“Running water,” was all she said, and no one except Chernow even heard, much less understood. Marguerite held the small, still form to her chest, and hoped, at least, that his soul had flown – that he had been graced with a soul to fly – and that it would know the peace his mother had renounced for ever. “Adieu, mon sanglant agneau,” she whispered: Farewell, my bloodied lamb. And, with a kiss to his forehead, said goodbye to her son.
JANE RICE
The Sixth Dog
JANE RICE WAS a regular contributor during the early 1940s to the landmark fantasy magazine Unknown/Unknown Worlds, and editor John W. Campbell, Jr praised her work as “beautiful” and “magnificent”. Her subsequent short story appearances include such magazines and anthologies as From Unknown Worlds, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Unknown and The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense. She also sold a series of humorous short-shorts to Charm, Mademoiselle and other ‘slick’ magazines in the Street & Smith chain. Over the years, reprintings of her stories “Crest of the Wave”, “The Refugee” and, especially, “Idol of the Flies” have introduced new readers to her deceptive blend of horror and whimsy.
She was born in the American South and, after attending convent school got a job “which defies description but which enabled me to sit around, here and there, eating watermelon.
“Started writing Boo-I-Gotchas and lo and behold, there was John W. Campbell, Jr, who was one smart editor. Branched out into the slicks and lucked on to Oliver Claxton who, also, was one smart editor.
“However, through the years, horror has become my genre, more or less. I like ‘the shivers’. Not gore and grue. Just bone-chilling encounters with a little humour thrown in to ward off the grisly . . .”
In “The Sixth Dog”, Rice’s disarming humour and quirky characters hide the darker deeds committed behind the closed doors of small town life . . .
WHEN I WAS small an old black man named Collins did yard work for an elderly couple who lived nearby. Their property was enclosed on three sides by a wrought-iron fence which joined a knee-high concrete coping that separated their front lawn from a public sidewalk bordered by a narrow grassy strip that edged the street.
After Collins had finished his once-a-week labors he would position himself on the abutment at the end of the coping and proceed to smoke a leisurely pipe while observing the passing scene from beneath his weatherbeaten straw hat.
I sometimes joined him. We sat silently and peacefully, more than acquaintances but not quite friends. Occasionally we exchanged views on various topics, mine flavored with my parents’ table talk, his with some subtle underpinning that spun from his being black.
He never asked me how I was doing in school, or what I wanted to be when I grew up, or any of the other talky-talk adults mistook for conversation-with-a-small-boy. And only once did he offer advice.
I have long since forgotten why I was sad. But I remember how desolate I was. No shadow of relief was visible anywhere. Nor would be, forevermore. My malaise if activated could have blown sky high the coping on which I sat, speechless and suffering, beside Collins.
Eventually, his respite concluded, he knocked the dottle from his pipe on the heel of his shoe and into his leathery palm. He tossed the results out into the grassy strip, where they became invisible, and dropped his pipe into the saggy pocket from whence it had come. Rising, he said, “When you got you a misery write down what ails you.”
He watched a car go by. “Burn what you wrote.”
He wiped his hand with his yard rag. “Spit in the ashes and go bury ’em in a rotted tree stump.”
He tucked the yard rag into the back of his pants so that it hung down like a tail. “That’ll be the end of it.”
He walked off. He had said his say. Take his counsel or lump it. The choice was mine.
Oh, boy! I raced home and in a matter of minutes was commending my despair to paper . . . between pencil sharpenings and foot tappings and communion with the ceiling. Over a period of time, and with many rewrites and assorted distractions, whatever it was lost importance, and my spirits had improved considerably.
I did follow through with the burning, secretly, on a dustpan, spit copiously into the ashes and scraped the now somewhat gluey aftermath on to a bread wrapper which I folded neatly, secured with chewing gum and stowed away to await the final interment. But I never did locate a rotten tree stump.
I doubt if I searched very hard as sandlot baseball had gained my full attention. Anyway, what difference did it make? My “misery” had evaporated.
