and there came only the mournful call of some wild thing on the distant bleak shore.
Shaken by the experience, now he wanted more than ever to reach the safety and warmth of the cottage, and the company of the two men there, manning their lonesome watch. He hastened along, skirting around the large boulder that lay on the broken ground beneath the stony rise that led up to the cottage. The sight of the thatched roof, and the thin stream of wood smoke from the chimney, gave him heart, and he hurried on. Soon he came tramping up to the outer porch, taking a deep breath, much relieved as he knocked firmly on the door.
He called out a greeting in Russian, one the men had taught him in their long hours at the post, but no one answered. Casting a wan look over his shoulder, he looked for any sign of recent activity out of doors. Then he tried the handle, finding the door unlocked, and nudged it open. The hinges creaked as he eased inside, thinking he might find the men dozing by the fire, or lost beneath those strange headsets they used when minding their equipment, yet, to his great surprise, there was no one there.
Why would they be out with the weather so unpredictable like this? Perhaps that sudden fog had fouled their radar set, and they went up to the cape to check on it. So this is what Oleg decided to do, yet his discomfiture only increased as he went back out and looked up the sloping rise to the high point where they had set up their devices. Nothing was there… He looked this way and that, thinking the men may have moved the equipment somewhere else. Could they have been recalled to their ship, he wondered? Did that strange whirlybird come just now, devouring them and taking them up into those fluorescent green skies? Was that what he had heard moaning through the ice fog, the deep growl of the engines on that flying contraption?
He took a long look around, shaking his head, and then going back down the rise to the cottage. Once inside he shifted off his pack, and set his rifle down by a chair. Then he saw something on the bare wooden table that seemed odd, a pot of freshly brewed tea, the steam still curling from the spout of the iron kettle. One cup was half full on the table, the second broken and spilled on the wooden floor.
He could picture the men in his mind… at least he thought he could. Suddenly it seemed very difficult to summon up the memory of their faces, though he had spent many hours with them there in the past. Frowning, he scratched his head, looking about, and finding absolutely no sign of the men, not their equipment or books, no boots and coats, nor any possession—only those two cups of tea, one half empty, the other broken. He walked up to the wooden table, pulling off his gloves and feeling something was very wrong here. One hand touched the side of the iron kettle, finding it still very warm, as though taken from the fire just minutes ago.
And yet, with each minute that now passed, his mind seemed to be enfolded with the same deep ice fog that he had encountered earlier on the trail. Why had he found it so necessary to walk all day and come up here to the hunter’s lodge? He knew damn well that pickings were very lean in the summer. He might find an occasional fox or minx, enough for a good pelt or two, but little more. And who had taken the liberty just now to make themselves at home in his cottage?
They must have seen me on the trail, he thought, and when that fog bank rolled through on the wind, they took the opportunity to slip away. Then again, it might have been the reclusive Huldufolk, curious about his isolated haunt, and creeping about in the fog to see what they might find. That he had come there that day, bearing gifts for two strange Russian men, never entered his mind. It fled like the thin, insubstantial tendrils of a dream, the images fading, recollection losing its grip, memories lost. Never again would he think about them, sitting there before those strange humming boxes and winking lights in the night, their eyes watching the odd sweep of a phosphorescent clock face