by Ellen Datlow
“ ‘Too late,’ she said, with all the smugness of a gambler holding a winning suit.
“ ‘Nat,’ I said.
“ ‘Queen Natalya,’ she said, ‘Sovereign of the Hungry Dogs. Who are going to tear you to shreds.’
“I bolted. There was no point in running any direction but the river, so that was what I did. At my back, I heard Natalie whistle, and the thunder of the dogs’ feet as they leaped into pursuit. My hope was to reach the river, splash in and let its current carry me to safety. Or at least, away from my sister and her animals.
“In the time I’d spent talking to Natalie, however, the distance between her box fort and the muddy shore had expanded to the length of a couple of soccer fields—not so far apart as to place the shore beyond reach, but enough to give the dogs a decent chance of bringing me down. I’d always been a fast runner, faster than anyone else in my grade at school, or two grades ahead of me, for the matter. A glance over my shoulder at the assembled dogs chasing me spurred my feet to move even quicker across the grass. But the dogs were running on four feet, which had to give them the advantage. By the time I was halfway to the river, the leader was right on my heels, its laughter dropped to a low chuckle. I veered right, left, faked right, trying to do what I could to increase the distance between us. The dog’s teeth snapped at me, missed me. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was about to burst out of my chest; my lungs were filled with fire. Funny, a small part of me picked up on this and thought, Wait a minute. You’re dead. How can you be getting tired?
“It didn’t matter. I had reached the shore. At the edge of the grass, I threw myself forward in what I intended to be a long jump, but was more my arms pinwheeling, my legs flailing, as if I could swim through the air. I landed off balance, in a half skid, and my feet went out from under me, dumping me on my back, hard. Before I could do anything, the dog was on me. Its snout tapered to a jagged blade. It raised up on its hind legs, and drove the blade into me, right here.” Hunter’s hand pressed the middle of his shirt.
“Holy shit, did that hurt. I had never experienced that kind of pain before; in comparison, drowning had been almost pleasant. It stunned me, as if I’d been plunged into freezing water, this full-body shock. The dog jerked its head loose from my midsection. Blood splashed my face. I wanted to raise my hands, protect myself from its next strike, but the most I could force my arms to do was tremble madly. The dog prepared to skewer me again. This time, its target was my throat. I shut my eyes.
“And nothing happened. No stabbing pain pierced my neck. I opened my eyes to darkness—no dog, no shore, no river—and then the world rushed at me. I was still on my back, but my mother was above me, her knotted hands pressing my sternum, my older sisters and younger brother leaning in to watch Mom’s efforts, my father standing just beyond them, as if afraid he’d jinx Mom if he was too close, too hopeful. After that, it was pretty hectic: the paramedics, the ambulance ride to the hospital, the exams to check my status. I didn’t forget what happened to me while I was dead, but I . . . put it to the side, you could say. There was no doubt in my mind as to its reality. I still hurt where the dog had impaled me. But since this reality didn’t align with anything I’d been taught to believe about the life to come, I needed time to process it. I can’t remember: Did I ever tell you about my mom asking me if I’d seen Natalie?”
“You did,” Carl said. “You told her she was happy, surrounded by glowing light.”
“Yeah,” Hunter said, “because how could I say her daughter was ruler of her own little hell?”
“Is that what you think it was?”
“Not exactly,” Hunter said, “but not too far off.”
“So, wait,” Carl said. “What about the whole ‘I died and there was nothing’ bit? Not to put too fine a point on it, but for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been pretty insistent about that.”
“Like I said, I lied. Or, not exactly. By the time you heard the story of my first death, I pretty much believed what I was saying. Or I believed I believed it. I don’t know. In my late teens, I went through a phase where I became obsessed with near-death experiences. You know, rising out of your body, moving along a tunnel of light, being greeted by all your loved ones. I read every account I could lay my hands on, searching for a narrative that matched up with what I’d been through. I couldn’t find one. I moved on to scientific studies of near-death phenomena, and learned that there were biochemical explanations for all of it. The tunnel of light was caused by the firing of certain neurons as your eyes shut down. The vision of your loved ones was a last-minute effort by your brain to fool itself about what it was undergoing, a final delusion. It made a sense I couldn’t argue with. I had always been a creative kid; my brain had just come up with a more elaborate fantasy. Yes, it had felt real at the time, but a lot of things had seemed real to me when I was a kid. I used to be very religious; I’m sure I must have told you.”
Carl shook his head. “You didn’t.”
“Oh yeah. Altar boy, morning and evening prayers, Bible study, the works. My parents had this series of books, The Catholic Encyclopedia, big, oversized volumes with gold covers, and I would slide one out from the bookcase and sit leafing through it. I didn’t just believe in Catholicism intellectually, I felt it viscerally. Jesus, Mary, the saints were these living presences I swore I could sense, as was the Devil. By the time I was a teenager, though, my faith had started to waver, mainly because I discovered girls, or maybe I should say, they discovered me. Either way, I knew all of the Church’s prohibitions against anything other than the most chaste kissing, but when Marcie Roy unhooked her bra, all of that went out the window. I was smart enough to be able to rationalize what we were doing, but I also recognized my mental gymnastics for what they were, a type of bad faith, believing my own bullshit, and this revelation was the first crack in the wall. Considering how devout I had been, my belief crumbled remarkably fast, undermined by good old sex.
