Sun-Dogs

Chapter 6

“Cecilia! Hey! You all right?” I rattled the door handle furiously—locked, of course. “Cecilia! Now, listen, you’re going to have to say something, darlin’, or we’re just going to have to kick this here door right in; ya understand?”

I leaned closer as something seemed to shift; to move—as clothing ruffled and rain trickled. “Cecilia?”

And then it came: Then she screamed, although it wasn’t so much a scream as a shriek, a wail—an extended howl the likes of which I’d never heard (and pray I never hear again). Then she was yowling like an animal even as I stepped back and kicked in the door; as I found her hunched over the toilet and starting to mumble–pitifully, incoherently. Defeatedly.

As I rushed in and knelt beside her, turned her to face me—not yet noticing the obvious; not yet noticing the mortal difference, the cruel jest that had been played on her. “Cecilia–what, what is it? What–”

But then I did notice it; noticed her flat stomach, her thin, gaunt face. Her haunted, terror-stricken eyes—and, also, the complete lack of blood anywhere.

“What happened here?”

“No-nothing—nothing happened. Don’t you see? He was just—he was just here, inside, kicking ... and then—then the kicking stopped.” She batted the tears from her eyes. “It just stopped; do you understand? It—”

She turned and retched into the bowl; forcibly, violently—just retched and retched, her entire body shaking.

I looked at Hank—who was already on the phone—then reached up, slowly, and flushed the toilet.

“Now, listen. There’s, ah, there’s people on the way here who are gonna help us with this—this thing, okay? So, until then, you just lean on the big white telephone here and try not to move—and I mean not a lick. All right? Ya hear?”

And then my phone rang, and, God help me, I had to take it. Then Donovan’s girlfriend was on the line demanding to know why I’d made him walk around the cemetery in the middle of a thunderstorm—and that I had better go look for him, and give him a ride, like, yesterday.

Because he hadn’t come home yet, she said, and he wasn’t answering his phone.

But that wasn’t really what alarmed me. No, what alarmed me was: I hadn’t made him cut around the cemetery. And then thunder struck somewhere close; krack-kakroom! And I got a move on.

––––––––

He lay spreadeagled like a ragdoll—like he’d been making a snow-angel—his tongue fat and blue; as if he’d been eating pomegranates—his entrails unspooled. The cumbersome poncho rustled as I dialed my cellphone and waited for it to ring—and ring.

Dammit, Bennet, pick up ...

“Hello, you’ve reached the personal number of Bennet ‘Benny’ Firth—Deputy; Sandy Chain Police Department; Badge Number—well, Badge Number 2, I mean, it’s a small department—winner of the 2017—”

I hung up and looked at the body—at its bloody hands, as though Donovan had been trying to shield his face; at the grass and dirt-turning-to-mud, which—

Well, wasn’t that odd.

I knelt and examined the ground—which was soaked in blood and rain. It was almost like—yuh, there; and there. Anterior and lateral support impressions. Nude; no shoes. And toeprints: one, two ... three—just three, with no evidence of a heel, no posterior support at all. Not human, obviously. Not dog. Not bear. More like a f*****g ostrich; or—

Ka-c***k! Karoom!

I jumped as lightning struck a nearby tree—my heartbeat surely stopping, if only for an instant, my bladder feeling as though it might void right then and there. Then I was up; I was standing, looking at the split trunk and the tree’s glowing pulp; looking at the burning branches, which crisped and fell away.

Fire extinguisher ... Dammit, get the fire extinguisher!

And then I was hustling, running for the truck as fast as I could, pausing at Cynthia’s grave—or at least where her grave should have been—feeling dazed and disoriented; spying the patrol truck where I’d left it—at Wilber’s—sprinting for it only to skid to a stop next to the fence and lean on my knees, panting.

Only to wait there where Oreo would have normally greeted me—just as he greeted everyone—with a hail of yaps and spit—but didn’t. Holding and looking at all the blood—then following that blood directly to his doghouse ... to where the poor thing had died half in and half out of its door. Where the poor thing had retreated to lick its mortal wounds and curl up in the cold, familiar straw; to wonder if it had protected its people and its property; to bleed out and die.

There was a crashing sound and I froze—the sound of wood splintering and glass breaking. A sound which had come from behind Wilber’s house.

I listened carefully, intently—heard only the wind and the rain, the thunder of lightning, dogs barking in the distance. At last it came again, only muffled somewhat, more muted: another splintering, another breaking of glass. This time, however, it hadn’t come from outside. No, this time it had born a kind of echo, a kind of interiority—as though it had originated from an interior space. As though it had originated from inside Wilber’s house.

––––––––

As for what I was thinking as I gripped the shotgun and stepped through the shattered doors, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was just the fact that it felt good to have it in my hands again—the shotgun, I mean, the Remington 870—“Fat Man,” as we called it, our nuclear option—the one Bennet wasn’t ever allowed to use. Or maybe it was Mollie’s newscast with its mentions of President Tucker’s refusal to concede and Steve Dannon’s Daedalus Seven returning to Earth, the connection being—I suppose—that both of them seemed about as possible as a baby suddenly vanishing or a killer ostrich wandering the peninsula.