Intruder

by Christine Bongers

  I tied a strangling knot in the bag, making a mental note to live out the rest of my life without coriander. Jimmy shuffled back a couple of paces, hacking into his hand as I flipped the bag into the bin and banged down the lid. Our newly installed alarm system trotted over to investigate. Sniffed at the wheel, then lifted a hind leg skywards.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Jimmy, happy now that the crap part was over. ‘You could put him in the ballet with an arabesque like that.’

  I frowned, wondering where the dog could possibly store such an impressive build-up of fluid. ‘Is he all right? That’s like the sixth piddle he’s done in less than five minutes.’

  Jimmy ambled over and scratched at the dog’s ridiculous ears. ‘He’s marking his territory. The sooner he claims this yard as his, the better. Then he’ll let us know if any outsider sets foot in here.’ He glanced up at me standing an uneasy distance away.

  ‘Come on, Katty. You have to make a bit of an effort to get to know him. Dogs are pack animals. They like to be liked. If he accepts us as part of his pack, he’ll defend us.’

  I squinted into the middle distance. It made sense, but it was hard for me to make the first move.

  ‘Why don’t you see if Hercules comes when you call him?’ Jimmy held out his hand and the great ugly dumpling turned round and licked it. ‘See? He likes me already.’

  I snorted. ‘He just thinks you have food. As soon as he realises you’ve come empty-handed, he’ll go straight back to piddling on random things like your leg.’

  ‘Actually . . .’ Jimmy reached into his pocket. ‘I do have a little something that Edie gave me.’ He held up a packet of what looked like bits of shrivelled bark. The dog snapped to attention and sat back on his haunches, expectant and smiling.

  I looked from the dog to the bag of dehydrated bits and back again. ‘Apparently one of us knows what that is.’

  ‘They’re liver treats.’ Jimmy didn’t seem to have a problem with the magnitude of that contradiction in terms. ‘They’re like lollies for dogs.’ He held out a flake and Hercules reared up on his hind legs, taking the treat with surprising delicacy from his hand. ‘See, Herc’ll do backflips for them.’

  ‘Okaaay . . . and what happens if I want him to tear a chunk out of a prowler and I don’t have any dehydrated gizzard chips handy?’

  It was meant to be a joke, but Jimmy’s face closed over, and it fell clanging into the sudden silence between us. When he finally answered, his voice was tight and oddly muted. ‘We’re not training him to attack, Kat. Just to sound the alarm.’

  ‘What good will that do?’ My voice was sharper than I intended. ‘You think a prowler will be scared off by him barking, then rolling over and asking for a treat?’

  Jimmy’s face hardened into the stubborn glaze it took on when I challenged him. ‘If he bonds with us, recognises us as part of his family, this house as part of his territory, he’ll bark the place down if someone tries to sneak in. That’s what dogs do.’ His voice softened. ‘No prowler hangs around when the barking starts. Trust me on that, Katty.’ Then he held out the packet of canine bribes. ‘Go on, give him a chance. Just be nice and see where it leads. Give him a pat.’

  I reached over and weighed the liver treats in my hand. ‘How about I feed him some proper food instead? That should help us bond, right? Dogs like being fed, don’t they?’

  Seven

  It looked like a dog-food bomb had exploded in the centre of the kitchen. The fallout was all over the floor. Bits had even ricocheted up into the shelves at the end of the bench. I picked my way through the shrapnel.

  ‘BAD DOG.’

  The culprit shrank back, bum in the air, tentatively waving his stump of a tail.

  ‘Don’t tempt me . . .’ I grabbed the ripped-open dog food packet off the floor and shook it at him. ‘I didn’t battle the Boxing Day sales for this, buddy.’

  He levitated up from the ground and smoothly latched onto the shredded bag. I stumbled back, the dog dancing after me on his hind legs. It took all my strength to reef the bag higher. He stretched onto tippy-toes, hanging on from his enormous hinged jaw.

  ‘You have got to be kidding.’

  He shook his head, brown eyes fixed on me.

