Night Howl

by Andrew Neiderman

“He’s part human,” Qwen said without cracking a smile. “We’ve got to approach this the same way we’d approach it if a man we was huntin’ was in there.”

  “Part human?” The patrolman looked at Michaels, but the upstate police chief didn’t change expression. Horowitz began to feel as though he had been dropped onto the set of The Twilight Zone. He looked back longingly at his patrol car, hoping for the sudden appearance of another black and white. Then he looked at the excited hound dog. “I’d better go back and radio the captain,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Qwen said. “You’re not going to do me any good in there, anyway.”

  Horowitz didn’t reply. He turned around and quickly shot off toward the patrol car. Qwen took a few steps toward the opening and Maggie put her front legs up on the crumbled stone. Her barking, now directed into the building, echoed, reverberating throughout the structure and upward. Then she stepped through the opening, with Qwen only a few feet behind. Harry Michaels drew his revolver and followed.

  The dog continued its barking, but she paused intermittently to sniff the crumbled floor. Qwen and Michaels looked around the room expectantly, neither saying a word until Maggie went farther into the building.

  “Go slow,” Harry Michaels said. “She came at me from outta nowhere.”

  “Keep yourself a few feet behind. Leave a good space between us,” Qwen said and started after Maggie.

  They stepped over broken Sheetrock walls and loose boards, slowing down before every pile of rubble behind which a dog could hide, but when Qwen saw Maggie at the bottom of the stairway, he sped up. She went up a few steps and stopped, not barking as much now as she was sniffing. Climbing the stairs seemed curious to her. Qwen thought it was almost as though his dog doubted her own findings. It made him suspect, and he paused to turn about very slowly. Michaels did the same, lowering his upper body into a kind of crouch, as if he expected the dog to come leaping out at him at any moment. He brought back the hammer on his pistol. Qwen heard it and suddenly realized it might not be so smart to have a nervous man with a loaded gun, primed and ready, walking behind him. He never liked it when he went hunting with someone, and he certainly didn’t like it now.

  “Look,” Qwen said, “it’s what I thought. He went above them, crawling over places they never imagined a dog would go. They missed him because they didn’t think of him as anything more. I want you to stay here at the bottom of the stairs in case he gets by me.”

  “You wanna go up there yourself?”

  “It’s the best way to approach this.”

  “Maybe we oughta wait for reinforcements. It shouldn’t be long.”

  “Naw, they’ll all be trigger-happy. You know how they feel. It’s not something they deal with every day.”

  “Who does? Christ, I don’t know,” Michaels said, looking up to the first landing. “Those steps might give way under your feet after a while.”

  “Then it’s best only one of us attempt it. From the way this place looks, chunks of it chopped out here and there, this is probably the only way down. If he gets by me, you’ll have to shoot him.”

  “You don’t hafta worry about that. Be careful,” he added as Qwen started up. “You’re not walking through some forest in the Catskills, now.”

  Qwen nodded. That was so, but in a strange way, he felt at home. A hunt was a hunt, and although there weren’t trees and grass and rocks about, there was still something wild about this place. True, they were in a part of the city and there were thousands and thousands of people around them, but to Qwen this was just another kind of jungle.

  The dog’s paw prints were now visible in the dust on the steps. He knelt down to study them. For him they were like fingerprints, and they served as final confirmation.

  “He’s here,” Qwen said. “For sure.” He stood up and followed Maggie to the first landing. The rats, feasting on the corpse of the junkie, scattered as quickly as they had when Phantom had appeared. “Shit!” Qwen shouted.

  Harry rushed up the stairs. “Looks like an O.D.,” he said. He indicated the syringe. “This place must be a shooting gallery.”

  “In more than one way, maybe,” Qwen said. He studied the steps before him. They didn’t look as secure as the first set.

  “Go slow,” Michaels warned. Qwen continued. Harry watched him until he reached the corner of the landing above. Maggie had paused by it as if she wanted assurance before going farther up. Qwen raised the rifle and started around. The step second from the top gave way and his foot went through. Michaels started up after him.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.” He got his balance again and whipped around the corner. There was nothing above him but another set of steps, this one missing the second, fourth, and seventh. “All clear,” he called behind him and continued on.

  He read the other dog’s bark; it was clear to him what this other animal was doing. For the first time since he had heard the barking of dogs sent to pursue him, he felt a sense of betrayal. It was funny that it hadn’t occurred to him before, but his mental powers and his awareness about the world around him had grown considerably during the last twenty-four hours. It was as though he had lost track of who and what he really was. Accordingly, his view of things began to change.

  Every time he closed his eyes and opened them, he focused in on parts of his surroundings he had neither seen nor considered before. Subtly, the borders of his vision expanded, but even more importantly, the contents within multiplied. For all of his life, until very recently, nothing had interested him unless it had carried with it the promise of food and comfort. Of course, he had a puppy’s curiosity in small movements and in other animals, but like any other animal, he tended to see everything in an isolated sense. Most of the relationships between things were lost to him.

