The Dog Megapack

by Robert Reginald

  ‘If you think it’s so funny, come meet the dog yourself.’

  ‘Where is this monster?’

  ‘Down the end of Wattlegrove Avenue.’

  Jenni laughed. ‘I came that way this morning. Dead quiet, it was. No dogs at all.’

  Ruba sighed. Same as her brother! Was Ruba the only one it chased? ‘Well, there’s one there in the afternoon. See for yourself.’

  ‘Can’t. Mum’s picking me up after school. Piano lesson.’ Jenni turned away as a group of girls ran past. ‘Wanta play some handball?’

  Then Ruba spied Harry.

  Harry the Horror was the school nerd. He had all the answers. When you asked him even a simple question, it took him hours to get to the point. So usually no one bothered. But Ruba was desperate.

  ‘Dog problem, eh?’ Harry pulled at his hairless chin as though he had a long beard.

  ‘How can I get past it?’ Ruba asked.

  Harry began listing a squillion ways to tame guard dogs. The first one involved staring it in the eye and letting it know who’s the boss. Ruba knew who the boss was and so did the dog. Harry’s other methods were even less practical, so Ruba stopped listening.

  ‘Talk to it,’ she heard Harry say, just before he began telling her about Method Number One Squillion and One. ‘If you reason with dogs, they always listen. Not like people.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Dogs are easy to handle if you speak their language,’ he said.

  ‘What language is that?’

  Harry smirked. ‘Doglish, of course. I’ll show you how it goes.…’

  * * * *

  Maybe the dog came from the Middle East like Ruba’s parents, because it didn’t appear to speak English—Dog or otherwise.

  It leapt at Ruba from the shadowy bushes in front of the old, crumbling house near the rise, and came at her like a rocket, mouth wide to gobble her up.

  ‘Rr-i’m rr-or frrreend-woof!’ she barked, as instructed by Harry.

  The dog kept coming, clearly unimpressed.

  ‘Frreend-woof! Woof-frr-end!’ Ruba repeated. The dog’s mouth opened wide, its teeth huge and sharp. Spit dribbled over its lips.

  Maybe it didn’t speak any type of English.

  ‘Fursa sa’eeda!’ she said in Arabic, which meant ‘Nice to meet you’. She didn’t expect it to work. How many dogs understood Arabic?

  But the dog stopped. It sat down and wagged its tail. Once.

  Ruba made an effort to breathe, in case she fell over from lack of oxygen. The dog’s dark eyes watched her.

  ‘Nice dog,’ she muttered.

  It continued to stare. Now it was Ruba’s move. She wished she’d paid more attention when her grandmother tried to teach her Arabic.

  ‘Il-autobees yissafir imta?’ she said. Which meant something like ‘When does the bus leave?’ Not very appropriate, but Ruba couldn’t think of anything else.

  The dog barked and stood expectantly. It took a step toward the old, crumbling house. Then it glanced back at her. When she didn’t follow, it growled.

  ‘It wants me to follow it,’ Ruba said out loud. ‘No way.’

  She moved one step in the opposite direction.

  The growl got nastier.

  ‘Bisalama!’ Ruba said (‘Goodbye’).

  Suddenly the dog leapt around behind her so she couldn’t go in that direction. It growled, floppy lips pulling back over enormous teeth. The growl sounded like something lurching up from the bottom of a very deep hole. The dog’s eyes glinted red. The fur on its back bristled.

  ‘Kwayes!’ Ruba whispered, scared stiff. ‘Okay! Okay!’

  She shuffled toward the house. As she did, the dog began to trot along behind her, quite content now.

  Ruba felt trapped. She’d have to enter the house, and frankly, it looked like the sort of place no one would want to enter. It was dark and the yard was overgrown and if she found out no one but ghosts had lived there for several hundred years she wouldn’t be surprised.

  ‘I don’t want to go in there!’ she said. To which the dog growled some more.

  So she opened the front gate and went in.

  * * * *

  When she knocked on the door, there was no answer. She shrugged at the dog, as if to say ‘Can I go now?’. It stared at her blackly.

  Ruba knocked again. Then the dog came up beside her, lifted its front paw and pushed. The door creaked open, revealing a lightless hallway.

  The dog barked and stared at Ruba, ordering her in.

  The whole place was bleak and dusty. Floorboards groaned under her feet as Ruba made her way down the passage. She came to a staircase. Staring up its twisting height, all she could see were shadows and none of them seemed friendly.

