Judy’s clock radio clicked on minutes before the sun. She rolled out of bed, glancing in the mirror as she passed it on her way to the bathroom. She was secretly pleased. She’d been dieting, doing aerobics and running for the last two months and she’d dropped ten of the twelve pounds she’d wanted to lose.
She passed into the bathroom and bounced on the scale. She looked at the digital read out and squealed with delight. One-fifteen. She’d lost the last two pounds. “And I’m gonna keep them off,” she told the scale.
She rushed back into the bedroom, shut off the radio and donned her sweats and running shoes. She was in a hurry to beat the sun.
Happier than she’d been in months, she tiptoed to J.P.’s door and eased it open. Satisfied that he was still asleep, she closed it and went down the stairs. She unlocked the deadbolt and went out the front door to meet the crisp morning.
She smiled into the cool breeze and glanced up at the sun starting its morning peak through the pines. She loved sunup and the birth of a new day. For her, every dawn signaled the beginning of another twenty-four hours away from the bad times and another day closer to the good times that she knew were coming.
She worried about J.P. Lately he’d been spending most of his time in town. She knew there were one or two children his age that he played with, but what she gathered from her conversations with him, was that he was spending a lot of time with the older boys at the park. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it wasn’t like him to spend so much time away from her. They were a team. Now it seemed like the team was breaking up. She didn’t like it, but she could understand why a boy would want to get out and play with other children.
If that’s all it was, maybe she shouldn’t worry, but he was neglecting the birds. He’d always enjoyed them and now it was like they didn’t exist. She didn’t mind taking care of them herself, she’d been taking care of pigeons all of her life, but it wasn’t the same without J.P.
Something was different. She wanted to sit down with him and talk it out, but she was afraid. Afraid that she was the cause, afraid that she was different.
She did feel different. She was more determined. She’d lost the weight that had been bugging her since J.P. had been born. She was getting up every morning and running, something new for her. She was taking more care with her appearance, trying to look her best. She bought new clothes. Clothes with bright colors, the opposite of the dull tee shirts and Levi’s she’d been wearing for the last ten years.
Now that she thought about it, she was different, but a good different. She couldn’t see why any of the recent changes she’d made in her life would drive J.P. away from her.
This morning, she resolved, when he wakes up, I’ll talk to him and we’ll work this out.
She continued fifty yards through the pines to Clark Creek, a slim stream of water that ran year round behind the two homes. She hopped over the slow flowing water and continued into the forest, listening to the sounds of the early rising birds. She wished she could tell which ones made which sounds. She would have to buy a bird watcher’s book.
She intended to wander through the forest until she came to a steep path that led down the hill to the beach below. She’d discovered it on one of her walks and she doubted that anyone else knew about it. She called it the sluice, because it was vee shaped, like a sluice. She had no idea what or who had carved the path through the trees. Maybe it was a former owner of one of the two houses, or maybe the creek overflowed in winter and this was a water path down to the sea, or maybe it was caused by animals seeking a way out of the woods, but she was grateful to what or whoever was responsible for it. She enjoyed the tricky, steep descent that provided her quick access to the beach, where she did her morning run.
But this morning, as she reached the beginning of the sluice, the forest turned quiet. She was instantly alert. She had become used to the various bird and insect sounds and their absence sent an eerie chill up her back. Go home, she told herself, and she slowly turned, trying to make as little noise as possible, and started for home. She was afraid.
She cringed at the crackling and crunching dried leaves under her feet. With every bird and creature silent, she was an elephant tramping through the woods and there was nothing she could do about it.
Winding her way through the trees, back toward the stream, she felt a presence behind her, something bad, maybe a bear. She picked up her pace, no longer concerned with the dead leaves cracking under her feet. Then she heard something and turned. She thought she saw movement behind, movement not caused by the soft, silent breeze brushing her sweating skin. She turned back toward the stream and home-and ran.
She saw the stream. She put on a burst of speed and flew over it. The forest noises picked up as soon as her feet hit ground on the other side. A bird or two at first, then the insect sounds followed by more birds. She slowed to a walk and chided herself. She had undoubtedly panicked over nothing. She felt foolish, like a little girl out after dark for the first time, but she wouldn’t have felt so foolish if she hadn’t been spending so much time alone up on the hill, with only her son and the pigeons for companions.
