Mr. Quarrell was born in 1946, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He has so far survived public schools, community college, and university (his baccalaureate degree is in English but written in Latin), the US Air Force, and various employment. His work has appeared in such outlets as Dark Ink Magazine, Rue Scribe, and Coffin Bell. He lives and writes in New Hampshire.

Bigger Than a Ferret-Polecat

Hugh gazed out through the French doors that opened onto the garden. “It’s still there,” he said, pointing with his pipe.

“What’s still where?” Hester replied, without looking up from her crossword.

“Can’t tell what, exactly” he said, “it’s biggish though, and dark.”

“Really?” She put down the Times. “How big? Where?”

“It’s a lot bigger than a ferret-polecat,” he said, smiling. “Just beyond the pergola. Slunk out of the potting shed and climbed up the grape arbor this morning while I was watering the hibiscus.”

Hester hoisted herself to her feet on the second try and shuffled to the vantage point that had captivated her husband. “Another of your little forest friends?” She looked toward the lawn perfunctorily. “Where?” she demanded, squinting. “I don’t see anything. What’s a ferret-polecat?”

“Never mind, just a joke,” said Hugh, shaking his head. He fastened his hands on her shoulders and turned her a bit to the right. He pointed alongside her head with his pipe in the direction of the pergola and grape arbor.

“There,” he said. “You’ll have to wait ‘til it moves to see it, it’s perfectly camouflaged.”

Hester peered for a few seconds, then turned away from the door. “It’s your brain that’s camouflaged,” she said, pouring a refill from her breakfast pitcher of Bloody Marys. “You probably saw a skunk.”

As she set the pitcher down, a noise that blended a shriek and a growl floated in from the garden through the open window. Hester’s face went ashen; her hand froze on the pitcher handle.

“Some skunk,” said Hugh, grinning around the bit of his pipe.

“What a hideous racket,” she said. “Close the damned door!” She downed her Bloody Mary and returned to the couch and the crossword.

Hugh took his vintage side-by-side Chekhov shotgun down from its rack near the mantle. “Off for my walk, Muffin,” he said, laying it over his arm. “Back by lunch, I expect.” He went out, with the French doors left ajar.

At lunchtime there was no sign of Hugh. Hester made her own sandwich, accompanied by grumbling and muttering and dollops of mayonnaise splupping onto the floor.

She was snoring on the sofa when the sun went down. She never saw the big dark form flow down from the pergola and skulk across the lawn. If the French doors had been closed, it might not have got in at all. Or at least the noise of something trying to open them might have wakened her in time. As it was, she never heard the next shrieking growl, this time with a snarl embroidered on, from the lawn just beyond the French doors. And well after dark, she never heard Hugh’s jaunty, “Back again, Old Thing, sorry to be so long,” wafting in through the open doors.