“You can’t have me…not yet.”
It throbbed with impatience.
Mike smiled at it. Daring it.
Sammy Comes Home
Ray Garton
“Did you hear about Mrs. Naccarato’s dog, Dad?” Bryan said.
“That yapping mutt up the street?” Jeremy Hale stood in his backyard and looked up at the sky, wondering if the weatherman had been mistaken in predicting only clouds for the day. The clouds had been white and fluffy that morning, separated by patches of blue. Now they were dark, muscular, and menacing, and the late-spring day had become cooler with a chilly breeze.
“Yeah, he disappeared. That’s the third dog since Sammy, Dad. The third one I know about, anyway. And the Jarviks haven’t been able to find their cat in a few days.”
The tension in Bryan’s voice made Jeremy look down. The creases that cut into the boy’s forehead were there too often. At ten, Bryan was already a world-class worrier. It didn’t mix well with his sensitive personality—the boy could be devastated by a thoughtless word—and sometimes Jeremy became concerned about his son’s ability to cope with life later, when he was on his own. He’d been even worse since their dog Sammy disappeared a week ago. He saw monsters in shadows, and he saw shadows at high noon.
Bryan was terrified that the dog was alone, in pain, suffering helplessly. Sammy occupied his thoughts to the point of distraction and Bryan’s sleep was disrupted by upsetting dreams about his dog.
Jeremy put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Like I said, we can get another dog, Bryan. We can go to the shelter and find one to rescue, just like we did with Sammy.”
Bryan frowned but didn’t look up at his father. His face tensed even more into a pained expression, and Jeremy thought he was about to cry.
Bryan said, “If Sammy comes home and sees that we’ve replaced him, he might…y’know…go away again. And not come back.”
He huddled down in front of Bryan and smiled. “If Sammy comes home, he’ll be so happy to see you, he won’t even care that we got another dog. And he’ll have a dog to play with when you’re at school. Look, we won’t be replacing him. This will always be Sammy’s home. But we’ve got dog food going to waste, and somewhere in that shelter, there’s a dog who’d love to go home with somebody. We’ll go tomorrow, okay?”
Jeremy had already decided that they would get another dog the next day because he couldn’t stand to see Bryan brood any longer. He hoped that would take his mind off Sammy. After a week, it seemed unlikely that the dog would be coming back.
“Hey, we need to get moving, broheem,” he said, standing. “The Knoxes will be here soon.”
“With Carla?”
“Yes, with Carla.”
“Carla says she thinks I’m weird.”
“Well, that’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, you’re ten and she’s eight, so you think she’s weird, too, don’t you?”
The creases vanished as Bryan smiled and then laughed quietly.
Jeremy pointed at Bryan and said, “Aha! I made you laugh!” Jeremy felt a cold drop of water on his hand. It was starting to sprinkle. He looked up at the darkening sky as the sliding glass door opened.
Sharon came out of the house and crossed the veranda holding a large platter of hamburger patties, hot dogs, and pieces of chicken. “Is it raining?” she said, as she stepped onto the lawn.
“Starting to. Looks like the first barbecue of the year will have to be on the veranda.”
As Jeremy slowly wheeled the heavy grill over the lawn’s small humps and pits and onto the covered veranda, Sharon said, “Our daughter is being a teenager.”
“Tell her if she doesn’t stop, she loses all Internet privileges for life.”
Almost as if responding to a cue, Amber came out of the house, stood before them with her arms folded across her chest, and said, “Can I go over to Monica’s?”
Sharon said, “Invite Monica over here. We have a lot of food, and some of it was purchased for the specific purpose of being eaten by you. Invite her over and you can both eat some of it. How’s that?”
Amber’s back stiffened and she released one of those long, tormented sighs typical of teenage girls. She spun around and marched back into the house.
“Isn’t Monica the one with the drunk father?” Jeremy said.
“That’s why she’s not going over there.”
He lifted the hood and started the grill. “Let’s get this feast fired up.”
—
Before Al and Melissa Knox and their daughter, Carla, arrived, the light sprinkle had become a downpour and a strong wind had come up. Rain spattered the windows, and the royal princess tree in the front yard was stripped of most of its pink April blossoms as its branches flailed.
