Houses had become today's trees. Forests of cheap houses with wooden struts and plaster walls and narrow roads that snaked through them just like a path used to beneath the cool canopy of the fat trunks of cedar and spruce and oak and chestnut that they cut down.
Menzies' didn't appreciate change at all.
Left no choice as to where to buy his shopping, and less as to what to buy for his scant meals, Menzies' entered the saccharin shopping market that smelled vaguely of old ice and cleaning fluid. The woman behind the counter was around forty and overweight, but Menzies had known her mother and this woman, though only a daughter of that casual friend, still remembered him. She had a mean turn to her mouth, but she minded her manners well enough to be polite to Donaghue, even though she might turn her snout at most other customers and sneer. In his day, she'd have been given the sack for such behaviour, or stayed home and had children she could turn mean, too. Donaghue wasn't sure which would have been better.
Either way, he smiled and greeted her as he put the basket with his shopping in on the shining counter with three metal strips equally spaced that he guess were to help weak people push their shopping close enough to weedy shop assistants to avoid any strain on their scrawny wrists.
Menzies knew the pain of repetitive strain injury from his time on the boats.
Used to be called 'working', he thought with a kind of resigned sadness.
A kid, a teenager, stood behind Donaghue.
'Morning, young lady,' he told the woman behind the counter.
'Menzies', you look well,' she said as she passed his food through the laser thing on a curly wire.
At least she knew how to pronounce his first name, even though he would have preferred Mr. Donaghue.
She said it like 'mingess'. Not a hundred percent, but then Scotland and his parents' intentions were a shade over ninety years old.
Done, he thanked her and stepped outside. The teenager's friend, no doubt (equally gormless, thought Menzies) waited, sat on some kind of short and impractical bicycle.
'Young man,' said Menzies, by way of greeting. The kid stared back. Menzies shook his head and moved on to the bakery (now another branded store) where he bought a loaf of fresh-ish bread, made with dough from a factory in some factory town and shipped in a lump and baked in an oven without a speck of dirt or grease or flavour...but still better than the bread they wrapped up in plastic.
He walked back past the mini-supermarket on his way home and saw the two kids (maybe ten years old, but maybe fifteen...he couldn't really tell) kicking a dog and that was how Menzies Donaghue ended up owning the first pet of his ninety-year old life.
*
3. Old Folk and Young Folk
At some point, people got scared. There wasn't a watershed moment, when adults stopped telling kids how to be decent. It just happened. A gradual, inexorable slide. Like the way a village sprawled and became something else, or the way people didn't talk to each other at a bus stop, or in a queue, but pretended they were alone or watched short scrawls on their television phones, or put tiny plugs in their ears to drown out the noise of a world where the volume had been slowly but surely turned up and now, to Menzies, it seemed it wasn't just the aged suffering tinnitus but every space on the planet that people called home.
'Stop that!' he told them. His voice was ninety years old, and maybe tired (certainly...), but his spirit wasn't old, or weak, or afraid.
'Fuck off,' said one child, the taller, slightly cleaner of the two boys.
Menzies' had heard worse, and from younger children and big, rough men, yet it never failed to shock him, this language, this way kids would speak to their elders, men and women with a lifetime of wisdom weighing heavily on them, their hands and shoulders only weak from the effort of carrying it.
The other child - grubby, with filthy nails, left off kicking at the dog (which didn't run but cringed) and swung a foot with a dirty once-white trainer-shoe into Menzies' thin plastic bag of shopping.
It split, and his shopping fell to the floor.
'Your parents should have taught you some manners,' said Menzies. His heart was uncomfortably fast in his sparrow-chest, but he didn't walk away or cry or anything. He might be ninety, but he was still a man. 'Where do you live, young man? I'll go and have a word with your father, shall I?'
The grubbier boy laughed. His friend laughed, too.
'Are you stupid, you old cunt?' said the taller child.
It wasn't like that word was new to Menzies, either, or even particularly shocking. What was shocking was a young boy thinking he could call an old man such a thing and just walk away.
The dog wasn't daft. It quit cringing and walked away, but not too far. Like it was curious, and quite smart.
Am I like that dog now?
He wondered. Should he cringe, hope for some respite, or walk away, tail between his legs? He didn't want to be like a dog. But was he just as powerless?
'Do not walk away from me while I'm still speaking!'
He shouted, and it hurt his throat. It had been a long time since he'd felt this kind of heart-pounding anger, the kind that made his thin skin burn.
The filthy boy stood as tall as he could, directly before Menzies. Maybe not even five feet tall, but menacing, like he watched too many of those films with burly fighting men.
'What you going to do about it, Ming?'
Menzies wasn't sure at all until he slapped the child as hard as his shoulder would let him. An old flat hand that wasn't fast, or strong, but had no padding at all. It probably felt like getting hit in the face with a spatula...but a metal one, at least.
The boy burst into tears. Shock, probably, rather than pain. He stared for a second at Menzies, utter disbelief on his ugly and snide little face.
'You can't...'
