“Try not to worry.”
“Okay. Night, Dad. Night, Mom.”
The door closed, and she lay in the dark, trying not to worry. It was like trying not to breathe. She was sure she’d never sleep again.
But she must have drifted off at some point, because she was suddenly startled awake. Had she heard an odd noise, or dreamed it? She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It said 1:17 in the morning. She lay still, listening. Then—there it was again, a rattling at her window.
She got up slowly, walked over to the window, and peered out, wondering sleepily if it was hailing outside. Or maybe a crazy squirrel was cracking open nuts, or—She couldn’t imagine what else might be making the sound.
In the tree-shadowed yard below her window, she made out the shape of a person. She sucked in a quick breath of fear before she saw the outline of a bicycle lying in the grass. The person was about her size. Dub!
Good old Dub! He must have had a brainstorm in the night. He had a plan, and now he was here to get her so they could carry it out.
Hastily, she pulled her nightgown over her head, threw on some jeans, a T-shirt, and her sneakers, and quietly inched her bedroom door open. No squeaks—good. Reflecting that for once she was glad she didn’t have a dog that might bark and alert her parents, she tiptoed toward the stairs. When she passed Michael’s room, she could see his small, sleeping form in the glow from his X-Man night-light. She paused to cock her ear toward her parents’ room at the far end of the hallway. Light, regular snoring sounds came from the open doorway.
Gingerly, she placed a foot on the far right edge of the first step, knowing how the old stairs creaked when she and Michael pounded up and down in the middle. Slowly, step by careful step, she made her way down. Only once was there a groan of wood against wood, which caused her to freeze in panic. But her parents never stirred. Heart hammering, she reached the bottom, slipped out the front door, and ran through the damp grass to the side of the house, where Dub was waiting under her window.
But when she drew close, her pounding heart leaped right into her throat. The person facing her wasn’t Dub. It was L.J. Cutler.
Before she could scream or shout for help, L.J.’s hand moved quickly to cover her mouth.
“If you promise to keep quiet,” he whispered fiercely, “I’ll take my hand away.”
Allie managed to nod. She was so paralyzed with fear, she didn’t think she’d be able to speak, anyway. Her mind was whirling with questions and wild ideas about what in the world L.J. Cutler was doing at her house in the middle of the night.
L.J. looked right into her eyes for a long moment before he removed his hand. Allie, free now, remained still and stared back. Something passed between them during that short time. Allie wasn’t sure what it was, but her heart slowed its frantic pounding, and she felt her fear subside.
“What are you doing here?” she asked quietly.
“I’m gonna help you get your dog back.”
“You took her! I knew it!”
L.J. shook his head impatiently, but said only, “And there’s something you gotta do for me.”
Allie looked into his dark eyes. “What?”
“You’ll find out. Come on.” L.J. bent to pick up the bicycle that lay on the grass, and Allie was surprised to see it was the same pink bike she and Dub had stepped over in the Cutlers’ yard. She’d assumed it was broken. Maybe it had been, and L.J. had fixed it. Ordinarily, she might have found it amusing to see L.J. Cutler mounting a pink bicycle with tattered pink and purple streamers on the handle grips. But there was nothing ordinary about this night.
“Where are we going?” Allie asked.
“You’ll see. Just follow me. Hurry.”
“All right. Let me get my bike,” said Allie. But if L.J. was going to issue ultimatums, she had a demand of her own. “We’ve got to get Dub. His room’s on the first floor. It’ll be easy to wake him up.”
“No! There’s no time!”
“I’m not going without Dub,” Allie said, crossing her hands over her chest. Part of her was amazed at her own courage in standing up to L.J. Maybe it wasn’t courage. Maybe she was afraid, and that was why she wanted Dub along. At any rate, it didn’t feel right to go without him.
“He can help,” she added.
L.J. let out an angry breath. “All right. We’ll get your boyfriend—”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” Allie protested.
“Would you just get your bike,” L.J. said, sounding exasperated. “I told you, there’s not much time.”
