Dogs (18 page)

Dad turns up our lane. He puts his foot on the accelerator, as if he can't wait.

“Dad, you can't do this.”

“Who's to stop me?”

“Me!”

I throw myself across him, grab the wheel, and jerk it hard. The car flies off the lane into the field. “Mr. Sinclair!” No way he can hear me. I push on the horn with one hand and keep it down.

Dad struggles for control. “Settle down, Buddy.”

I scrunch my knees and pull myself over the gear stick to his side. Dad punches me on the ear. I see stars. It doesn't matter. I keep hold of the wheel, horn blaring.

The car veers toward the woods. Dad tries to brake, but I jam a foot on the accelerator. Everything's a rush of snow, wipers, horn, headlights, shouting.

Suddenly, right ahead—the bushes in front of the woods. We're going to crash. I hurl myself toward the passenger side.

The car hits the bushes. We fly forward. I bang my shoulder by the glove compartment. Dad hits his head on the windshield. He falls back, bleeding.

I throw my door open. Dad grabs the back of my coat. He pulls me back, but my jacket's unzipped, and my arms slip through the sleeves. I scramble away as fast as I can into the bushes.

“Stop!” Dad yells. “Don't make this hard, Buddy.”

I look back. Dad's out of the car. I'm alone. There's no one to help me.

“Jacky!” I shout. “Jacky!”

I'm here, Cameron.

“Dad's going to kill me.”

No. Remember the clearing? Get to the clearing.

I make it past the bushes, into the woods. I stumble across dead branches. The snow's in my face.
Where
am
I?

“Buddy, I see your tracks,” Dad singsongs. His voice goes in and out of the wind.

What do I do? Where do I go?

Don't give up, Cameron.

I shield my eyes. In front of me I see fallen trees under a thin layer of snow. I recognize the one with the roots pointing to the sky. The clearing's ahead.

“You can run but you can't hide.” Dad's voice is louder. Closer. “I've found you before. I'll find you now.”

I'm dead. I'm dead.

Keep
going.

I push on, make the clearing. “What now?”

The
boulders. Arty and me, we played in the boulders.

I head toward them.

Faster. Faster.

A few more feet, I'm there. I crouch behind them, look back to the woods. All I see is snow. My eyes fill with tears and flakes. I search for a crawl space.

To
the
right. There's an opening between the rocks.

Here, yes. I pull myself inside as far as I can. All I hear is the wind and my heartbeat. Out of nowhere, everything goes still. There's just a breeze, a whistling through the rocks.

Where's Dad? Did my tracks fill in? Did I lose him in the snow? Maybe he passed through. Maybe he's gone. Yes, that's it. I picture him wandering in the woods, lost. Or on the run. He'll want to get out of here. He knows I'll be getting someone to call the police. Maybe he thinks they're already coming.

The storm picks up again. For the first time I realize how cold I am, and how my leg and shoulder hurt. It doesn't matter. I'm safe. I close my eyes. My fingers and toes stop tingling. I fill with a strange warmth. I start to drift.

Cameron, no. You can't let up. It's dark. It's snowing. You'll freeze out here. And your mother and Ken, they're still locked up. Your father could kill them before he runs. You have to stop him.

Mom. Ken. I give my head a shake. I have to save them. I go to crawl out of my hiding place. That's when Dad grabs my legs.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

I'm afraid to look back. I don't have to. I picture Dad on all fours outside the opening. There's a gash on his forehead from where he hit the windshield. His face is covered in blood and snow. It runs down his neck.

“You always loved that story.” Dad pulls on my legs.

I brace myself tight with my elbows. The wind blows louder. Snow whips around the boulders.

“I said, ‘Come out,' Buddy. You can't win. It's over. I'm stronger than you. I have a gun.”

“Then shoot me! Go ahead! Let the neighbors hear! Let them call the police! Let them catch you, you psycho whack job!”

Dad roars and yanks my legs so hard I feel my arms pulling out of their sockets. He yanks again. As my arms give way, I hear a high, piercing whistle. Is it Jacky? The wind? I don't know. All I know is that the whistling turns into howling. It's so loud I can't hear myself think.

