by Dan Simmons
Michelle screamed once. Between black bodies, Dale caught a glimpse of her red hair rolling. The three dogs roiling above her seemed larger, more ferocious. Their growling and snarling filled the night.
Only half conscious, bleeding from his torn scalp, Dale rolled out from under one of the black dogs and tried to get to his feet. The second hound hit him from behind and Dale pitched forward onto the frozen ground, feeling the wind go out of him. The black hounds were ripping and tearing at Michelle not twenty steps away.
Dale kicked back, felt his boot connect solidly with dog ribs, heard the howl almost in his ear, and struggled to get to his knees, crawling toward where the larger three dogs seemed to be ripping Michelle apart.
The two hounds whirled around him, their jaws higher than his head, their eyes burning yellowly. One snapped at his shoulder, seizing his leather sport coat and ripping it, pulling him off his knees and tumbling him onto his face in the frozen mud. Dale covered his face as both hounds ripped his sport coat from his back, tossing it back and forth between them. Their slaver fell on his hair and cheek. He rolled on his back, balling his hands into fists.
“Michelle!” he screamed. There was no answer except for the snarling and growling.
The larger of the two hounds that had hit him leaped across him now, the other black dog growling out of sight above and behind him. Dale hammered at the black wall of the largest hound’s chest as the animal straddled him, setting a huge paw on his chest like a lead weight. The animal’s breath was sulfurous, rank with carrion rot.
“Get . . . the fuck . . . off,” gasped Dale, grabbing the giant hound by the loose skin at its neck as if it had a dog collar and thrashing to throw it off him. The black dog snarled and snapped, its teeth missing Dale’s face by less than an inch. The fourth hound had run back to join the others in their assault on the now silent woman. Dale could hear the dogs moving away in the darkness, toward the sheds and barns, but dragging something . . . dragging something.
Dale screamed again and slammed his fists into the jackal ears of the hound above him. The dog leaped back.
Rolling onto his knees again and struggling to stand, Dale got a last glimpse of Michelle—just her pale legs and one hand, no longer flailing but dragging limply—as the four black dogs dragged her out of the last light from the open kitchen door, toward the black fields and the unseen barn. The dogs were snarling and snapping, tugging first one part of her and then another.
“You fucking goddamned fucking . . .” screamed Dale, blood running into his eyes and the earth seeming to pitch and roll as he staggered toward the pack of hounds. He could not see them or their victim now. Dale remembered the shotgun, hesitating only a second before turning back to get it. Even if it cost him a few seconds, he would be useless out there in the dark with the beasts unless he had a weapon.
Dale swung back to the concrete stoop and had just stumbled up onto it when the fifth dog hit him again—leaping through the air, its black coat gleaming silver-black in the yellow light from the kitchen—and then both he and the hound were flying off the stoop, striking the wall of the farmhouse once before bouncing away. Dale fell facedown in the black dirt, felt the earth rise like a wall below him, and felt himself sliding backward down it, toward the snarling hound behind him, into darkness.
TWENTY-ONE
* * *
“AND then what happened?”
“I already told you what happened next.”
“Tell us again,” said the deputy sheriff.
Dale sighed. He was very tired and his head hurt. The local anesthetic was wearing off where he had received nine stitches for the cut on his head, and a tetanus shot made his arm ache even through the throb of various bruises. But the headache was the worst part. The nurses had let him get dressed again, and now he and the sheriff’s deputies were talking in an empty lounge just off the emergency room at the Oak Hill Hospital. It was a little after three in the morning, but there were no windows in the lounge and the fluorescent lights were very bright. The air smelled of burned coffee.
“After you left the farmhouse,” prompted Deputy Presser. He was the older of the two men in uniform but still in his twenties, with a florid face and short-cropped blond hair. “How long was that after you say you lost consciousness?”
Dale shrugged and then regretted the movement. His arms and shoulders and ribs ached as if someone had been kicking him with hobnailed boots. The headache stabbed behind his eyes like so many steel darts. “After I left the farmhouse,” Dale said slowly, “I walked to the KWIK’N’EZ at the I-74 exit.”
