“That was it, yeah,” Doug said. “The last straw. The docs all said she couldn’t get better, not without help ‘round the clock. But it was that and it was another thing—”
He reached down and pulled the shirt tail out of his trousers, hiking it up and leaning back so the porch light could catch the spot he exposed. An eight-inch scar lay on his belly, a touch longer than a C-section line on a mother. It was white against the natural tan of his skin. No hair grew within a half inch of either side of it. He let the reality of that sink in then let the shirt tail fall.
“Your mother, Farrah,” he said quietly. “She wasn’t right for a couple of years. It took me a while to see it. I thought I could fix it. But I figured she was going the same way her own Mom did. I could argue both sides of any coin in those days. Nowadays, well, I usually pick a side.
“I was ready to just let everything go. The hoarding, Farrah. It was unbearable. She filled every square inch of that house. And she was hiding money, hiding silly things, like cutlery and toothpaste. She was shouting and arguing. She was sure that this guy, Sean Ketwood, was waiting for her out in the yard or at Harlow’s behind the deli counter. Wherever. She had dreams about him, woke up shouting. Thing was, we didn’t even know the guy. It was all made up, kiddo, all in her head. That’s why I came as quick as I could tonight. I thought she maybe made up this stuff about the dogs. I thought it was all that history…coming back. But just for her.
“To be honest, I’ve been worried. About you—”
“Me?” Farrah said with genuine surprise.
“You,” he said, bowing his head. “If Grandma Kit had it, if Kathy went the same way, what’s to say you wouldn’t, too?”
Farrah stood shivering. She was shaking from more than the cold.
“I talked to this Sean Ketwood feller and he had no idea what she was talking about. You remember him, kid. He actually brought you home one night after you took a tumble from your bike out back. Mom and him, they only ever laid eyes on each other in church. They didn’t go to school together or even really know each other. First time it came up, I thought the worst: I thought Mom was cheating on me—”
“Was she—?” Farrah asked this quickly. She regretted it as soon as it came out of her mouth. But she had been desperate to know, ever since she’d found out about the redheaded man Mom had talked about.
“No,” Doug said. “I really don’t think she was. But at that point, I couldn’t believe anything your mom said. She and I, we argued. I mean all the time. One afternoon, she came at me—” He lazily lifted his shirt up again and let it fall without revealing that big scar again. “Put a kitchen knife—she’d hidden every last one all over the house and yard—put it right in me. It was a few days before you found her in the tub. She’d taken sleeping pills that day, I doubt you remember that part, but she’d only nicked herself a few times with one of her Lady Bics. Didn’t lose much but it looks like a lot in a full tub. I remember the fright in your eyes. Me? Couple days before with that kitchen knife in my gut, I lost a lot, had my deputy come over and get her under control. The decision had pretty much been made before you found her in the bloody bath water, kid. I think she knew it, too. Might have even been why she did it.
“I was scared.”
Doug reached out and pulled his daughter to him. He was still strong and warm, everything she remembered from childhood. Her shivering eased as he held her. She’d have been ten or so when Mom came after him. When she attacked him.
“That’s why,” Doug said, burying his mouth in Farrah’s hair and smelling her, like he did when she was small. “I sent her away because I couldn’t bear the thought of you getting hurt.”
5
Doug and his daughter were just coming in the front door when Grandpa Danny nearly fell at the bottom of the stairs. He grabbed hold of the newel post and stuttered to an awkward stop, able to keep himself upright.
“I can’t find her,” he blurted, catching his breath. He started coughing and doubled over, making his face flush.
“What?” Farrah asked.
Through his hacking, Gramps managed to get some words out. “—Sleeping—I just went—back to bed—rest my eyes—few minutes—can’t find her—”
Panic-stricken, Farrah looked up at her dad. Doug turned to latch the front door behind them. Both looked down and across the hall. From here, they could both see that the back kitchen door was ajar. It wavered in a slight breeze and the curtain over its window fluttered. Farrah’s heart skittered. She closed her eyes, as if she could un-see the open door.