  Now it was different—he not only saw things for what they were in themselves, but he also saw their significances. The barking dog was not just a barking dog following a rote command to pursue; it was intrinsically linked to the man who was its master. In his eyes now, this dog was no longer a dog. It had become part of the man.

  It seemed to him that all the world was closing in—animals, men, and even the very surroundings. Now he understood why this place had depressed him. It was a place of death. Buildings died, as well as living things, and sometimes they took living things with them. Maybe that was why the man was on the stairway; maybe that was why this was the kingdom of rats and other vermin.

  He was sorry now that he had entered it, and as he looked about the room and realized the height he was at, he concluded that he had made a very big mistake, a mistake similar to taking the wrong turn in one of the test mazes back at the laboratory. In a real sense he had trapped himself. He had made it easy for the man’s dog and for the man. Such mistakes were tragic, and he knew that there was no room for tragic mistakes in the world of kill-or-be-killed.

  He sensed that the man and the dog were only a flight or two below him now. All he had left to choose was where to do battle. This room was too small and too confining. It was better to go to the stairway, where he would have the advantages of height and surprise. He trotted out of the room, staying closely to the wall again, and made his way over the partially demolished hall floor.

  Maggie went wild. Qwen was amazed at the intensity of her reaction. She started up the steps of the landing and then came back down. Each time she did this, she inched up a little farther. It was as though she were pressing against an invisible wall, pushing it back slowly. Qwen studied the top of the landing, looking for some sign of the animal. He felt certain that it loomed just around the next corner.

  Although all the steps in this section of the stairway looked intact, he saw that the header holding the stairs to the landing floor had slipped a few inches. It was possible that his added weight would send the entire set of steps falling downward and him along with it. He placed his left foot gently on the first step and leaned against what was left of the corridor wall. There was nothing to
grab onto if the floor should give way beneath him, he thought.

  “Go ahead, Maggie, go ahead,” he said in his most encouraging tone of voice. His dog looked back at him and then climbed another step. Her bark was sharp but full, and in the narrow stairway corridors it was amplified tenfold.

  Qwen took another step. He thought the stairway trembled beneath his feet, so he paused, hoping to be able to jump back down to the more secure flooring behind him if the section began to crumble. In the back of his mind was the thought that the whole thing could come down.

  Maggie was four steps ahead of him. He could see that this was as far as she would go. There was no point in sending her up any farther anyway. He checked the tranquilizer gun. They had loaded it with serum darts strong enough to bring down a dog twice the size of the normal German shepherd. He hoped to be some distance from the dog before he shot at it. He needed some room to retreat while the tranquilizer took effect. He expected the wound would surprise the animal and disorient it quickly. Once Qwen had captured the dog, he would tell the whole story; the authorities would have the animal to test and examine as a way of validating Qwen’s claims. They would no longer be able to hide Fishman’s death, and the attempt to have Qwen killed would be exposed as well. The potential realization of all these goals motivated him to take another step and then another.

  And then something happened that he had never anticipated. Maggie stopped barking and lowered her body to the steps, crouching as though she expected to be run over. She inched down. Qwen looked up at the corner just as the great dog put its head out from behind the wall. For a long moment, during which Maggie produced a thin, subdued whine, Qwen and the German shepherd faced each other.

  He had the rifle about chest-high, but he didn’t lift it into position for firing. He and the dog studied one another with an almost similar curiosity. Qwen saw something familiar in the dog’s eyes. It was easy to detect a higher intelligence behind its gaze, but along with that was the look of something wild. For Qwen it was as though he were looking at a different form of himself—something that loved and belonged in nature, but something with an awareness and perception far beyond anything born and bred in the wild.

  This sight took Qwen by surprise and it was a long moment before he realized how close he was to the animal and how dangerous a situation he was in. When he did so, he raised the rifle and took a step back. The dog did not charge forward, though. Instead, he retreated behind the wall before Qwen could get off a shot.

  “Are you all right?” Michaels called up the stairway. “Qwen?’

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Two patrol cars just pulled up.”

  “Keep them down there.”

  “Any sign of him?”

  “Not yet,” Qwen called back. He couldn’t tell Michaels what had just occurred, because he couldn’t explain it to himself. “Easy, girl, easy, Maggie,” he said. He moved up the stairs to the landing and looked down the corridor. Much of the floor was gone. Beams running beneath it were clearly visible. There was just one large, gaping hole at the end of the corridor where the wall had been. Qwen hesitated before going forward. He hoped the dog would reappear and he could get a clear shot, but it didn’t.

  Qwen stepped farther into the hallway, balancing himself on the more secure portions, and inched his way toward the doorway of the first room on the right. At this point Maggie remained a foot or so behind him. He paused and listened. He heard the voices of the policemen below and he heard Harry Michaels’s voice. He looked down through a hole in the floor. It seemed as though the opening went all the way down to ground-level. Then he moved a few feet more. He was less than two yards from the doorway of the room, and he was sure he heard sounds coming from it.

  Qwen lowered himself into a crouch and brought the rifle stock against his shoulder. He heard the policemen below start to make their way up the stairs behind him. There were a number of them now and they made considerable noise.