My mother found this paperwork one day while doing what she called “turning out your room”.
“What in the world?” she asked me. “What is it?”
So, I told her. Explained that, although stumpless, Collins’ remedy for what I (euphemistically) termed “the pits” had worked. Had, in fact, been an unqualified success.
“Good grief,” was her response as she consigned my handiwork to her collection of trash.
I realized much later that writing-it-down was a cathartic and that the rest of Collins’ instructions were merely dark-of-the-moon mumbo jumbo.
Through the years I have employed this writing-it-down procedure to clear my thinking, but this time I do it in desperation. The conjectures gnawing away at me like black rats are unthinkable. With all my shivering soul I hope this “analysis” will send them scuttering into oblivion.
“Where to begin?”
Well . . . Otis Clanton and his two older brothers, Simon and Jason, were neighborhood fixtures. You don’t pay close attention to the eccentricities of neighborhood fixtures. Their corner, not-for-sale, paint peeling, derelict house abutted my place of business – which, by some miscalculation during the remaking of a “bungalow” (circa 1930s) into a small veterinarian clinic, lay three square feet over the Clinton’s property line. An uneasy circumstance they had let lie. Needless to say, I bent backwards to be an untroublesome neighbor but I didn’t actually observe them.
Anyhow, Sam Eizenger – who is a roly-poly advertisement for his deli across the street – said, with typical Eizenger gestures (a lifted shoulder, a spreading hand, an elevated eyebrow and a deprecatory lower lip), that the Clantons were trying to invent “some kinda somep’n to replace food.”
“Mebbe they do it,” he said. “Mek a million dolla outta the diet screwballs.” He rotated a meaty forefinger in the vicinity of his temple. “Laugh alla way to the booby hatch.”
An opinion that, somehow, describes the Clantons to a T. They were gaunt, unsmiling men with pale, squinty eyes and genetic defects. Simon had a wry neck. Jason was a hunchback. Otis wore a built-up boot. Their countenances were closed, and their attire bore witness to their involvement with ingredients that stained and burned. They stayed to themselves, ignoring the rest of us, although the rest of us were in the process of changing the texture of the street.
Commerce was taking over. One by one the no longer feasible, tired old houses with their latticework and sagging porches were being converted into unpretentious ventures such as Ace Hardware, Spotlight Jewelry, the Acme Loan Company, Jan’s Flower Pot, The Card Shop, Sam’s Deli, an Amoco Station . . . a growing hodgepodge of this and that which, I suppose, should include the bus stop bench used only by Billy Williams (a hulking, bushy haired, redhead and jack-of-all-trades who did odd jobs around the vicinity and used the bench as a sort of office). According to local tittle-tattle he spent what he earned on whores, whiskey, horse races, and Moon Pies. However, he was handy and thus was not penalized for his lack of respectability.
My veterinarian try, with its brave false front and squeezed-in rear parking, blended into the locale without a ripple.
I am sure the Clantons kept a wary eye trained on me but they behaved as if none of us existed.
To illustrate, I might have been so much plankton that early April evening when I interrupted Jason and Otis who were up to their hips in a hole they were digging.
I
had just closed for the night but instead of getting into Herman, my faithful, if cranky, four-wheeled cohort, and driving off I went through a gap in their see-through hedge to investigate. Their underground troubles might mean that I was next in line and if there was anything my slim resources didn’t need it was that.
Jason and Otis stood in their hole looking up at me with no change of expression. After years dragged past, while they slowly locked and unlocked eyes, Jason answered my query.
He said, “Our dog died.”
Further converse being unnecessary they resumed digging. I had been dismissed.
Riding off in Herman I was relieved that all was hunky-dory below ground. I was mildly surprised that the Clantons had owned a dog and that an animal could live so near without being noticed. But that was the Clantons for you. Keep any and all Clanton activities under wraps.
I decided they’d only had the poor beast for a short while and had tried to treat its . . . whatever . . . themselves. With a veterinarian right next door. Some people were inexplicable.
