‘Pick a language,’ Daniel would laugh, and to his delight, Larry would usually choose Siouan. Not tonight. Tonight it was real late and the house was still and empty.

Lord, but he was tired now. He sat on the bench and pulled off his boots. Maybe it was too late for a beer and TV. Maybe he should just sleep and try not to dream of that mess of flesh he’d stood over in the woods. He put a hand out to the front door beside him and turned the lock. Never usually did that but tonight he felt like it. One quick look at what was on the sports channel, he decided. He stood up and walked through to the sitting room, slumped down on the sofa and punched the remote. Volleyball. Christ. Did he really want to sit and watch a bunch of faggots pushing a ball about on a beach? He sighed and sank into the cushions. It was something to watch. Something to help him unwind.

The windows filled with illumination. The yard-light had gone on. Daniel sat up. That happened sometimes when a big animal broke the beam. But not often. He’d fixed it so you had to be at least as big as Tess. Even Larry couldn’t do it. Only a big deer or a bear would make it read their movement and neither made a habit of coming that close to the house. He went to the window, expecting, hoping, to see an elk blinking in the glare. Nothing. His heart started to beat a little faster when he looked at the thick snow, and one set of human prints, his own, meandering up to the porch, filling up quickly with the huge drifting flakes. No hoof prints. No paw prints. There was obviously something wrong with the sensor. He stood there for its forty seconds of light until it clicked off again and the virgin snow in the yard was lit only by the square of light from his window, his figure making a bulky shadow in the centre of the square.

Behind him in the room the TV was shouting about someone getting the ball over the net. Daniel shook a shiver from his shoulders and sat back down.

It clicked on again. He thought about ignoring it, but he couldn’t. He leapt up quickly this time, in case there was something fleet-of-foot evading his gaze, but the yard was as still as before. Daniel waited stiffly until it switched off into darkness again, then pulled the curtains roughly across the window. He wasn’t going to get up and down every time the damn thing went on. He’d look at it in the morning. Get a new sensor from Hardy’s tomorrow.