Allie ran to the garage, entering by the small side door instead of lifting the heavy, noisy garage door. L.J. was already at the end of the driveway, ready to go. She rode up, motioned for him to turn left, toward Dub’s house, and followed him out onto Cumberland Road.
It almost didn’t seem real, to be pedaling her bike quickly down the middle of her silent street in the quiet summer darkness. A half-moon gave enough light to see by. The moist air still held the day’s heat, and Allie almost felt part of the night itself.
They didn’t pass a car or a single soul, adding to the dreamlike feeling of their trip. When they reached Dub’s house, Allie was relieved to see that he’d left his bike leaning against the porch. She got off her own bike, motioned for L.J. to stay where he was, and went around to the back of the house, where Dub’s room was. The window was open, the curtains fluttering slightly in the night breeze.
She looked in and saw Dub lying on his back, his legs sticking out from under the sheet. She scratched on the screen and whispered, “Dub! Get up! It’s me.”
There was a slight rustle from the bed, as if Dub had awakened and was wondering, as she had, if he’d really heard something or merely dreamed it.
“Dub!” she whispered again. “Wake up! It’s me.”
Dub sat up and looked toward the window. “Allie?” he said groggily, throwing off the sheet. He was wearing a T-shirt and baggy boxers.
“Shhh!”
“What are you doing here?”
“Quiet. I’ll tell you in a minute. Come on out.”
“Out the window?” Dub asked. He didn’t seem to be fully awake.
Allie thought about it. The window looked big enough, and it was probably safer than trying to get through the house without waking his parents. “Yeah.”
Dub came over and started lifting the screen.
Allie almost laughed. “Put some clothes on,” she said. “And some shoes.”
Dub scratched his head, then shook it a few times to wake himself up. By the time he’d pulled on shorts and sneakers and slid out the window to stand beside Allie, there was a big grin on his face. “So what’s up?” he asked.
“L.J.’s here, too.”
Dub’s smile fell. “L.J.’s here?” he repeated.
“He says he’ll help us find Hoover. And we have to do something for him.”
“What does he want us to do?”
“I don’t know,” Allie answered. They were both still whispering. “But I didn’t have much choice. We’ve got to get Hoover back. Anyway, we have to hurry. L.J.’s really jumpy. He keeps saying there’s not much time.”
“I’m glad you came to get me.”
“Me too.”
“Let’s go.”
Eighteen
L.J. was out the driveway and heading down the road as soon as Allie and Dub appeared at the front of Dub’s house, and they had to pedal hard to catch up with him. He led them on a familiar route, and at first Allie thought he was taking them back to his house. But he slowed down at the entrance to the old bean packing plant and turned into the driveway. He stopped right there, and moved his hand up and down in a signal to Allie and Dub to be very quiet.
“The teacher’s dog’s here,” he said in a tense voice. “There’s a bunch of other dogs, too. My old man’s home. He’s pretty drunk, but his hearing’s great. If all them dogs start barking, the sound’s gonna carry up the hill on a night like this.”
All
ie was trying to take in what L.J. had said, and figure out what it meant.
“What are we supposed to do?” Dub asked.
“I’m gonna get the old man’s truck and come back here,” L.J. said.
“You’re going to drive?” Allie asked in amazement.
“Yeah,” L.J. answered impatiently.
“You know how to drive?”
L.J. shrugged. “I figured it out. Sometimes the old man gets too blasted to see, forget about driving. So I take over. It ain’t so hard.”
“Oh.” Allie tried to hide her astonishment, as if having to take the wheel because her father was too drunk to drive were something that happened to her every day.
“So listen,” L.J. said urgently. “You two stay here till I get back, but you can’t make any noise, you got it?”
Allie and Dub both nodded.
“Then we’ll start loading the truck.”
“With what?” Allie asked, but even as she said it she knew the answer.
“The dogs,” said L.J. “Nine of ’em, plus a litter, plus that one of yours.”
“But—” Allie began.
“I know it,” L.J. said, his dark eyes growing even darker. “The racket’ll be enough to wake the dead, and my old man, too, probably. But I’ll have his wheels, and he don’t run so fast anymore. We drive to the police station, and it’s all over.”
