“Nonsense,” he said out loud, as if doing so would quell the voice.

A goshawk buzzed his head. Wooooosh. The goshawk’s crimson eye ogled him as it streaked for the other end of the orchard, dagger wings and fanned tail cutting through the green air.

Where’s it going, Matthew? the little voice asked. Why is that goshawk out in the open at two in the morning? Think about it.

Matt stood from the post, as if changing position would make the voice go away. Wings buffeted the air around him. Birds of all sizes and species swarmed the sky, their scattering silhouettes against the gigantic curtains of northern lights.

To the southwest, where the orchard met the wall of chokecherry, several balsam firs marked a game path that led to the bog. It was there a trophy white-tailed deer scraped and picked its antlers against a trunk. The buck’s hide was green from the lights, turning it into a woods specter.

Matt shifted his attention back to the sky, turning in a circle, soaking in the curtains from orb to treetops. He wanted to remember as much of this as he could. His father would’ve done the same thing. To put it simply, very few people got to see this kind of spectacle. And it wasn’t some gimmick in a movie. No sir, this was the real deal.

A strange sensation hit him, like he’d just stepped off an elevator. Then he realized the ground was shaking under his feet. He went over to touch the leaning post and it too was vibrating. The U.P. was not known for earthquakes, but it was possible. As he removed his hand from the leaning post, a tremendous boom echoed from the Hurons. Matt’s first instinct was to hold his hands to his ears, but then he realized it was too late. As his ears rang, he tried to form an association with the sound, and the closest he could muster was an enraged elephant mixed with freight train.

His nerves bubbled up in his throat, and he swallowed away the bile. He worried that the voice might return. He took deep breaths, his feet uneasy on the earth, his mind betraying him at sub-levels, ready to order his feet to go at any second. Okay, calm down, he thought. You know there are no trains in the area. Could’ve been a quake shifting some rocks up in the Hurons. This is tough country under the soil, real rugged. Precambrian stuff.

The sound came again.

Huuuooohar.

Matt cradled his ears, half for protection, half for denial. When he removed his hands and touched the post, it no longer shook. He scanned the southern valley towards the Hurons, looking for anything that might’ve created such a noise.

The birds had disappeared from the sky.

The noise came from a bad thing, the little anxiety voice said. A very bad thing. Run.