  ‘Not up there, I hope?’ she asked the dog. It barked, but stared ahead.

  Not up. Ruba kept moving along the ground-floor passage.

  Finally she came to an opening that led downstairs into a dark basement area. Spooky. As she skirted around it, Ruba felt the dog nudge her. She looked at the animal and it made a ‘grawffff’ sound, its eyes sparking red again.

  Okay. Down.

  ‘Hello!’ she yelled into the darkness.

  ‘Assalamu alaikim!’ came a weak voice from below. Ruba stepped back in surprise. Tingles crept up her spine.

  ‘Hello!’ came the voice again, in English this time. ‘Is someone there?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Ruba. ‘Is someone down there or are you a ghost?’

  ‘Hamdulillah!’ That was Arabic for ‘Thank God!’. The voice didn’t sound spooky now. It sounded relieved. ‘Help me, please!’

  Should she go down? Well, someone might be hurt—and besides, the dog wasn’t giving her much choice. It glared at her over its long snout.

  She reached into the dark, looking for a light switch.

  ‘Globe blew,’ said the voice.

  Ruba sighed. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Bottom of the stairs. I fell when the light went out. Broke something. I can’t move. Help me. Min fadlek.’

  ‘Aiwa,’ Ruba answered. ‘Yes. I’m coming.’

  She was very careful, searching each step with her foot before putting her weight on it. Halfway down she glanced back. The dog was there, like a hovering shadow.

  By the time she reached the bottom, her eyes had adjusted and she could see better. A man lay spread-eagled on the rough floor, one leg bent at a strange angle. He was very skinny, his eyes bulging desperately.

  ‘Hamdulillah!’ he muttered. ‘I thought I’d die here.’

  Ruba knelt beside him. ‘You look terrible,’ she said.

  ‘Three days.’ One hand rubbed over his forehead. ‘I’ve been here since Al-ahad.’

  ‘Sunday?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m new. An immigrant. From Cairo. My first day in this house I have bought and I trip. Couldn’t get up the stairs and no one could hear.’

  Ruba thought about what he’d been through. In a new country. Lying there in the dark, unable to get help. No one knowing he’s there. Alone. ‘You’ll be okay now,’ she said. ‘I’ll get an ambulance.’

  ‘You save me.’ His hand reached out. ‘How did you know to look here?’

  ‘Your dog chased me in. It was real smart, though at first I didn’t know what it was up to.’

  ‘My dog?’ The man looked puzzled.

  ‘Up there.’ Ruba pointed, but the dog was no longer lurking at the top of the stairs, even as a shadow.

  The man frowned at her. ‘This is strange. I have no dog. Not here in this new country.’

  ‘No dog? You must have. It wanted me to help you.’ She described the dog in detail and the man listened, his brow creasing. When she was finished, he shook his head.

  ‘It sounds like—no, but that is impossible.’

  ‘What’s impossible?’

  ‘I had a dog as you describe. When I was young. But it died.’

  Ruba glanced to where she’d last seen the dog, feeling little tingles run up her spine.

 
‘My father,’ the man went on, ‘he used to say that dog was part jackal. That it honored me by being my friend. That it would stay with me forever.’ He grinned at her, even though he was in pain. ‘Perhaps it did.’

  Ruba said nothing. She swallowed.

  ‘It was called Anubis,’ the man added.

  RIP VAN WINKLE, by Washington Irving

  I.

  Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill Mountains. They are a branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the goodwives, far and near, as perfect barometers.

  At the foot of these fairy mountains the traveler may have seen the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great age, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.

  In that same village, and in one of these very houses, there lived, many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient, henpecked husband.

  Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the goodwives of the village, who took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.

  The great error in Rip’s composition was a strong dislike of all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and uphill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

  His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes, of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother’s heels, equipped in a pair of his father’s cast-off breeches, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

  Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ear about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house—the only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

  Rip’s sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master’s going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods; but what courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.

  Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on. A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George III. Here they used to sit in the shade of a long, lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman’s money to have heard the profound discussions which sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster—a dapper, learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary! And how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place!

  The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sundial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent, and angry puffs; but, when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would nod his head in approbation.

  From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquility of the assemblage, and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.

  Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized as
a fellow-sufferer in persecution. “Poor Wolf,” he would say, “thy mistress leads thee a dog’s life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee.” Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master’s face; and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

  In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Catskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.

  On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild and lonely, the bottom filled with fragments from the overhanging cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

  As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!” He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: “Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!”—at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master’s side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place; but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it.