“Hey!” Nick shouted.
He pushed the button to lift the door again, but the opener jammed, squealing as the motor burned out. Cutting it off, he tossed his keys and briefcase aside, grabbed Buddy’s leash, and ran out the front door.
The rain was coming down at an angle, soaking through his suit. He looked in all directions, but Buddy was already out of sight.
“Buddy!” he yelled, suddenly scared. “Buddy, come back!”
He had the awful feeling that Buddy might have done this before. Maybe that’s how the dog had come to be lost in the first place. Now he might never see Buddy again, and the idea of being back in that lonely, dronelike existence he’d been living before Buddy had come along drove him out into the street. He started running, wincing every time lightning forked across the sky. He could imagine the headlines: MAN KILLED BY LIGHTNING WHILE CHASING DOG.
“Buddy!” he yelled. “Hey, boy! Come on!”
His next-door neighbor’s white SUV came down the street toward him. Nick waved, hoping the driver would stop. He wanted to ask the family to be on the lookout for his dog. But the vehicle drove straight for him, never veering.
Astonished, Nick barely jumped out of the way in time. Without stopping, the SUV pulled into its driveway and inside the garage. The door came down before anyone got out of the car. No one ran out to see if Nick was hurt or even waved in apology.
Fuming, he went on searching for Buddy, taking care now to use the sidewalk. He was halfway across the driveway of Erin’s neighbor when the black Nissan zoomed into sight. Instead of pausing to let him cross the rest of the way, the Nissan pulled in, clipping him hard enough to spin him off his feet. Sprawling, Nick lay there, half stunned. His leg hurt like blazes.
Sheer anger propelled him to his feet. “Hey!” Nick shouted. Furious, he pounded on the dark-tinted window as the car paused there, waiting for its garage to open. “You bastard! Are you crazy or something?”
The driver, unseen behind dark windows, didn’t respond. As the Nissan pulled into its empty garage, Nick decided he wasn’t going to let this guy get away with it.
He ducked inside the garage just as the driver’s door opened. Nick grabbed it from the driver’s hands as the man got out. “Now see here, you—”
He found himself staring into a pair of dead eyes. He’d never looked into a gaze so void of personality or feeling. The guy was maybe in his forties, with thinning hair expertly trimmed. His green eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed. And as they stared into Nick’s they held nothing at all.
The man didn’t speak, just went on staring through Nick. Creeped out, Nick balled his fist and socked the guy in the jaw, making him stagger. “Think about that the next time you run down a pedestrian, you stoned son of a bitch.”
Limping outside, he stood on the driveway in the rain as the garage door closed.
“Jerk,” he muttered.
Worry about Buddy sent him hobbling onward. As soon as he found his dog, though, he would be sending complaints to the HOA and the cops.
All eight streets of the neighborhood later, and still no sign of his dog. Exhausted, soaked to the skin, hurting as his leg stiffened more and more, Nick kept on searching. It was dark now. The worst of the thunder and lightning had moved on, rumbling to the east, but the rain was still pounding down so hard that he could barely hear his voice every time he shouted. He just hoped that poor Buddy would come to him.
A dog’s yelping cry caught his attention. He was on Crestmont Court by now, and the street was ankle-deep with water the storm drains could not handle.
“Buddy!” he bawled at the top of his lungs.
A bark answered him.
Down at the end of the cul-de-sac, he saw a pair of men by the isolated house. They were struggling to put a gray-and-white dog into the trunk of a car.
Nick never stopped to think. “Hey!” he shouted angrily. “You there! That’s my dog!”
They ignored him, one raising the trunk lid higher as the other man tried to shove a struggling Buddy inside.
“Buddy!” Nick yelled anxiously. “Come here, boy! Buddy!”
With a snarl, Buddy squirmed free. He came streaking to Nick, who knelt and caught him in relief, clutching the panting, shaking dog tight.
“There’s my Buddy,” he said breathlessly. “There’s my good boy.”
