by Jack Dann
“Tommy!” she said, startled by his expression. And the boy’s face changed, assuming the sullen look that had become habitual to him. She hesitated, uncertain of what to say. Joseph had said that jealousy was natural, but she had not thought that the boy could hate the man so much. “How did you get in there?”
Tommy pointed to a gate in the fence a short distance from them.
“Hey, Tom, I bet you’ve found all kinds of things to show us,” Joseph called. His attempt at joviality was met by a frown, but he led Alice to the gate and they entered the smaller yard. Tombstones—weathered so that names and dates were no longer legible—stood at drunken angles within the bounds of the fence. “It’s the old graveyard that the guidebook mentioned,” Joseph said to Alice. “I’d guess there’s a lot to see here.”
Alice tried to join in Joseph’s attempt to generate enthusiasm without much success. She peered at the headstones and wandered along the edge of the fence, kicking at rocks. In one corner of the fenced yard, she found a small grave, a quarter the size of the others, set apart from the rest by several feet. She pointed it out to Joseph. “Look. I guess it was a child—it’s so small.”
Joseph glanced inside the book and shook his head. “Nope, it’s not a person at all. It’s the first grave in the yard, though. Apparently, it’s the guardian of the churchyard.” He ran his finger down the page. “Says here that they figured that the first one to be buried in a new cemetery had to stand guard over it, so rather than burying a person, they buried ah . . . a dog.” He looked at Alice half-apologetically.
“Yeah?” Tommy’s face showed signs of interest. “What was the dog supposed to do?”
Joseph looked at Alice and she nodded. “Well, the spirit is called a church grim, and it’s supposed to guard the cemetery against wickedness. It says here that the legend of the church grim may be related to the legends of the Wild Hunt—magical hounds that were supposed to roam the moors and chase people who were foolish enough to venture out after dark.”
“They chase people like the hound of the Baskervilles did. What do they do if they catch them?” Tommy was still interested.
Joseph shrugged and closed the book. “It doesn’t say.”
“I’ll bet they rip them up.” The considering tone in the childish voice made Alice frown. She did not care for the turn the conversation had taken.
“That doesn’t sound very nice, Tommy,” she admonished him.
“It’s okay if it’s a wicked person,” he argued. “Then it’s okay.”
Alice let the subject drop and they walked to the heart of the village in the growing twilight. Birds sang in the hedges and wildflowers grew by the side of the road. Tommy seemed happy for a change—he had picked up a stick and was using it to tap out a rhythm on the road as he walked a few paces behind Alice and Joseph. But when Alice looked back, she caught him watching them with a measuring look and she remembered his expression when he saw Joseph kiss her. She linked an arm with Joseph’s protectively.
It was not until after they had gone out to dinner, returned to the bed-and-breakfast house, and Alice had put Tommy to bed, that she realized that the jacket she had worn was gone. She tried to remember whether she had worn it on her way back from the church, and she seemed to remember dropping it on a chair by the door in the entry hall of the house, but it was not there. Joseph shrugged when she mentioned it, saying, “If you left it in the churchyard, it’ll still be there tomorrow.”
“Maybe I dropped it in Tommy’s room. I’ll check.” For some reason, the loss disturbed her.
Tommy’s room was empty. His clothes were gone and his pajamas lay in an untidy heap on the floor. The full moon flooded the room with light and suddenly she felt cold. The only place the boy would have gone was back to the graveyard. She remembered the black beast that had leaped from the shadow of the fence and she shivered.
Joseph was already in bed when she returned to the room. She hesitated, then slipped on a sweater. He rolled over in bed to look at her. “Aren’t you coming to bed?”
She paused. If he were to know where she was going, he would insist on accompanying her. She realized that it was foolish to worry about the jealousy of a seven-year-old, foolish to hear the wild baying of a hound in the back of her mind. But the jacket was gone and Tommy was gone. And Tommy hated Joseph.
“I’m still a little restless,” she said. “I thought I’d go out for a walk before bed.”
The crickets that chirped in the hedges lining the road fell silent when she passed. She walked quickly, clutching her sweater tightly around her against the chill night air.
Tommy was like her, she thought as she walked. He had the capacity to hate. Joseph did not understand that—he thought the child would learn to accept him. But Alice had seen the look in Tommy’s eyes.
She reached the churchyard and paused by the stone wall. The scent of roses seemed stronger in the darkness than it had in the day. Over the sound of the crickets, she heard another sound—like the click of toenails on flagstones. A cloud had covered the moon and the church and graveyard lay in darkness.
“Tommy!” Alice called over the wall. “It’s time to come home.” The crickets were silenced by her voice and she paused, listening to a hush that breathed. She stepped through the gap in the stone wall and followed the flagstones toward the iron fence. The scent of roses became almost overpowering.
A dark shadow separated itself from the darker shade by the fence, and she could dimly see a black beast with red-rimmed eyes, standing in her path. She froze in the darkness. Remembering advice that Paul had given her long ago, she spoke to the animal quietly and firmly. “I don’t know what the hell you are—dog or guardian spirit, but you won’t get my husband. I’ll protect him.”
The beast growled—a deep-throated sound that rose and fell, rose and fell. The animal stepped forward and still she stood frozen, confident that the animal would not attack. She had seen Tommy playing with it in the graveyard.
“I am your master’s mother, dog. You are making a mistake.”
Then another shadow stepped out from the shade of the fence as the moon came out from behind the cloud. Tommy held in his arms Joseph’s jacket, which she had worn so often, the jacket that still carried the scent of her perfume. The moonlight shone on Tommy’s eager eyes and she knew that it was no mistake.
Table of Contents
Auto-Da-Fe
Roog
Do It for Mama! Concerning Dogs, Men & Manhattan: 24 Hours of Violence & Tragedy
The Hounds
The Howling Tower
Demon Lover
A Few Kindred Spirits
Dogs’ Lives
Here, Putzi!
Desertion
I Lost My Love to the Space Shuttle Columbia
The Master of the Hounds
One-Trick Dog
Friend’s Best Man
Wish Hound