If she had been more in touch with the town, she would have heard the stories.
J.P. woke the instant the forest went quiet. Unlike his mother, he had spent time in town and was familiar with the stories, stories about the strange happenings. They started shortly after the day of the murders, the day his cousin Janis disappeared.
That same day, the murder day, the sheriff’s two German Shepherds, Woodruff and Dandy, failed to show up for dinner and everyone assumed they had been stolen, or worse, poisoned. Sheriff Sturgees was in the habit of letting the dogs roam free around town. They were friendly, tame and everybody liked and fed them, but they would roam no more and now J.P. and a lot of the other kids were sure they knew why.
Two nights after the Shepherds vanished, some of the junior high school boys were playing baseball at the park, when Dick Rainmaker, out in left field, saw an animal across the street, running along the beach. He said it looked like a black cougar with a wolf’s head.
The next night the Johnson’s cat vanished and then the stray cats around town started disappearing. Then Johnny Miller’s collie didn’t come home.
The kids that played at the park credited the mysterious disappearances to the Ghost Dog, and they had taken to calling it Black Fang, because Johnny Miller was half way through Jack London’s White Fang when his dog went away for good.
“ Black Fang,” J.P. thought, when the forest went quiet. He shuddered, despite himself, because he didn’t want to believe in the Ghost Dog any more than he believed in Santa Claus or Green Lantern. But there was a lot of ground covered between the man with a bowl full of jelly and the Guardians of the Universe. Things like vampires, werewolves, Superman and aliens, and the more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something to the stories, because yesterday Dick Rainmaker’s dad took one of their horses out for a ride and never came back.
The grownups said that old Andrew Jackson Rainmaker was plain tired of his nagging wife and kids. So tired that he saddled up and rode away. The sheriff wasn’t even going to look for Mr. Rainmaker till he’d been gone at least two days, but the boys that played at the park, Dick Rainmaker included, knew that it would make no difference. The sheriff would never find him, and he’d never be back. Black Fang got him, sure as shit.
J.P. got out of bed, went down the hall to his mother’s room and knocked on the door, expecting her to invite him in. When she didn’t answer, he pushed it open, then he remembered that she had started running in the mornings.
He wished she believed him about the Ghost Dog. Dick Rainmaker believed. Dick was scared, and Dick was fifteen.
He’d wanted to talk to his mom about the Ghost Dog last night, but when he got home, she was in one of her moods. She hadn’t eaten all day and was cranky. He didn’t know why she wanted to get skinny all of a sudden. He thought she looked fine and he hated it when she was cross with him for being a few minutes late, even though she apologized to him minutes later. He wished she would just eat and be her old self.
So last night he forgot about the Ghost Dog and went to his room and watched television till after midnight. It was the latest he had ever stayed up by himself. Now, still sleepy and staring at his mother’s empty bed, he had the sudden feeling that Black Fang was after his mom.
He ran back to his room and swiftly changed from his pajamas into jeans, tee shirt and high top tennis shoes. He didn’t waste time with socks. He was in a hurry to get outside and find his mom. He wished he had told her about the Ghost Dog, because all of a sudden he was afraid his mom was going to disappear like Dick Rainmaker’s dad.
Dressed, he ran from the bedroom. If he wasn’t too late, he thought, he might be able to warn her and save her. He would tell her not to go running on the beach anymore. She should stay inside. It was safer inside.
The forest noises stopped again, as suddenly as they had started. She quickened her pace. Something was moving behind her, something that frightened the forest creatures into silence, something bad. She started to run, but before she hit her stride, she tripped over a fallen branch. She thrust her arms out to break her fall, skinning both hands on the hard ground. She felt a sharp stab of pain in her right arm as it buckled under her, but despite the pain, she lay still, afraid to move and afraid not to. She listened to the silence.
There is nothing there, she told herself. Then she rolled onto her side and saw the reddened swelling midway between her elbow and her wrist. Pushing off with her left hand, she stood. White hot pain shot through her arm. She tried to think through the haze of panic and pain.
