As Al drove into the parking lot, he said, “What the hell is going on here?”
Jeremy looked out the window and saw two police cars and an ambulance parked in front of the clinic’s entrance, their light bars throbbing red and blue. The back of the ambulance was open, but there was no one around.
Al parked, killed the engine, quickly got out, and opened the rear door. “Just wrap him in that blanket he’s on,” he said.
Sammy did not struggle or even move. He was limp as Jeremy wrapped him in the blue blanket and lifted him out of the Highlander.
The clinic’s entrance, double doors of tinted glass flanked by rectangular windows of the same height, faced the parking lot. They were nearing the doors when a muted scream came from inside, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
Jeremy and Al exchanged a worried glance but continued toward the door. Al stepped forward to pull it open for Jeremy. A figure appeared on the other side of the tinted glass as he reached out for the handle, and he stopped, then took two quick steps back, saying, “Hold it a second.”
A screaming woman inside the clinic was careening toward the doors with both arms outstretched, an expression of maniacal horror on her face.
Jeremy walked backward clumsily to get out of her way.
Her hands hit one of the doors and she and her shrill scream erupted from the building.
As she ran between them, Jeremy quickly took her in: middle-aged, thickset, short curly brown hair, tan pants, and a heavy, baggy, rust-colored sweater.
She ran between them, arms still stretched rigidly before her as she screamed, “Get it off! Get it off me! Get it off!”
Jeremy turned to watch her run toward the street, screaming and flailing her arms, and he saw the back of her sweater sagging under the weight of something clinging to it.
“What the hell is that?” Al muttered, barely above a whisper.
It was milky-white and streaked with what looked like blood, with several spiderlike legs and a dangling, spindly tail. The creature clung to her baggy sweater and bobbed back and forth with her movements. Its hold on the sweater seemed precarious, and it looked like it was slowly sagging and about to fall away. But when he squinted his eyes slightly, Jeremy saw that it was not sagging but lengthening. The thing on the woman’s back appeared to be growing as she ran.
In his arms, Sammy was still and seemed to be getting heavier. But now Jeremy was not eager to go inside the clinic. He turned to Al with a perplexed expression and said, “Did that…um, was it just me, or…did that thing look like it was—”
Before he could say “growing,” another burst of movement from the entrance made them turn. A paramedic hurried out of the clinic and ran after the woman without giving Jeremy and Al a glance.
More screaming came from inside the clinic as the door started to swing closed. Before it could finish, a uniformed police officer jogged out of the clinic and ran after the paramedic and the screaming woman. The radio receiver on his belt made an electronic belching sound, followed by a garbled voice.
Another officer came out of the clinic, this one in no hurry. He stepped out far enough to watch the other officer chasing the screaming woman. He had brown skin and a neatly trimmed black mustache. He reached up and lifted the lapel of his shirt closer to his mouth and said something into it. A moment later, a voice on the radio responded, but Jeremy could not tell what it said.
The officer turned and looked at them, spoke into his lapel again, then came toward them.
“I can’t let you go in there right now, sorry,” he said in the flat, terse way most cops spoke. He looked at the bundle in Jeremy’s arms and said, “Sick pet?”
Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. What’s going on in there?”
Ignoring the question, the officer nodded at the blanket and said, “What’s wrong here?”
“We don’t know. He was missing for about a week, perfectly healthy when he disappeared, but when he showed up on the porch today, he was in bad shape.”
A car sped by on the street and honked its horn twice. Startled, the officer spun around to watch the car go by. As he turned slowly back to Jeremy, his eyes darted all around the parking lot. They were looking down at the pavement.
He seemed nervous, jumpy. Maybe even scared. The small nameplate beneath his badge read OFFICER GEORGE ESPANOSA. He reached out and pulled aside an edge of the blanket to reveal Sammy.
The dog’s eyes were half open and glassy, and his tongue hung limply from his muzzle. Jeremy realized Sammy was dead. “Oh, damn,” he said, thinking of Bryan.
