Now, wide awake, heart thumping wildly, Garth lay in bed, tossing and turning in the sweaty sheets, listening keenly to the sounds behind the rain. The sounds, he knew, came from somewhere in the thick forest surrounding the old family log cabin; they had been constant for the last three nights.

If he listened hard enough, behind the rain pounding on the cabin’s tin roof Garth could even hear a reverberating empty wooden sound, like two hollow wooden sticks being struck against each other, at regular intervals; it was as if someone were trying to send him a message through the chill wet October darkness. Occasionally, straining to listen, head exploding with migraine pain, he was certain that he could detect voices, sometimes a man’s but most often a woman’s. Once last night, Saturday, he had even heard someone shriek.

Then, as he heard a beast’s low howl, he sat bolt upright in bed; he remembered a story he had known about since childhood and had heard as recently as last year in one of the bars in the small logging town just down the road.

Some old locals had been talking about a witch or a fallen angel (they couldn’t decide which one), a woman with dark wings who prowled the local forests, kidnapping and dismembering stray children and who could assume the form of a wolf or large dog at will. One of the men claimed to have seen the witch— a beautiful woman with long raven hair, black wings, and a black flowing gown--thirty or forty years ago when he had been fishing with his son down by Anderson creek. Another commented that, ten years ago, he and his wife had seen a huge white wolf in their back yard late one night. In fact, according to the area’s historian Simon Reyes, reports of the sightings of the huge beast and the beautiful woman with raven wings had been occurring for a century.

When he had heard these tales before this weekend, Garth had discounted them as mountain myths that locals made up to keep themselves amused and frightened. As Garth now lay in bed listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof, waiting for the sounds, imagining a howling, shrieking beast prowling the forest just beyond his cabin, certain that he had detected the rustling of wings behind the rain, he wasn’t so sure.

A respected college English professor who wrote historical novels in his spare time, Garth had looked forward to the weekend as a chance to clear his mind, polish a new manuscript set in the pre-Civil War South, do a bit of hiking and fishing alone, and escape an alcoholic wife and two teenage sons that thrived on making his life miserable. His nineteen year old son Jeff, in fact, had spent the last weekend in jail; the sixteen year old, Danny, was being held in a detention home for raping the neighbor’s twelve year old daughter.

Almost as if they had been timed to do so, the incessant rains had started one hour after his arrival, around 4:30 Friday afternoon, gradually at first, but by midnight water coming down in sheets. The more it rained, the more depressed Garth became. Now it was late Sunday night, and the rains had been unrelenting as blood flowing from an open wound, confining Garth to his dark cabin, turning the land into a dark muddy wasteland, and pushing him into the unlit canyon of despair. With the rain feeding his dark mood, he was now afraid to walk to the trout stream that lay one hundred yards from his cabin door. The notion of walking to the small town one mile away earlier that evening had become terrifying.

So as it had poured, day after day, Garth had remained in his cabin, keeping the television on nearly full volume to drown out the sound of the rain as well as the images of dismemberment and decapitation that came with this storm, forcing himself at times to read through Nabokov’s The Execution, unable to tackle his unwieldy manuscript, titled DeathWitch, about witchcraft in the pre-civil war South. Upon occasion, he knelt next to his bed in the small room at the back, opened the old black leather family Bible, and prayed that God would help him to make it through the weekend.

As Garth now lay in bed—Friday night, Saturday night, and now Sunday night-- listening to the intensifying rainfall, he began to recall a childhood incident that had scarred him deeply and that he had tried to forget. It was almost beyond control, his mind’s almost obsessive insistence upon bringing to the surface of his conscious thought the memory of a gruesome tragedy and upon replaying bits and pieces of the event until the script lived in his mind in its entirety. This night, Sunday, he finally recalled the incident in vivid, bloody color.

Confused, Garth had dropped the fish he was cleaning, wiped the blood on his shorts, looked at Ronnie, and begun to walk towards the house. It was then, with no warning it seemed, that the sky darkened and rain began to fall in buckets. Through the whoosh of the rain, as the boy had walked towards the cabin, he could hear uncontrolled sobbing, which he knew came from his mother. He’d heard his mother cry many times before. Too, as he approached the front steps, he noticed the local sheriff’s blue and white patrol car parked out front.

When Garth had stepped into the small darkened cabin, his overweight, red-haired mother had run to him, thrown her arms around him, and wept. In the small room, his father, he noticed, had had his back turned towards them and was talking in a low monotone to the officer. "What’s the matter, Momma?" he had asked, holding his trembling mother, stroking her long red hair, and trying to comfort her.

Between gasps and sobs, his mother had told him that his sister’s body had been found three hours before five miles up the creek. Numbed, Garth had listened as his mother related how a tourist family from Arkansas had found eight-year old Tina floating face-down in a pond that fed off the creek. Rope burns on her neck had suggested to local authorities that Tina had been strangled to death, her corpse left in the pool for someone to find. Horribly, Tina’s hands and feet had been cut off.

