"Oh," said Eric.
#
All five calls went through to Craig’s assistant, who told him the same thing each time: Mister Morrow was in a meeting, Mister Morrow could not be disturbed, Mister Morrow would be in touch as soon as he was available. The assistant declined to take another message.
Eric bumped his head against the plastic window, loud enough to startle attention from the bus's other passengers for an awkward moment.
Matthew hunched down on the bench ahead of him and did not turn. His earphones emitted the faint whine of hammering drums and tortured guitars. He hadn’t said a word since they’d walked out of the school gates. Eric’s suggestion they take a bus to visit the animal centre was met with cold indifference. Matthew didn’t ask why he picked a shelter on the other side of town. Eric didn’t mention the video.
The Cooper Gardens Animal Control Centre was a squalid quadrangle of grey-washed brick buildings surrounded by high hurricane fences. Its pungency was apparent from the street, a cloying cocktail of faeces, urine, meat products, and industrial disinfectants hopelessly inadequate for the task of masking it all. The hours of business were spelled out on a peeling aluminium sign screwed to the front.
The reception area was no more impressive: an unattended counter with a bell; a soft drink vending machine with long cracks kicked into its front panels; a framed motivational poster of a dog catching a Frisbee across year upon year. Half a dozen people formed up around a large dog smiling cheese in a staff photo dated two years ago. The phone half-hidden by the counter was made of battered beige plastic, at least twenty years out of warranty.
Matthew smacked the service bell and then dropped into a plastic chair without a glance in Eric’s direction.
A woman emerged through a doorway to the back office. Her golden-tawny face, spattered with dark freckles, wore a cheerful half-smile. She was barely taller than Matthew, but stylish glasses and a business-casual look put her well out of her teens. In a tone falling just short of bright confidence she asked, "Eric Ullman?"
"How did you know?"
"It didn’t sound like you would take my word for it when we spoke. I expected you even earlier."
Eric hated people making assumptions about him. "I came as soon as I could."
Chun shrugged. "Also, nobody else has called all day, so who else would you be? Who is this with you?"
"My son, Matthew," said Eric. "It’s his dog Hayley who’s gone missing."
Matthew yanked the headphones from his ears. "Have you seen her?"
Her smile was warm and sympathetic. "I told your father she’s not here. Would you like to come and look?"
Matthew nodded, lips pursed to conceal his disappointment.
The back office was a collection of filing cabinets facing off against a computer workstation and a metal-topped examination bench. "The kennels are through here."
Chun led them into a warehouse fitted out with several rows of stacked animal cages. An exercise yard visible through high windows would not have covered half a football field. It was mottled with holes and a few indomitable hunks of grass.
The smell was worse than the outside air had hinted. Their presence provoked were a few desultory woofs of acknowledgment.
Eric guessed the capacity of the centre at over one hundred dogs. "Most of these cages are empty."
"Normally we are over capacity. The patrol vans haven’t brought in any strays all week. That’s why I was so sure about your dog. It has been very quiet."
Matthew paused in front of a cage containing a sleeping bundle of frizzy chocolate-and-milk hair. A handwritten sign on the cage read "Stray. Age eighteen weeks. Breed indeterminate. No chip."
"What happens if nobody comes to collect them?"
"I am afraid that every unclaimed dog in this row will be destroyed in the next few days."
"Mattie, that means they will be given–"
"An injection to make them die. I know." He turned from them, fists in his eyes as if to push the tears back in.
Eric tried to put his hands on his son’s shoulders but they were rebuffed with a violent shrug. "Mattie, it’s okay. That hasn’t happened to Hayley. Right, Chun?"
Chun put an arm around Matthew, speaking in a soft voice. "Only animals with no collars or microchips end up here. If your dog was brought into any pet rescue centre, they would read her chip and contact you."
Matthew rocked on his heels, rubbing his eyes agitatedly. "Did we get Hayley chipped, Dad?"