Officer Espanosa pointed at the patch of skin that had been so distended earlier. “This area was swollen?”
“That’s right,” Jeremy said. “How did you know?”
“Any idea what it was?”
“We don’t know,” Jeremy said, “but it looked like a bad infection. It was really swollen, like a big boil, and then, at some point, it burst and drained and—”
“Burst?” the officer said. “When? Where?”
“In our bathtub. At my house.”
Officer Espanosa turned away for a moment, lifted a hand and rubbed the back of his neck, sighed. Then: “Do you live near here?”
“Yes. Why? What’s happening here?”
Another police car pulled into the lot and parked next to the others. Two officers got out, a man and a woman. He went inside and the woman approached them, saying, “We’re supposed to lock this place down?”
Officer Espanosa stepped away from them and met her halfway. “Yeah, that’s the plan, but somebody just ran off with one of those things on her back.”
“We know what they are yet?” she said.
“No idea.”
Jeremy turned to Al and whispered, “What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think they want us to know about it.”
The female officer went inside and Officer Espanosa came back. He waggled his fingers at Sammy and spoke hesitantly. “Did you, uh…did you see anything? When that thing burst?”
Jeremy frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He nodded in the direction the screaming woman had gone. “Did you see that thing on her back?”
Jeremy and Al exchanged a worried look.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Officer Espanosa said.
“I don’t understand,” Al said.
“Those things, whatever they are…they, uh, seem to be—well, no, they are coming out of dogs and cats. After they’ve been missing for a while, it seems. It’s happened twice today in this clinic, which is why we’re here.” He gestured at Sammy. “And the result looks just like this. And you say this happened at your house?”
Jeremy stared down at Sammy, at the moist slit at the center of all that loose, puffy flesh.
“Oh, God,” he said, “we have to go back, Al. Now.”
They rushed to the Highlander and Al opened the rear door. As Jeremy put Sammy back into the vehicle, Al got behind the wheel.
“My partner and I will follow you,” Officer Espanosa said.
—
The Highlander splashed through a puddle as Al sped out of the clinic’s parking lot and turned left on Mockingbird. Officer Espanosa and his partner followed behind in his patrol car, light bar on, siren wailing.
“Everything’s fine, don’t worry,” Al said, rocking slightly in his seat. “It’s probably not even the same thing those other animals had. We’ll get there, everybody’ll be fine, the cops can take a look around, don’t you worry. Everything’s fine, just fine.”
Jeremy did not respond because he knew his friend was not talking to him and would not hear him, anyway. Instead, he fumbled his cellphone out of his jacket pocket and called home. Sharon was laughing when she said, “Hello?”
“Sharon!” he said, surprised by how happy she sounded.
“Jer? Where are you?”
“What do you mean, where am—look, I want you to—” There was a burst of noise while
everyone in the house seemed to start talking and laughing at once. “Sharon? Listen, I want you to get everyone out of—”
The line fell silent. The connection had been cut. Jeremy cursed as he hit redial. “What’s wrong?” Al said.
“I got cut off.” After two rings, voicemail picked up. “Goddammit. Voicemail.”
“What did she say?”
“She was laughing. It sounded like they were all laughing.”
Al smiled. “See? They’re fine.”
On Bluebird, he spotted a skinny, sickly-looking orange tabby cat, patches of bare skin in its wet, matted coat, walking slowly, haltingly, along the edge of the sidewalk. Its left side bulged unnaturally.
A block closer to the house, he saw a black-and-tan mutt and a Jack Russell terrier about a yard apart, slowly limping and staggering down the left side of Oriole. Each one had a swollen protrusion on its side.
As the Highlander drove by a cheerful yellow house on Finch, Jeremy saw a large, gray tomcat with a hairless sac jiggling from its right side dragging its hind legs up the driveway.
“They’re all coming back home,” he whispered.
“What?” Al gave him a couple quick looks. “Did you say something?”
