A sound to spark some primitive—or maybe only childish—fear. A flash of ancient, ignorant panic, tickling your spine. A brief awareness of how the natural world might, in an instant, reduce you to a brief, trembling, and utterly inconsequential detail of its larger machinations. Somewhere at this point, this noisy pinnacle—I recall it as the intense height of the storm—a man stood briefly in the doorway, and then slipped into the room.