6
After scrambling to get boots and coats on, Doug, Farrah, and Gramps made their way out the back door and down the steps, their footwear squeaking on the boards and with the snow. Doug didn’t draw his service revolver, but he had the holster unbuttoned and his flashlight at arm’s length. They stepped through the snow. The heartbreaking part for Farrah was seeing the staggered footsteps in the new snow. They already were covered by a fresher layer, a series of dimples mapping Mom’s flight from the house. Her steps had been pressed in while Farrah had been on the front porch learning about the history of her mom and dad. Instead of watching over Mom, she’d been out front learning from Dad how her mom had nearly killed him a decade ago.
The morning was still dark. Only a hint of light was at the east, over the jagged tree tops.
The trio moved swiftly but cautiously through the yard, following the tracks Mom had left. They went towards the north edge of the yard, where the trees separated and where Gramps used to take Baz for his walks when both were younger. The snowfall had eased up. But it was still chilly. The breath of each of them hung in the air and then dissolved to nothingness. Just like Mom, it would seem.
Farrah knew that Mom had come out this way last night too. Her mind flashed on the thought of Mom’s muddy feet against the white bed sheets. She hadn’t told Dad that part. Maybe she should have. She wouldn’t do it now, though. The night was painfully quiet, but it felt like that quiet needed to persevere. As if saying anything would shatter it and pull the wild pack out of the woodwork. They would scramble from hiding places tucked in and around every one of these trees, all on a collision course for the trio.
Doug went into the woods first, bracing his flashlight-toting hand, wrist-over-wrist with his pistol-hand.
Farrah went second. Gramps brought up the rear with his hunting rifle. He struggled to keep from hacking but a few coughs escaped. They were sharp and low against the empty night and made Farrah fret. The night would hear them. The night would send its animals.
They needed to move faster. They needed to catch up with sleepwalking Mom before she got to whatever den those nasty dogs had built for themselves. As if reading her mind, Doug looked back at her and said, “The dogs aren’t liable to be around anymore. After you spooked em, they likely headed back north. Away from town, but up towards King’s Land. That’s likely where they’ve been breeding. No one goes up that way since the power plant closed.”
Three sets of breath came in syncopated rhythm, puffing into the air and then turning to nothing.
He crept along, his police-issue black boots squeaking in the sloppy snow. “Haven’t been there in years. I should probably put it on my monthly rounds. Take some trank darts, too.”
Farrah said nothing. She was processing what Dad had told her. “Don’t worry,” he said, again, as if reading her mind. “The dogs are long gone. We’ll find Mom in a few minutes.”
After winding through the trail for a few minutes, they came out into the relative brightness of the main clearing. No Mom. Just her trail of dimpled footsteps in the snow leading off to the same far end of the clearing where Baz had been attacked.
There, at the far side, standing against the wooded backdrop was a man in a dark black suit.
7
Click-click. It was Doug cocking his service pistol, then aiming it. Behind Farrah, Gramps raised his rifle and gave it a k-chack to prime it.
At first, Fa
rrah thought the man was a tree, cut off at the five or six feet mark, or maybe rotted and fallen over to leave only a particularly tall, misshapen stump. But the man moved. He put a hand up as if to wave at the trio.
Stunned into silence, Farrah simply followed her father. His pace sped up, likely because a pistol’s aim at this range was lousy and he wanted to get closer.
“Hold there,” Chief Doug shouted at the stranger in the black suit. “Officer of the law,” he called as he moved closer, almost leaving Farrah and Gramps behind. Gramps huffed and puffed. Farrah didn’t dare take her eyes off the stranger. As they got closer, he lowered his hand, but he didn’t move. He might bolt at any moment. Doug wanted to talk with him, but closer, much closer.
“You carrying?” Doug called, deliberately leaving spaces between the things he said to the stranger.
A pause from the stranger, then he called back. “Nope!” he called, as if he was simply out on a Sunday stroll in the woods with his dog. The dogs! Farrah glanced around them. They were nearing the centre of the large clearing. Why on earth did she think of the wild dogs now?
