corridor and past the stalls, heading toward the door. It had a frantic quality, part shuffle, part awful scurry.
Panting, whoever it was ran first one way, then back, mindless and without direction, in terrible desperation—that panting! The tack room door opened again with a whoomph. More of the same fugitive flight sounds, like wings flapping against a windowpane. I felt as if a bird was trapped inside of me, flailing against my rib cage. It was hard to breathe; the air around me, only moments before so sweet and comforting, now felt thick and debauched, musky and wild, as if someone was pumping squalor through the vents. Suddenly something wicked oozed from every pore of that barn.
A horse whinnied in alarm.
There was a frenzied scuffle. It grew louder and louder and it came closer and closer, rhythmic and churning, my terror increasing incrementally in jolts of electricity. Dizzy and disoriented, a violent bang brought me round as someone or something landed against the stall door where I hid. My head snapped back. I buried my face in my knees and clamped shut my eyes and tried not to scream. I heard a ragged scrambling, a helpless floundering, and down the corridor the discomposing tread of dragging.
There was something else, something rasping, halting and breathless. Scared. It sounded like a word. “Why?”
The door to the tack room thumped shut and there was silence.
A LL I WANTED WAS to get out of there, but where to go? How to get there? Shaking with fear, I was incapable of sustaining a logical sequence of thoughts. I sat with my eyes shut for a long time. When I dared to unlock my eyes for a quick peek, the top corner of the stable door was visible from where I sat hunched against the wall behind the straw. That door represented freedom and home. Home! However was I to find my way back home? Even thinking about escape was proving too harrowing an exercise—any idea that I might be exposed made me lightheaded. Curling up into myself, I listened and waited. It was so quiet that even the slapping of the horses’ tails as they whisked away flies, the occasional muffled stamp of a hoof on straw, resounded like a thunderclap and I covered my ears, afraid of what I had heard, terrified of the erratic pulse of my own breathing.
I remained in that twilight state for what seemed like forever, a prisoner of shock and impending stasis. Too terrified to make the slightest movement, I sat rigidly in place for so long that when I finally tried to stand and walk it was like taking a mallet to limestone, parts of me crumbling with every stiff and painful step. The door to the tack room remained shut. I had no idea who or what was inside that room, or if they were still inside. Had they left? The tack room had its own separate entrance. My temples pounded. Should I stay or should I go?
I imagined the heart of the barn itself beating in unison with my own as I made my way slowly and mechanically upward until I was standing, holding my breath so successfully that by the time I reached the stall door I felt faint. Outside the stall, tiptoeing toward the stable door, barely resisting the urge to bolt, I counted each step as I quietly focused my whole being on that door. I was almost there when I heard a faint cry.
My knees buckling, I strained to hear, the insistent buzzing of flying insects and the crunch of straw now the only sounds. Then I heard it. Whining. How I wanted to find Vera, but why now? I looked cravenly beyond the door and into the fields.
Whimpering. It was coming from behind me. Behind me was the tack room. Behind me meant going away from the stable door, which had become the central focus of my life. Jostling currents of fear, anger, self-interest and my love for little Vera swept over me. I took two steps forward and then, mustering what little courage I had, I spun around and hastened back down the long center aisle of the stable, passing two more mares with foals and then a series of empty stalls. At
Panting, whoever it was ran first one way, then back, mindless and without direction, in terrible desperation—that panting! The tack room door opened again with a whoomph. More of the same fugitive flight sounds, like wings flapping against a windowpane. I felt as if a bird was trapped inside of me, flailing against my rib cage. It was hard to breathe; the air around me, only moments before so sweet and comforting, now felt thick and debauched, musky and wild, as if someone was pumping squalor through the vents. Suddenly something wicked oozed from every pore of that barn.
A horse whinnied in alarm.
There was a frenzied scuffle. It grew louder and louder and it came closer and closer, rhythmic and churning, my terror increasing incrementally in jolts of electricity. Dizzy and disoriented, a violent bang brought me round as someone or something landed against the stall door where I hid. My head snapped back. I buried my face in my knees and clamped shut my eyes and tried not to scream. I heard a ragged scrambling, a helpless floundering, and down the corridor the discomposing tread of dragging.
There was something else, something rasping, halting and breathless. Scared. It sounded like a word. “Why?”
The door to the tack room thumped shut and there was silence.
A LL I WANTED WAS to get out of there, but where to go? How to get there? Shaking with fear, I was incapable of sustaining a logical sequence of thoughts. I sat with my eyes shut for a long time. When I dared to unlock my eyes for a quick peek, the top corner of the stable door was visible from where I sat hunched against the wall behind the straw. That door represented freedom and home. Home! However was I to find my way back home? Even thinking about escape was proving too harrowing an exercise—any idea that I might be exposed made me lightheaded. Curling up into myself, I listened and waited. It was so quiet that even the slapping of the horses’ tails as they whisked away flies, the occasional muffled stamp of a hoof on straw, resounded like a thunderclap and I covered my ears, afraid of what I had heard, terrified of the erratic pulse of my own breathing.
I remained in that twilight state for what seemed like forever, a prisoner of shock and impending stasis. Too terrified to make the slightest movement, I sat rigidly in place for so long that when I finally tried to stand and walk it was like taking a mallet to limestone, parts of me crumbling with every stiff and painful step. The door to the tack room remained shut. I had no idea who or what was inside that room, or if they were still inside. Had they left? The tack room had its own separate entrance. My temples pounded. Should I stay or should I go?
I imagined the heart of the barn itself beating in unison with my own as I made my way slowly and mechanically upward until I was standing, holding my breath so successfully that by the time I reached the stall door I felt faint. Outside the stall, tiptoeing toward the stable door, barely resisting the urge to bolt, I counted each step as I quietly focused my whole being on that door. I was almost there when I heard a faint cry.
My knees buckling, I strained to hear, the insistent buzzing of flying insects and the crunch of straw now the only sounds. Then I heard it. Whining. How I wanted to find Vera, but why now? I looked cravenly beyond the door and into the fields.
Whimpering. It was coming from behind me. Behind me was the tack room. Behind me meant going away from the stable door, which had become the central focus of my life. Jostling currents of fear, anger, self-interest and my love for little Vera swept over me. I took two steps forward and then, mustering what little courage I had, I spun around and hastened back down the long center aisle of the stable, passing two more mares with foals and then a series of empty stalls. At
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