A Feral Darkness

by Doranna Durgin

  At least, not when she didn't push him into it at the spring. Even then...he started to listen to her through his fear; the flinging and screaming and cursing shortened in duration each time. Then she'd put him downhill with the latest greasy basted shank bone she'd bought for just this purpose, and she'd sit by the spring and hope to touch something of that which she'd felt here before. It didn't happen, but the meditative time soothed her.

  She never saw Parker. She didn't know if he'd taken her seriously or if he just came to the spring when he'd discovered she didn't. As Masera had pointed out, her work schedule was easy enough to divine, especially with Mickey in the loop.

  And now that she'd come to recognize the darkness, it all but disappeared. Sometimes she thought she felt its brief touch...and sometimes she thought she'd been standing in a draft. Perhaps Emily felt her lack of urgency, for she apologetically mentioned that the girls were deeply buried in a 4-H project, and that unless Brenna was frantic for the information, it'd be a few more days before they could wield their Internet know-how on Brenna's request for information on Mars Nodens.

  Brenna had to admit that she wasn't frantic for anything but more Pets! groomers.

  Elizabeth visited the store a couple of times, and after a week and half talked about returning to man the counter. Brenna narrowed the groomer applicants down and scheduled interviews, and the Pets! management, although typically failing to address the issue directly with her, kept their hands off the schedule book. She saw Masera at the store, and sometimes he stopped by the grooming room just in time to help her with an especially unruly creature. He didn't question her methods any longer—and that, she thought, spoke more to her about him than almost anything else he'd done. The fact of it dwelt inside her like something small and warm and waiting to hatch.

  She kept his card in her wallet.

  The thing that worried her most, that stuck in her mind as she carried the grooming workload and immersed herself in spring clean-up around the farm, finalizing another year of leasing the ten back acres for corn, marking the barn leaks and sags and walking the fence line to fix what she could and make note of the rest, was the look that often settled on Sammi's face, whether she was in the store for supplies or to oversee an adoption day. She was no longer talking about the man's death, was no longer talking about rabies at all. Brenna had the distinct feeling that she'd been warned to silence by authorities who didn't want a panic, although the incident had been announced on the news, along with the fact that the dog had been put down and its brain tested—positive, no surprise to anyone. It answered the question about where Janean had gotten the rabies, and with the dog dead, also officially ended the threat.

  Except that Brenna knew what Sammi knew, which was that the dog had gone through quarantine, and still hadn't been sick at the time of its new owner's death. The Center for Disease Control knew it, too, because they had copies of all of PePP's records. But no one said anything about that part of it anymore, not even Sammi. Especially not Sammi.