Allie nodded. L.J. had clearly thought the whole thing through. He was going to turn his father in to the police. She could hardly believe it. It struck Allie as a very brave—or very foolhardy—thing to do. But then she had a thought.
“L.J.,” she asked, “if you want to stop what your father’s doing, why didn’t you say something when we came to the house with the police? Or call the police sometime when your father was out?”
L.J. shook his head. Allie didn’t know if he considered her question too stupid to answer or whether he just didn’t feel like explaining. In the faint light, he looked tired as he pushed the pink bicycle forward with his foot and rode away.
She and Dub looked at each other, too dumbfounded to speak and afraid, now that L.J. was heading home, of alerting the dogs and waking Mr. Cutler just as L.J. was taking the truck.
Allie’s brain buzzed with all the things that could go wrong. What if Mr. Cutler had gotten up to use the bathroom and found L.J. missing? What if he heard L.J. start up the truck? What if this was all a trick, and L.J. was setting them up?
She began to feel very frightened. She strained to listen for any sound coming from Dundee Road, but the night was quiet except for an occasional hollow tap, when the loose flap of metal on the old roof of the bean plant lifted and fell in the slight breeze. Now she knew: that was the sound she and Michael had heard in their heads, a message from the ghost dog. They must have heard it at the very moment when Mr. Cutler was moving the dogs, including Hoover, to the bean plant so they wouldn’t be discovered on his property.
There was so much she didn’t understand about what was happening. First of all, what had made L.J. decide to help her? But right behind that puzzling question were others. What would happen to L.J. if his plan failed? Mr. Cutler would be furious.
Then Allie realized that it was just as frightening to imagine what would happen to L.J. if his plan succeeded. Either way, he was certain to be in big trouble with his father. Allie had seen Mr. Cutler’s anger over a bad cut in a piece of plywood. She didn’t want to think about what he would do to L.J. for this.
Dub’s face looked troubled, and she figured many of the same thoughts were going through his head. The wait seemed to be taking forever. Where was L.J.? Shouldn’t he be back by now? Had he been caught? Did he really know how to drive? She closed her eyes, focusing every nerve and muscle on listening. Then, there it was, the sound of the truck slowing at the corner and turning. Lights out, it approached the place where she and Dub stood, still straddling their bikes.
“Ditch the bikes for now,” L.J. said softly through the open driver’s side window. “Hide ’em someplace and come on.”
Allie and Dub hid their bikes in some overgrown bushes and made their way back across the parking lot, where weeds poked up through the buckled asphalt. L.J. had parked the gray pickup close to what Allie figured was the old loading dock. He jumped out of the front seat, leaving the door open, then reached into the truck’s cab and took out several lengths of rope. He handed them to Dub, and gave Allie a wad of rags and an empty burlap sack. L.J. held a flashlight and another sack with something in it. He motioned for Allie and Dub to follow him.
Inside the walls of the plant, L.J. switched on the flashlight for just a moment, allowing him to get his bearings and giving Dub and Allie a chance to get a glimpse of the layout. After the flashlight went out, Allie was surprised to feel L.J. take hold of her arm. She, in turn, grabbed Dub’s arm and the three of them inched their way silently through the solid blackness.
Since she was unable to see, Allie’s sense of smell seemed stronger than usual, and the dank odor of decay that had wafted from the plant during the day was almost overpowering. Beneath it was the smell Michael had identified as “poopy.”
Allie hoped that Michael was deep in sleep at that moment, and not experiencing a frightening dream or ghostly sensation, especially without her there to comfort him. But she couldn’t think about that now. She had to concentrate on shuffle-stepping silently behind L.J. through the blackness, and keeping her grip on Dub. Suddenly, there was a loud metallic clang as L.J. walked into something lying on the floor. He fell, letting go of Allie’s arm in the process.
In the quiet afterward, Allie heard L.J. swear softly. Then there was a whimper, followed by a sharp bark, then another, and another. The sound echoed through the empty plant, seeming to tear right through the black fabric of the night. L.J. swore again, and turned on the flashlight. He stood up, disentangling his foot from between the rungs of an old aluminum ladder.