A car engine roared to life, and tires squealed as the dognappers’ automobile peeled from the driveway and gunned straight for Nick. Half blinded by the headlights, he felt himself frozen by sheer astonishment, but only for a split second.
Grabbing Buddy, he flung himself to one side, rolling over as the car swept past, missing him by inches. Lying there as the rushing water gurgled into the swollen storm drain, Nick tried to catch his breath. Being nearly run over three times in one evening was no coincidence. In his arms, Buddy was trembling. After a moment the dog gave him a small lick on his chin.
Nick’s heart was pounding so hard that he thought he might pass out. Finally, he managed to sit up. Still clutching Buddy, he fumbled around, intending to clip the leash securely to his dog’s collar before he stood. But Buddy’s collar was gone. In its place was a too-tight nylon strap with a small plastic box affixed to it. A short, blunt wire like an antenna poked out of the box.
“What the hell is this?” Nick asked, while Buddy whimpered and rubbed his head against Nick’s chest. The dog pawed at his ears, whining harder, and scratched violently at the strap.
“Okay. Hold on. Let’s get this thing off.”
Nick fumbled with the strap until he finally succeeded in pulling it free. He turned it over in his hands, curious about what it might be, but Buddy was still whining and shaking his ears.
On impulse, Nick tossed it into the storm drain, letting it disappear in the swirling water. As though some signal it was emitting had shorted out, Buddy stopped whimpering and jumped at Nick, licking his face with joy.
“Good boy,” Nick said, rubbing his ears until Buddy winced. “Got a problem there? Want me to look?”
Buddy shook his head violently, making his ears flap, and whined softly.
“Okay,” Nick said, scratching Buddy’s chin instead. “Don’t run away from me again, promise?”
Just to be safe, he made a slip knot in the leash and put that on Buddy before he stood up.
Pain shot through his ankle and burned up his leg. Crying out, he staggered and barely managed not to fall. It hurt so badly that he couldn’t catch his breath at first. If he had been able, he would have screamed. Finally, the agony faded, leaving him sweating and exhausted.
Drawing several deep breaths, he gritted his teeth and gingerly eased his weight onto his left foot. Pain lanced through his ankle again. Gasping, he patted his pockets for his cell phone. It was smashed. He thumped it to be sure, but the casing was cracked and it wouldn’t even light up.
That meant dragging himself somehow to the nearest house.
Only, the nearest house was the dark, unlit one that Buddy was afraid of. Staring at the place, Nick thought he saw a shadowy figure walk past one of the front windows. A cold chill that had nothing to do with the rain ran up Nick’s spine. Okay, he thought, not there. Next house, then.
But as he looked up the street, the lights in that one went out. As did the lights in the next one, until all the lights were out on Crestmont Court.
It wasn’t a power failure. Nick could see lights still burning fine on the other streets. All of Haven Estates ran on the same power grid with backup generators. It was unlikely that one street would lose power while the rest kept going.
The garage door opened at the isolated house. A vehicle backed out without its lights on. Buddy pressed against his injured leg and growled, making the prickles run up Nick’s spine again.
Instinctively he turned toward the shortcut, hobbling along in the rain and putting as little weight on his left foot as he possibly could. Every step was excruciating, but he had only to glance at Buddy, cringing as close to him as p
ossible, to keep going. Buddy’s fear was contagious.
The only way to get himself into the drainage channel was to drop onto his butt and slide in. He did so, gasping and wincing, and crouched in the rushing water with his head below the top edge of the drain. As the vehicle drove by, Nick clutched the dog to him and held his breath. It was moving slowly . . . too slowly . . . as though searching. The beam of a powerful flashlight swung above Nick’s head. His fear grew hot and tight in his chest, but he forced himself to remain absolutely still. If he didn’t move, they couldn’t see him.
Finally, the car drove on, still without headlights. When he could no longer hear it, he crawled through the water rather than get to his feet again.