Eric paled. He tried to think back to the day he’d brought her home. She’d been a bargain; fifty bucks to an old school friend who’d needed to get rid of a litter. She’d been wormed and vaccinated already so he took her straight away. And hadn’t Mattie been overjoyed, rolling around the floor with the bouncing, yapping bundle of puppy?
He couldn’t understand how he’d gone from that to arguing with Gemma. In the end, when she’d run out of steam, she’d made him take full responsibility for the dog. He couldn’t remember if she’d made him take Hayley to a vet to get a microchip.
Chun led Matthew back to the reception area. Eric followed as far as the back room and waited by the examination table. Chun bought Matthew a soft drink from the machine.
When he was settled, Chun said to Eric, "Why did you bring him here? I told you we didn’t have your dog. Can’t you see how upset he is?"
Eric’s whole torso felt constricted. He held his phone up to her eye line; gooseflesh made the hairs on the back of his hand rise like hackles. "Why did you send me the video?"
Her eyes widened. Cracks showed in her straight-backed confidence. "What video?"
Never taking his eyes from hers, Eric replayed the call. She glanced up as if suddenly aware she was alone with him. Then movement in the video caught her attention. Eric watched her eyes grow wider, then narrow.
"What was that?" he demanded as soon as the clip froze. "You reacted to something."
Chun’s freckles burned dark as the colour fled her face.
"Tell me," he said. "Tell me!"
"Mammoth. The dog’s name is Mammoth." Chun took the phone from Eric’s fingers, stabbing its face with both thumbs to replay the final moments. "Because of his fur, you know? And his size."
"How do you know him? Is he yours?" Eric was brutally aware he was bigger and stronger than this girl. If she didn’t want to tell him, he could make her do it. Warmth flooded into his hands.
Chun flinched and pushed the phone back at him. She put a speckle-painted fingernail between her teeth and bit down, her eyes darting fearfully through him. Past him.
"A man used to work here. Kevin Parkhouse. He worked here for many years before I was hired. Mammoth is Kevin’s dog."
Eric grabbed her shoulders as if he could shake answers out of her. She felt rubbery, limbless beneath his grip. "Parkhouse? Is he the sick bastard who made this? Does he have my dog?"
"Don’t."
He pushed her back, steering her toward the wall. Over her shoulder he saw Matthew spring up from his seat, shocked. Eric winced but didn’t relax his grip.
"I said don’t."
Chun rolled her head around and closed her jaws over his forearm. She grabbed the forefinger and thumb of his other hand and turned them in opposite directions. The hard sole of her boot raked down his shin.
Pain flared everywhere at once. Eric’s eyes bulged as Chun’s mouth released its grip with a tearing noise. The agony spread to his pinned wrist as she forced him to collapse to his knees.
He sprawled onto the floor, coughing bile onto dull white tiles spattered with old stains. "Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–".
As he lay there staring, she retreated toward the office.
"Last year I caught Parkhouse taking death-listed animals home. Instead of destroying them properly, he fed them live to Mammoth." She spoke from the safety of the office door with the flat distance of a radio newsreader reporting the gold price. "He lost his job. He shot himself in his living room last Christma
s. The dog wasn’t there. I haven’t seen it. I never want to see it again."
"Wait," said Eric, trying to rise. "I said I was sorry. I just–"
"I’m closing now. You and your son have to leave. If you don’t go now, I’ll call the police."
#
Matthew waited until Eric sat down, then wordlessly chose a seat at the front of the bus. Eric called Craig, over and over, pumping the redial button with the metronomic rhythm of a poker machine addict. As soon as the message began "You have reached the phone of–" he cut the call and tried again.
He could barely close his fingers. Chun might have cracked the bones.
One stop from home, he snapped out of his trance to see Matthew through the window, walking alongside the curb with tears streaming down his face.
Eric mashed the button to stop the bus and jumped out of his seat, pushing and jostling his way to the front. The driver braked hard and everyone fell forward except Eric, who let the momentum propel him the rest of the way. Before the driver could protest, Eric just said, "Door." Eric was off the bus before the doors finished hissing open.
He looked back down the street. His son was nowhere to be seen. No answer came when he called Matthew’s name.