“We gotta be quick now,” he said urgently. Leaving the flashlight on, he began to run, and Allie and Dub ran along behind him through one huge, yawning room and down a corridor to another room, where the barking had risen to a howling chorus.
There were the dogs, some in wire cages, some chained to posts driven into the earth floor, all of them barking, whining, and yelping in earnest now. At first, in the wildly swinging beam of the flashlight, it was hard to tell how many there were—the noise was so deafening it sounded like hundreds!
Allie saw scattered about a few aluminum pie plates, which must have been used for food or water. The smell here was strong, as the dogs had been forced to relieve themselves where they were. It was the smell Mr. Cutler had worked so hard to hide in his barn.
The flashlight shone for a moment into a corner and Allie let out a cry. She raced to the wire cage, felt for the latch, fumbled with frantic fingers until it opened, and threw her arms around Hoover. Hoover bathed her face in kisses.
Allie’s joy was interrupted by L.J., who came up behind her and said angrily, “There’s no time for that! Give me some of those strips.” Allie held out her hand and he took some of the pieces of cloth. “Get going. We gotta muzzle ’em all, quick,” he said, “before they make any more noise.”
At Allie’s uncomprehending look, he took one of the strips of cloth, looped it over Hoover’s nose, twisted it under her chin, and tied the ends behind her neck, making it impossible for her to bark.
L.J. had propped the flashlight on the ground, and in the arc of light that spread across the floor, Allie could see that he had taken biscuits from the sack he’d been holding and scattered them about. The food kept the dogs quiet while he and Dub busily tied the cloth strips around the muzzle of one dog after another.
Allie helped, noticing that the dogs were of different breeds and different sizes. Most were noticeably pregnant.
“Take that empty sack,” L.J. ordered Allie. “Wait until I get the mother muzzled, then put her puppies in it.”
Allie saw that beneath the dog L.J. was muzzl
ing was a litter of tiny, squirming puppies, so young their eyes weren’t yet open. “Put them in the sack?” she repeated uncertainly.
“Do it!” L.J. said, sounding exasperated. Allie, realizing this was no time to be overly delicate, lifted the tiny, warm bodies and placed them inside the sack. The mother pawed frantically at L.J. as she watched her puppies being taken and, even muzzled, she was able to whine her distress.
“Where’s that rope?” demanded L.J.
Dub pointed to the floor, where he’d set the rope while putting on muzzles.
“Okay, tie a piece around each one’s neck,” L.J. said, handing three lengths of rope to Dub, three to Allie, and keeping the rest for himself.
When all the dogs were leashed, L.J. spoke again. “I’ll take four dogs and the sack. You each take three dogs—you, take that one,” he said to Allie, indicating Hoover. “We’ll head for the truck as fast as we can and load ’em in the back. Let’s go.”
L.J. had his hands full with four dogs and the sack of puppies, so Dub led the way, holding the flashlight. This time, they made no attempt to tiptoe quietly. They moved as quickly as they could while herding ten confused, frightened, and uncooperative dogs in a tangle of leashes.
If Mr. Cutler had heard the dogs barking, he was already on his way. There wasn’t a moment to waste.
The parking lot was empty except for the gray pickup. The bed of the truck was covered with a cap, making it a little like a small camper. L.J. opened the tailgate, lifted the first dog, and put it inside. When he turned to pick up a second dog, the first jumped out of the truck.
“We don’t have time for this!” L.J. muttered furiously.
Allie listened for any sound of Mr. Cutler approaching, but couldn’t hear anything except the shuffling and muffled whining of the dogs. She moved forward to block one side of the tailgate opening and Dub moved to the other, so the dogs L.J. loaded couldn’t jump out while he was loading the others. It seemed to take forever, but finally all ten were squeezed in.
“You hold the pups on your lap,” L.J. told Allie, thrusting the sack into her arms. “Come on, get in.”
The Ghost of Cutler Creek Page 10