  A silence that said more to Brenna than any amount of normal questioning.

  ~~~

  The day before Elizabeth's return, in the morning lull immediately after Brenna opened and with Gary in the back doing mysterious manager-type things, Brenna found herself savoring the quiet half-hour before the first scheduled customer, lining the day's index cards out on the lower counter and trying to come up with the best strategy for getting through them all. DaNise could brush and prep this one out, she decided, putting a card to the side, and could be counted on to bathe several medium-sized mixed-breeds without help or intervention; those cards went to the side as well.

  She was startled when the door to the parking lot yanked open—not a customer moseying in, but someone with great intent and no time to waste; Brenna could tell that even before she looked up. Still, she was entirely surprised to find Mickey there, looming over her from the other side of the counter. Not as though he had any particular intent to threaten her, but like it was simply his default mode—although in the first instant, Brenna couldn't be sure just why he was there—for work related reasons or because of Parker—and her confusion must have shown on her face.

  Mickey didn't seem to care or even to notice. "I'm outta here," he said, rapping out the words. "You hang with Gil, I've seen you. Tell him this for me—" and Brenna almost lost his next words, so unused to thinking of Masera as Gil that she couldn't understand who Mickey meant—"Tell him it's been moved to Thursdays, same time."

  "Tell him what?" Brenna said, still unable to understand what the whole thing was about.

  "Heard me, didn't you? Tell him that. You don't gotta understand." He glanced inside and must have seen something he didn't like, because he reached for the exterior door. "You're his friend, you tell him that. Otherwise, like I said, he could be sorry. And you tell him to keep his mouth shut if he's stupid enough to get in that position."

  And out he went, not straight out to the parking lot but directly off to the side; an instant later something out of sight peeled rubber—he'd either left the vehicle running or he'd jumped into the passenger side.

  Before she'd even had time to process what had just happened, Gary came through the storeside door at what could only be called a run. "Was that Mickey Hefler?" he demanded.

  Bemused, Brenna nodded; that was all for which she had time.

  "What'd he want?"

  That, she didn't answer right away, because Masera's business was none of Gary's business, no matter how little sense any of it made. "He asked me to deliver a message, that's all. What's the big deal?"

  "What's the message?"

  "Well," Brenna said, carefully neutral in tone, "it wasn't for you." Then, when she saw his response building, she shrugged. "It didn't involve the store," she said, in case that's what he wanted to hear, and then repeated, "What's the big deal?"

  "There's been food product missing over the last couple of months," Gary said, and in that moment went from about to pull a manager-bully moment on her to venting to her. "We had a couple of stock boys in mind for it. Mickey was at the top of the list."

  "I get the feeling someone tipped him," Brenna said, finding herself irritated to be holding a message from Mickey-in-trouble to Masera-whose-brother-suspected-he-was-in-trouble. "I don't think he's coming back."

  Gary stared at the empty parking lot for a moment and made a frustrated growling noise in his throat. "Fine," he said. "I'll bet whoever tipped him is still here." He went back into manager mode and gave Brenna a pointed look. "Don't tell anyone else about this."

  Well, no. Except for Masera, who'd get his message when she saw him, along with a pointed question or two. But Brenna didn't remind Gary of that detail, just nodded. "Okay," she said, and went back to her schedule work.

  Even with the odd Mickey incident, in the end the weeks added up to a seasonal normalcy, and Brenna allowed herself to be distracted by the normal routines of life, to fall into complacence. The day Elizabeth came back to work, dragging and grouching about the preventative antibiotics she'd been on, Brenna wasn't even thinking about the darkness or Druid's fits or even the way Masera had of catching her eye from the sales floor for just a moment of contact and the briefest of smiles, though she hadn't seen him for days. She was just working.

  "The Damned Cat went home, I heard," she said, coming out to take a breather and assess the schedule for the rest of the day. Elizabeth had come in hours after Brenna and DaNise, once they were immersed in work and could use her help—handling the phone when things got crazy, intercepting the customer interaction, coming back to distract and beguile the wiggly dogs so Brenna could work quickly. In general, making Brenna's life a whole lot easier.

  "I guess so," Elizabeth said. "No surprise. The damned Damned Cat ought to have been put down, if you ask me."

  "You've got my vote there," Brenna said, which was all she could say without explaining about the darkness she was so sure had been involved. "Who's coming in next?"