“The point is, if I had been wrong about religion, which had been at the center of my life, then the chances seemed petty good I had been mistaken about my post-death encounter with Natalie. If there was a difference between the two, it was that what I’d been through with my sister and her dogs retained the vividness of actual experience. I told myself it was due to the extremity of the situation which had produced it. Let’s face it, you’re probably thinking something along those lines right now, aren’t you?”
“You were young,” Carl said, “and it was a horrendous event. It wouldn’t be a surprise if your mind tried to protect you from it. Although . . .”
“What?”
“If it were purely a matter of distracting you from your end, you would think the fantasy would have been more pleasant, less threatening. You go into the light, you meet your sister, and that’s all, folks. This is way outside my area of expertise, though, so there could very well be another explanation I’m not aware of.”
“Like residual guilt over the death of my sister.”
“I suppose. If what we’re talking about is some kind of defense mechanism, I’m not sure that works.”
“You’re right,” Hunter said, “it doesn’t. I want to say it took me a long time to reach the same conclusion, but I knew, on some level, I knew all along. I couldn’t admit it, was all.”
“What changed? The cancer?”
“Before that,” Hunter said. “About six years ago, I saw Natalie again. I was back in Afghanistan, Kabul, to shoot a piece on the rise of heroin addiction there. I was working with a journalist from the Guardian, Janet Singh, and she had been told about a spot under one of the local bridges where the addicts gathered. We took a taxi to the place, and sure enough, there were all these men sheltering under a structure that might have gone back to the Soviets. This was in the middle of winter, January, and it was freezing. Janet found someone to talk to, a young guy who had the worn-out look long-term users get. He had a frankness I associate with certain kind of addict; it’s like their dru
g use has reduced everything in their lives to the essentials, which is maybe not so strange.
“Anyway, we asked the guy the usual questions. How did you start using? How did it affect your relationship with your family? Is the drug hard to come by? Are you afraid of the police? My Pashto isn’t very good, but it didn’t need to be. The guy gave the same answers you get from addicts the world over. Until it came to his dealings with the cops, when he said something that caught my attention. ‘There are good cops and bad cops,’ he said, ‘but the men are more worried about the little girl.’
“ ‘The little girl?’ Janet said.
“ ‘Yeah,’ the guy said. For about the last week, a girl had been showing up among them. It wasn’t unusual for there to be kids under the bridge, but this girl dressed like a westerner, in a red T-shirt and shorts. Taking her for the child of an aid worker or a journalist, one of the older men tried to shoo her away. In return, she did something to him.
“ ‘Did something?’ Janet said. ‘What? What did she do?’
“The guy became embarrassed, looked at his shoes. ‘She put her finger to his forehead,’ he said, ‘and the old man fell down in a fit. His eyes rolled back in his head; foam came out of his mouth. At the end of it, he was dead. Since then, everyone avoided her.’
“Janet took the story for a variety of collective hallucination, which is the rational interpretation. I hadn’t thought about what happened after I drowned for I can’t tell you how long—not consciously, anyway—but right away, I was back beside the box fort. It was as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus. All the air rushed out of me. I bent over, hands on my knees. Janet noticed, asked if I was okay. I shook my head. Hard as it was to speak, I asked the guy if the girl was wearing anything on her hair. I didn’t know the word for crown, so I swirled one hand around my head. His eyes grew large, and he nodded, said she had on a taaj like a child would make. ‘Who is she?’ he wanted to know.
“I couldn’t think how to answer him. Janet wanted to know what was going on. I started to say, ‘Nothing,’ but it was obvious that wasn’t true. Did I mention I’d been in the country for a week? I didn’t, did I? You could guess, though. I looked up at the guy, and standing ten feet behind him, there she was: Queen Natalya, Ruler of the Hungry Dogs, my dead sister. She hadn’t changed much since I’d seen her last, four decades earlier. She glared at me with hatred pure and freezing as an Arctic gale. I panicked, told Janet we had to leave, apologized to the guy we were interviewing, dug in my pocket for some cash to press into his hand. I was terrified Janet was going to notice the girl in the red T-shirt and jean shorts, wearing the cardboard crown, which of course she did while I was attempting to hustle her from under the bridge. The addict had already turned and seen Natalie, and he leaped back the way he might have if he’d seen a cobra raised to strike. ‘Who is she?’ he asked. ‘You know that little girl?’ Janet said. I told the guy to steer clear of her. I didn’t know the word for ghost, so I settled for calling her bad. Janet said, ‘How is this child bad?’ She was trying to step around me, to get to Natalie, who was radiating malice, who was radioactive with it. ‘Please,’ I was saying, ‘we need to go. We can’t stay here.’ But Janet was having none of it. ‘We have to find out what this girl is doing here,’ she said. ‘No, we don’t,’ I said. While we were arguing, Natalie turned and ran the other way, out from beneath the bridge. Everyone gave her plenty of room. Janet pushed me aside and set out after her.”