  Phantom heard it too, and to him it meant that the pack was closing in; it would be only moments now before he would do deadly battle. He knew where Qwen was and he knew where he had placed himself in relation to avenues of escape. He looked at the carton in the corner. A part of him wanted to retreat to it, but there was something else in him that longed for the fight.

  These conflicting drives made him pace up to and back from the doorway. Finally, driven by a rush of anger and frustration, he turned and charged out. Qwen fired the moment the dog’s head appeared, and the dart struck him in the neck. The gunshot and the blow sent him reeling to the right. He stumbled down the corridor toward the opened wall.

  Qwen stood up and moved slowly toward him. He saw that the dog looked confused. He wavered to the right and then to the left, leaning against a part of the wall to steady himself. The policemen were shouting now and moving faster up the stairs. Qwen heard Harry Michaels shout his name, but he couldn’t respond; he couldn’t do anything but watch the dog as it turned and faced him, battling against the effects of the serum.

  Phantom started toward him, stumbled, and fell to the right. Then he struggled to get back to his feet and fell farther to the right. Qwen saw what that meant. The floor was obviously weak there, it was cracked, and there were small holes along the boards. He moved as quickly as he could toward the animal, but when the dog raised himself again by pushing downward, his forelegs went through the decayed floorboards and his body slammed down on the weakened slats.

  The rear portion of the great dog disappeared first. He struggled to maintain a hold on the firmer portions of the floor, but he sank lower. Qwen charged forward, disregarding his own safety. He took a position on the solid side of the corridor and reached out to grasp the dog’s collar. He caught it just as the rest of the floor gave way under the animal; Qwen tried to hold on, but the weight of the dog was tremendous. He could hold it for only a few moments.

  The dog looked up at him then turned its head as though to snap at his wrist. Qwen released his hold and the great German shepherd fell into the dark, hollow guts of the deteriorated building, disappearing within as if he had been swallowed into the mouth of Hell. Qwen heard a crash, but no sound came from the dog. Qwen imagined it had lost consciousness before it hit.

  16

  WHEN THEY FINALLY located Phantom below, Qwen determined that the dog’s neck had been broken. Blood streaked from its mouth, and there was a deep gash in its right shoulder. Dead within the ruins of the building, the German shepherd somehow didn’t seem as big as it had in life. For Qwen, and especially for Harry Michaels, it was as though the dog’s body had already begun to decompose.

  “It’s not as big as Ernie said it was,” said one of the policemen standing by.

  “When it’s comin’ at ya, it’s twice the size,” Michaels said. He held up his arm. “Believe me.” All the policemen looked at him and then back at the dog. Qwen stood up. “Too bad,” Michaels told him.

  “Too bad?” Horowitz said. “Whaddya mean?”

  “We needed it alive,” Qwen said.

  “For what?”

  “For proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Qwen said. He started out, Maggie at his heels. Michaels started after him.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Patrolman Horowitz called.

  “Take us back to my car,” Michaels said. He kept walking.

  “Wait a minute. Hey. Listen, the captain wants you two back at the station. You’re going to meet the commissioner.”

  “Shit,” Qwen said.

  “We don’t have time for that,” Michaels said. “I got a town to get back to. We got our own problems up there.”

  “But—”

  “Just drive us back to our car,” Michaels repeated.

  “What the hell are you guys so unhappy about? Jesus, you two act as though you killed Lassie.”

  “We needed that dog alive,” Michaels said. They all got into the patrol car and Horowitz started away from the demolish
ed building. Qwen looked back through the rear window.

  “I had him by the collar,” he said, “but I couldn’t hold him, and before I could get another grip on him, he turned to bite me, even though he knew he was goin’ to fall.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to go back to where he was,” Michaels said. Horowitz looked at him and shook his head again.

  “Maybe. I got the feeling he knew it was over.”

  “You know somethin’,” Horowitz said, “listening to you guys talk about that dog gives me the creeps.”

  “Join the party,” Michaels said.

  When they got back to the station, Horowitz pleaded for them to go inside, but they refused again.

  “Just tell the captain thanks for the use of his city,” Michaels said.

  Horowitz watched them get into the Fallsburg patrol car and drive off. He pushed his hat back and scratched his temple.

  “Who the hell were those guys?” he muttered and went in to tell the captain that they wouldn’t stay to meet the commissioner.

  On the way home, Qwen described to Michaels his battle with the dog. Now, with the two of them alone, Qwen had more time to reflect on what had occurred. He decided he would try to explain to Michaels what it was like when he had his first face-off with the German shepherd. He wanted to see if Michaels understood what Qwen meant when he talked about a mesmerizing effect.

  “Of course, I didn’t have time to look into his eyes like that,” Michaels said, “but I imagine it would be some helluva experience if I was a few feet from him and he just stared. Now me, I’d probably piss in my pants. Especially after our introduction,” he added, holding his arm up.

  “You know,” Qwen said, almost as if he didn’t hear a word Michaels had uttered, “old Maggie here can look at me and I can look at her and we can talk to each other, express feelings, if you know what I mean. But there’s never a doubt as to who’s the dog and who’s the man. It was different on those stairs.”

  “I wish we woulda gotten him alive,” Michaels said.