Given that I love Halloween, I want to contribute a bit of spookiness of my own to the mix. Digging deep in the voluminous files of Stately Black Manor, I have blown the dust off an oldie of my own, a little vignette of a couple of raccoon hunters and their hounds. Enjoy.
Running the Dogs
The
elk was a silent shadow under the moon, staring at us with a cold malice I
would never have thought possible in an animal.
Its eyes were pits of darkness that sucked in the thin silver moonlight,
looking in and beyond us, freezing us more thoroughly than the sharp late November air. The huge bull stood as
still as the stars, his evil flowing through the tall fence that bound him, an
evil that cowed our dogs and jellied our knees.
“He can’t get through that fence,” Frank shivered backward, his
old Mossberg twelve-gauge his only comfort, “he can’t get through that fence.”
The dogs wrapped around our legs, too frightened to whine. All except Rounder, the wise blue-tick
stalking closer to the elk, hate-filled and stiff-legged, tense as a spring-trap,
his growl a distant thunder. He was a
climber, and the fence wouldn’t stop him.
The elk shifted his black gaze to the hound, both animals continuing a
war old before man walked the Earth. The
moon stopped; the air grew breathless.
Somewhere there was a distant shout, a yell like no other, a
deep wordless bellow that seemed to speak of dead secrets and frustrated
revenge. Rounder jerked back as if
kicked; Frank stumbled back a step with a strangled yelp; the elk turned and
melted back into the woods from which he came.
I dropped to one knee, dazed and sick, my Remington dropped beside me,
forgotten.
We grabbed the dogs, Rounder moaning and fussing, and headed
for the truck. Silence stood between
Frank and me, neither of us willing to speak for fear of making what had
happened become real. I glanced back
continuously as we drew away from the fence, terror slowly building as I
expected at any moment to see pieces of the darkness that was the tree-line
pull away and glide across the moonlit field towards us. We were almost in a full run when we got to
the truck, the dogs having torn away from us and already huddled near the
tailgate.
Frank floored the pick-up away from the field, bouncing crazily
down the gravel road, the dogs in their boxes, us in the cab. Frank struggled to light a cigarette, the
rutted road defeating him as I switched on the radio, the classic-rock thump a
welcome relief to us both. We banged
along in the truck for what seemed like half the night before either of us
spoke.
“God-damn that was a
big elk,” Frank hugged the steering wheel, his cigarette nervous in his
fingers.
“Big ain’t the word for it.”
I looked out the door window of the truck at the dark farmhouses sliding
by, the moon keeping pace with us.
“I mean, I seen them elk out there before, but God-damn...”
“Who keeps elk anyway?
It’s gotta be expensive to bring ‘em in from out west.”
“Raises ‘em for meat; elk’s pretty expensive, I hear. Makes a lotta money, man.” He shook his head like somebody might when they
wake up with a headache. “It was so big...”
“It wasn’t that it was all that big...it just looked...I don’t
know...”
“Hateful. That was just
one hateful-assed elk.”
A small town was passing us, one of those tiny Ohio towns down
around Amish country that seem to loom off the backroads, tired and forlorn
since the farmers left so long ago. The
town seemed oddly familiar, looking like the small town near the elk-farm we
had just left, yet hastily rearranged and placed along the road to intercept us
once again. A worn out gas station - not
one of those all-purpose gas station/grocery store/lottery dealer places, but
an honest-to-God gas station, with analog readout pumps, rusted 7-Up sign, and sagging garage - was all
that seemed to be open. Frank pulled in,
balled up his empty cigarette pack, and hopped out.
I looked around us.
“Where are we?”
Frank shrugged. “I
dunno. I lost track back around Wellington. Down on three-oh-one, maybe, south of
Homerville?”
I shook my head. “No. This looks like the place we left back
there.” I jerked my head back down the
road towards that place, dreading to look.
“You’re crazy. We been
drivin’ twenty minutes.” He turned and
went into the station, snorting. I
walked out towards the road away from the lights, looking out at the moon-blued
soybean fields across the way. The sound
of laughter came in on the chill breeze, the strange hysterical laughter of
children fighting off sleep, but with a harsh tone to it, an almost angry
sound. There was movement in the soybean
field, dark shapes twisting and gyrating, seeming to beckon to me. I hopped the ditch along the road and headed
out to the shadows under the moon.
I could not tell how many there were. They seemed to slip and whirl around a still
form on the ground, a form that bleated in pain, not animal, not human. With each yelp the shadows laughed and drew
closer to the form, beating it noiselessly with arms or clubs-I couldn’t tell.
“Hey you kids...” I began to call, the words strongly begun but
catching in my throat. The shadows
stopped their brutal dance, twisting to face me, featureless in the dark. I moved forward, the first step the bravest
I’ve ever taken. With a noise like wind
in the treetops the shadow kids raced past me, giggling. I walked to the form on the ground.
The form lurched up, leaning drunkenly towards me. A hand that could not be lit by the moon
reached out, grabbing my coat. A face I
could not see drew near mine, cold, cold breath washing over me, words without
meaning scraping my ears. I pulled away,
twisting from the rubbery grasp, tripping backwards only to recover just as the
form gripped me again. I pushed at its
face, my hand slipping across a burning cold surface. It gobbled meaningful gibberish in my ear as
I punched it, once, twice, again. It
moved away, like smoke on a strong breeze, recovered, moved to me again. Then I ran.