“What did you do?” Carl said.
“I walked to where the cab was waiting, got in, and returned to the hotel, where I sat at the bar consuming more alcohol than I had in years. This wasn’t convivial excess; this was shot after shot of overpriced vodka to numb the memory of what I’d seen. Eventually, Janet showed up. She’d chased Natalie into a maze of alleys where she’d lost her. She was tired, and pissed, and wanted answers I was too drunk to give her. Let’s face it, though: had I been sober, I doubt I would have told her the truth, either. I was deeply afraid, in a way I’d never been. Scratch that. The fear—the absolute dread hollowing me was what I’d experienced as a kid, when I worried about Hell. The joys of religion. Once you know about something like that, you start to wonder if you might wind up there. It leaves you with the sensation of being horribly exposed, as if your skin is made out of glass and everything you are is on display. It did for me, anyway. Part of an overdeveloped superego, I thought when I left the Church. Sitting at the bar, I felt all the old fear, vulnerable in a way I hadn’t standing across a tent from a Sunni chief pointing his .44 magnum at me. I finally told my friend I’d freaked out because the girl we’d seen looked exactly like my long-dead sister, which had triggered all kinds of emotions I wasn’t prepared for. If you’re going to lie, keep it as close to the truth as you can, right? Janet wasn’t satisfied. We’d been in enough high stress situations for her to know I didn’t lose my shit, not like that. But she let the matter drop, for which I was grateful. It was the last time we worked together, though. Two days later, I left Kabul on the first flight I could snag. I spent the intervening time firmly ensconced at the bar.
“So that was weird,” Hunter said, “but maybe it was an isolated incident, right?” He shook his head. “Nope. On and off since then, Natalie has appeared to me. While I was shooting wildfires in the hills above LA, she was visible between a pair of flaming trees. In eastern Ukraine, she was in the middle of a group of rebels creeping through high grass. I saw her on the roof of a burned-out car on a side street in Aleppo. Always, she wore the same, hate-filled expression.
“My most recent encounter came the week following my cancer diagnosis. I decided I wanted to drive down to the Jersey Shore, revisit the site of my first death. Morbid, perhaps, but there you have it. Do you know, in the years since, I hadn’t been back to that beach once? Not so surprising, I guess.
“With traffic, it was a ten-hour drive. I went alone, didn’t want to bring Jill with me. I suppose that was a sign the marriage was on its way out. I left at breakfast, arrived in the early evening. The town had taken a beating during Sandy: There were still gaps where beach houses had stood. I had an idea I would find a motel room, spend a couple of days on the shore. I stopped at a deli, bought an Italian combo hero and a Coke. Being there might have been all kinds of traumatic, but parking on a side street, walking toward the beach, I was kind of exhilarated. The sky was hung with low puffy clouds the sun was filling with red and gold light on its way to the horizon. I strolled onto the beach, which was mostly empty, sat down halfway to the ocean, and ate my dinner while the waves rolled in. If there was one place I was certain of encountering Natalie, this was it, ground zero for our first meeting. Or, not first, but you know what I mean. Our first posthumous run-in. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I wasn’t concerned about it, but I was less worried than you would have anticipated. Maybe what I needed to do, I thought, was to confront my sister here, where everything had started. Call it a version of taking the fight to the enemy.
“All my bravado went straight out the window when I saw her running toward me. She burst from the waves, already moving full-tilt, her arms out low to either side, her fingers curved into claws. Her mouth was open in a scream that made me nearly piss myself. Where the ocean foamed behind her—I don’t know how to describe this—it was full of the Hungry Dogs, I couldn’t say how many of them, rising from the water and falling back into it, as if they were trying and failing to gain form. Natalie’s bare feet pounded the sand. Her clothes were dry, as was the cardboard crown. I’m not sure I can convey how frightening it was. It—she had lost none of the intensity, the single-mindedness kids have, and that we spend our adult lives attempting to recover. She didn’t hate: She was hate. She was no bigger than she’d ever been, but her screaming surrounded her, made her part of something enormous and terrifying. I swore I could hear the dogs laughing in the waves.
“I didn’t waste any time. I left my sandwich wrapper and bottle where they were and fled for the car, which s
ounds easier than it was. My feet kept threatening to slip from underneath me and dump me on my ass. At my back, Natalie’s scream expanded. Legs burning, I reached the pavement. Natalie’s scream was deafening; it vibrated right through the center of me. I glanced over my shoulder, saw her a dozen steps away. Whether I was going to reach the car before she reached me was looking like a close thing. Thank God for keyless entry; I jammed my hand in my pocket, found the remote, and pressed the unlock button. My shirt jumped as Natalie swiped at it, missed. As we drew even with the car, I sped up, running past the driver’s side door and then dodging left, around the trunk, to the passenger’s side. It was the kind of trick I used to play on her when we were growing up, and it worked now, as it had worked then. I flung open the passenger’s door, threw myself into the car, and hauled the door shut, locking it.