He broke into a quick walk that became a fast jog and then a breathless sprint back to the previous stop. Beneath a street lamp just beginning to outdo the dying sun's luminescence, he frantically turned and called out. . The only sign of life was a man back down at his bus stop, whose face was obscured by the camera he held up. When Eric called, "Hey, did you see a kid running around here?" the man took a silent step toward him. Eric didn’t have time to backtrack.
This was an old, established neighbourhood with tall trees and dense gardens behind high fences. Everywhere he turned were yards concealed behind brick walls, shrub thickets and sculpted hedges. Matthew could be hiding anywhere. In the fading light, Eric knew he stood no chance of spotting him if he decided not to be seen.
He yelled Matthew's name up one street and down a couple of side lanes. A few house lights flicked on and front curtains twitched in response.
In a few minutes, he found himself back on the main street. The bus stop camera man was gone.
By the time he trudged into his own driveway, Eric was convinced Matthew must already be home, taking some time to himself.
When he saw none of the interior lights turned on, his confidence faded.
Craig’s Audi sat in the driveway. Eric groaned, realising he’d lost track of the time. He hadn’t even started on dinner yet.
As he circled the car, the motion sensor floodlight above the garage door flashed on.
Blood, candy-cane red in the searing light, pooled around the dark lump sprawled across the concrete step.
Eric’s breath caught in his throat. The figure on the ground made a gargling sound and a splash of fresh red bubbled from beneath it. Eric reached down and touched the body on the foot. The sharp-edged soles of Craig’s Italian leather shoes were barely scuffed.
"Craig?"
The ragged sound came again, hoarser this time and more urgent.
"Craig!" Eric shuffled forward, mindless of the gore and rolled the body over.
Craig’s eyes were the first thing he noticed, wide and pleading, drowning in confusion. Dirt and blood spattered his pale, plastic face. A dark hole ringed with flaps of wet red skin bored through his throat. Some reflex in the depths of his oesophagus convulsed and disgorged a swell of thick ooze.
Craig made a sound like a rattlesnake blocking a drain. His eyes rolled one way and then another, as if he had tried to fix them on Eric but overshot. Then they fell still.
Something began to rise in Eric’s chest, an angry denial like a howl starting in his balls and forcing its way up.
He opened his mouth to release his numb horror, when something moved ahead of him.
A low shape plodded out of the gloom, pausing with its head just inside the ring of light. Hayley. Her blonde muzzle was dark with gore. Her tongue slipped out and lapped blood from shining teeth. She panted heavily.
Matthew emerged from the darkness and fell in beside his dog. He shook all over and his eyes were locked on her face. Neither seemed to notice Eric.
And now, another figure disgorged from the swallowing dark of the yard. A tall, nearly bald man holding a camera phone up to his face. Eric recognised his shape and posture.
"Mattie. Don’t move."
Vapour hissed from Hayley’s open mouth. Twin stalactites of dark, viscous drool hung from blood-soaked muzzle hair. She looked at him now, and in the vivid glare her unblinking brown eyes conveyed judgment. "Mattie. Hayley's hurt Craig. Just keep still, okay?"
Matthew dug his fingers into the scruff of Hayley’s neck and kneaded. Her ruffled hair painted his hand with blood. "Craig was angry, Dad. He yelled at me because you weren’t here."
"You saw what happened?" Eric eased himself to his feet. He took a slow, tentative step. Hayley growled once, low and brief, and then again when he tried to complete the step. He froze. She resettled into her sentinel stare.
Taking a low slow breath, he said, "Did Craig hit you?"
Matthew’s mouth was a flat line. "He was going to. Hayley stopped him."
Eric stood over his lover’s cooling corpse and wondered what he felt. Anger? Grief? Terror? Nothing seemed to fit. Craig’s eyes were wide open to the grey night sky. In their emptiness they looked right through him.
The man with the camera stepped fully into the light. Under the floodlit glare his sparse comb-over was plastered to a chalky scalp by mottled crusts of dried blood. A small hole ringed with delicate bruises on his left temple was out of balance with the empty cavity that extended from above his right ear down to his jaw. Fragments of teeth hung more from habit than muscle.
