from a peg. I’m kinda surprised it’s not completely ruined, what with the elements. Funky, huh? A Daniel Boone era accessory.”
“Gives me the creeps.”
“The creeps? It’s just a fur.”
“I don’t dig fur. Fur is dead. Man.”
“You’re a riot. I wonder if it’s worth money.”
“I really doubt that. Who cares? It’s not ours.”
“Finders keepers,” Miranda said. She held the cloak against her bosom as if she were measuring a dress. “Rowr! I’m a wild-woman. Better watch yourself tonight!” She’d drunk enough wine to be in the mood for theater. “Scandinavian legends say to wear the skin of beast is to become the beast. Haugstad fled to America in 1910, cast out from his community. There was a series of unexplained murders back in the homeland, and other unsavory deeds, all of which pointed to his doorstep. People in his village swore he kept a bundle of hides in a storehouse, that he donned them and became something other than a man, that it was he who tore apart a family’s cattle, that it was he who slaughtered a couple of boys hunting rabbits in the field, that it was he who desecrated graves and ate of the flesh of the dead during lean times. So, he left just ahead of a pitchfork-wielding mob. He built this cabin and lived a hermit’s life. Alas, his dark past followed. Some of the locals in Poger Rock got wind of the old scandals. One of the town drunks claimed he saw the trapper turn into a wolf and nobody laughed as hard as one might expect. Haugstad got blamed whenever a cow disappeared, when the milk went sour, you name it. Then, over the course of ten years or so a long string of loggers and ranchers vanished. The natives grew restless and it was the scene in Norway all over again.”
“What happened to him?”
“He wandered into the mountains one winter and never returned. Distant kin took over this place, lived here off and on the last thirty or forty years. Folks still remember, though.” Miranda made an exaggerated face and waggled her fingers. “Booga-booga!”
Lorna smiled, but she was repulsed by the hide, and unsettled by Miranda’s flushed cheeks, her loopy grin. Her lover’s playfulness wasn’t amusing her as it might’ve on another night. She said, “Toss that wretched skin outside, would you? Let’s hit the rack. I’m exhausted.”
“Exhausted, eh? Now is my chance to take full advantage of you.” Miranda winked as she stroked the hide. Instead of heading for the front door she took her prize to the spare bedroom and left it there. She came back and embraced Lorna. Her eyes were too bright. The wine was strong on her breath. “Told you it was cool. God knows what else we’ll find if we look sharp.”
* * *
They made fierce love. Miranda was much more aggressive than her custom. The pain in Lorna’s knee built from a small flame to a white blaze of agony and her orgasm only registered as spasms in her thighs and shortness of breath, pleasure eclipsed entirely by suffering. Miranda didn’t notice the tears on Lorna’s cheeks, the frantic nature of her moans. When it ended, she kissed Lorna on the mouth, tasting of musk and salt, and something indefinably bitter. She collapsed and was asleep within seconds.
Lorna lay propped by pillows, her hand tangled in Miranda’s hair. The faint yellow shine of a three-quarter moon peeked over the ridgeline across the valley and beamed through the window at the foot of the bed. She could tell it was cold because their breaths misted the glass. A wolf howled and she flinched, the cry arousing a flutter of primordial dread in her breast. She waited until Miranda’s breathing steadied, then crept away. She put on Miranda’s robe and grabbed a bottle of Old Crow and a glass and poured herself a dose and sipped it before the main window in the living room.
Thin, fast moving clouds occasionally crossed the face of the moon and its light pulsed and shadows reached like claws across the silvery landscape of rocky hillocks and canyons, and stands of firs and pine. The stars burned a finger-width above the crowns of the adjacent peaks. The land fell away into deeper shadow, a rift of darkness uninterrupted by a solitary flicker of manmade light. She and Miranda weren’t welcome; the cabin and its former inhabitants hadn’t been either, despite persisting like ticks bored into the flank of a dog. The immensity of