  E
lizabeth smiled a wicked little smile, but her eyes looked tired. "Jeremy Cocker. In for a summer cut-down."

  Brenna made a face. Nasty little biter, Jeremy was. Although...she'd noticed of late, that some of the less irredeemable dogs—the ones who simply hadn't ever been told they weren't the boss of the world—weren't as much of a problem for her as usual. As though she were somehow regaining a little of the feel she'd had as a child, the ability to touch them deeper than words or human dominance role-playing ever could.

  Maybe Jeremy wouldn't be so bad today.

  Though Elizabeth didn't look so good. Brenna said, "You okay? Maybe a full day the first time back was too much."

  Rubbing her throat, Elizabeth scoffed. "A full day of what? Answering the phone? Copying over the customer cards that got too nasty?" She splayed her fingers. None of them were splinted anymore, but several were Vetrapped, and very few of them seemed to bend properly; they all bore scabs surrounded by angry red and shiny flesh. "I suppose I should feel lucky I'm doing this much so soon. It's those damned pills."

  "Damned Cat's Damned Pills," Brenna muttered nonsensically.

  Elizabeth burst into laughter; she shook her head when Brenna glanced at her, surprised. "You've been living alone too long, Bren," she said, reaching for her sports water bottle and rubbing her throat as she swallowed. Again.

  Something in the oft-repeated gesture rooted Brenna to the spot, giving her chills from the base of her skull all the way to her heels.

  Rabies. Wildly known as hydrophobia because its victims couldn't swallow. And the timing, though on the short end, was still right. From five days to as long as a year, with a couple of months average before the symptoms showed up. And then flu-like symptoms for a week. More or less. And then the classic symptoms. The swallowing. The thickened saliva. Even as Brenna watched, Elizabeth took another sip, swished her mouth, and laboriously swallowed.

  Ridiculous. The cat had had its shots, had gone through quarantine and returned home.

  So had the dog Janean rescued.

  She opened her mouth to say something and nothing came out. What could she possibly say? A suggestion that Elizabeth get checked for a disease she'd been inoculated against, a disease that meant certain death once it became symptomatic?

  And yet Brenna had no doubt. And even as she couldn't bring herself to say anything, she couldn't stand the thought of one more moment of not saying anything, of watching Elizabeth struggle to swallow.

  "Take Jerome in if he gets here, will you?" she said suddenly, her voice sounding a false note in her ears. "If I don't take this chance to run to the restroom, I might explode before I get another."

  "Go," Elizabeth said, waving an imperious hand as she made some final notes on the card for the young Springer Spaniel Brenna had in the back.

  Brenna fled to the bathroom at the rear of the store, beyond the looming shelves piled high with dog food. Slamming the stall closed behind her, she leaned against the door, covering her face with her hands, pressing her fingers against the instant sting of tears in her eyes. Stop it, she told herself. Stop it, stop it, stop it. You can't be so sure. You're being ridiculous.

  She grabbed a wad of tissue, blew her nose, and made use of the facility. Stalling for time. By the time she reached the mirror at the sink, her nose was only mildly outrageous in its redness, and her cheeks residually shiny. Splashing cold water on her face helped; she blotted it dry with a rough paper towel and decided she could pass for over-tired, which she was.

  But when she left the bathroom, she found she couldn't bring herself to return to the grooming room. She found herself pacing back and forth in the short hallway that held the bathroom alcove, not even mindful of the fact that Roger's office was at the other end of it and that of all things, she didn't want to have to explain herself to him.

  Masera's voice came to her ear, a cadenced rise and fall as he spoke to one of his clients, his words not audible but the effect somehow making his accent more obvious to her. Without even thinking, she followed it, bursting around the corner of a tall shelf and surprising them all when she nearly plowed through Masera, customer, and dog—a chronically happy Golden Retriever who flung himself at her with protestations of love.

  "That's what I'm talking about," the customer said, as the dog planted one big foot in Brenna's gut and the other jammed her breast. Modest though it was, that body part still knew insult when it landed.

  "My fault," Brenna said, trying not to squeak. "I wasn't watching—"

  But Masera had intercepted the leash and stepped on it, calmly asking the dog to go to a down position, removing his foot and repeating until the dog, all but bursting from its skin with the desire to express its exuberance to the world, stayed down. "That's what I'm talking about," he said. "Every time he gets out of hand. And you might want to think about making sure his food doesn't include corn. It's like feeding sugar to a child before bedtime."

