by Dean Koontz
Joey listened to the night wind sniffing and licking at the house, and it sounded like a living thing. He pulled the blanket all the way up to his nose, as if it were a shield that would protect him from all harm.
After a while he said, “She’s still out there somewhere.”
The dog lifted his square head.
“She’s waiting, Brandy.”
The dog raised one ear.
“She’ll be back.”
The dog growled in the back of his throat.
Joey put one hand on his furry companion. “You know it, too, don’t you, boy? You know she’s out there, don’t you?”
Brandy woofed softly.
The wind moaned.
The boy listened.
The night ticked toward dawn.
4
In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, Christine went downstairs to Joey’s room to look in on him. The lamp she had left burning was off now, and the bedroom was tombblack. For a moment fear pinched off her breath. But when she snapped on the light, she saw that Joey was in bed, asleep, safe.
Brandy was comfortably ensconced in the bed, too, but he woke when she turned on the light. He yawned and licked his chops, and gave her a look that was rich with canine guilt.
“You know the rules, fuzzy-butt,” she whispered. “On the floor.”
Brandy got off the bed without waking Joey, slunk to the nearest corner, and curled up on the floor. He looked at her sheepishly.
“Good dog,” she whispered.
He wagged his tail, sweeping the carpet around him.
She switched off the light and started back toward her own room. She had gone only a step or two when she heard movement in the boy’s room, and she knew it was Brandy returning to the bed. Tonight, however, she just didn’t care all that much whether he got dog hairs on the sheets and blankets. Tonight, the only thing that seemed to matter was that Joey was safe.
She returned to her bed and dozed fitfully, tossing and turning, murmuring in her sleep as night crept toward dawn. She dreamed of an old woman with a green face, green hair, and long green fingernails that hooked wickedly into sharp claws.
Monday morning came at last, and it was sunny. Too damned sunny. She woke early, and light speared through her bedroom windows, making her wince. Her eyes were grainy, sensitive, bloodshot.
She took a long, hot shower, steaming away some of her weariness, then dressed for work in a maroon blouse, simple gray skirt, and gray pumps.
Stepping to the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, she examined herself critically, although staring at her reflection always embarrassed her. There was no mystery about her shyness; she knew her embarrassment was a result of the things she had been taught during the Lost Years, between her eighteenth and twentieth birthdays. During that period she had struggled to throw off all vanity and a large measure of her individuality because gray-faced uniformity was what had been demanded of her back then. They had expected her to be humble, self-effacing, and plain. Any concern for her appearance, any slightest pride in her looks, would have brought swift disciplinary action from her superiors. Although she had put those grim lonely years and events behind her, they still had a lingering effect on her that she could not deny.
Now, almost as a test of how completely she had triumphed over the Lost Years, she fought her embarrassment and resolutely studied her mirror image with as much vanity as she could summon from a soul half-purged of it. Her figure was good, though she didn’t have the kind of body that, displayed in a bikini, would ever sell a million pin-up posters. Her legs were slender and well shaped. Her hips flared just right, and she was almost too small in the waist, though that smallness made her bustline—which was only average—seem larger than it was. She sometimes wished she were as busty as Val, but Val said that very large breasts were more of a curse than a blessing, that it was like carrying around a pair of saddlebags, and that some evenings her shoulders ached with the strain of that burden. Even if what Val said was true and not just a white lie told out of sympathy for those less amply endowed, Christine nevertheless wished she had big boobs, and she knew that this desire, this hopeless vanity, was a blatant reaction to—and rejection of—all that she had been taught in that gray and dreary place where she had lived between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
By now, her face was flushed, but she forced herself to remain in front of the mirror a minute more, until she had determined that her hair was properly combed and that her makeup was evenly applied. She knew she was pretty. Not gorgeous. But she had a good complexion, a delicate chin and jawline, a good nose. Her eyes were her best feature, large and dark and clear. Her hair was dark, too, almost black. Val said she would trade her big boobs for hair like that any day, but Christine knew that was only talk. Sure, her hair looked good when the weather was right, but as soon as the humidity rose past a certain point, it got either lank and flat or frizzy and curly, and then she looked like either Vampira or Gene Shalit.
At last, blushing furiously but feeling that she had triumphed over the excessive self-effacement that had been hammered into her years ago, she turned away from the mirror.
She went to the kitchen to make coffee and toast, and found Joey already at the breakfast table. He wasn’t eating, just sitting there, face turned away from her, staring out the window at the sun-splashed rear lawn.
Taking a paper filter from a box and fitting it into the basket of the dripolator, Christine said, “What can I get for you for breakfast, Skipper?”
He didn’t answer.
Spooning coffee into the filter, she said, “How about cereal and peanut butter toast? English muffins? Maybe you even feel like an egg.”
He still didn’t answer. Sometimes—not often—he could be cranky in the morning, but he always could be teased into a better mood. By nature, he was too mild-mannered to remain sullen for long.
