The old television in the corner popped and hummed like a live wire, decidedly livelier than the rehashed Tonight Show mono­logue it played. Now and then the walls creaked, either from settling or the wind. And things scampered incessantly across the low roof. Too big for mice. Squirrels maybe, more likely rats. He’d shot one last week. The fields were full of them.

Outside the shack’s single window the night was alive with sound. The breeze sawing through the tall, dry grass. The chirping of crickets. The light patter of kamikaze insects pummeling themselves against the screen door. In the distance a dog barked, and even farther away, an engine revved, then faded.

As he listened, he knew there was someone in the room with him.

He wasn’t sure just how he knew. There had been no specific sound to alert him. The screen door hadn’t creaked, and no one had jiggled the knob. The window had not rattled. There had been no heavy footfall, no spoken word, not even a cleared throat. No breathing.

Still, there was someone there. He could feel it. And he knew who it would be.

He raised himself up on an elbow, scratched his whiskered chin, and looked around the dingy little one-room building he’d called home for the past three weeks. It was mostly dark, which was just as well since he’d grown to despise it in that short length of time. The solitary light in the room was the flickering glare of the old black-and-white Motorola in the corner, which due to age and a failing picture tube was fading in and out with annoying regularity, but receiving the audio undisturbed. He grunted with indifference. Best of Carson anyway.

The strobic flash of the TV was a distraction, but soon his eyes adjusted and he was able to look past it, to search the darkened fringes of the room where shadows gathered like strands of cobweb. There was the wobbly dining table where his gear was laid out, the matching stool, the Peg-Board on the wall where hoes and rakes had hung, back when this was a toolshed and not the caretaker’s quarters. Next to the basin was a wooden counter, its top stained black by peat moss and potting soil, these days a home for his hot plate and toaster. His eyes shifted across the rest of the room. Past the Motorola and Karnac the Magnificent was a tall but leaning bookshelf that held nary a book, just some Beanee Weenees and a can of tomato soup and what little else he could afford from the Village Pantry near town. Beyond the bookshelf and hidden from the TV’s luminescence was a La-Z-Boy from the early Mesozoic. Its time-frozen gears were locked somewhere between upright and recline, and its scaly, torn vinyl had been disguised with a throw cover.