by Robert Parry
And suddenly he was awake. He looked at the clock on his bedside. It read three forty-seven AM. Nothing new about that. Must have been over twenty years since he didn’t have to get up at some point in the night to take a piss. But this felt different. It wasn’t the usual groggy, nagging pull of his bladder. This felt urgent, instinctual. Like a rabbit sensing a predator it couldn’t see. He strained his head, listening hard into the silence, but there was nothing. This ranch had been his home for pretty much his whole life, and he knew it about as well as he had known anything. Almost as well as he had known his own wife. He knew every inch of the place, every dripping faucet, every knot in every creaking floorboard, and he knew something wasn’t right. He could just feel something. Something under the silence, something that raised the hair on his arms.
He swung his legs out of the bed, slid his feet into his slippers, and looked at the empty space in the bed where his wife used to sleep.
“Honey, I’m gonna go get a glass of water. There ain’t nothing to worry about, so you go on back to sleep now.”
He still talked to her, even though she had been dead going on nine years now. Miss Ellen May. His Miss Ellen May. Slim, tough, and prettier than the Montana sunrise in her blue cotton dress and boots. She was the best dancer in the county, and she swore as good as any ranch hand or roper when she’d had a few whiskeys. They were married forty-eight years before the cancer took her. It took her fast, which people told him was a mercy, although he couldn’t see much mercy in it himself.
He slipped on his robe and walked out onto the landing. It wasn’t cold. It would be a few weeks yet before the nights drew in, but he felt less exposed than in just his pajamas. He gripped the handrail and started down the stairs, passing the faded family portraits that hung there. His grandpa in black and white, a serious-looking man with his moustache and Winchester rifle, his daddy and his momma both young and happy, holding their son. His favorite picture of Miss Ellen May. The one with her sitting on a hay bale in the back of a pickup truck. All of them long gone now.
At the bottom of the stairs, he peered into the living room. The moonlight casting the furniture in slivery shadows. He could smell the woodsmoke and ash from the fire grate, and he looked at the old Winchester rifle that hung above the mantlepiece. He knew it wasn’t loaded and hadn’t been for a long time. He crossed the room and rested his hand on the mantel to steady himself. He always had liked the way it felt, reassuringly solid yet smooth from years of use. It soothed the growing sense of unease in his gut. He glanced up at the old rifle again then walked into the kitchen. It was empty. Nothing there but stillness and shadow. He went to the sink, took a glass from the rack, and turned on the faucet. The faucet groaned and the water burst out, but it was too loud, too exposing. He shut it off and put the glass back unused, then tightened the belt on his robe and looked out of the window.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, they settled on a shape. It took him a moment to register what he was looking at. At first, he thought it was his truck, but the shape wasn’t something made by man. He peered harder into the dark, trying to grasp where the edges of it ended and the night began. Above him the clouds shifted, and thick shafts of moonlight fell across the yard. The old man’s breath caught in his throat as the shape was draped in the moonlight.
Standing in front of him was something from another time, powerful and primal. The creature stood there unmoving. Hot breath steaming from its nostrils, its black horns casting a shadow on the ground like some ancient devil. The old man blinked. There hadn’t been buffalo here since his grandpa’s day, back when they roamed the plains free from the fear of man.
The beast pawed at the dirt. Then, as if it knew it was being watched, it turned its mighty head to look at the old man. For what seemed like an eternity, the animal stared into the man’s eyes, then shook its head and turned away. The moonlight slid off its great shoulders as it melted slowly back into the darkness and disappeared.
The old man stood there transfixed. He didn’t remember walking away from the window or out of the kitchen. He passed the wooden mantelpiece and the empty fire grate, the family pictures on the stairs, until he found himself back in his room, standing over the bed. He looked down at his wife, who opened her eyes and, seeing him, asked, “What’s the matter?”
He blinked at the sight of her. “I saw a buffalo.”
She smiled back up at him. “A buffalo? I saw one of those once.”
“Around here? When?”
She held out her hand to him. “Must be going on nine years ago.”
The man looked over to the clock on his bedside. It read three forty-seven AM. “Is it that time?” he asked. She nodded, and the man, suddenly tired, took her hand, climbed into bed next to his wife, and closed his eyes.