Two Eternities
*
Cassidy stood before the door now, his gloved hand on the iron latch. It was weeks ago that he’d awakened from the restless sleep that had urged him to return here, jarring his memory, making him realize in a fog of abashed sentimentality that he’d left the book behind when he and Jamison had closed the cabin on their way down the mountain all those years ago.
He took a deep breath and pushed, and when the door creaked and gave way to his hand, he stepped inside and stood in the still of the room. He’d prepared himself for disappointment, had come here knowing that the book might well have disappeared—been thrown away or pocketed or even burned for fuel on a bitter winter’s night—but even though he’d braced himself for the possibility of failure, he was not ready for what emerged from the feeble light.
There were five of them, each as dead as the next, the three largest standing where they’d drawn their last breath, and the closest—a shaggy headed, red-and-white Hereford with a white stock tag stapled to its ear—staring at him, accusingly, with bloodshot eyes.
He threw himself backward, away from the frozen animals, and in doing so stumbled against the door, knocking it shut. Trapping him in the darkness. He thrust out a hand to secure his bearings, but the clumsiness of the effort only served to rob him of his balance, and he teetered briefly, precariously, over the corpses before somehow managing to right himself.
A snowstorm! They’d wandered in during a snowstorm, he reasoned, wildly, as he fought to regain his breath. They found their way here just as he and Jamison had done, and the door had blown shut behind them. It was the only reasonable explanation for their being here.
In the darkened room he could feel their eyes on him, as if they were weighing and judging his every thought. But the Hereford steer with the recriminating gaze was the worst of them. Where have you been, Cassidy? it seemed to demand. If you’d have done something sooner, I might still be alive.
Cassidy had no words for the beast, and neither would he find them. Not if he had another thirty years to search his heart. He was, as his old hero had once said, standing on the threshold of two eternities, past and future, the moment of his being frozen in time. He was here for the book, that was all. It was the only thing left to save.