Emerging onto Ladybrook, he straightened slowly and tried not to feel discouraged by how far it still was to his house.
Only, the car that had searched for him on Crestmont Court was now sitting in his driveway, the engine running.
This time, he was more angry than scared. “What are they, the dog police?” he muttered. He wanted to confront them, but this wasn’t the time.
Erin’s lights were shining brightly close by, and he struggled in that direction. It took an eternity to reach her front door. Shivering, he knocked, but she didn’t answer.
Frustrated, he rang the bell, but she didn’t come and Cotton didn’t bark from inside. “Don’t be gone,” he whispered.
He limped around to the side of her house, trying to look in a window. All the blinds were drawn. But a gap in the curtains next door drew him to it.
Desperately he peered inside, and saw a man and woman sitting in the living room. Their TV was playing, but the woman wasn’t watching. Instead, she was staring off into space with a vacant look on her face. A bowl of popcorn had turned over in her lap, spilling kernels onto the floor.
He thought at first that she’d suffered a stroke or something, but the man on the sofa was eating popcorn. His hand moved regularly to his mouth like an automaton.
Something about the two of them made Nick think of the Nissan’s stoned driver. He backed away, tangling himself in the shrubbery for a moment and nearly falling. That saved him, for, as he crouched, leaning against the house for balance, he heard a car moving slowly along the street, very slowly as though searching for something.
Me, he thought with a shiver.
It was crazy, but he didn’t waste time rationalizing anything. Pulling himself up, he opened the gate to Erin’s backyard. He was careful in case Cotton was out there. He didn’t want her escaping, too. But the Westie wasn’t around.
“She’s a smart girl,” he told Buddy, who was whining again. “Safe and dry inside with her mommy.”
At the back, Erin’s windows were open under a covered patio, letting the rain-washed breeze into her house. Erin was sitting on her sofa with the TV on, muted. Her laptop was running on the coffee table, but Erin wasn’t typing. Instead, she was sitting there slumped with her hands in her lap, staring vacantly at nothing at all. The laptop’s screen saver was on, so Nick knew she’d stopped working several minutes ago.
“Erin,” he called softly, not wanting to scare her. “Hey, Erin, it’s me!”
She didn’t move. She didn’t seem to hear him.
“Erin!” he called again. “Hey! Wake up!”
Like a sleepwalker, she turned her head slowly in his direction. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like, clinging to her window like some kind of ax murderer with his clothes torn and wet. But her expression didn’t change. Her face was slack, as though she’d taken a drug and couldn’t quite wake up.
“Erin!” he said sharply. “For God’s sake! It’s Nick. I need help.”
Buddy barked sharply.
She flinched and blinked, lifting her hands to rub her face. Only then did she seem to notice him. Fear flashed in her eyes. “Who’s there?”
“Nick Penby! Please, Erin. If you don’t want to let me in, call a cab for me, okay? I need the emergency room.” He felt a wave of agony run through him, as though all his strength was draining away, and pressed his palm to the window screen. “My cell phone is broken. I think I’ve busted my ankle. Buddy ran away in the storm, and a car hit me.”
“My God.”
At last she was running to the back door. Throwing it open, she helped him inside. Buddy ran in circles around them, tangling his leash and getting in the way.
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, struggling to support Nick’s weight. “I must have been half asleep, or something. What happened?”
He didn’t have the breath to tell her. She started to put him on the sofa, but he protested, not wanting to ruin it. So he ended up on one of the kitchen chairs that he’d helped move in. It felt so good to sit down that he wanted to cry.
Instead, he swallowed the water and aspirin she brought him. When he could, he told her everything, while she sat holding Buddy on her lap, toweling him dry.
The more Nick talked, the stranger her expression became. Her glassy brown eyes, he noticed, were red rimmed as though she’d been crying. And her hands moved slower and slower across Buddy until they weren’t moving at all.
“Erin?” Nick said sharply.