Sharon and Melissa had gone to college together at UCLA and had been best friends ever since. Jeremy and Al had met only because they’d married Sharon and Melissa. Fortunately, they’d become fast friends, thanks to a few things they had in common: football, baseball, old Godzilla movies, and, most of all, beer.
Al and Melissa both had Caucasian fathers, but Al’s mother was black and Melissa’s was Korean. The result was a beautiful copper-skinned daughter with shiny black hair and brown, almond-shaped eyes. But as lovely as she was, Carla could be quite a handful.
They ate indoors because it was much too windy to sit on the veranda. The food was arranged buffet-style on the dining room table and everyone helped themselves. Cracks of thunder cut through the roar of the rain and the howling wind.
“Mr. Jones must be scared,” Carla said, as her mother made her a plate.
“Our cat, Mr. Jones, is scared of thunder,” Melissa said. “He hides in the kitchen cupboard whenever there’s a storm.”
As he set out four different kinds of barbecue sauce, Jeremy looked at Bryan in time to see his features tighten in response to Melissa’s words. He was sure Bryan was thinking about how Sammy used to hide under the bed in the master bedroom during thunderstorms, always leaving his flattened butt sticking out, tail tucked between his sprawled hind legs. He hadn’t been able to do that in a long time because he’d gotten too big. Instead, he curled up in the hall bathroom tub and barked his head off.
Sammy was a calico Australian sheepdog, healthy and playful, with bright blue eyes and a big, tongue-lolling grin. In the four and a half years since they’d found him at the shelter as a playful, growing, but abandoned pup, he had been Bryan’s loving companion and playmate. Sammy was the fierce guardian of the household, as long as you believed that the household’s deadliest enemies were anyone who ever delivered anything to the house, the ice-cream truck that drove through the neighborhood on most days during the summer, and any siren within earshot.
Jeremy knew that four and a half years was a long time to a ten-year-old boy. Sammy had been an important part of half of Bryan’s lifetime. It would be an emotional loss to any child. But Bryan seemed to feel things more intensely than most, and for longer than most. Bryan was so sensitive that Jeremy and Sharon had discussed the possibility of therapy. Ultimately, they’d decided it would be best for one or both of them to address Bryan’s sensitivity, and they had decided on Jeremy.
Before they could have a talk, Sammy disappeared, and Jeremy had not yet approached the subject. He suspected that losing Sammy would be an effective ice-breaker for a conversation about letting go of things. But it was a conversation that hadn’t taken place yet.
“Amber, is Monica coming over?” Sharon said.
Amber shrugged. “She said she was. But she’s not here yet.”
“She just lives a couple of blocks away, right?”
“Yeah. She said she was going to walk.”
“In this rain?”
Amber shrugged.
Standing beside Jeremy as she put a helping of mixed vegetables on her plate, Melissa whispered, “Are you going to get another dog?”
He looked around to see if Bryan was close enough to hear them. He had gone into the kitchen. “We’r
e going to the shelter tomorrow. I just hope it doesn’t happen again. Dogs have been disappearing in this neighborhood. Sammy never left the backyard unaccompanied. Somebody had to go back there and let him out or take him.”
“People are assholes,” Melissa said.
Once everyone had their food, Jeremy, Al, and Bryan went into the living room to watch a game between the Giants and the Dodgers, while Sharon, Melissa, and Carla ate at the bar in the kitchen, and Amber took her plate to her bedroom.
That was where everyone was when they heard the scream. It sounded like it had come from the front porch.
Jeremy rushed to the front door and opened it to find Amber’s friend Monica Starrett standing on the steps under a bright red umbrella. Her left hand was pressed over her mouth as she gaped down at something on the porch just outside the door.
“Monica?” he said, as he looked down and gasped.
Lying on the porch in a matted, bloody mess was Sammy.
