Free Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen by David Perlmutter, Brent Nichols, Claude Lalumiere, Mark Shainblum, Chadwick Ginther, Michael Matheson, Mary Pletsch, Jennifer Rahn, Corey Redekop, Bevan Thomas Page A

*
    Geoff Hart is a scientific editor, technical writer, and translator from Montréal.

Bloodhound
    Marcelle Dubé
    The smell insinuated itself into Luke Corrigan’s dreams; he turned away from the open window of his bedroom, trying to escape the acrid stink.
    Finally he woke up and swung his feet out of bed and sat on the edge, naked and sweating, his heart beating fast. In the war, he’d wake up just like this, convinced that something was in the trench with him. Only once had it been a German. Usually it was just rats.
    He reached for the filter on his bedside table, then paused. He needed to figure out what the smell was before putting on the filter.
    It was still dark, and the only sound was the loud ticking of the alarm clock by his bedside. Moonlight streamed through the window of the barn loft that was his bedroom, gilding the barrel stove against one wall, washing the rough pine planks of the floor in pale light, and bouncing off the old, warped mirror above the chest of drawers, where he kept the flowered porcelain pitcher and bowl for shaving.
    The smell teased him, first appearing, then disappearing, leaving only the ancient smells of hay, manure, and horses filtering up through the floorboards of the loft, along with the more recent smells of gasoline and grease from the little repair shop he had set up in the far corner of the barn.
    He wrinkled his nose and took a deep breath. Some smells grew bright and sharp when he did that. Not this time. Whatever it was, it wasn’t near. Still, something about it was familiar enough to raise his hackles.
    He pushed the tangled sheet away and stood up to pad over to the window. The hot Manitoba night filled his room. Filled the valley with dust and parched crops and small dead things lying by dried-up waterholes. Even the crickets didn’t have the heart to chirp. His back was damp from the sheets, and he could smell the sweat on his scalp.
    Harriet MacNeil’s farm stood middle-of-the-night quiet, with a half-moon and a wash of diamond stars beaming down on the seared fields beyond her farmhouse. Nothing moved.
    Breathing shallowly, he turned his head one way, then the other, trying to make sense of what he was smelling. Dry earth thirsty for rain. Boulders gradually releasing their warmed stone smell. The faint whiff of a coyote that had passed by a few hours ago.
    Other smells were so prevalent that he only noticed them by their absence: Rex, the MacNeils’s dog, whose smell was as much a part of the scent landscape as the smell of the maple trees in the farmyard; the faint, gagging smell of Jamison’s pig farm three miles upwind; the ever-present perfume of a wild grass that he had yet to identify but had come to call “sweet hay,” which was what Allie, Missus MacNeil’s granddaughter, called it. He had moved into the loft above the empty barn in February, where he near froze to death before he figured out the wood stove, and even then the smell of sweet hay had lingered.
    And now, underneath them all, the ghost stink of death riding the wind.
    He stuck his head out the window and looked in the direction of the pig farm. There, on the horizon, was a long, glowing snake that seemed to leap toward him even as he watched.
    * * *
    Harriet MacNeil woke from a deep sleep to the sound of her name. Allie? Then the voice penetrated her sleep-befuddled awareness. Luke. Her strange tenant.
    She sat up suddenly, clutching the threadbare cotton sheet to her chest, and the old iron bed that had belonged to her parents squeaked beneath her bulk. What was Luke Corrigan doing in her bedroom?
    He was a dark figure standing by her bedside. Rex stood next to him, whining a little.
    “What is it?” she asked, automatically looking to the window, but there was no glow of fire, her ever-present fear, especially now, in this drought. The farmhouse had been built in 1912, after the original one burned down, but the barn was even older.
    “Fire,” said Luke. “You have to take your