The Stranger

A sudden gust rattled a loose pane in the narrow window. The old woman paused in her sweeping to listen to the wind rising around the cabin, whistling through chinks in the mud daubing and swirling down the stovepipe with a hollow, moaning sound.

She had long since become accustomed to the constant roaring of the pine tops swaying overhead. But a wind like this one … well, it carried with it memories she didn’t like to revisit and a forewarning of yet another long winter in this desolate place. In the strong gusts she thought she heard the shrieking of a thousand anguished souls, and in the lulls there was a low murmuring and a kind of mournful sighing that was somehow even worse than the screams.

The woman shuddered and began pushing the old straw broom across the floor again. It felt like she’d been sweeping these rough boards for a hundred years, and yet she could never get rid of the filth. Lately, it seemed the ragged broom made no difference at all as the dirt accumulated in a sooty layer that filled the cracks between the planks.

Dark arrived early here, no matter what the time of year. The sun slanting over the endless miles of heavy forest found this small clearing for only a few hours each day. As the light grew dimmer, the woman stole a quick glance at the window and briefly considered lighting the lantern.

No. That might attract its attention.

She set aside the broom. As had become her nightly ritual, she slid the heavy pine table across the floor to rest against the door, then retreated to the rough-hewn chair at the back of the cabin. There she would sit in the darkness, in the silence, and wait. She prayed this night would bring no new terrors, but her intuition told her this was a vain hope. There was something out there, watching the cabin, just as she sat in here, watching for it.

How strange it was that after all these years, it was only now that the thing chose to creep out of the woods to terrorize her. At first it had been just a vague, uneasy feeling of being observed as she gathered sticks for the wood stove or dug her meager crop of root vegetables from the garden patch next to the cabin.

Then she had begun to catch glimpses. A smoky silhouette atop a leaning fence post. A darker patch of blackness in the shadow of the outhouse. A coal-colored blur slipping around the corner of the ruins of the woodshed. Every evening, a little closer.

Despite its strangeness, there was something oddly familiar about the thing. Its size and blocky shape cast the old woman’s memory back across decades to the young girl who had left her home in Ohio with a man she barely knew. West, across the plains, then north into the forests. The man had told her father that there was opportunity there, in the trackless depths of the woods. Trapping and logging and, soon enough, clearing and farming.

The man had told her father a lot of things that weren’t true.

On that long journey, she had brought a satchel of belongings and one, young cat. He was black as midnight, and she called him Tim. He traveled all the way with them to this very spot, and he had been the only reminder of home and the only source of comfort she had.

But this new, dark thing outside, whatever it was, couldn’t be Tim, because that trip had been more than 30 years ago, and no cat lived that long. One night, not long after the man had constructed this cabin, he had flown into one of his rages after tripping over Tim in the dark and literally kicked the helpless creature out of the cabin. Lying in bed, the woman had heard its yowl of pain, but dared not go to its aid. She expected to find the body in the morning, but the cat was nowhere to be found, and she never saw it again. She still missed it.

The woman also knew the stranger in the darkness couldn’t be a different cat, because there were no such creatures here. Cats meant people, and of people there was only herself for many miles. Certainly there were deer aplenty, she had seen an occasional black bear and once, a majestic bull elk. For a few years a wolf pack prowled the perimeter of the property, and their howls kept her wide-eyed late into the night.

This new, small, dark thing frightened her more.

It was about the size of a hare, but she’d never known a hare to slink so sinuously through the grass or leap so effortlessly atop the sloping well house roof. It might have been a raccoon, except no raccoon stared through the darkness with amber-red eyes that glowed like coals.

Sitting at the edge of the chair, the woman wrapped a dark, woolen shawl around her threadbare shift. She was cold, always cold. Age and hardship had withered her, and the flesh that stretched over her dry bones retained little heat. Her gaze flickered to the pot-bellied stove. But the kindling box beside it was empty, and she couldn’t risk a trip to the woodpile for fuel.

It didn’t matter anyway. She’d learned long ago, well before her body shriveled and the cabin began to crumble around her, that nothing could warm this place. Despite her youthful hopes and attempts to make the cabin livable and even pleasant, it had never been a home. It had always been cold and silent, even during the years the man had shared it with her.

The man had been cold and hard, too, and she sometimes wondered if that was what had drawn him to this isolated place, as harsh and cruel and merciless as he was. The other settlers he had told her father would come, never came. His half-hearted attempt to clear a space for farming lasted just long enough to carve out this circle that separated the cabin from the endless sea of trees. He had hunted and trapped, and she had grown potatoes and turnips and gathered berries and cured wild game, and they had lived that way, barely scraping by, for decades.

If only there had been a child, things might have been different.

But the man had taken that away from her, too, the day he slammed his fist into her swollen belly and killed any chance of being a mother. The woman’s thoughts drifted to the edge of the clearing and the small square of earth where she faithfully placed flowers all summer long, and the longer, newer rectangle beside it. She did not lay flowers on that grave.

It had grown fully dark as she sat thinking about the man, and the baby that barely was, and Tim. How long had it been since she had seen another face, heard the sound of a human voice? Even her own voice was only a memory to her, because who was there to talk to? How many years had it been, with the man and without the man, in this wilderness? There was no way to tally the days and years, and no reason to do so.

The shelf that once held jars of preserved fruits and vegetables and salted meat was empty now. The woman couldn’t recall the last time she had eaten – certainly not since before the thing outside had appeared, and how long ago was that? She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter; she felt no hunger or even thirst anymore. Only cold.

There was a sudden sound that jarred her from her thoughts and caused her gaze to shoot to the door. Was that … scratching? Yes, a sound like long, sharp talons raking down the outside of the timber. Then the door thumped just a bit, as though something small but determined were pushing against it.

“Go away!” the woman rasped, but her voice sounded small and pitiful in the darkness.

Then the thing answered. It was a pleading, slightly impatient sound. A sound she knew. From the window there now came a rattle, caused by a soft paw gently tapping the glass. Looking, the woman saw golden eyes peering through the window and above them, velvety ears.

With sudden understanding, the woman rose from her chair, feeling stronger than she had in a long while. For the first time, she noticed the still form lying under the thin blankets on the narrow cot next to her chair. It looked like it had been there for some time. The woman didn’t examine it more closely; she likely would not have recognized the long, gray hair and wrinkled features anyway.

Instead, she walked across the cabin and slid the table, oddly much lighter now, out of the way. Opening the door, she looked down.

“Hello, Tim,” she said.

The black cat chirped a greeting and wound itself around and between her legs, purring. It felt soft and so, so warm. The woman sensed its heat transfer to her ankles, moving up her legs and torso and all the way through her. It reminded her of the summer days she spent in the garden back home in Ohio, bathed in sunshine.

“Would you like to come in, Tim?”

The cat disentangled itself from her legs, but didn’t enter. Instead, with tail raised high, it turned and began walking away from the cabin. It paused and looked back over its shoulder, and the woman understood that she was to follow. Tim led her across the dark clearing and into the woods. Somehow, it was lighter here than in the clearing, and growing brighter with every step she took. Her feet seemed light and her body felt strong and young.

Ahead of her, a glowing circle of golden light appeared, growing larger as she approached. She could feel a warm breeze coming from it, and smelled an exquisite aroma – roses, she decided. From somewhere in the distance inside the circle, the woman heard the laughter of a small child. It was a babe she had never met, but whom she knew now as intimately as ever two souls had been joined.

At her feet, the cat paused and looked up at her.

She smiled and reached down to scratch his ears. “Come on, Tim,” she murmured. “It’s time to go home.”

And together they stepped into the light.