Because this is where they killed him, she thought. This is where the five or six tore into poor ‘ol Bazzy until he left his insides in the mud and snow.
They were close enough to make out the stranger’s face. Gramps had been right. Grey with jaundiced, yellow patches. And his hair was missing in places too. He wasn’t Frankenstein’s monster, not quite, but his look made Farrah think of that book.
Close enough to see his electric eyes too. He was smiling.
With that realization, the stranger in the black suit abruptly put his hands over his head and clapped twice. The sound was like a double strike of thunder. That’s when the woods around the clearing erupted.
From Farrah’s periphery, the snow leapt up in the air. Only it wasn’t snow. It was dogs. It was dozens of the wild dogs. They’d been covered up, laying down and waiting under the blanket of snow that hadn’t been disturbed. The mental math hit her. How long had the animals been laying there, only waiting?
But she didn’t have time consider that now. They were racing towards her and Dad and Gramps, an ever-closing arc in all directions, bounding in a mad race to reach them. Doug shouted. Gramps did too.
“Sweet Jesus, look at em all,” Doug said, putting one arm out like a steel bar, as if he could shield his girl from the coming onslaught.
“Holy hell,” Gramps said, backing up to survey the wave of animals lunging out of the snow. He was tightening the circle of himself, Farrah, and Doug.
“You take north and east!” Doug called.
“Got it!” Danny hollered.
“I got west and south!” Doug shouted against the rumble and movement of the animals coming at them.
Gramps started firing first. He got two off and then paused. Doug waited a few beats for the animals to get closer. His arm length wasn’t as straight or as sure as the lengthy barrel of a rifle, no matter who was firing it.
Panicking, Farrah pulled her eyes away from the stranger. She saw those animals closing in. There were thirty, no, forty of them, easily. She looked over at the two coming closest to her dad. He squeezed off two shots. The sound blared in her ears, two muddy blasts. The fire of each shot lit up the night and Farrah saw a split-second snapshot of her father in the explosion of light. Inside those moments, he braced against the recoil of the weapon. It looked like the biggest strain of his life. Farrah didn’t think he’d ever discharged his weapon in the line of duty before.
Gramps and Dad fired, and fired, and fired. A dozen dogs hit the muddy snow. But right up behind each of them, it seemed like there were two or three more to take each one’s place in the pursuit.
The two men circled Farrah, standing helpless without a weapon. She cringed against the eruptions of gunfire. Between the shots, she heard the unthinkable. Laughter.
Like some kind of mad man, the stranger howled with laughter.
8
The dogs got to Grandpa Danny first.
They got to him as he was trying to reload his rifle. Up his legs, to his waist and then snarling and barking at him, face to face. He struggled to get them off, batted at them and shoved them. Finally, he managed to get a round into the chamber and leaned back to fire at the dog that clawed and spit and barked right up at his eyes. It was trying to get its jaws around his neck, snapping and coming within a half-inch of connecting teeth to flesh.
One blast left the weapon. Fire spurt from the barrel. But the dogs had spun Danny around, had him confused. The shell went through the dog’s belly but at this range, it blasted through the animal’s backside and hit Doug, just under his arm. Two down with one bullet. A hole burst in his police-issue jacket. It turned red at once. Doug bellowed and fell to his knees, giving the wild dogs at his feet a chance to overtake him.
Both Gramps and Dad were down on the ground. The dogs circled like a swarm of giant, barking insects.
Farrah threw her hands to her ears and screamed. Out of the blurry madness of the wolf-like pack, a separation happened. A strip of white snow revealed itself. And in that parting, a set of feet walked casually toward her. They wore beautiful men’s dress shoes, now wet and looking extra-black against the white of the clearing’s floor. Farrah’s eyes went from those feet up a set of legs in black wool slacks to a suit coat. And then, finally she settled on the figure’s face as he approached.