“But you say you had a cell phone. You could’ve used it before you got to the KWIK’N’EZ.”
“I said that I couldn’t find the cell phone,” Dale said softly, so as not to aggravate the headache. He tried to place words between waves of pain. “I looked in my truck, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it slipped down between the seats. The Land Cruiser’s interior lights weren’t working. I could have looked in the house, but I thought it was important to get out of there and call for help.”
“Your sports utility vehicle would not start,” said the deputy in a monotone. He was glancing at the cheap spiral notepad in his hand. Dale could see the price sticker with its bar code still on the back of the notepad.
“My sports utility would not start,” confirmed Dale. “The battery . . . it wouldn’t even turn over.”
“But Deputy Reiss got it started on the first try using the keys you lent us,” said the sheriff’s deputy. He glanced at the younger deputy sitting on the other side of the table. The younger man nodded seriously in confirmation.
Dale started to shrug again but then nodded. “I don’t know why it didn’t start earlier.”
“And you have no phone at your residence. At the residence you currently lease?”
Dale took a breath. Nodded again. They had been going over this in one form or another since midnight. “You’re sure there’s no sign of Michelle?” he asked the younger deputy.
“Nope,” said Deputy Dick Reiss. His name badge was pinned over his left shirt pocket.
“It’s dark out there,” said Dale. “Did you check the big barn?”
“Taylor and me checked all the barns and sheds,” said Deputy Reiss. Dale saw for the first time that the young man had a small wad of tobacco tucked between his cheek and gum.
The older deputy held up the notepad as a gesture for Deputy Reiss to shut up. “Mr. Stewart—do you prefer ‘Mister’ or ‘Professor’?”
“I don’t care,” Dale said tiredly.
“Mr. Stewart,” continued the deputy, “why did you walk the three miles to the KWIK’N’EZ? Why not to a neighbor’s house? The Fallons live just a mile and a half north of you. The Bachmanns are just three quarters of a mile back toward the Hard Road—right before the cemetery.”
“Bachmanns?” said Dale. “Oh, that’s who live in Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s house now.”
Deputy Brian Presser returned a blank gaze.
Dale shook his head again. “If we’re talking about Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s old house just north of the cemetery, it was dark. There were no vehicles in the driveway. A big dog was barking in the side yard. I kept walking.”
“But why the KWIK’N’EZ rather than into town, Mr. Stewart?”
“I couldn’t remember where there was a pay phone in town,” said Dale. “I thought there might be one at the post office or in front of the bank, but I couldn’t remember. And it seemed darker in that direction. When I got to Jubilee College Road . . . well, I could see the lights of the KWIK’N’EZ just a mile or so ahead along the cutoff past the Hard Road.” He touched his throbbing temple. “It seemed . . . safer. A straight line.”
Deputy Presser wrote something in his tiny notepad. Dale noticed that the deputy’s fingers went white with the tension of holding the pen and that the fingers bent almost concave in the same too-tight way that some of his students at the university had held their pens while taking notes.
/> Dale cleared his throat. “I didn’t actually make the call,” he said. “I was . . . well, I sort of lost consciousness again when I got to the gas station. I just asked the night man there to call the police and then I sat down on the floor next to the frozen foods until your deputy arrived. Not Deputy Reiss. The other one.”
“Deputy Taylor,” said Deputy Presser.
“The sheriff’s not involved?” asked Dale. He had been relieved to the marrow of his bones when C.J. Congden had not responded to the call.
“No, sir,” said Presser. “The sheriff’s taken his family up to Chicago for the holidays. He’ll be back day after tomorrow. Did you say you knew the sheriff, Mr. Stewart?”
“A long time ago,” said Dale. “We went to school together. A long, long time ago.”
Deputy Presser looked up at this, then made a note in his notepad.
“Jesus Christ,” said Dale, shaking with fatigue and the aftereffects of shock, “aren’t you going to get some people to look for Michelle? Those . . . animals . . . might have dragged her anywhere. She could still be alive!”
“Yes, sir. Come daylight, we’ll have some folks out there. But tonight we’ve still got to get some things straight. You say she drove a white Toyota pickup truck?”