As Al pulled the Highlander into the driveway and stopped behind Jeremy’s Honda Accord, Jeremy’s phone vibrated in his hand with a hum. Sharon was calling, but Jeremy was more interested in getting inside the house than talking on the phone. The siren fell silent as the police car parked at the curb and four car doors popped open, then slammed shut.
Jeremy put the buzzing phone in his pocket as he ran for the front door, which opened as he hurried up the porch steps. Sharon stood in the doorway, holding her phone in her right hand. Her face was red and puffy, gleaming with tears.
But she was smiling.
“Where did you go without him?” she said. “I tried to call you and—”
Jeremy tried to be gentle as he pushed her aside, saying, “Without who?”
As soon as he entered the house, Al shouted, “Melissa? Carla?”
“In the kitchen,” Melissa called cheerfully.
He rushed toward her voice.
Running footsteps thumped through the house and Bryan appeared, grinning. “Dad! You left without him!”
“Left without who?” Jeremy shouted, as the two police officers stomped into the house behind him.
Bryan’s eyes widened when he saw them. His voice was unsteady as he said, “Why are the police here?”
The fear in Bryan’s face made Jeremy’s chest ache. He went to him, dropped down on one knee and clutched his upper arms firmly. “Who are you talking about, Bryan? You said I left without him. Without who?”
“Without S-Sammy.”
Jeremy experienced a brief plummeting sensation, as if the floor had opened up and he were dropping down a dark shaft. He tried to stop the tremors in his hands and arms. He shook his head slowly. “No, Bryan. I’m sorry. Sammy didn’t make it.”
“What do you mean? He…he’s in the kitchen.”
Movement behind Bryan caught Jeremy’s eye and he saw Al slowly backing into the hall, staring at something in the kitchen with a slack expression. “Sharon, Carla, come here. Now.”
In the kitchen, Carla said, “But Daddy, he’s so much better and—”
“Come here now.” They joined Al in the hall. “Go get in the car.”
“We’re leaving?” Carla whined, as Melissa said, “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t argue, dammit, just go. Both of you.”
Jeremy stood, went to them, and looked through the archway that led to the kitchen.
A calico Australian sheepdog that looked identical to Sammy, with a damp coat that was missing some patches, sat on its haunches in the center of the floor. It remained perfectly still and did not even blink as it stared at them.
“After you left,” Sharon said, as she approached Jeremy, “we were in the kitchen and I was getting the kids some ice cream and…he just wandered in. I thought you’d taken him with you. Did he get out of Al’s car before you left? I…I don’t understand.”
“Okay,” Jeremy said quietly, with forced calm. “Everybody out of the house. We’re all going to go out on the porch. Understand?”
“Jeremy,” Sharon said, sounding scared, “please tell me what’s—”
He leaned close, put his mouth to her ear, and whispered, “Sammy is out in the car right now. He’s dead. That is not Sammy. I don’t think it’s even a dog.”
In the kitchen, the creature that looked like Sammy still had not moved or so much as twitched. It did not even look like it was breathing.
He squeezed Sharon’s arm and whispered, “Take Bryan and the girls out of the house. Now.”
Her voice was high and unsteady as she said, “Come with me, Bryan.”
“Can I bring Sammy?” he said.
Jeremy and Sharon both said “No” at the same time. She shouted for Amber and Monica until Jeremy heard them coming down the hall. “Go,” he said to Sharon.
As he walked away, Bryan’s eyes held his father’s eyes for a moment, and the fear and confusion in them broke Jeremy’s heart.
Officer Espanosa and his partner, a beefy man with a pale complexion and freckles, stood just behind Jeremy, eyes on the dog.
“You saw my dog, right?” Jeremy said.
Espanosa nodded, his hand resting on the butt of his holstered firearm. “Yeah. I know this isn’t your dog. Go outside with your wife and son. We’ll take care of this.”