It was the grey and yellow mix of the stranger’s skin Gramps had described. He wore an excruciating smile of yellow, corn-cob teeth and glared at her as he approached. And the dogs? They stood aside and calmed their leaping ferocity. All but the handful that had landed atop Gramps and Dad in two sloppy piles of matted fur, clumping mud and limbs.
The stranger was dragging something along with him. Limp in his wake, he brought the tendrils of several lengths of rope which he had tucked under his arms. He dropped them and before Farrah could even turn from the sickly sight of his fetid and grinning face, he had one of his arms outstretched to loop one cord of rope around her left wrist. She struggled away from him. It was of no use. The writhing mass of dogs had piled up all around her and she could not even gain an inch of leave from the spot where the stranger bound her wrist.
She looked down to her right hand in a slow, blurred movement, as though she had been drugged. She was vaguely aware of the stranger’s touch. At her wrist was a thick and twined section of mooring rope, used mostly for securing a boat to a dock. Multiple small ropes were wound together to become one. And that one was now a knot. She likely could have pulled one wrist free from the giant knot, but would need her left hand to do so.
As soon as one knot had been secured, he moved to lash the second. And, at once, the first wrist was tugged away from her. Where the multiple ropes entwined, there were the mouths of waiting dogs. Three, no four, of them and they each gripped one thick section of the smaller ropes. They pulled at them in unison, as though they may rip her arm from its socket.
A tick later, her left arm was secured in its own knot and yanked away from her. In slow motion, her eyes went in that direction, blurry and uncomprehending. But there, on her left arm, a thick knot of light tan that bled away to multiple individual ropes, each now clenched in the gritting teeth of a wild animal.
Two arms secured against freedom as she stood immovable by the girth of dirty, smelly beasts at her feet. They ceased their snapping at least. The dogs that held sway over her arms each yanked at her from opposite directions. She strained to keep them from ripping her apart: four dogs in that direction and four more in the other.
From his crouch, the smiling bastard of a stranger stood and blew her a kiss. She felt hot breath on her face and cringed back from it.
He turned and, again, clapped his hands. That scattered a pile of the wild pack from its control over the toppled Grandpa Danny. Beneath them, as though rising from the doom of drowning in a black sea, he opened his eyes. He was covered in blood. They’d gone after mostly his arms as he he�
��d raised them in defence. The blood oozed from gashes there. But his main body looked mostly unaffected.
The stranger let out a hoot of laughter. Then he put that nice shoe of his on Danny’s chest. “Flip over,” he said in a thick, gurgling voice that sounded like maybe he was on the tail end of a bout with whooping cough. “Don’t make me say it again.”
Exhausted and coughing, Danny did. His wet rump was black from the mud and the moisture. He let out anoomph then fell into a peal of coughing again. The stranger leaned down and uncoiled a section of rope to get a more manageable diameter. He tied the man’s wrists together with it, leaving Gramps to languish in the mud, face to the side, but the rest of him pressed into the guck like an animal ready for slaughter.
Bawling and unable to move, Farrah called out to him. He called back. “Don’t, Farrah,” he said with strain. “I’m okay, Littlest Lady,” as if he was talking to a toddler. “Grandpa Danny’s just fine. You’ll be too.”
Next was the writhing pile of dogs keeping control of Doug. Upon a third of the stranger’s handclaps, those dogs disbanded as well. Beneath them, Doug sat in the muck with his head bowed, and a defensive gesture of his arms up at his face. His wet and bloody hair hung down. Farrah—straining against her eight dog commanders—saw that her father’s chest rose and fell. As if waiting for that confirmation, the stranger got around back of him and used one of those lengths of thin rope to bind the police chief’s hands in a similar fashion to Grandpa Danny’s.
Then he returned to the front of the Chief, stared down at him and spat on him. “Bugger,” he said to Doug Birkhead. “Never did a lick for me. I should do a lot worse than this.” Then he gave Doug a kick in his shoulder and the men flung backwards in to the mud near his father-in-law. The stranger went over and used his foot to roll Doug over. “But the King has other things in mind,” he said. “For both of you.”
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