  ‘How about a little remorse?’ I lowered the bag until all four paws were back in contact with the floor. He skittered on the cork tiles, trying to find enough traction to wrench the bag from my hand.

  ‘How about, “Thanks, Kat, for lugging this home in the stinking heat”?’ I yanked at the bag, but the stubborn git wouldn’t let go.

  ‘How about, “Thanks for wasting all that time choosing the right food”? The fifteen-dollar kind.’

  His eyes had taken on an obstinate glaze. Well, two could play that game. I tugged harder.

  ‘The one with beet pulp –’ whatever the hell that was ‘– for healthy bowel motions and firmer stools.’ I leaned back, determined to win this tug of war.

  Another voice cut in over the top of me. ‘HERCULES – DROP IT.’

  The dog let go so suddenly that I bum-skied across the kitchen floor.

  ‘You have to use the command voice.’ The evil witch leaned against the doorjamb. ‘If you’re interested, he does come with instructions.’ She waved a sheaf of papers at me and surveyed the damage. ‘He’s well-trained, but has no control when it comes to food. You should probably feed him on the verandah.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of knocking?’ I pushed myself to my feet and dusted off the kibble that had stuck to my hands. ‘Anything else I should know?’

  ‘It’s all in here.’ She handed me the sheaf of papers. They were helpfully labelled ‘Herc Instructions’ and neatly stapled together at the top left-hand corner. ‘Jimmy asleep?’

  I nodded, scanning the papers. He’d sleep all day, get ready for his next gig, then leave me home alone, locked up tight with nothing but a fully charged mobile and a four-legged piddle-machine for company.

  The Herc Instructions were full of helpful hints on how to deal with the animal hoovering kibble off our cork tiles. They gave me something to think about apart from my unwanted visitor and the queasy feeling in my gut about the coming night on my own.

  According to the cheat sheet, Herc liked people – Point One in his favour. And he was intensely loyal. Score Two for the ridiculous brute.

  I frowned at the next dot point. ‘It says here, “Herc is lazy and needs to be exercised. Take him for a walk in the afternoon, for his own good.”’

  He paused his vacuum-cleaning at the mention of his name.

  ‘I don’t have to do that, right?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘The more time you spend with him, the quicker he’ll bond with you. It’ll bring out his protective side. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  No. But right now, it was all I had.

  I went back to the instructions while she grabbed a broom and dustpan, pushed the dog aside with her foot and swept up the last of the kibble.

  ‘It says he can do tricks.’ I lowered the pages and assumed what I hoped was the command voice. ‘SIT.’

  He sat.

  Whoa, that was the last thing I expected. I tried another one.

  ‘DOWN.’

  He lay on the floor, one front paw curled under his chest, like a cat.

  I almost laughed, but caught myself before she noticed.

  She pulled a big old Tupperware container out of a drawer and emptied the dustpan into it. ‘You can still use this. I don’t think Herc will object to a few floor sweepings in his dinner.’

  If I’d known he was that unfussy about what he ate, I wouldn’t have wasted fifteen dollars on fancy dog food.

  She pulled some folded bills out of the pocket of her shorts and tossed them on the bench. ‘I’ll cover the food,’ she said.

  Mind-reading again; her evil powers never ceased to
amaze me.

  ‘But you feed and walk him, okay?’ She didn’t wait for an answer and headed for the door, throwing one last bit of unwanted advice over her shoulder. ‘Because he’s still young, you’ll need to reinforce the commands so he doesn’t forget them. That means practising with him every day. It’s all in the instructions.’

  I grunted, irritated at her for thinking that she could waltz in and out whenever she felt like it, but even more annoyed at myself. She was like a vampire I’d invited in when I screamed, when I unbolted my window. Now I had to deal with the consequences.

  I frowned at the instructions again, not sure if I’d misread the last in Hercules’s repertoire of tricks.

  Now that was weird.

  The dog had collapsed into an exhausted puddle on the floor. ‘Sit’ and ‘Down’ must have been too much for him. I checked the papers again and snapped my fingers twice, as loudly as I could.

  One eye opened. He reluctantly pushed himself to his feet, tail wagging, waiting for what he seemed to know was coming next.