Menzies' felt no particular satisfaction at the child's shock or pain. He didn't feel any kind of guilt, though. To his mind, children like this were long overdue a damn good backhand.
'I can. Your father should have done the same, maybe then you wouldn't be such a little cunt yourself.'
Menzies walked away, not riddled with guilt or doubt about right and wrong, but happier than he had been for a long time.
DOG followed.
*
4. DOG meets Mr. Donaghue's Friends
The dog had no collar and no tag. Perhaps it had a microchip, but it seemed content to follow Menzies on his walk back the rambling unkempt house he called a home. Almost immediately he began to think of it as a simple creature, and had no intention of naming the thing. It was no more his to name than one of the spiders that shared his home. It was DOG, and that was good enough.
They walked side-by-side along the long, cracked concrete path that led to Menzies' front door. Spider webs covered the wild roses, last of their blooms wilting now it was coming toward autumn, but their thorns thick and stern and as old as the bushes themselves. Not new, spiteful sharp prickles, but thorns like rhinoceros horns, sharp and hard enough to tear quite deeply.
Webs hung, too, from the porch like curtains might, drawn and tied back either side of a wide window. Here and there, spiders themselves, fat ones and ones with thin, spindly legs, spun and weaved and swung about Donaghue's head.
DOG didn't seem to care about the spiders one way or the other.
At the open door, the old man paused and turned to the dog. It looked up, panting, alert, with a long-haired tail straight out.
'You want to come in?' he asked.
The dog's tail moved a little, and then a lot.
'Fine by us both, then,' he said, and the dog followed him inside.
It kept on panting, perhaps from the walk, perhaps because it had grey around its muzzle and was simply tired as Menzies felt. He took a cracked bowl from the cupboard and blew a spider out, which deftly landed on the draining board and ran away. When he placed the bowl, filled with water, the dog lapped at it long enough for Menzies to put away his few purchases. The dog was messy and water splashed the
unwashed tiles.
A few of Menzies' other house guests lowed themselves on their fine strands to examine the dog and find him of little interest. One, a large fellow, crawled from the skirting at the base of the cupboards. DOG took all the water it had wanted, and then chased the spider around the kitchen. It knocked against the table and snapped at the spider. The spider escaped - fat, but quick.
DOG looked up at Menzies, bright-eyed, tail wagging.
'Good game?'
DOG's tail wagged some more.
'Hungry?'
It barked.
Menzies wondered if he should get some dog food. He didn't have any handy, of course, because he'd never owned a dog, but the animal seemed more than content with a few crackers soaked in an oxtail-flavoured cup-a-soup.
Afterward, he let the dog out to do its business. He fully expected it to run off, back to whoever owned it. It didn't. DOG ran out, squatted (even though it was a male dog) and returned straight away.
It was smart, and happy, and Menzies found he quite liked having DOG around. The dog proved to be welcome company that the old man hadn't realised he'd missed.
That first evening, he sat in his old, worn armchair, with a book on his lap. DOG curled itself near his feet. Menzies smiled, looking down at this new edition to his household. The dog looked to be something like a retriever, but mixed. Long hair, but not unkempt at all, and probably cared for, like it belonged to someone.
'Good boy,' he said quietly. DOG looked up, tongue out, and then closed his eyes again.
Menzies thought that he would venture out and ask around town about a dog lost to its owner, someone who probably cared deeply about their dog. Maybe it was a family pet, or belonged to someone older like him. The dog had grey in its muzzle but its eyes were still bright and there seemed to be nothing wrong with its hearing.
We'll find your owner, boy, he thought. In the morning.
He picked his book up, read for a time until he found himself sleepy and took them both off to bed. DOG seemed happy enough on the floor, and the spiders didn't seem to mind the dog in the slightest.
For some reason - perhaps loneliness even Menzies hadn't recognised - he forgot all about his intention to find DOG's owner.
*
5. Settling in
Some few days later, certainly no more than a week, DOG became tired and listless from nothing but crackers and some tinned peaches. The day was cool, but the sun was warm enough that Menzies decided to take the walk to town. Necessity, yes, but he wanted DOG to be happy, and well. He knew little about owning a pet, but he knew more than enough about responsibility. The dog had become his.
He put his old grey suit jacket over his narrow shoulders - shirt and tie beneath, and a thermal vest beneath that (long johns on his scrawny legs, too). He put a hat on his bald head to keep the sun off and out of his eyes, and took the slow walk to town. DOG stayed behind. It watched him walk along the littered path from the front room window, its paws up on the window sill and its tongue lolling out.
In the village, as he still tried to think of it, he bought a few other things a dog might need, and the fewer old men need. A brush for the dog's long hair, some dry food (tins would have been a tall order on his old arms) for the dog. He didn't consider a collar, or a toy. The dog wasn't his, not strictly, and toys were for puppies, he figured, just like toys for humans should be for children, not grown-ups.
DOG was happier, after that, and stayed by his side almost constantly for nearly another whole week. It chased the spiders - those local, and those rare ones with true venom that had followed Menzies back from the long foreign trips and must have bred and had other spiders.