The forest remained silent. Her skin was alive. She felt a cold chill as a vomit-like smell assaulted her. Nearby, bushes moved. She knew it wasn’t the wind. The morning had calmed. She heard something behind the bushes. There was something there, scraping against the ground. The only audible sound in the forest, save for the sound of her heavy breathing. There was definitely something in there, and she felt like it was stalking her.
She darted her eyes in all directions. She was trapped. She wondered it if was a mountain lion. She had never heard of them in these woods, but she supposed it was possible. She heard a low growl and her mouth went dry. Her eyes stayed glued to the bushes. They weren’t moving now. Whatever was in there was being still. It growled again, more like a big dog, she thought.
Afraid to move and afraid not to, she inched away from the bushes on the other side of the creek toward home and safety. The thing in the bushes growled and started to move. She moved a little faster. The pain in her arm was like wild fire.
The thing roared and she saw a black blur leap the creek and vanish into the pines ahead of her. Oh my god, she thought, it’s between me and the house. Thinking quickly, she reversed her direction-and ran. She was too afraid now to deal with pain.
She rejumped the creek and started pumping her runner’s legs, dodging tree and bush the best she could, but still getting several scrapes. The thing roared again, giving her an adrenaline rush. Scratched and bleeding, she ran for the sluice with the thing behind her. She felt it closing as she neared the path down the hill. The adrenaline gave added strength. She lept off the hill, landing on her behind in the center of the vee in the sluice.
The landing knocked the wind out of her, but she had no time to catch her breath, she was sliding down the hill and it was all she could do to keep from tumbling head over heels. Instinctively, she lay back and tried clutching the dirt sides to slow her slide. Failing, she grabbed at thinly growing shrubs, but to no avail. She was going over loose dirt, small rocks were ripping at her clothes and there was nothing she could do about it till she hit bottom. She was frantic. She didn’t think she was going to make it. She was about to give up, when the angle of slide leveled a bit. She used the opportunity to grab onto a shrub with her good hand and managed to stop her slide and catch her breath.
The few seconds it took her to grab a breath seemed like forever. Any second the thing was going to get her, she thought. She forced herself to turn and look up the hill. It wasn’t easy. She had to push her tired, aching, and damaged body onto its side with her good arm. If the thing came for her, there was nothing she could do. She sat up, fighting the urge to cry out. Sitting, she turned, expecting the worst, but there was nothing there. Whatever it was, it apparently didn’t want to leave the forest.
She felt exposed on the hill. She felt like she was being watched. Then the thing roared once more and by the sound of it, she was able to tell that it was going away, but for how long? Would it come back? She had to get off the hill. She had to get home to J.P.
She tried to move, but it was agony. Her arm was screaming. With great care, keeping her feet in front of herself to control her rate of descent, she went down the hill on her backside. It was agonizingly slow work, but she forced it upon herself. She couldn’t afford the luxury of waiting for help. She wanted to get home to J.P. as quickly as possible.
After a few minutes, with not much progress, she slipped and started to slide. She was out of control, rolling and tumbling in the sluice, screaming against the fear and the stabbing pain. But the careening ride didn’t last long, in short order she was thrown out of the sluice and deposited on the soft beach sand below.
She tried to stand and found that if she bit hard enough into her lip, it was possible. Then she saw the most beautiful sight, Rick’s red Jeep coming down the beach. Once again he was going to be her savior.
J.P. shuddered when he heard the animal scream from the forest. He knew what it was and he was afraid, but his mom was out there. He ran toward his mother’s bedroom, tripping on the oval rug in the hallway. He picked himself up and hurried on. He stopped for an instant in front of his mother’s bureau, he was scared shitless, but again he heard that animal roar and he pulled open the bottom drawer.
He knew what was there, his mom had shown it to him and told him to never, never touch it, but he was going to touch it now. He knew the gun was loaded, because his mom had told him it was. “This is a thirty-eight Police Special,” she had said. “I’m showing it to you, so you’ll know what and where it is. It’s not a toy,” she continued. When he asked her why they needed a gun, she said, “We’re alone now and you never know who might come calling in the middle of the night.” She had gone on to say that she trusted him and his judgment, after all he was almost eight. That’s why she wanted him to see the gun. She trusted him and here he was grabbing it out of her bottom dresser drawer, but he wasn’t going to play with it.