Jeremy looked at the creature. It stared directly into his eyes, muzzle tipped forward slightly, still unmoving. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m going.” He went out the front door and pulled it closed behind him.
On the porch, Sharon was hugging Bryan and Amber was crying.
“Where’s Monica?” Jeremy said.
“Running home,” Sharon said.
Al’s Highlander was gone, and so were Al and his family. The blue blanket in which Sammy’s remains had been wrapped lay in a small heap on the edge of the lawn.
Jeremy turned to his family and opened his mouth to speak, but he did not know what to say.
“Where did that dog come from?” Sharon said, her voice low and throaty.
“I…I don’t—”
A horrible sound came from inside the house, a harsh shriek that seemed to be made up of multiple voices, none of them human. All four of them reflexively moved away from the house to the edge of the porch.
The shriek was followed by two gunshots.
“They’re gonna hurt Sammy!” Bryan shouted, as he ran for the front door.
“No!” Sharon cried, as she and Jeremy lunged for the boy.
Jeremy swept him up in his arms as one of the police officers screamed inside the house. It sounded like Officer Espanosa. An instant later, someone or something slammed against the inside of the front door hard enough to rattle all the windows.
“Okay, in the car, let’s go,” Jeremy said, nodding for Sharon and Amber to go ahead of him as Bryan cried in his arms.
“But my purse is in the—”
“I’ve got my keys, let’s go.”
Once the kids were in the backseat, Jeremy fished his keys from his jacket pocket and got in the car at the same time as Sharon.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said, starting the car. “Away from here for now.”
“I don’t understand,” Amber said, sniffling. “What happened?”
“Sammy came back!” Bryan cried. “He was better! They’re hurting him!”
“I’m sorry, Bryan, I really am.” Jeremy backed out of the driveway and drove away from the house.
“But you let them do it!”
“That wasn’t Sammy. I know you don’t believe me now, but it’s true.”
Jeremy turned left on Hummingbird and saw a dog in the road up ahead. It was a beagle, slowly crossing from right to left and dragging a sac of hairless flesh with it. Jeremy s
tomped his foot on the gas pedal and the car sped forward, heading directly for the dog.
First Sharon, then Bryan and Amber, began to scream at him not to do it.
The beagle stopped walking in the middle of the road and turned its head toward Jeremy as he closed in. Jeremy’s hands were so tightly clenched on the steering wheel, they ached.
It was an older dog. Someone’s companion. Someone’s best friend. Some family’s pet.
He jerked the wheel and swerved around the beagle, rapidly dropping his speed. He could not do it.
But he hoped someone could.
The Brasher Girl
Ed Gorman
For Stephen King
I guess by now you pretty much know what happened the last year or so in the Valley here—with Cindy and me, I mean.
All I can hope for is that you’ll give me time to tell my side of things. Nobody ever did. Not the cops, not the press, not even my own parents. They all just assumed—
Well, they all assumed wrong, each and every one of them.
It took me nineteen dates to have my way with Cindy Marie Brasher, who was not only the prettiest girl in Central Consolidated High, but the prettiest girl in the entire Valley, though I will admit to some prejudice on that particular judgment.
The night we met, I was twenty-three and just out of the Army, and she was seventeen and about to be voted homecoming queen. She was not only good-looking, she was popular, too.
Consolidated being my own alma mater, I went along with my sixteen-year-old brother to the season’s first football game, and afterward to a party.
Things hadn’t changed much as far as high school rituals went. There was a big bonfire down by the river and a couple kegs of Bud and a few dozen joints of some of the worst marijuana I’d ever smoked. A couple hours in, several of the couples snuck off into the woods to make out more seriously than they could around the bonfire, at least ten different boys and maybe two girls rushed down to the riverbank to throw up, and two farm boys about the same size got into a fistfight that I let run three, four minutes before I stepped in and broke it up. One thing you learn in the Army: drinking and fistfights can lead to some serious damage.
Dark Screams, Volume 4 Page 4