The story of the murder had made evening news on all three major networks. However, as rumors of a child-eating witch circulated the bars and stores in the area, Tina’s murderer had never been found; local police and the FBI had searched the area for clues and missing body parts hundreds of times.

Secretly, from the day of his sister’s disappearance and murder, Garth had blamed himself and Ronnie. At nine o’clock the morning of the murder, when the children had begun to fish the stream, Garth had joyfully noticed Tina wandering away from them, heading upstream towards the darkest part of the forest and had said nothing. Tina was always wandering off on her own, and Garth, the oldest at twelve, was tired of looking after his sister.

Now at forty-four years old, Garth remembered that as she had wandered off down stream, Tina had carried two large wooden Chinese sticks, one in each hand, which she struck together in five-second intervals. The result was a hollow reverberation that carried for miles through the forest. Her father had given Tina the sticks for Christmas last year, supposedly to ward off unfriendly Chinese spirits.

So when he and Ronny had returned to the cabin in the middle of the afternoon, storm clouds rapidly gathering overhead, he had noticed that Tina wasn’t there. He had been instantly seized with a panic he tried not to show his parents. She’s coming, he had assured his worried mother and father, who at four o’clock had climbed into their pickup and driven the back roads to find the little girl.

Hopeful that everything would work out, Garth had returned to helping Ronnie clean the twenty-two fish they had caught. An hour later, his parents had returned home without Tina, and it was then that Garth had started to get the queasy feeling in his stomach that told him something was definitely wrong. Around six, normally dinner time, as he and Ronnie were packing the fish in an ice chest, Garth had heard the sobbing and walked through the torrential rain to the little cabin to learn the details of Tina’s murder.

The sounds, the terror, Garth knew, had to stop. This was becoming unbearable. At the very least, spiraling into depression, Garth knew that he had to discover once and for all what was causing the sound. It was possible, even likely, Garth realized, that the sounds were figments of his exhausted and overworked imagination; he knew that his depression, if untreated, invariably led to moderate to severe psychosis. He suspected that he was already hearing things. As for treating the symptoms, Garth remembered that he had left his medication back home in Salem.

Yet, if he could assure himself that there really was no basis for the sound, Garth knew he would probably find peace. It was just as he put his legs over the edge of the bed and stood, ready to get dressed and brave the rain storm, that he heard voices coming through the rain and an explosion on his roof, as if something had jumped onto the top of his cabin. In his mind’s eye, he saw what sat atop the cabin: a demonic spirit, an angel with dark wings. He froze, body numbed by fear, waited for the voice, knew instantly that it had to be Tina’s voice.

Jesus Christ, Garth thought, trying to call upon the rationality and intelligence that characterized him as an English professor and a writer. Jesus, this cannot be happening; I cannot allow myself to get depressed. Wondering why he hadn’t stayed home in Salem, he noticed that he was sweating profusely. He felt sick to his stomach.

I have to act, Garth told himself, sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling on a sweater, his levis and boots, and his winter parka and heading for the door; for only in action, only by confronting the sound and the basis of his fear would his fears vanish. Fearful yet determined to face his own darkness, Garth strode boldly to the front door, unlocked the bolt, and grabbing the old ax he kept near the door stepped outside onto the porch and finally down the two steps into the relentless rain, pounding the muddy earth with hellish fury. He couldn’t recall ever having been in such a violent storm. Pausing for an instant, he listened to the rain and looked at the huge sharp ax he was cradling in his hands. It had been his father’s ax and had never been used for anything but to cut wood. Perhaps, Garth thought, his mind spinning for an instant in a crazy direction, that was about to change.

Then, startled out of his brief reverie, he heard the hollow wood sound again, but this time the drumming occurred in rapid succession and came from the trees all around him. Then, as the drumming suddenly stopped, he heard laughter and voices form behind the cabin. Determined not to be mastered by his fears, Garth put his head down in the driving rain and, carrying the mighty ax in both hands, waded through the thick mud around the cabin towards the dense undergrowth.

As he moved in the direction of the creek, he peered through the furious rain, expected thick wet darkness, and could just make out a dim glow somewhere several hundred yards in front of him. What the hell is this?, he asked himself. He couldn’t fathom an outdoor fire in this weather.

Heart pounding furiously, the sounds now drumming constantly, he pushed his way through the forest towards the glow, aware as he walked that he was looking at a huge bonfire that had somehow been set in the rain. When he came to the clearing, he stopped, fire towering in front of him, flames leaping to the sky and cracking wildly in a fiery dance. What is this?, he wondered, slowly circling the fire, feeling scorched by flame, and keeping his eyes on the perimeter for anything that moved. He felt in his heart that something had to be there, lurking in the darkness, waiting for him; he listened for the hush of dark wings. It was still pouring rain.