Weeks went by before anyone took note of the fact that Simon Clanton was no longer around. He was purported to have become a hermit in the Ozark mountains . . . to have joined an order of monks out West somewhere . . . to be non compos mentis in a mental institution . . .
At any rate he had quitted our locality and, since he wasn’t missed, none of us cared where he was.
Time went on.
By September I had summoned sufficent courage to chance a helpmeet and hired the sole applicant, a Miss Agnes Hanlon who was a casualty from a recent downsizing of personnel at the local denim factory. (I suspect her strong voice and unshakable opinions may have been the underlying reason behind her dismissal.)
She was a thirty-something, no-nonsense type who carried her few necessities (a Pinch purse Scrooge would’ve loved, a comb, a real handkerchief, and two loose door keys – hers and mine – in her pockets. She was built like a battleship, preferred to be addressed as Hanlon, and was pleased that the clinic was “within walking distance”. Macho to the hilt.
But she was a welcome addition. She answered phone calls, scheduled appointments, sent out bills, and could be relied on in an emergency that required two extra hands. She also was an animal activist and took it as a personal affront when anything that walked on four feet was endangered, which may be why she signed on for the job.
So it was that she responded at once when the high, frantic yike yike yike of a dog in sore distress began seeping through the walls late one afternoon.
“I’ll see to that,” she threw over her shoulder as she sailed by the examining room on a fast track towards the rear entrance to avoid being delayed by Mrs Nelson Potter who, because of her Bostonian connections, expected instant service whenever she appeared with No Water Foo San Pam Toy, her asthmatic, spoiled-rotten Pekinese.
I handed Queenie back to Sam Eizenger but skipped my usual lecture on Queenie’s obesity. (Being a veterinarian sometimes requires a herculean amount of drubbing away at a simple problem . . . in this case Sam’s indulgence of his cat’s fondness for slivers of liverwurst, herrings in cream sauce, soft cheeses, gobbets of chicken fat . . . etc. and etc. ad infinitum).
Advocating continued use of the heart medicine I had prescribed previously, and which I doubted he administered with any consistency, I hurried him off, clutching Queenie for all he was worth to prevent her from being set upon by snuffly, lethargic No Water Foo.
I hastily ushered Mrs Nelson Bostonian Potter and her heart’s love into the examining room, gave her an encouraging promise to be with her in a moment and closed the door, hoping she would stay put. Then I went leaping after my assistant who could be heard in full cry.
I was through the gap in the Clanton’s hedge and up their back steps in nothing flat, intending to get a headlock on Hanlon, if necessary, to bring a halt to her hammering on the Clanton’s back door, and her command: “Open up! Open up, I say!”
I wanted no trouble with the Clantons. If they reclaimed their three feet of property my clinic would be a gone goose, and it was obvious that Hanlon had made a BIG mistake. The Clanton’s house was quiet as a tomb. The dog, wherever nearabouts it was, had ceased to protest.
I grabbed one of Hanlon’s arms in mid-raise . . . at which moment a key snicked in the lock, a chain rattled, and the door opened.
Otis Clanton surveyed us with his pale, unwavering eyes.
And we surveyed him. His pants and shirt were dark with sweat. His lank hair hung in damp strings. A streak of something dragged across a scrawny cheek. He smelled to heaven of an unnameable odor so high that my nostrils automatically widened and Hanlon took an involuntary step backwards. In his arms he held a dog wrapped in a draggled blanket. A gristly, grey muzzle was visible, the nose inquisitive, the slits of eyes watchful.
The answer to the whole incident was clear-cut. The two remaining Clanton brothers had acquired another dog which, hauled from a needed and strenuous bath, had given vent to its anxiety.
Hanlon said, “We heard . . .” simultaneously with my “We thought . . .” and we both stopped speaking as the creature raised its upper lip and with a wild show of yellow teeth snarled at us, resenting our intrusion.
My apologies were as lame as they were fleet. Still gripping one of Hanlon’s arms I pulled her away and hurried us down the steps to find Sam and Queenie arriving on the scene.