—
Everyone rushed out to the porch in a great commotion and gathered around Sammy. The dog lay on his left side, abdomen rising and falling with the staccato rhythm of his panting. He lifted his head and rolled his eyes over the faces around him with an agonizing groan that dissolved into a whimper. Streaks of mud and blood were smeared over the steps and across the porch to the spot where the dog lay. His coat was matted and wet, with bare patches of skin where hair had fallen out, as if he had mange. Sammy’s eyes locked with Jeremy’s and the dog wailed in pain.
But it was the glistening bulge on the left side of Sammy’s abdomen that so horrified them. The hairless skin was stretched taut and it looked as though it were about to burst.
As soon as she saw it, Carla turned and ran back inside the house with a shriek. Amber and Monica followed her.
“What is that?” Sharon said, voice trembling as she neared tears.
Melissa put a hand over her eyes and turned away, and Al wore a sickened expression.
But Bryan knelt at the dog’s side immediately, reached out a hand to stroke Sammy but pulled it away without touching him, and repeated the dog’s name quietly as he cried.
Sammy rolled his eyes toward Bryan, whining, then tipped his head back and released another wail, this one long and ragged. Bryan looked up at his father with desperate, glistening eyes.
Jeremy felt sick to his stomach. He knew that whatever was wrong with Sammy, the dog most likely would not survive, and he also knew what it was going to do to Bryan to watch his dog die.
He hunkered down beside Bryan and put a hand on his back. “I want you to go inside, call the vet clinic, and find out if Dr. Rey is working today—can you do that?”
Bryan did not take his eyes off Sammy. He seemed not to hear Jeremy at all.
He shook the boy gently. “Bryan, did you hear me?”
Sammy cried out again, a heartbreaking sound that made Bryan shudder as he turned to Jeremy and said, “It moved!”
“What?”
Bryan turned to Sammy again and pointed a trembling finger at the messy distention in the dog’s abdomen. “There’s something inside! It moved!”
The dog’s body had jolted suddenly, perhaps reacting to a sudden spike in pain, and the swollen protuberance on Sammy’s side had jiggled.
“Bryan, did you hear me?” Jeremy said, standing and pulling the boy to his feet, forcing Bryan to face him. “Go inside, call the vet clinic, and see if Dr. Rey is working today. Do it now.” He turned Bryan toward the front door and gave him a little shove. Then he turned to Sharon and whispered, “Go with him and keep him away from the bathroom.”
“What can I do, Jer?” Al said.
Jeremy hunkered down beside the dog and muttered, “This is probably gonna hurt, Sammy boy, and I’m sorry.” He scooped his arms under the dog from behind and stood, holding Sammy in his arms with the bulbous growth held away from him.
Sammy felt hot through Jeremy’s sweatshirt and trembled uncontrollably. Jeremy carried him through the house, down the hall, and into the bathroom. When Al followed him inside, Jeremy said, “Close it and lock it.”
Al quickly closed and locked the door, then swept back the shower curtain. Jeremy bent down and gently placed Sammy in the bathtub. The dog made quiet sounds of misery but did not struggle.
Al said, “I hate to say it, Jer, but I don’t think Sammy’s gonna last much longer.”
Sammy tried to raise his head and rolled an eye toward Jeremy, tongue dangling from his mouth.
Upper lip curling slightly as he knelt beside the bathtub and leaned forward, Jeremy nodded at the puffy bulge on the dog’s belly and said, “What is that?”
“I’m no vet, but it looks like one hell of an infection.”
“Whatever it is, I’ve got to get him to the vet.”
“We can take my car; I’ll drive. You can get in the back with him.” Al went to the door. “You want Bryan to come?”
No, he did not want Bryan to come. He wanted his son to avoid the nightmares he knew would follow the dark moods that would descend upon him at odd times, the painful loss that would shatter his face every time he saw an Australian sheepdog that resembled Sammy. Jeremy knew about all of those things because he’d experienced them himself. When he was seven years old, he’d watched his stepfather, in one of his many rages, beat his dog Max to death. Jeremy had been a sensitive world-class worrier, too. He knew Bryan would have a similar reaction because the boy was just like him. Jeremy tried to protect his son in ways no one had protected him when he was a boy, but there was no way he could refuse him this. He wished the boy didn’t have to watch Sammy die. He wished he could protect him from all of that. But he knew that was impossible, and he would have to be insane to try.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. He glanced down into the bathtub. Sammy was still whimpering but not moving around as much. “I’ll go get Bryan.”
