At approximately ten o’clock on a mid-June evening, near Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, I escorted my canine friend, Magni, on his final patrol of the yard. His duties at that hour are mostly ceremonial, though they do include the inspection of shadows and the watering of certain favored plantings.

It was during this routine expedition that I became aware of a disturbance in a tree.

I do not mean a squirrel, nor a raccoon, nor one of those ordinary woodland complaints with which a man may contend using reason, profanity, or a flashlight. No. This was a congregation. A convocation. A committee of large birds had assembled themselves in the branches, and they were making a noise for which civilization has not yet coined a decent word.

It was a hiss, but not the honest outward hiss of a snake, which at least has the courtesy to declare its intentions plainly. This was an inward hiss. A drawing-in of wickedness. A sound as if the tree itself were attempting to inhale a ghost. The sound was not angry. It was busy. Somehow this was worse.