With the gun in hand, he raced down the hallway, careful not to trip again. He left the hardwood floor and turned onto the wall to wall carpeting of the living room. He skirted around the davenport and coffee table, more afraid than sure of himself, with his little boy’s hot, sweaty hand extended for the front door’s big brass doorknob. He threw open the door, crossed the porch and went down the steps, skipping the last one.
He didn’t have any farther to go. Standing in front of the house with the sun hanging in the early morning sky, he was confronted with silence. The woods were quiet. He strained to hear the steady drone of forest noises, and hearing none, strained his eyes for movement. His eyes weren’t disappointed. They fixed on the rustle of bushes behind Rick’s house. There was something there. He saw a blur dart behind the pines that extended from behind Rick’s house to the back of his house.
The birds are back there, he thought.
“ You’re not gonna get the birds!”
He bounded up the steps and again raced across the living room, but instead of going into the hallway, where his bedroom and safety were, he turned into the dining room, careful not to bust his shins on the one chair that was always pulled out from under the big round oak table. That table always reminded him of King Arthur and his knights. Now, he was Sir Lancelot on his way to protect his mother from the evil dragon.
He threw his shoulder against the swinging kitchen door, throwing it inward, without breaking his stride, running across the tile floor into the service porch. He grabbed the back doorknob and tried to turn it, but his hand slipped round the knob. Locked. He let go of the knob, and, with shaking fingers, tweaked the lever in the center of it and turned. Then he grabbed the doorknob and turned, turned and pulled. The knob turned but the door was still locked, deadbolt locked, double deadbolt locked.
Mr. Keeper at the hardware store told his mom that double deadbolts were better than singles. That way if a thief broke in through the window, he couldn’t get the doors open to take their stuff out. He could hear Mr. Keeper’s voice, plain as the gun in his hand. “There is a danger to double deadbolts though, you can’t get out without a key, there have been children killed in fires, because they were trapped inside.” He remembered old Mr. Keeper telling his mom to be sure your boy knows where the key is kept.
He had his own key on his key ring, somewhere in his bedroom, but he couldn’t remember where. Then he remembered that his mom had a spare, an emergency key. It was in the cupboard, next to the coffee filters, hanging on a coffee cup hook. He lay the gun on the dryer and ran into the kitchen. He opened the bottom cupboard and using the kitchen counter for a hand hold, stepped up on the lower cupboard shelf. He was too short to reach the top cupboard by himself. He opened the top cupboard door, grabbed the key and pulled on it, breaking the key chain. Then he hopped down and went back into the service porch at top speed, fighting the urge to be scared. Sir Lancelot was never scared.
Back in the service porch, he fumbled the key in the lock and turned the deadbolt. He started when it clicked, but only for an instant. He grabbed the gun and opened the door. Cautiously, not running, not in a hurry anymore, he stepped out onto the back landing. There was something out there. He felt it. He looked at the loft. The birds usually up and pecking the ground or billing and cooing were silent. Something in the air had frozen them statue still, silent sentinels warning him of the danger out back.
He descended the steps, no longer Sir Lancelot. He was a cautious Rambo, a nightfighter climbing down those wooded stairs, one hand on the railing, the other clutching the gun. The gun that his mother had forbidden him to ever touch. Leaving the steps, he crossed the silent yard to the loft. The sound of his footsteps rang through the quiet morning air. Now, he was only a boy, a scared boy.
Running his eyes through the inside of the loft, he saw Maverick, a tough male blue bar and his mother’s favorite, by the feeder, unmoving, head cocked, eyes alert. He sensed danger. Dancer, his favorite, was on Maverick’s left in the same position. All the other birds were in their orange crate nests. Never had he seen them like this.
He walked around the cage, knowing something was out there. He wanted to turn and run back to the house and crawl into his bed, but something told him he was no safer there than he was out back with the birds. Besides, his mom was out there somewhere. He hoped she was okay.
He saw something move beyond the clearing, twenty feet from the loft. He turned to face it. Nothing there. But something was there, in the bushes. He knew it sure as Maverick and Dancer knew it.