The gas station was impossibly far away, glaring across the
field like a beaten face. The truck
gleamed by the pumps, the only piece of sanity left in this dark town. The laughing children swirled around me, a
flock of crows after roadkill. The form
behind me was fast, too fast, staggering insanely at my elbow. I jumped the ditch, pain shooting from my
left ankle, a moment on the road, a rush and a roar as I saw the semi hurtling
at me, a desperate spurt, the wind of the semi’s passing pulling me after and
then down, somewhere in the tempest Rounder baying from his box. I scrambled up and spun, ready to make a
stand.
There was nothing in the road except the flattened corpse of a
rabbit, weeks old. Beyond was the empty
soybean field, the stars twinkling madly.
Suddenly I could feel how ragged my breathing was, how much my ankle
hurt, how soaked with sweat I was. I
walked to the truck, fighting to get my trembling under control. The truck was running, doors flung wide. The lights of the gas station reached out to
it, and to me, luminous fingers groping into the dark. Frank was nowhere in sight.
I walked into the station, looking for an attendant that wasn’t
there. Ancient Valvoline cans and stacks
of antique Firestone tires patiently waited within the garage bays. A greasy, worn Chilton’s manual lay open on a
shelf, schematics of a ‘51 Chevy transmission seeming to form some arcane
formula in the fluorescent light. A
faint hum of static came from a roughly-handled radio sitting on a work bench.
It all seemed fake somehow, like a mock-up of a gas station made by an
intelligence familiar with the main items but clueless on the details:
woodcarving tools stored in socket set boxes; cans of yeast mixed with cans of
motor oil; a pneumatic wrench too strangely shaped to have ever been used. The place felt alive, a thrumming coming from
below that was felt through one’s bones rather than heard.
“Help you?” I jumped at the sound. He was an old, old man, his eyes hidden by
wrinkles, his bent frame belied by the impression of a hidden tautness, like a
dog ready to jump on someone coming through the door.
“The guy I was with.” I
braced myself, as though waiting for a punch to be thrown. He slowly turned, thumbing towards the truck.
“I expect that’s him there.”
The faintest trace of hatred was a ghost in his graveled voice. “Reckon you boys oughta be off home now.” He turned back to me, and I saw the glitter
of black eyes peer out through the wrinkled brow. I tried to defy those old eyes, but I could
not. I could only hold them for a moment
before I had to look down, down at his twisted and mottled hands that wrung a
shop rag with barely hidden violence.
I walked from the garage, my tongue thick with fear as I passed
the old man. He smelled of rot and
freshly turned earth. Something deep and
instinctual urged me to hit him, to force him back to the ground from which he
sprang, and then to run; but I resisted, the truck my only focus, the dogs
rattling in their boxes, Rounder moaning a primal warning.
I got into the truck.
Frank was there, his face unreadable as he pulled us back onto the road. I dreaded to speak, to voice the insanity of
the night, for fear even Frank had become part of it. The more I looked at him the more he became a
figure from beyond madness, a hunched insect creature affecting the shape of
man, almost hugging the steering wheel to his chest. He did not look at me, staring at the humming
road that rose to meet us in the night.
His cigarette burned evilly, a smoldering anger in its ember. There was no comfort in the radio, the whispering
hiss of static hiding some monologue of cosmic malignity. We hurtled along the nightroads, the towns of
man lost to us now, passing farm buildings that were grotesque humps on the
back of the land. I fought an urge to
hit Frank, or what he had become, and jump from the truck. The urge became
stronger, unbearable, and I felt like I was confined in a moving prison cell. Then
a howl came from somewhere, everywhere, a pure, clean sound of redemption.
The dogs. Their calls
were a chorus of primal good, led by the strong booming bay of Rounder. The darkness seemed to lift a bit, the stars
melting and reforming, the road blurring and becoming solid again. The truck snarled and swayed, Frank
convulsing in agony. I shoved next to
him, grabbing the wheel, locking the brakes.
He grabbed at me, punching and gouging.
I lit from the truck, with him just behind. He doubled over, falling to his hands and
knees. I pulled down the tailgate,
opening the dog boxes one by one. The
dogs spun and yowled in joy, like they did during the first snowfall. Only Rounder was subdued, standing dignified
and holy over Frank, guarding for and against.
I had no doubts now about Frank. I lifted him from the road, clapping him on
the back to assure both of us he was real and whole again.
“Those cigarettes are gonna kill you.”
A raspy sigh was his only reply. We sat on the tailgate, letting the dogs
sniff the ditches and fields around us, the star-filled bowl of the night
bright above us. The moon was low and
feeble, obscured by a distant stand of trees.
The eyes of the dogs flashed in the starlight. Frank finally stood, stamping his feet
against the cold. He softly called in
the dogs, bundling them into their boxes.
“I reckon we ought not to run the dogs out here anymore.” He clicked the tailgate shut quietly and
carefully. I straightened my hat and
stuffed my hands in my coat pockets. The
horn of a diesel locomotive sounded somewhere far off.
“No. I reckon not.”
No comments:
Post a Comment