  The middle-aged man gave him a dubious look, running a hand over his bald pate as though to smooth hair that was no longer there—or maybe to check just in case something had grown back. "Corn? It matters?"

  "It matters," Masera assured him, and stepped back just enough to make it clear he was moving on. "See you in class."

  "Half an hour," the man said, perhaps confirming that he indeed knew when the class started. As soon as he stepped out, the Golden sprang to his feet and bounded away, taking the man with him.

  "He'll figure it out," Masera said, watching him go—and then added thoughtfully, "Or else his chiropractor's going to make out." But despite his light words, when he turned to her, he had his serious face on. "What's wrong?"

  She knew why she'd come to him, but those weren't the words she heard leaving her mouth. "Mickey stopped by early yesterday morning," she said. "He had a message for you."

  "He did?" Masera evidently found the idea as startling as she had, the way his brows drew together.

  "So he said. He wanted me to tell you that it was changed to Thursdays, same time. And not to go to the first time, or you'd be sorry, but if you were sorry, you'd better keep your mouth shut."

  Well, it meant something to him. "Mickey's a fool," he muttered, anger shutting down his features.

  "I don't suppose you'll tell me what that's all about."

  "No." He looked right at her, captured her with the strength of it.

  She felt like growling at him. She did growl at him. But she didn't pursue it—not now—and she had enough on her mind that she didn't even linger over it, nursing resentment. Standing there in front of him, with the flush of emotion still on her cheeks, her thoughts went straight back to the front of the store, drawn with the same horror that makes people gape at accident scenes.

  "Maybe I should ask again," Masera said, pulled out of his anger by her disquieted distraction. "What's wrong?"

  Brenna wrinkled her nose. "Nothing, I hope. I mean—" and she stopped, not even knowing where to go. "I don't even know why I'm here—"

  "Because I'll understand," he said. For the first time she noticed that he had a new bruise and scuffle mark on his cheek, and a cut on his chin. Things might have been quiet for her, but it looked like whoever'd roughed him up the first time had come back for a small second helping.

  "I think I'm being—" she hesitated. "That maybe the past month or so has gotten into my head. But I can't—I don't—"

  "Brenna."

  "I think," she said, squeezing the words out, "that Elizabeth has rabies."

  But he didn't laugh, and he didn't say she was being ridiculous. He looked at her, his eyes hooding as he considered her words. "If she's showing signs—"

  "Then it's too late," Brenna finished miserably. "I'm wrong. I have to be wrong."

  "What you have to do," he said quietly, "is tell her."

  "How can I? What can I say? It's a feeling, nothing more. Based on one day's observation by me, and I've never seen anyone with rabies."

  "She's got a boyfriend. Unlike HIV, rabies is passed in the sali
va. If you're wrong, her doctor will say so."

  Brenna closed her eyes. It's not happening it's not happening it's not happening. "She's my friend."

  "That's the point," he said, and his hand brushed her shoulder, a brief reassurance. "And it's why you came to talk to me. Because you knew what I'd say."

  At that she opened her eyes and scowled. "You think you know everything," she said, and spun away from him, stalking down the aisle and startling customers with her expression all the way back to the grooming room. Being angry at something made it just a little bit easier to live with what faced her there.

  "Brenna," Elizabeth said in surprise, holding Jeremy Cocker's leash and his customer card. She wiped surreptitiously at a small gathering of thick saliva in the corner of her mouth. "What on earth's the matter?"

  Brenna told her.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER 14

  ISA

  Frustrations & Hindrances

  Brenna pounded nails. Angry pounding, each impact banging out a word in her mind. It's! Not! Fair!

  Not fair that she'd been right about Elizabeth. Not fair that her friend had gone downhill so quickly, and only a day later, was isolated in a hospital. Not fair that Brenna wasn't allowed to visit.

  To say good-bye.

  She slammed a final nail into place—not-fair!—and reached for the drill, aiming it at the holes she'd just marked for the replacement hinges of an interior barn gate. The barn itself was a hodgepodge of old and new, with huge main timbers and thick original boarding. One side served as a garage for small farm machines and equipment storage, while the middle contained a grain area, a closed tack room, and a work space where horses could be fed, saddled, shod, and treated. The other side and along the back held run-ins for pastured horses—sections where horses from separate pastures could find shelter, and interior areas for isolation. There were no stalls; there had never been stalls. And try as she might, Brenna had never been able to conceive of a simple way to convert the barn—with its limited electricity and complete lack of plumbing—to a dog facility.