The Bog by Michael Talbot Page A

was very attractive. Beneath his plain but tightly fitting clothing he was lean and muscular, and a whorl of dark hair showed through his loosely buttoned shirt. He was also, she realized in her sudden reassessment, very handsome, and his hair and beard were a shiny and lustrous black. Equally striking were his eyes, which, in spite of their furtive modesty, had a sort of smoldering sensuality about them. She realized that if she didn’t know him so well, and had come upon him suddenly in an appropriate setting, she might easily view him as a satyr or some god of the forest, a Bacchus or a Pan.
    “Honey, should that be doing that?” she heard David’s voice in the background.
    “What?”
    “That pot on the stove,” he said, pointing, and she noticed that the potatoes were furiously boiling over the sides of their pan.
    She looked at him, annoyed that he had called it to her attention instead of simply getting up and turning it off himself.
    After they ate they had coffee in the living room. Finally the evening grew late, and it was time for Brad to leave.
    “Are you sure you won’t stay?” Melanie offered politely, once again aghast at the idea of anyone spending a night all alone in a tent out on the moors. “We have clean sheets and plenty of room.”
    “Oh, stay!” Katy piped in brightly.
    Brad considered the matter for a moment. “It’s a tempting invitation, but I just don’t like the idea of leaving the camp unattended for that long. We’ve made an important discovery and I wouldn’t want anyone to go in and mess it up.”
    Melanie looked at her husband, wondering if he too was at all discomfited by the notion of Brad returning to the camp at so late an hour, especially considering the dismaying revelations of the day. But David scarcely even seemed to register Brad’s leaving and was in the process of taking Tuck upstairs to bed.
    Brad said good-bye and left.
    Melanie noticed also that since they had come into the living room, Ben had at long last moved out of his corner in the kitchen and followed them in. He still had not eaten anything, and ever since nightfall he had once again grown increasingly agitated. Now, with Brad’s departure, he padded cautiously over to the door and was sniffing deeply at the air coming in through the crack above the threshold. Suddenly he once again let out a low and plaintive howl.
    “I’m going to let him out,” David said when he came back downstairs.
    Melanie looked at her husband incredulously. “After what you discovered today?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, what if something gets him?”
    “Mel, I thought we went through this. There’s nothing out there that’s going to hurt him.”
    “Then why is he behaving this way?”
    “I told you, there are so many new smells about that it’s just going to take him awhile to get his bearings.” David approached the door.
    “—but,” Melanie argued, but her husband looked at her so sternly that she quieted.
    He reached for Ben’s collar, but the retriever instantly backed away. “Come on,” David coaxed. “Don’t be a big chicken.” He grabbed Ben around the middle and propelled him outside. “Now go get ’em,” he said as he shut the door.
    Melanie felt a sinking feeling. She was sure this was not the thing to do, but she knew her husband well enough to know that this was not a point on which she should challenge him. Outside, Ben just continued to yowl.
    While they were undressing for bed upstairs, they could still hear Ben’s barking, and for the first time David himself grew a little worried. He went to the window in his underwear and peered out. The evening sky was still overcast and the night was an impenetrable black. He could see nothing. For lack of knowing what else to do he went back to bed.
    It was about half an hour later that Ben’s barking became unusually vigorous, and David once again jumped out of bed and ran to the window. He threw it open. Even he could tell now that