Switching on the dripolator and pouring water into the top of it, she said, “Okay, so if you don’t want cereal or toast or an egg, maybe I could fix some spinach, brussels sprouts, and broccoli. They’re all your favorites, aren’t they?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Just stared out the window. Unmoving. Silent.
“Or I could put one of your old shoes in the microwave and cook it up nice and tender for you. How about that? Nothing’s quite as tasty as an old shoe for breakfast. Mmmmmmmm! Really sticks to your ribs.”
He said nothing.
She got the toaster out of the cupboard, put it on the counter, plugged it in—then suddenly realized that the boy wasn’t merely being cranky. Something was wrong.
Staring at the back of his head, she said, “Honey?”
He made a wretched, stifled little sound.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
At last he turned away from the window and looked at her. His tousled hair hung down in his eyes, which were possessed by a haunted look, a bleak expression so stark for a six-year-old that it made Christine’s heart beat faster. Bright tears glistened on his cheeks.
She quickly went to him and took his hand. It was cold.
“Sweetheart, what is it? Tell me.”
He wiped at his reddened eyes with his free hand. His nose was runny, and he blotted it on his sleeve.
He was so pale.
Whatever was wrong, it wasn’t simply a standard complaint, no ordinary childhood trauma. She sensed that much and her mouth went dry with fear.
He tried to speak, couldn’t get out even one word, pointed to the kitchen door, took a deep shuddery breath, began to shake, and finally said, “The p-p-porch.”
“What about the porch?”
He wasn’t able to tell her.
Frowning, she went to the door, hesitated, opened it. She gasped, rocked by the sight that awaited her.
Brandy. His furry, golden body lay at the edge of the porch, near the steps. But his head was immediately in front of the door, at her feet. The dog had been decapitated.
5
Christine
and Joey sat on the beige sofa in the living room. The boy was no longer crying, but he still looked stunned.
The policeman filling out the report, Officer Wilford, sat on one of the Queen Anne armchairs. He was tall and husky, with rough features, bushy eyebrows, an air of rugged self-sufficiency: the kind of man who probably felt at home only outdoors and especially in the woods and mountains, hunting and fishing. He perched on the very edge of the chair and held his notebook on his knees, an amusingly prim posture for a man his size; apparently he was concerned about rumpling or soiling the furniture.
“But who let the dog out?” he inquired, after having asked every other question he could think of.
“Nobody,” Christine said. “He let himself out. There’s a pet portal in the bottom of the kitchen door.”
“I saw it,” Wilford said. “Not big enough for a dog that size.”
“I know. It was here when we bought the house. Brandy hardly ever used it, but if he wanted out badly enough, and if there wasn’t anyone around to let him out, he could put his head down, wriggle on his belly, and squeeze through that little door. I kept meaning to have it closed up because I was afraid he might get stuck. If only I had closed it up, he might still be alive.”
“The witch got him,” Joey said softly.
Christine put an arm around her son.
Wilford said, “So you think maybe they used meat or dog biscuits to lure him outside?”
“No,” said Joey adamantly, answering for his mother, clearly offended by the suggestion that a gluttonous impulse had led to the dog’s death. “Brandy went out there to protect me. He knew the old witch was still hanging around, and he went to get her, but what happened was . . . she got him first.”
Christine was aware that Wilford’s suggestion was probably the correct explanation, but she also knew that Joey would find it easier to accept Brandy’s death if he could believe that his dog had died in a noble cause. She said, “He was a very brave dog, very brave, and we’re proud of him.”
Wilford nodded. “Yes, I’m sure you’ve got every reason to be proud. It’s a darned shame. A golden retriever’s such a handsome breed. Such a gentle face and sweet disposition.”
“The witch got him,” Joey repeated, as if numbed by that terrible realization.
“Maybe not,” Wilford said. “Maybe it wasn’t the old woman.”
Christine frowned at him. “Well, of course it was.”
“I understand how upsetting the incident was at South Coast Plaza yesterday,” Wilford said. “I understand how you’d be inclined to link the old woman to this thing with the dog. But there’s no solid proof, no real reason to think they are linked. It might be a mistake to assume they are.”
“But the old woman was at Joey’s window last night,” Christine said exasperatedly. “I told you that. I told the officers who were here last night, too. Doesn’t anyone listen? She was at Joey’s window, looking in at him, and Brandy was barking at her.”
“But she was gone when you got there,” Wilford said.
“Yes,” Christine said. “But—”
Smiling down at Joey, Wilford said, “Son, are you absolutely, positively sure it was the old lady there at your window?”
Joey nodded vigorously. “Yeah. The witch.”
“Because, see, when you looked up and noticed someone at the window, it would have been perfectly natural for you to figure it was the old woman. After all, she’d already given you one bad scare earlier in the day, so she was on your mind. Then, when you switched the light on and got a glimpse of who it was there at the window, maybe you had the old woman’s face so firmly fixed in your mind that you would’ve seen her no matter who it really was.”
Joey blinked, unable to follow the policeman’s reasoning. He just stubbornly repeated himself: “It was her. The witch.”
