he still had his loaded shotgun but almost too tired to care about what was waiting for him, Dale went down the stairs.

The soft lamps near Duane’s old brass bed spilled soft yellow light onto the pillows. The wine crates and wooden shelves of paperbacks were reassuring in their familiar clutter. The furnace rattled and breathed with its usual sound. The radio dial glowed, and the old music played softly. Perhaps he had turned the radio on without thinking about it when he was down here. Or perhaps the station had been off the air for a while when the deputies were here with him. Who cared?

His legs felt leaden as he climbed the stairs and went back into the study.

>LU.MES hurkilas—the demon entities who are set to capture wolves and to strangle serpents.

“Well,” said Dale to the empty room, “thanks for nothing.” He switched off the ThinkPad and fell onto the daybed, still fully clothed, his muddy boots hanging over the edge. He was asleep before he thought to pull a blanket up over himself.

DURINGtheir last months together, before and after the late-spring blizzard that had snowed them in at the ranch, Clare and Dale had spoken—at first via banter but then more seriously—about being together. Clare had been accepted into an elite medieval studies graduate program at Princeton and would be leaving in July to meet some of the other anointed scholars there and prepare for the coming years. In June, Dale heard himself offer to join her there so that they could be together.

“I’ll finish the fall semester, take that sabbatical I’ve been putting off, and head your way.”

“What would you do there?” asked Clare. “Around Princeton?”

“Maybe they need a lit teacher. Some nontenure-track guy to teach freshman comp.”

Clare said nothing, but her silence showed her skepticism.

“Seriously,” said Dale, “what am I going to do here in Missoula without you? I’d be like Marley’s ghost hanging around someplace that’s dead to me.”

“Isn’t it the ghost who’s supposed to be dead?” said Clare. “Not the place?”

“Whatever,” said Dale. “Actually, I’ve always thought that it was the ghost who was vital and the place that died. That’s why ghosts can be seen—they’re more real than the thin, faded version of the place. You know, like Lincoln’s ghost in the White House.”

“Interesting,” said Clare. They were cleaning out the stables at the ranch, and now she paused to rest on a pitchfork. “You’re serious? About coming east?”

“Absolutely,” said Dale. He realized even as he said it that he had not been serious, not up to that moment, but that now the plan meant more to him than anything else in the world. At the same instant, he felt the relationship between them swing as if on the hinge of his intentions; up to that moment he had been the locus, his hometown, his university, his classes that she was auditing, his family here in Missoula to be dealt with—but now he would be the guest, she the focus of action and attention. As if acknowledging this further, Dale said, “What I’ll really do is write my serious novel and learn how to be a good house husband while you’re at the library studying The Song of Roland or whatever the hell it is. When you come home in the wee hours, I’ll have a hot meal waiting and give you a back rub when we go to bed.”

Clare had looked up at him then, almost startled, with something like alarm visible in her eyes in the instant before she looked back toward the horses. Perhaps, Dale thought, it had been the use of the word husband . Whatever the reason, her glance had given him the first solid foreboding of their final breakup just three months in the future.

As if denying the possibility of that, he had stepped forward then, pushed her pitchfork away, and hugged her tightly, feeling her soft breasts through the denim workshirt. If there was a second or two of awkwardness on her part, it fled as soon as she returned the hug and raised her face for a kiss. One of the horses—Mab’s roan, probably—showed jealousy by kicking the stall gate.

Someone was knocking on the door.

Dale struggled awake, registered that he was lying on the daybed in Mr. McBride’s study still fully clothed and that his head still hurt like a sonofabitch, and then the pounding resumed. He looked at his watch. 9:15A.M. —they had promised to have people here for the search at first light. “Goddamnit to hell,” muttered Dale.

Groaning, rubbing his whiskered cheeks, he went out to let Deputy Taylor in.

“Where are they?” asked Dale as the heavyset deputy stepped into the kitchen, swinging his arms to get warm and eyeing the empty coffeemaker. Taylor had obviously also just been awakened.

“You’re supposed to come with me,” said the deputy, nodding toward his idling car outside.

“What are you talking about? Deputy Presser said he’d bring some people at first light for the search and. . .”

“I got a radio call. You’re supposed to come with me right now.”

“To the sheriff’s office?” asked Dale. “Have they found Michelle?” Dale’s skin went cold then with the absolute certainty that they had found her body.

Deputy Taylor shook his head, although Dale couldn’t guess which part of the question he was answering. Hopefully both parts. “You gotta come now,” the deputy said, pulling Dale’s peacoat from the hook.

“Do I have time to grab a quick shower and change my clothes?”

“I don’t think so,” said the chubby deputy, holding out the peacoat.

“Am I under arrest? Do I have to ride in the back of your car?”