He had circled the huge flame a fourth time when he saw it, movement next to a huge dead pine tree ten yards away, a gigantic white blur. Quickly, he left the fire and moved toward the flash, walked up to the tree where the white thing had been, found nothing, looked again, and turned around. Whatever it was had gone, he decided. Perhaps, he told himself, he had made this up in his mind.

It was as he turned around to walk back towards the fire that he saw the huge thing seemingly step out of the fire, separating itself from the flame, placing itself between him and the flames. Briefly wondering if he had become totally delusional, stopping abruptly and raising his ax, he stared at the thing silhouetted by the fire and, as he continued to stare, watched the dark figure materialize as the biggest dog he had ever seen. Garth could clearly see the thing now, a beast that had just walked into this world from the gates of Hell. The thing seemed to be inches in front of him. It was a huge white beast, its eyes glaring red, its teeth bared, a snarl audible though the rain. He could smell the fetid breath of the white beast.

Heart jumping into his throat, thinking he should turn and run, Garth nevertheless raised his ax and planted his feet firmly in the ground just as the beast lowered itself, howled, studied him for an instant, and then lunged towards him. seeming to hang in the air for an instant. Instinctively, Garth struck out with his ax, aiming for the head, the sharp metal ax head cracking into the animal’s neck. The beast shrieked in its death, and Garth could hear gristle and bone snap and pop. With a spray of blood that covered Garth, the beast bayed again and again and, its mouth wide in agony and its red fiendish eyes on Garth, fell to the earth inches from Garth’s feet in an explosion of mud and blood. The bloodied white beast lay there, its eyes open, its body motionless and apparently unbreathing.

Garth breathed deeply, wiped some blood off his cheek, realized he was still in the world. The thing’s gotta be dead, Garth assured himself; nothing would survive that blow. The ax stuck from the beast’s neck, and it occurred to Garth that he should chop the thing’s head off.

Slowly he leaned over to pull his weapon out. Just as he grasped the handle, the bloodied white beast opened its eyes and mouth, shrieked like a demon, bared its teeth, and lunged. Reacting automatically, Garth sprang backwards, fell on his back still clutching his ax, felt the beast’s teeth sink into his right leg, screamed from pain. He knew death was certain, paused and lay on the wet ground and then sat up to look. The huge beast lay still and bloodied, Garth’s leg still in the thing’s jaws. The rain was now a constant deluge. What the hell sense does the damned fire make? Garth asked himself. Prying his leg loose with agony, Garth learned to one side and vomited wildly and then struggled to his feet and, ax poised, slowly limped over to and then around the wolf. Holy Mother of God, thought Garth, this thing is as big as a bear.

Exhausted, his energy spent, Garth studied the fire, still blazing furiously, mysteriously, looked once more at the beast, assured himself that the thing was dead, put his ax over his right shoulder, and began to limp back in the direction of the cabin. The pain from the bite was excruciating, the bleeding he realized intense.

He had limped one hundred yards through the forest, leaving a sure trail of blood, when he again heard a sound, a hollow baying, knew then he should have severed the beast’s head; heart in his mouth, he heard something unmistakably huge crashing and thudding through the forest in his direction, knew before it was on him that the beast was not dead and was closing on him.

Panicked, Garth tossed the ax aside and took off running towards his cabin, charging through the dense, wet undergrowth in spite of his limp. The terror of a pursued animal coursed through him like electricity and he wondered, for an instant, who he was and what he was doing. Then, cabin in sight, he stumbled, tripped over a fallen log, and went sprawling face down into thick mud.

Pounded mercilessly by the punishing rain, Garth never had a chance. As he forced himself to turn over, held up his arm to defend himself and fought to get to his feet, he knew instinctively that the thing had sprung. Sudden burning pain coursed through his body as he felt razor-sharp teeth penetrate the flesh of his neck, felt the jaws seize his neck, knew his body was saturated by a warm, sticky fluid, felt himself being bloodily dragged by the neck through the mud, grabbed weakly at the jaws to pry himself to freedom, felt the animal on top of him, suffocating him with its massive strength. Blood flowing from his open neck wound, realizing that struggling was futile, even insane, Garth let his hands fall from the beast’s mouth, gave death permission to take him, and felt the beast’s teeth release its grip around his throat.

Dazed, bleeding profusely, Garth saw the beast looking at him, noted again its red demonic eyes, then saw standing behind the beast two figures: one was a tall beautiful woman with long flowing black hair, blood red lipstick, dark angelic winds, and a long flowing dress that was black as night; the other was a girl, whom Garth in the delirium that precedes death struggled to recognize. The girl held a long hollow stick in each hand and, at regular intervals, staring at him, pounded them together. He couldn’t place the little girl.