To Christine, Officer Wilford said, “I’d be inclined to think the prowler was the one who later killed the dog—but that it wasn’t the old woman who was the prowler. You see, most always, when a dog’s been poisoned—and it happens more often than you think—it’s not the work of some total stranger. It’s someone within a block of the house where the dog lived. A neighbor. What I figure is, some neighbor was prowling around, looking for the dog, not looking for your little boy at all, when Joey saw them at the window. Later they found the dog and did what they’d come to do.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Christine said. “We’ve got good neighbors here. None of them would kill our dog.”
“Happens all the time,” Wilford said.
“Not in this neighborhood.”
“Any neighborhood,” Wilford insisted. “Barking dogs, day after day, night after night . . . they drive some people a little nuts.”
“Brandy hardly ever barked.”
“Well, now, ‘hardly ever’ to you might seem like ‘all the time’ to one of your neighbors.”
“Besides, Brandy wasn’t poisoned. It was a hell of a lot more violent than that. You saw. Crazy-violent. Not something any neighbor would do.”
“You’d be surprised what neighbors will do,” Wilford said. “Sometimes they even kill each other. Not unusual at all. It’s a strange world we’re living in.”
“You’re wrong,” she said hotly. “It was the old woman. The dog and the face at the window—they were both connected with that old woman.”
He sighed. “You may be right.”
“I am right.”
“I was only suggesting that we keep our minds open,” he said.
“Good idea,” she said pointedly.
He closed his notebook. “Well, I guess I’ve got all the details I need.”
Christine got up as the officer rose from his chair. She said, “What now?”
“We’ll file a report, of course, including your statement, and we’ll give you an open case number.”
“What’s an open case number?”
“If anything else should happen, if this old woman should show up again, you give the case number when you call us, and the officers answering your call will know the story before they get here; they’ll know what to look for on the way, so if maybe the woman leaves before they arrive, they’ll spot her in passing and be able to stop her.”
“Why didn’t they give us a case number after what happened last night?”
“Oh, they wouldn’t open a file just for one report of a prowler,” Wilford explained. “Last night, you see, no crime had been committed—at least so far as we could tell. No evidence of any sort of crime. But this is . . . a little worse.”
“A little worse?” she said, remembering Brandy’s severed head, the dead glassy eyes gazing up at her.
“An unfortunate choice of words,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, compared to a lot of other things we see on this job, a dead dog isn’t so—”
“Okay, okay,” Christine said, increasingly unable to conceal her anger and impatience. “You’ll call us and give us an open case number. But what else are you going to do?”
Wilford looked uncomfortable. He rolled his broad shoulders and scratched at his thick neck. “The description you’ve given us is the only thing we’ve got to go on, and that’s not much. We’ll run it through the computer and try to work backward to a name. The machine’ll spit out the name of anyone who’s been in trouble with us before and who fits at least seven of the ten major points of standard physical comparison. Then we’ll pull mug shots of whatever other photos we have in the files. Maybe the computer’ll give us several names, and we’ll have photos of more than one old woman. Then we’ll bring all the pictures over here for you to study. As soon as you tell us we’ve found her . . . well, then we can go have a talk with her and find out what this is all about. You see, it really isn’t hopeless, Mrs. Scavello.”
“What if she hasn’t been in trouble with you before and you don’t have a file on her?”
Moving to the front door, Wilford said, “We have datasharing arrangements with every police agency in Orange, Sa
n Diego, Riverside, and Los Angeles Counties. We can reach their computers through our own. Instant access. Datalink, they call it. If she’s in any of their files, we’ll find her just as quickly as if she were in our own.”
“Yeah, sure, but what if she’s never been in trouble anywhere ?” Christine asked anxiously.
Opening the front door, Wilford said, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll probably turn up something. We almost always do.”
“That’s not good enough,” she said, and she would have said it even if she had believed him, which she didn’t. They wouldn’t turn up anything.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Scavello, but it’s the best we can do.”
“Shit.”
He scowled. “I understand your frustration, and I want to assure you we won’t file this away and forget about it. But we can’t work miracles.”
“Shit.”
His scowl deepened. His bushy eyebrows drew together in a single thick bar. “Lady, it’s none of my business, but I don’t think you should use words like that in front of your little boy.”
She stared at him, astonished. Astonishment turned to anger. “Yeah? And what’re you—a born-again Christian?”
“In fact, I am, yes. And I believe it’s extremely important for us to set good examples for our young ones, so they’ll grow up in God’s image. We’ve got to—”
“I don’t believe this,” Christine said. “You’re telling me that I’m setting a bad example because I used a four-letter word, a harmless word—”
“Words aren’t harmless. The devil beguiles and persuades with words. Words are the—”
“What about the example you’re setting for my son? Huh? By your every act, you’re teaching him that the police really can’t protect anyone, that they really can’t help anyone, that they can’t do much more than come around afterward and pick up the pieces.”
“I wish you didn’t see it that way,” Wilford said.
“How the hell else am I supposed to see it?”
He sighed. “We’ll call you with the case number.” Then he turned away from the door, away from her and Joey, and moved stiffly down the walkway.