Sometimes he wondered if those spiders passed something along to their many offspring.
The old man...he's one of us.
A legend, maybe, among the thousands of spiders and their children and their children and onward, forever.
DOG often snuffled as a spider landed on one of its long ears. It shook its head as it slept at Menzies' feet, either while he read or while he slept.
The spiders were content enough to be chased and in the fortnight DOG lived with Menzies and the spiders, DOG had yet to catch a thing.
October turned to November and the distant sound of fireworks. Menzies smiled and closed his eyes as he lay down to sleep. His pillow was beginning to cool at night now, and the feeling of a cool pillow and a dog gently snoring beside his old double bed was pleasant.
Perhaps, he wondered later, he should pay someone to come and cut the lawns. It would be hard to find the dog's messes in the long grass (grass long enough to fall over under its own weight toward the end of each summer which seemed to pass faster). But he understood that such things were idle musings of an old man who held onto the ridiculous hope that death wouldn't find him. Menzies understood he'd be long dead before DOG managed to cover the entirety of his huge garden in shit.
*
6. Stones in the Night
On one of Menzies' trips into town, more frequent than they had been for years (dogs, it seemed, ate far more and far more often than he, despite that he was at least three times its size) he passed a bus stop. It was a sheltered one, brick-built, like you might see still in country villages where the denizens are less prone to vandalism and the cheap-high litter of their city counterparts.
But not all of those village bus stops are home to elderly men and women waiting on a rare bus. Inside the deep shadows of this one, on the opposite side of the road to Menzies, were two children. One was thirteen, one twelve years old, and both of them had good memories for old bastards and they were of a kind for whom fear almost organically transformed to leave anger in its place. Instead of being chastised, or chagrined, when found out for their numerous vile acts, they took their shame and turned it around. Nothing was ever their fault. They could do no wrong.
Kicking a lost dog was forgotten. They remembered a slap and hard words from an old man very well, though - an old man who they followed along thin country lanes until he stepped inside what, to them, looked like a derelict home.
The younger, dirty boy who lived not in a new forest of cheap houses but with a mother and father who made their few pennies at auctions and boot sales and got the other things they wanted through theft or from other thieves at a price they could manage, imagined he still felt an old man's slap burning the thin, tight flesh around his narrow cheek.
He and the taller boy waited until dark.
They were impatient. A Playstation, iPhone generation. Everything should be instant, everything should be theirs. But in violence and hatred they were happy enough, whispering in the bushes, watching the old bastard's house.
Waiting for what, they weren't sure. Maybe waiting for the old man to go to sleep. Some ill-formed plan flowed from their curse-filled conversation. Maybe frighten the old man, or steal something from his house. Either way, they would do their deeds when he slept.
The dirtier of the two half-entertained thoughts of beating the old man. Hitting hit with something heavy. Making him hurt. Making him understand.
But then DOG came out.
It was dark, and the old man was crisp and clear as he stood in the light of his front door and the dog they remembered bounded into the dark.
The old man turned and left the door open and two angry children, still an age when men like Menzies' remembered children should play in the woodlands, making war with acorns and stick, or hunting crabapples. But the only forests and woods left children like these were made of struts and plaster.
The two boys moved carefully, and quietly, because humans are cunning and hate and anger are more cunning and older than men.
DOG's tail wagged as one of the boys clucked gently and patted his leg to coax the dog to him. While he did, the other child - the dirtier of the two - came from behind, holding a heavy edging stone that kept Menzies' overgrown garden from swallowing the path. DOG turned its head just in time to take the stone, dropped by a child with his arms above
his head, from nearly six feet up, across its bright-eyed, happy face.
'Shit,' whispered the taller child.
The younger shrugged, remorseless, and took a newer, stolen phone from his jeans' pocket. Later, he posted the picture on FaceBook, Their friends groaned and complained or thought the pictures of the dead dog were fucked up. They didn't really know that the two children had killed DOG. Some might have cared, some might not.
The spiders knew. They cared.
They crawled and scuttled along the path from the garden and through the open door as the two children walked, not ran, away.
*
7. When the Man Cries
Menzies walked back to the door.
He'd never had to call for DOG, but dog didn't leap through the door as usual.
'DOG!'
Dog didn't come. Instead, thousands of spiders came from every spot outside, within the boundaries of his home, until they surrounded Menzies. In the light from the porch, he could see them clearly. Some of those spiders' eyes were black, some reflected the light. Some, fewer, were rare spiders with nothing but vestigial eyes. Pale things, legs no bigger than needles, bodies almost translucent. Some he recognised, some he did not. Some big, fat, tarantula-types, perhaps related, perhaps not. Older spiders, five or ten years old, some of them. Thick, hairy limbs, or quick and narrow. Two eyes, or four, or six, or eight.
Menzies had never seen so many of these constant companions in one place, and every spider in the glow of his porch light was unmoving, staring.
The Cold Inside (Horror Short Stories) Page 4