Jeremy followed Al out of the bathroom. At the end of the hall, Al said, “I’m gonna make sure there’s room in the back of the Highlander,” then turned right and headed out to his car while Jeremy turned left to find Bryan and Sharon. He found Sharon in the kitchen, comforting Bryan, who was trying not to cry and failing. She looked at Jeremy when he entered, but Bryan quickly lowered his head as he wiped his eyes. He went to Bryan and gave him a hug.
“We’ve got to get Sammy to the vet, Bryan,” he said.
“I called and Dr. Rey isn’t working today,” Bryan said.
“That’s okay, we’ll see someone else. Do you want to come with us?”
Bryan’s eyes, glistening with tears, widened slightly. “What are they gonna do to Sammy?”
Jeremy exchanged a look with Sharon, then said to Bryan, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Sammy, but it’s bad. It looks like he has a severe infection, and we don’t know what else is wrong with him. I’m sorry, Bryan, but I think there’s a good chance Sammy won’t be coming home. You can come with us if you want.”
Bryan stopped fighting his emotions and let the tears flow. Sharon pulled him to her and embraced him.
“Get Sammy in the car first,” she whispered to Jeremy.
Jeremy nodded and left the kitchen. He met Al coming back into the house and both headed down the hall as Jeremy said, “Let’s get Sammy to the car and—”
An explosive clamor came from behind the closed bathroom door down the hall. They heard Sammy bellow in pain, the clicking and scraping of his claws among sounds of rapid, clumsy movement. As Jeremy hurried toward the bathroom door with Al behind him, something slammed into it on the inside and, as he hurried toward it, Jeremy saw the bathroom door shudder from the impact.
Sammy fell silent.
Jeremy stopped at the closed door and put his hand on the knob, but hesitated. His heart suddenly pounded and a surge of adrenaline made his hand tremble on the doorknob. It passed in a couple seconds and he thought briefly of how ridiculous it was. He turned the knob.
When he tried to push the door open gently, it resisted. Something heavy was
obstructing it. He pushed harder against the obstacle, sliding it over the floor, and stuck his head through the opening.
Jeremy experienced a moment of dizziness when he saw how much more blood had been smeared over the bathtub and floor. The dog lay on his left side with his back against the door. His body trembled fiercely and his shallow breaths came fast, but he made no sounds. Something about him was different, but Jeremy was too concerned about getting him to the vet to pay much attention to details.
He shoved the door open enough to step inside.
“Oh, jeez,” Al said, as he leaned through the half-open door and saw all the blood.
Jeremy realized the distended section of Sammy’s belly had burst. The puffy, gray flesh looked deflated and shriveled. He bent down and scooped Sammy into his arms again as Al pushed the door all the way open.
“There’s a big blanket in the back,” Al said.
Sharon followed them out to Al’s Highlander, and after Jeremy had placed Sammy in the back, she said, “I think Bryan’s too upset to go with you. Will you call and let me know if…you know.”
He nodded. “Where’s Amber?”
“In her room with Monica.”
He gave her a quick kiss and got in the back of the Highlander with Sammy.
Sharon hurried to the house and out of the rain.
—
The Cascade Veterinary Clinic was less than five miles from the house in its new location, a redwood building designed specifically for that purpose, which had opened only a few weeks ago. Al zigzagged through the neighborhood streets, all of which were named after birds, going too fast. Halfway there, the rain began to thin a bit and Al turned his windshield wipers down from the high setting.
In the back of the Highlander, Jeremy watched Sammy. The dog wasn’t moving at all now and his breathing was shallow. Puffy flesh now sagged where it had been grossly swollen and he could see the puckered opening where it had burst and drained. He spoke softly and reassuringly to Sammy and wondered how Bryan was holding up. Swaying with each turn Al took, Jeremy lifted his head and watched the houses go by. They were almost there.
Dark Screams, Volume 4 Page 3