Matthew considered the pale man as if noticing him for the first time. "He followed Hayley here. His name is Kevin."
Eric’s thoughts slowed, simplified.
"Mattie, just walk toward the front door, okay?"
Matthew shook his head. "I’m going with Hayley, Dad."
"Going? Going where?" Eric’s hand throbbed. An eerie calm settled on him. Matthew’s words were like a story that was losing his attention.
"She’s won her place in the pack, Dad. I will too."
Eric opened his mouth, unsure what to ask.
The pale man stopped recording him and click-clicked a finger against his phone’s screen. Eric caught a glimpse of grey eyes looking in different directions. Then his phone rang.
"Answer it," said Parkhouse. In the clear air, his voice had the same hollow menace as it had in the messages. Its scratchy faintness hissed like a recording coming through someone else’s headphones. "Answer it. Stay out of the way. Answer it."
Eric did as he was told.
An image opened on the screen of a room in disarray. Small furnishings – chair, shelves, a metal table - were scattered around a white room dotted with red. Eric’s eyes struggled to adjust to the fuzzy focus. It took a moment to recognise the back room of the animal shelter. Over the edge of a beige cabinet that had spilled its contents across the floor like viscera hung a slender, heavy boot below smart business slacks. The leg above the knee was obscured by fallen shelving.
Eric’s shin throbbed as he recalled the boots.
"Mattie–"
"You should go inside, Dad. You don’t have to be here for this."
The soft padding of paws on gravel surrounded him. He felt the hulking hound behind him before he saw it, as if the air was trying to get clear of it. Mammoth dropped to its haunches beside Eric, indifferent to his existence. Eric choked away an absurd impulse to scratch the thick brown curls between its ears.
The man pointed the camera at him, eager to catch the moment.
Matthew hugged his dog like a proud parent. "Hayley made the kill, but the top dog eats first."
"Mattie!"
Mammoth’s ears flicked up at his exclamation. Hayley hunched and bared mo
ttled fangs. Low canine growls came from all around.
Mattie hunched forward. His unbroken voice, incapable of growling, hummed with innocent joy. Hayley’s tail thumped against his legs.
Mammoth rumbled. Pale Parkhouse obediently shuffled closer, his camera locked on Eric’s face.
Eric turned a circle, slow and careful, every eye on him until he faced Mammoth. Dogs crept into the light, their bodies low, ears flat, and tails down. They formed a ring like onlookers at a schoolyard punch-up. He felt Mattie and Hayley behind him, urgent and eager. His eyes were locked on Mammoth; he didn’t look back.
He hunched down and placed his gouged palm against Craig’s cheek. It was already turning cold. The fingers of his other hand folded around his phone until it was part of his fist.
"These are mine," he said to the pack alpha. He bared his teeth, hungry, white, and ready. "If you want what’s mine, you have to take it from me."
I like using horror techniques in the service of other genres, but I rarely write supernatural horror in and of itself. Probably because I don’t like openly exploring the things that really scare me. The horror in this story for me is how easily the relationships that matter to us can slip away if they're neglected rather than nurtured. The smallest shift in our personal priorities, the most minor upheavals in our economy of attentiveness, could be all it takes to lose everything. And the real horror is that it's never just one infraction, but a series of choices becoming habits, and sometimes the mistakes aren't visible except in retrospect, when it's too late.
For the record, I'm not scared of dogs, but I really do not want to be eaten by one.
The Mirror Witch and the Wormwood Miranda
Kimiko Shimizu's birthday sleepover was the best because we got to stay up all night and be space pirates. I don't mean playing pretend. That's for little kids. I mean we summoned the mirror witch who took us to the Wormwood Miranda.
You know how to do it, right? Richelle told me you and Carmen Lodge got the mirror witch to give Mr Blunt the PE teacher a rash and that's why he had to take term three off and go to Thailand for treatment.
Mnemo's Memory Page 20