“A Tundra, I think,” said Dale. He looked up at the two deputies. “It must still be parked there at The Jolly . . . at the farm.”
“No,” said Presser. “When Deputy Taylor and Deputy Reiss here drove out to the old McBride place, there was no white pickup. No vehicle whatosever . . . except for your Toyota Land Cruiser, of course. Which started right up when Deputy Reiss tried it with the keys you gave him.”
Dale could only frown at the two men for a moment. “No pickup?” he said at last. “No other car?”
“No, sir,” said Deputy Presser, jotting notes again. “Are you sure you saw the vehicle you say Miz Staffney arrived in?”
“Yes,” said Dale. “Wait . . . no. I don’t remember seeing her truck yesterday. But . . . I mean . . . she had to have driven there, right? It’s too far to walk from town . . .” For a wild moment, Dale felt his heart hammering with hope. Michelle must have not been hurt too badly if she could have driven her truck away. Then he remembered the snarling and snapping of the hounds and his heart rate slowed, the surge of hope fading. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Did you check her house in town?”
“Yes, sir,” said Presser. “We checked the house you told us about. There’s no one there. No vehicle in the drive there, either.”
Dale breathed out and looked down at his hands where they lay as heavy and clumsy as poorly executed clay sculptures on his thighs. His chinos were filthy and spattered with his own blood.
“You say she arrived at the farmhouse in the daylight, though?” asked Deputy Presser.
“Late morning,” said Dale. “Or very early afternoon. I was sleeping late. She woke me. We started cooking the dinner shortly after she arrived.”
“And you never noticed what vehicle Miz Staffney arrived in?”
“No,” said Dale. He looked the young deputy in the eye. Then he turned his gaze on the younger deputy, who stared back while chewing his tobacco. “Look, I asked earlier, but neither of you answered. Did you find blood there? Torn clothing? Signs of a struggle?”
“We found blood where you hit the door,” said Deputy Reiss, moving the chaw aside with his tongue. “We found that sports jacket you talked about. It was all tore up, just like you said.”
“And Michelle? Was there any sign of . . . of the dog attack?”
Before the younger deputy could answer, Deputy Presser raised the notepad to silence him again. “Mr. Stewart, we’re going back out to the McBride place now, to look around again. We’d like your permission to search the house itself. Deputy Reiss there stood in the kitchen and shouted in to see if the lady was inside, peeked in a couple of rooms, but we’d like your permission to really search in the house. Could be, if she was hurt, she might be in there out of sight somewhere.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Dale, struggling to get up.
“No, sir, that’s probably not a good idea,” said Deputy Presser. “The doctor here says that it might be better, because of the knock on your head, if you stayed in the hospital until tomorrow noon or so for observation.”
“I’m going,” said Dale. He held on to the back of his chair, blinking away the dizziness that came with the waves of headache.
“Your call, Mr. Stewart,” said Deputy Presser. He and the other deputy led Dale through the empty ER, past the curious nurses and interns, and outside to where a Sheriff’s Department car idled in the driveway, its exhaust roiling up and surrounding them like fog.
Dale rode in the back of the cruiser and felt like a prisoner—wire mesh grille between him and the two silent deputies up front, no window or door handles in the back, and the stink of urine and desperation rising out of the ripped upholstery. Evidently even small counties like Oak Hill’s and Elm Haven’s had their problems. Dale felt his heart begin to pound heavily as they drove up the lane to The Jolly Corner, the dead trees gaunt at the edge of the headlights.
Deputy Taylor was waiting in his idling vehicle. For a minute the four men stood in the dark side yard, the three deputies talking softly among themselves while Dale’s gaze flicked repeatedly to the night-dark fields beyond the dim glow of the lights. “Could I have the keys?” he asked.
“Pardon?” said the deputy who had shown up at the KWIK’N’EZ hours earlier. Taylor was short and fat.
