THIRTY-FOUR
In the early evening, Rick Knowles thought he heard a low rumbling sound coming from his barn. Not usually concerned by noises, being a dairy farmer often meant all kinds of different sounds filled the air, but this was no cow. Alert, he stopped and listened, straining to again pick up the sound. But when nothing came from inside the old building his grandfather had erected almost half a century ago, he trudged back through the fields to his farmhouse, dismissing it as either the wind rattling through rusted hinges or sodden haystacks groaning with the damp.
Marilyn, his wife, looked up as Knowles came blustering inside, shaking off his coat and stamping his feet. She returned to heaping stew onto several plates, Jonathan their eldest already spooning great hunks of meat into