He took a step forward, squinting into the morning sun. He remembered from the Louis L’Amour stories that his mom read him, that a gunfighter liked to have the sun at his back, and he was staring into it. What would a Louis L’Amour gunfighter do? He would move, try to get a better position. J.P. moved away from the loft, toward Rick’s house, never for an instant taking his eyes of the area where he’d seen the bushes move.
He stepped sideways, one step, two, three and the bushes moved again. It was only the breeze, he told himself. Then he heard something, a low growl. Black Fang, he thought. Four steps, five, six, seven, the bushes moved again and this time it wasn’t the wind. Eight steps, nine, ten, his angle was better, the sun no longer directly in his eyes. Eleven steps and then the largest animal that he had ever seen gracefully appeared from the bushes as if by magic. It seemed to be walking on air.
It was Black Fang, the Ghost Dog. Its blue-black, short fur glistened in the sunlight and its red eyes bore into him, like the electric drills that Mr. Keeper sold in his hardware store. He wanted to turn and run, but he stood his ground. Sure as a Louis L’Amour villain would shoot him in the back, this thing would come for him if he ran. He stood fast, meeting its glare full on, afraid to move and afraid not to. If the thing charged him, he was done for. He wasn’t a gunfighter. No way could he shoot. He was a boy and he wanted his mother.
The blue-black beast raised its right paw as if it wanted J.P. to get a look at it, and he did. He saw the steel-like claws reflecting the sun’s glow like diamonds. It was the animal’s way of telling him it was going to rip him apart. Then it pawed the ground, digging, no not digging, demonstrating its power by ripping up great chunks of earth as easily as one of Mr. Keeper’s buzz saws ripped through pine.
Paralyzed, J.P. watched as the beast glided toward the loft and the birds inside. J.P. felt a new fear, not fear for himself, but for the birds he loved. The Ghost Dog or whatever it was, was going to kill the birds before it came for him. It was going to rip through the chicken wire cage and turn his birds into blood pudding.
No way.
“ No, you’re not!” He was getting mad. The beast was halfway to the cage, taking his time, making J.P. suffer, trying to make him more afraid. But it wasn’t working. J.P. was getting more mad than afraid. He raised the gun, holding it with both hands, like a TV cop. He pointed it at the beast and pulled the trigger.
The noise was louder than any firecracker and his arms were thrown up and back with the kick of the blast, but he held onto the gun and kept the animal in sight.
The animal faced J.P. The shot had gone wide and to the right, throwing up a divot of dirt halfway between it and the pigeon cage. The animal looked first from J.P. to the loft, then back to J.P., like it couldn’t make up its mind to go for the birds first, then J.P., or the other way around. Then it turned back to the loft and continued its slow glide to the pigeon cage.
J.P. brought his arms back down, back into the TV policeman shooter’s position, tried to aim and pulled the trigger again. This time the gun didn’t jerk as much. He was ready for it and had tightened the muscles in his hands and arms. This time the shot didn’t go wide. He hit the beast square in the chest, right where his dad told him to aim, when he’d taken him deer hunting. “Make the shot clean,” his dad had said, “and you won’t have to go crashing through all hell and gone trying to put a wounded animal out of its misery.”
The beast stopped and regarded J.P. with its red eyes. J.P. saw that it was bleeding. He shot again and missed. The beast didn’t move. He shot again and again hit it full in the chest. His dad would have been proud, but the beast didn’t go down. It stood stock still, baring its fangs, longer teeth than J.P. had ever seen, and he shot again. Another miss. Another shot, another hit, again in the chest. He pulled the trigger again and heard the metallic click that told him the gun was empty.
He’d seen enough television to know that when the gun was empty you threw it at your attacker. They always did that in old cowboy movies. But that would be dumb, far smarter to run, but that would be useless. He could only stand and watch as the hot breath closed in on him. The animal advanced slowly, no longer interested in the birds. This was no television monster. This was real.
He saw the Ghost Dog prepare to spring and knew that he was finished. Then he heard the car coming fast. The blue black Ghost Dog heard it too. The car was getting close. It was out front. The Ghost Dog, with a bullish snort, turned and vanished into the woods.