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her gaze strayed to the television.
He turned around, wincing as he moved. The commercial that was playing vanished, and Nick saw instead a black screen filled with jagged, spiky colors flashing rhythmically, like a badly designed screen saver.
When he blinked, it became the commercial again. Puzzled, Nick flexed his leg, deliberately making it hurt. The TV image wavered, and he saw the jagged, spiky lines.
“Erin!” he said loudly. “Wake up!”
She blinked and looked at him.
“Turn off your TV, please.”
She sat there as though drugged and didn’t move. Finally, Nick pushed himself to his feet and limped over to click off the TV. When Buddy wiggled on her lap and licked her face, she blinked, cradling his whiskery face in her hands and smoothing back his eyebrows. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“They were trying to steal you,” she said, as though the conversation hadn’t been interrupted. “You silly dog. Why did you let the storm scare you into running away? You might have been lost forever.”
Suddenly she was crying, clutching Buddy and weeping into his coat.
Nick watched her in concern. “Where’s Cotton?” he asked.
“Gone!” Erin wailed.
“When? Tonight?”
She shook her head. “Three days ago. I came home and she wasn’t in the backyard. I—I thought she’d run away. I looked everywhere.”
Nick stared at her, not sure what to think. “Why,” he asked finally, conscious of feeling hurt, “didn’t you ask me to help? You know I would have.”
She wiped her face, refusing to look at him. “Sure, I—I guess I knew that. I put up flyers right away. No one called me, no one. When I got home that night, all my flyers had been taken down.” Her eyes flashed with dull anger. “Who would do that? What kind of place is this, where they won’t even help you find a little dog?”
Thinking of the men who had tried to steal Buddy tonight, he was beginning to have an idea.
“Erin,” he asked, “do you play your TV a lot?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t watch it. It just comes on, and I leave it going for company. You know how it is.”
“You know about subliminal messages, right?”
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“And your TV just comes on? You don’t turn it on?”
“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment, as though still in a fog. “No, it comes on every evening just before I get home. It’s set to have my news program running when I get here.” She brightened. “Neat, right?”
“Why don’t you turn that function off?”
“Why should I? It’s nice, like—like someone waiting here for me, you know?” Then she reddened. “I—”
“Hey, it’s okay to feel lonely, l
iving like this. I was, until Buddy came along.”
Buddy woofed proudly.
“And you’ve got Cotton waiting for you, or you did,” Nick continued. “Have you called the pound, or your vet’s office?”
“What?” Erin’s voice was spacey and faraway again. She stared at the screen saver on her laptop.
Angrily, Nick slammed down its lid and unplugged its charger.
“Hey!” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m talking to you about your sweet little dog that’s missing. The one you keep forgetting to look for.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“You just admitted that she’s been gone for three days, and you haven’t even made the basic phone calls.”
“But—”
“Was the gate open or shut when you got home that day?”
“What?”
“Answer me!” Nick said. “The day she disappeared. Was the gate open or shut?”
Erin closed her eyes, lifting her hands to her ears. “I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“Think about it.”
“Open . . . no, shut.” She lowered her hands. “It was shut! My God, you think she was stolen?”
“Maybe. Some men were trying to steal Buddy tonight.”
“Like . . . like a—”
“Like maybe our HOA now has its own animal-control officer,” Nick said grimly. “To enforce this no-dog policy that’s recently popped up. Since I got Buddy. Since you moved here with Cotton. We’re the only residents that walk our dogs. I wonder if that’s why we got the letters.”
Erin looked bewildered. “I don’t understand.”
“I think I do. Dogs keep us active and alert. They entice us outdoors, where we see, and feel, and think. Don’t they, Buddy?”
Buddy wagged his tail.
“When did you quit walking Cotton every day?” Nick asked.
“I—”
“After your TV started coming on every evening?”
Erin shook her head. “Why are you asking all these questions?”
Twilight Zone Anthology Page 21