“Whatsa matta?” Sam wanted to know. Demanded, really. (Was Queenie’s doc some kinda nitwit?) He attempted to soothe his mewling cat who, contrary to her customary lazy behavior, was doing her hissing, clawing best to break loose from his enfolding embrace.
I said, “False alarm,” trying to sound competent. “Nothing to get excited about.”
I maneuvered us back from whence we had come and, at the last instant, shot a backward glance at Otis on his railed wooden porch. He and his dog were immobile. Both plainly in tune. The animal lifted its head and howled, and the blanket slipped to reveal that the creature had some sort of deformity. Otis tightened his hold and carried his dubious acquisition inside.
Sam left us, intent only on restraining Queenie, and Hanlon and I re-entered our bailiwick to find Mrs Potter had gone, leaving a note that stated her time was as valuable as my time, if not more so, and that she was taking her custom elsewhere.
For what probably was a first in her life Hanlon was sufficently abashed to simmer down.
Nevertheless, she engaged in a surreptitious surveillance for several weeks, but there were no more occasions suggestive of mistreatment to one of man’s-best-friends and she finally desisted.
The Clanton’s second dog dwindled into past history. And out of sight, out of mind.
Time passed.
The winter waxed and had begun to wane before Sam Eizenger inquired one day if it was true that Jason had drifted off to the Florida Everglades? To study leeches?
It sounded like the sort of thing Jason might undertake, and he most certainly had left the vicinity.
The rumor ran its course and died. Nobody gave a hoot where Jason was. He had departed and that was that.
But in my thoughts a lovely dream began to take root and grow. My business was slowly improving. If Otis, the lone remaining Clanton, could be coaxed into selling me his property perhaps I could wangle the money, expand my facilities and transform them into a full fledged, top notch clinic. The works! I could see it! The Southeastern Veterinarian Clinic with an accredited staff and a parking lot that stretched from here to there to accommodate the influx of pet owners seeking THE VERY BEST for their ailing furred, feathered, and finned companions.
I dream large.
Overnight the dream went down the tubes. Otis Clanton took unto himself a wife.
Where he found her Lord knows. But find her he did and made the union legal right out in the open at City Hall. Nobody could take her away from him, even if she was young enough to be his grand-daughter.
We could call him an old goat if we wanted to but h
e made sure everybody knew how the wind blew by stumping through our enclave – with her trailing along behind, Indian fashion – to Spotlight Jewelry for a ring guard to keep her wedding band tight. Then he led her back to his house and shut the door.
The scuttlebutt emanating from Spotlight intimated that the five-dollar ring guard was worth more than the ring itself.
Joe Yates (who speaks a language all his own) issued an opinion from the Amoco station that seemed to apply. He said, “Thet liddle bitty thang ort to hev her haid examine.”
Warm-hearted Muriel Sims who has The Card Shop shouldered what she believed was a neighborhood responsibility. She made the rounds with a card that had a welcoming motif, to which we all obediently signed our names. She attached these best wishes to a suitable plant, courtesy of Jan’s Flower Pot, and carried this offering over to the newly wed Mrs Clanton.
She was let in by the bride but her stay was brief to the point of being non-existent because before she could get into gear, in fact while she was holding the plant, she was dispatched by Otis.
The experience, though short, contained surprises and Muriel, spurned and humiliated, had no qualms about reporting what she had assimilated more or less by osmosis.
She delivered her spiel to us when she came in to replenish Cookie’s heart medicine. Cookie – a stray who, bony and hungry, edged into our district one rainy afternoon – has set up housekeeping in Muriel’s sympathetic heart. He knows he has lucked on to a bonanza and can be “poorly” when he chooses. I don’t betray him. He has filled an empty spot in Muriel’s otherwise loveless life among the greeting cards.
Anyway, Muriel informed us that:
One. Otis Clanton has a laboratory. She had seen a portion of a counter laden with test tubes and beakers and other “queer stuff” reflected in the half-open transom above a door down the hall.
The Best New Horror 7 Page 35