  I extended my arm, cocked my thumb and forefinger into the shape of a gun, and pointed it at his oversized head.

  He tilted his chin quizzically.

  I took aim and pulled the trigger.

  ‘BANG.’

  He dropped like he had been shot and rolled over, legs in the air.

  Damn. What sort of person would train a dog to do that?

  Eight

  The Herc Instructions were a great distraction.

  Whenever last night’s prowler invaded my thoughts, I grabbed my ridiculous new protector and focused on putting him through his paces.

  SIT. DOWN. COME. BANG.

  It kept my hands and mind occupied. And after being holed up at home for most of the summer, it was a relief to finally have something to do, and someone to do it with – even if it was only a dog.

  The city had emptied for the Christmas break. Everyone had headed off to the beach, or scattered to far-flung family reunions, while Jimmy played and I worked my way through my newly acquired novel collection.

  I’d found the box of old books during a cleaning frenzy at the start of the holidays. It was at the very bottom of the junk cupboard under the stairs. Buried beneath a clutter of empty shoeboxes, scuffed Barbie rollerskates, faded orange flippers bent into stiff right angles, snorkels with opaque face plates, and too-small raincoats and gumboots.

  Inside were neatly stacked books, bound in linen and leather, with stitched spines, each bearing a handwritten book plate on the inside cover: Ex Libris Yvette Walters or, later, Yvie Jones.

  I’d found my mum’s books. The special ones she’d cared enough to keep.

  When she was well enough, Mum would drag me to secondhand book stores all over town, trading old paperbacks and picture books for new ones. We’d rush home to the striped hammock that Jimmy had slung under the back deck, and together we’d swing and read, feet dangling in the elephant ears that grew thick in the heavy shade. But when the chemo started, the rocking motion made her sick and she abandoned the hammock and, eventually, the reading too.

  Without her down there, the shadows had deepened and lengthened. Dark and dreadful things lurked in the shrouded corners and scuttled in the underbrush. I avoided the area, leaving the hammock to rot. All that remained of our magical reading place was a dirty frayed rope hanging under the back deck.

  Until now.

  I began reading Mum’s old books out of curiosity, but once I started, it became an obsession. I imagined her hand on mine, guiding each new selection. From the fairytales she used to read to me when I was young, through to the classics she had kept for herself.

  I discovered we shared a taste for the sly wit of Jane Austen. (Mum had all six of her novels, so I’m guessing she must’ve liked them.) I’d just finished reading Emma, and watching Clueless, the movie it spawned, when Herc shouldered his way into my life. Which was probably good timing – I needed to detox after weeks of OD’ing on Victorian sensibility.

  Jimmy would be pleased; the Herc Instructions had succeeded where his nagging had failed, finally getting me out of the house: Herc needs to make friends. Take him to the dog park so he can meet some of the locals.

  It seemed simple enough on paper. But at the end of the bike path, with the enclosure looming before me, the reality of what I was about to do bit deep. I hesitated, squinting in the sunlight, a sinkhole slowly collapsing in the pit of my stomach.

  Herc glanced up, oddly alert to any change in my mood.

  I hadn’t visited the local dog park in years. When I was a kid, it had brought back too many painful memories of the Marco-sized hole in my life. Then, after the dog attack, that hole had closed over. Permanently, I had thought. Now, here I was, about to rip open the old scar.

  Herc rubbed his velvety nose reassuringly against the side of my knee. Then he put his head down and ploughed on towards the park, almost pulling my arm out of its socket.

  ‘Geez, I’m coming,’ I muttered. ‘But I’m warning you, if things start getting hairy, we are out of –’

  A stranger stalked towards me, his head and upper body swathed in a black hoodie despite the sweltering heat of the day. He moved in a jerky, loose-limbed way while a mangy blue cattle dog slunk by his side. I could just make out a fringe of dark hair hanging over sallow olive skin beneath his hoodie. His eyes flicked past me, scanning the ground in front of his feet. There was something about the way he avoided eye contact, something that made my skin crawl.