I feel Dad pulling me out. I close my eyes and wait for the end. Only the wind—it's not the wind. It's the dogs.

I see them bounding through the woods. Their heads are down. Their fur bristles. Their eyes burn like coals.

Dad hears them too. He's still on all fours. He turns his head. He sees the dogs racing toward him, ears back, teeth bared.

Dad lets go of my legs. He freezes in terror. The dogs leap in the air.

Dad screams.

I'm sitting on the living room couch between Mom and Ken. Mr. Sinclair is here too, along with police and paramedics. There are three police cars and an ambulance outside.

Mr. Sinclair was the one who called the cops. He heard the horn, looked out his window, and saw headlights, the car out of control, and the crash. He took his shotgun and a heavy-duty flashlight and went to see what was up. When he realized the car was empty, he headed into the woods. He heard some yelling and found me at the boulders.

Dad was already dead.

Dad's dead
. I say it over and over. I can't believe it.
Dad's dead
.

I told Mr. Sinclair about Mom and Ken. We went to the car. The key was still in the ignition. We'd just gotten Ken out of the trunk when the first cops drove up with their flashers.

The cops called in reinforcements and brought us back to the house. Before they could tell me to stay put, I raced downstairs and got Mom out of the coal room. She and Ken hugged me tight and didn't let go till just now when the paramedics arrived.

The medics check us out. Mom has a sprained ankle, Ken's face is messed up, and I have a bruise on my shoulder. “Other than that, you seem be okay,” one of them says. “To be on the safe side, we'd like to bring you to the hospital to be sure. They may want to keep you overnight. You're likely in shock.”

“Fine,” Mom says, “but not till you've finished what you have to do out there with the police.” She means in the woods with Dad. She won't feel safe till she knows he's in a body bag. Neither will I.

The cops leave with the medics, except for the two who came by that night after the nursing home. The heavy one asks each of us to tell him what happened; the thin one sits on the piano bench and takes notes. We tell them, then wait, numb, till the others return. I hear the shed door open and the sounds of them stomping the snow off their boots.

Dad's dead. Dad's dead
. Why don't I feel anything?

Our cop friends go out for a briefing, then they all come back into the room.

“So it's true?” Mom asks.

The heavy cop nods. “It seems his throat was ripped open by an animal. All we can think is a coyote. It's next to unheard of. But if he was down on all fours, bleeding in the dark, he'd have looked and smelled like wounded prey. One good bite to the jugular, and he'd have been gone in no time.”

His partner nods. “Whatever it was, there aren't any tracks. The snow's seen to that. We'll have a sniffer dog sent over from Hamilton County, but with all the critters out here and in the ravines, who knows if we'll find the one that did it.”

I want to tell them it wasn't a coyote, it was the dogs, but I'm not stupid.

“You're lucky to be alive,” the heavy cop says.

There's a moment of silence. Mr. Sinclair's been sitting in the leather armchair in the corner, head bowed. “May I say something?” he whispers with a glance to Mom. “Something personal?”

“Certainly.”

Mr. Sinclair shifts awkwardly in his seat. I've never seen him look so old. There's something in his voice and eyes that's different too.

“Would you like this just for the family?” the heavy cop asks.

“No, stay,” Mr. Sinclair says quietly. “What I have to say is mainly for Cameron, but I don't care who hears it.” He looks into my eyes. “After what happened tonight—with you, with your mother, with your father…well…there's something I never thought I'd say, but it's something you deserve to know.”

I'm half afraid to hear. “What?”

“The boy who lived here when I was your age, Jacky McTavish, he's been on your mind since the day we met.”

I nod.

“His father was like yours. I saw the bruises. McTavish said Jacky got them from playing. But I was the one he played with, and he never got bruised around me.” Mr. Sinclair closes his eyes; his forehead presses down. “The last time I saw Jacky alive, we were in the clearing. He was crying that his mother had run off with somebody, that she didn't want him, and from now on he'd have to stay inside. He made me promise not to tell. He said if I told, something terrible would happen to him. I knew what his father was like. So I promised I wouldn't tell.