“Car keys,” said Dale. He took them from the deputy and crawled up into his Toyota SUV. The truck started immediately. Dale turned on the overhead light and found his cell phone where it had slipped down between the center console and the passenger seat. He thumbed its on switch, but the display showed the charge depleted. Dale slid the phone into his shirt pocket and joined the three deputies on the stoop. He was cold and shivering without a jacket.
The kitchen was just as he and Michelle had left it after dinner—dishes rinsed but piled on the counter, the apple pie cold next to the empty coffee cups. Dale remembered that Michelle had turned off the coffeemaker before they had gone upstairs.
Deputy Presser stepped over to the stove and pulled the Savage over-and-under shotgun from where it had been propped against the wall. He broke it open, removed the unfired .410 cartridge, and raised his eyebrows while looking at Dale.
“I kept the gun loaded because of the dogs,” said Dale.
“So you’d seen them dogs before,” said Deputy Reiss from where he stood looking into the empty dining room.
“I told you both that I’d seen the dogs before. Just never so . . . big.”
Deputies Presser and Reiss exchanged glances. Dale noticed that Presser had slipped the shotgun cartridge in his jacket pocket. He handed the weapon to Deputy Taylor, who remained standing by the outside door.
“I’m freezing,” said Dale. “I’m going to go downstairs to get a sweater.”
“We’ll come with you,” said Deputy Presser. To Taylor, he said, “Larry, you look in the rooms up here.”
The basement was, as always, warmer than the upstairs. Dale pulled a heavy wool sweater from his stack of clothes near the bed and slipped it over his head while the two deputies looked around the room, shining their flashlights behind the furnace and peering into the empty coal bin. Michelle was not hiding anywhere.
Upstairs again, Deputy Taylor reported that there was nothing on the first floor. Presser nodded and stepped into Dale’s study. “What’s that mean?” asked the deputy, pointing his heavy flashlight at the IBM ThinkPad’s screen.
The message on the otherwise dark screen read, >Hrot-garmr. Si-ik-wa UR.BAR.RA ki-sa-at. Wargus sit.
“Is that German?” asked Deputy Presser.
“I’m a writer,” said Dale. He was stalling for time and trying to translate the message himself. He had never seen it before.
“I asked you if it was German or something.”
/>
Dale shook his head. “Just double-talk. I’m writing a science fiction novel, and I’m trying to get the sound of some alien’s speech.”
“Like Klingon, you mean,” offered Deputy Reiss from the hall.
“Right,” said Dale.
“Shut up, Dick,” said Deputy Presser. The deputy walked out into the hall, leaving Dale to continue staring at the screen. If any of the deputies read Old English—a long shot, Dale knew—he might be in trouble. But as far as he could tell, only the first and last parts of the message were in Old English. “Hrot-garmr” translated as fire, but literally meant “howling dog,” as in the howling funeral pyre they built for Beowulf’s or Brynhild’s funeral in the old epics. “Wargus sit” translated into “he shall be a warg”—that word again. “Warg” meant an outlaw who had literally become a wolf in the eyes of his comrades, a worrier of corpses, someone who, like Indo-European werewolves, deserved to be strangled.
“Mr. Stewart? What’s upstairs?”
Dale came out into the crowded hall and looked up to where Deputy Presser stood five steps up the staircase. “Nothing’s up there,” said Dale. “It’s been sealed off for years. I just took the weather plastic down a few weeks ago. It’s empty.” He shut up, realizing that he was babbling. His heart pounded in syncopation with his throbbing headache.
“Mind if I take a look?” asked Deputy Presser. Without waiting for an answer, the deputy switched on his flashlight and loudly climbed the stairs. Deputy Reiss followed. Taylor went back into the kitchen, still carrying Dale’s empty over-and-under. Dale hesitated a few seconds and then went up the stairs.
Both men were in the front bedroom. One of the candles on the bedside table had burned out in its own pool of wax, but the other one was still burning. The blanket and the quilt on the bed were still mussed from when Michelle tossed them back as she got up to leave just . . . My God, thought Dale . . . just hours earlier. It seemed like days.
Deputy Presser lifted the quilt with his long flashlight and looked at Dale for an explanation. Dale met his gaze and stayed silent.