  My fingers tightened around Herc’s lead. I scanned the stranger’s hands for a ring, for a telltale dusting of dark hairs across the fingers. But his hands were hidden: a thick black leash was wound round one fist; the other was balled up in the pocket of his faded, too-small hoodie.

  He angled his body away from me, averting his gaze as he ducked past, veering off the path and cutting across the grass to the street, his dog glued to his heels.

  Herc whined at my side, half-strangled by the short leash I held him on. ‘Sorry, boy,’ I murmured, loosening his lead and forcing myself to breathe. Looking for a prowler in every bloke that walked past would send me nuts. I had to get a grip or risk losing it completely.

  ‘Okay, Herc.’ His ears pricked up as I injected a little bravado into my voice. ‘What are you – man or mouse? We’ve made it this far, let’s get this thing done.’

  Inside the fenced area of the dog park, two enormous animals, one black, one red, tore around the picnic tables, growling and snapping at each other.

  Oblivious to their noisy orbit, a mottled hyena-like creature stared hard at a ball lying at its owner’s feet, as if willing it to spontaneously combust. A spritely little chocolate-brown poodle tap-danced past, nose in the air, pink bows clipped into the woolly curls of its ears.

  I hesitated, gripping the upper rail of the gate. What little momentum I’d mustered with my pep talk to Herc was draining rapidly from my body.

  So many dogs . . .

  But what did I expect? It was a dog park; of course there’d be dogs.

  I swiped at the sweat beading my upper lip and brow. ‘C’mon, Herc. Time to cowboy the hell up and get on in there.’

  He cast me a quizzical look. My voice sounded funny, even to my ears. My chest was so tight I couldn’t suck in enough air.

  I can do this . . . I just need a minute . . .

  ‘You all right?’

  I spun round, hand flying to my face.

  A lanky, black-haired boy around my age eyed me with concern. ‘You’re as white as a sheet. You want to sit down?’

  My legs answered for me. I slid down the wire gate till my butt hit the ground. Herc’s face swam into view, his eyes brimming pools of concern. He parked his jaw on my knee, encasing it in floppy chops like warm velvet knee-muffs.

  The boy crouched down in front of me, slinging one arm over H
erc’s broad back. ‘Take a couple of deep breaths. And maybe put your head between your legs if you’re still feeling dizzy. Want me to get you some water?’

  I shook my head, burying my burning face between my knees. Now I was swooning like that silly Harriet Smith in Emma . . . could my day get any worse?

  Herc nosed at my hair, moaning softly at the back of his throat.

  ‘Don’t worry, pal. She’s going to be fine.’ The boy thumped at his ribcage, directing his next comments to me.

  ‘Your colour’s improving. Feel any better?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, I’m good.’ I lifted my head, and sucked in a big gulp of air. ‘Sorry, that’s not like me . . . must be the heat or something . . .’

  He eyed me speculatively, then shrugged and flipped a slimy and tattered tennis ball into the air. ‘Don’t worry about it, I faint all the time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Nah.’ He grinned, catching the ball and flipping it higher. ‘Just messing with you.’

  A big red dog barked at him from inside the fence. ‘That’s my red setter, Sequoia. She wants her ball back. I accidentally tossed it out of the park, so she made me go fetch.’

  I nodded, fingering the knotty scar on my chin. Unable to resist sneaking a quick look at his hands.

  He dipped his head. ‘You’re supposed to say “Good boy” and give me a pat.’ He paused, then tapped the side of his nose. ‘Dog joke.’

  I smiled wanly. No ring. No knuckle hair, either. Nice hands, though, with long slim fingers. Piano player’s hands, like Jimmy’s . . .

  ‘Look, if you’re worried about the dogs in there –’

  ‘Who? Me? Why? Should I be?’ I levered myself round to peer into the park. ‘Are any of them vicious? What should I do if one of the dogs attacks?’

  ‘Attacks?’ He laughed. ‘What are you? Made of bacon?’

  He broke off, staring at my fingers, which were unconsciously worrying at the ugly scar along my jaw. I dropped my hand and let my hair swing forward to curtain my face. But not before I saw understanding click into place behind his eyes.