“Later I heard my parents whispering that Jacky's mother had taken him away with Matthew Fraser. Father said, ‘It's not proper,' but Mother said, ‘Even if it isn't, it's a good thing. How Evelyn's managed to stay with Frank so long is a mystery known only to God.' I heard kids gossip at school. They said things about Jacky's mother, how she was a whore, and no wonder Jacky was so strange. But they didn't know Frank McTavish. And they didn't know what Jacky was like when he wasn't at school being picked on.”

Mr. Sinclair sucks in his breath again and again. “I should have said something. I never did. I kept that stupid promise because I was afraid for Jacky and what would happen if I told. Then McTavish got the dogs, and within a month he was dead. When Jacky wasn't found there afterward, I figured his mother had come back and got him.

“My father was McTavish's executor. He paid the taxes on the farm and worked it. He said he was keeping it for when Mrs. McTavish or Jacky would come back to claim it. We thought they would too, in the beginning. By the time you wonder if maybe no one's ever coming back, things are the way they are, and life goes on. McTavish had no other kin. We had squatter's rights to the farm, so why think the worst, even if it's true? Better to imagine happy endings.

“I moved out of my parents' home and into here in my twenties. I moved everything on the first two floors into the basement. It was all junk by then, but in my head I was still saving it for Jacky, and I'm a hoarder at the best of times.” Mr. Sinclair glances at me. “I don't believe in ghosts. Never have, never will. But I don't mind saying now that I had dreams about Jacky too. He wanted us to play, and I'd wake up thinking of our times in the clearing, and him and that damned fool cap I'd given him.

“When I was thirty-two there was a storm. Some shingles blew off, and I knew it was time to do the roof or there'd be more leaks than there already were. So for the first time I went up to the attic to check out the damage from the inside. At the end of the attic, there was a hope chest—his mother's, I figured. I opened it to see what was inside, expecting maybe some blankets. And there he was: Jacky, wearing the clothes he always wore and that Davy Crockett cap. Poor little tyke. I'm guessing he crawled inside to get away from the dogs and the lock fell shut and he couldn't get out.

“For the first few weeks after I found him, I didn't know what to do. I'd go up to the attic every night and stare at little Jacky in his hope chest. I knew if I didn't do something, I'd go crazy. One morning I made my decision. I brought him and the chest downstairs and sealed up the attic.” Mr. Sinclair exhales. “It's my fault. If only I hadn't kept that stupid promise, if only I'd told the truth, that Jacky didn't go with his mother, that her letter was a lie, he might be alive today.”

There's a long silence.

“What did you do with the body?” I ask quietly. “I mean, there wasn't a problem with you farming the land. You wouldn't have been in trouble, so why didn't you just report it?”

Mr. Sinclair wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I was afraid he'd end up buried in his family's plot. I knew since Evelyn's letter was wrong that McTavish had killed her. How could I see Jacky trapped forever with the monster who'd murdered his mother and made their lives a living hell?” He pauses. “Jacky had been dead over twenty years. No one was looking for him. Nobody cared. Well, I cared. I buried him in his mother's hope chest in the clearing by the boulders, the one place where he'd been happy.”

My shoulders start to shake. Mom puts her arm around me.

“You may not have known everything you thought you knew,” Mr. Sinclair tells me gently, “but you're a pretty good guesser.”

“I suppose the only thing we'll never know is where Frank McTavish disposed of the bodies,” says the thin cop.

“He buried them in the cow stalls,” I say.

The cops share a here-we-go-again look. But I keep going, strong and clear: “Mr. McTavish knew he had to bury them. If their bodies or bones showed up, he'd be the first suspect. But it was March. The ground was still frozen. Only a backhoe could break it—and that would've drawn attention and made the graves obvious. The one place warm enough where he could dig in secret, where the bodies would never be found by accident, was the dirt floor inside his barn.”

When the cops were here before, they wanted to scare me. Tonight, so far, they've tried to comfort me. Now, for the first time, they look at me with respect.

“That sure could be a possibility,” the thin cop says, tapping his knee with his pen. “Brian, what do you say we get the team to investigate?”