Horror Business (14 page)

I hope it’s the wind that’s making that noise.

I toss the tray of meat in the rectangle of light. The tray lands hard and the crumbles explode out into the darkness; the neat brick-shape becomes a splatter.

The pinpricks lower. He still watches me, but at least he’s sniffing the bait.

I take the muzzle in one hand and the bat in the other.

Finally, his eyes dim. Lulled into submission. My dog laps up the meat crumbles in the darkness. He barks. It sounds happy. He moves forward into the light to finish the rest.

I gasp. It’s uncontrollable.

***

I’m soaking, out of breath, and my hand hurts from banging on the veterinarian’s door. The receptionist looks annoyed that I’m interrupting her closing duties, but I knock harder and finally she looks at the clock and realizes that she’s still got five minutes before the office officially closes.

“Jesus,” she says, unlocking the door. “You’re going to break the—” She sees my dog. She places her hand over her mouth. A bolt of lightning reflects off her wide eyes. She backs up. “Jesus,” she says, again.

I lead Brock in. Red and black rainwater drips off him. His head hangs low, weighed down by the leather muzzle over his snout.

“Please,” I say. “He needs help.”

The receptionist shudders. “Yes. Yes he does. Let me call the doctor.” She picks up the phone and says: “You need to get out here.”

The vet comes out—a young guy with dark-rimmed glasses, sculpted hair and the jawline of a soap opera star. He walks with flippant confidence and makes a big show of checking his watch as he approaches.

“What’s the matter with your pet?” he asks, still counting the time. He drops his wrist. He sees the monster I’ve brought to him.

“Oh.” It’s all he can muster while he trying to maintain professionalism. “It must be, well, maybe, um, some sort of infection?” Then he whispers the same righteous invocation his receptionist did.

He hurries past me and goes to the front doors. He looks to the left and then right to make sure no other cars are in the parking lot. He locks the door—an action that’s backlit by a flash of lightning.

“Let’s get him on the table,” he says, taking the leash from me. He yanks my dog forward. Brock whimpers or growls or chuckles; everything coming out of the hole in his throat sounds like the grinding of a trash compacter. The vet leads us back to his operating room.

“Can he get up on his own?”

I pat the metal operating table. “Up, boy!” It’s hard to say without my voice shaking. I fake a smile and pat it again. Brock stares at the vet.

“You’re going to have to pick him up,” he says, backing into the corner.

I breathe deep and wrap my arms around Brock’s chest and below his thighs. He crumples together like an accordion made of bones. I feel his insides tighten, but his face remains blank. He never takes his eyes off the vet. I lift Brock up, easily. His weightlessness is heartbreaking.

“Stay here,” the vet says. He leaves the room, slamming the door behind him. Brock fixates on the door, waiting for the vet’s return. Foam and saliva drip through the straps on his muzzle and coat my hand. The volume of his growling diminishes to a purr. The ticking of a giant industrial clock sounds like the grim reaper chipping away at Brock’s lifeline. The receptionist pulls a phone out and the screen lights her face blue.

“What’s going on? What’s he doing?”

The receptionist doesn’t respond, just swipes at the screen.

Brock’s eyelids flutter. A whimper escapes the hole in his throat.

“Easy boy,” I whisper. I pet his head. It’s sticky.

A tremor runs through my dog. His front legs give out and his head crashes against the table. I throw my arms around him and try to hold him still. He thrashes against my embrace. His fur leaves brown and red smears on the metal surface.

“
Hurry up, man!
” I shout. Brock shakes uncontrollably. He chokes on the slime and rot in his throat. I quickly remove the muzzle so he can breathe.

The vet crashes through the door, holding a hypodermic needle. He pulls the plastic tip off and clear liquid drips out on his polished shoes.

“Do something!” I say.

“You took off his muzzle.”

“He’s dying.”

The vet shakes his head. “Hold him tight.” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Did you hear me? Do not let go of him.”

“What’s in the needle?”

He scorns me like a parent forcing vegetables on their kid. “It’s a
sedative.
”

The vet searches the nape of Brock’s neck, one of the few spots on his body left with hair. He pushes the needle in. My dog bucks and unleashes a slithery whine. His eyes close. I release my grip and stand back. The ticking clock is deafening.

The vet hesitates before approaching the table. He places a stethoscope to listen to Brock’s heart; wet strands stretch off the body when he pulls it away. “Mark the time,” he says to his receptionist.

“Wait, what
?
” I ask.

“I’m sorry. There was no way he was going to live. Not with those wounds.”

“But. …” I look down at the needle.

The vet’s voice becomes paternal. “It was the right thing to do. He was suffering.”

“You killed my dog?”

“We ended his pain,” the vet says.

I break down. I don’t even care if the hot receptionist sees me cry.

The vet pats my shoulder. I push his hand away. I call him an asshole through my blubbering. The receptionist holds a box of tissues in my face, and I take one without really knowing what to do with it. It tears apart as I rub my face.

“Just go home, kid. Get some sleep. I know how much he meant to you.”

I’m thinking that perhaps the vet’s right, perhaps Brock is in a better place right now. I’m thinking about this when thunder claps. The sound is so loud it’s like the heavens are breaking apart. The lights go out.

Claws skitter across the metal table. I hear the sound of dry ripping. The vet screams. Then the building’s front door shatters. Glass falls into the lobby.

The lights flicker on. The vet holds his forearm. The skin of his wrist is peeled all the way down to the elbow. Blood drenches his lab coat.

“
How did that not kill him?”
he screams. “
How is he not dead?”

The receptionist screams. They’re both screaming. Everyone’s screaming. I push past her and look through the shattered front door, but I know the night has swallowed Brock.

I take note of all the dead animals in my yard.

Three robins, one blackbird, and five pigeons. Two squirrels. One cat, maybe two. Some are so ripped apart that it’s hard to tell what they originally were.

And off in the far corner of the backyard lies the first dog from the river. Besides a large chunk taken out of its throat, the creature looks untouched. I guess Brock showed some mercy to his creator.

***

I catch up to Ally walking to school and notice she’s crying. She tells me her uncle died last night and asks me if I think it’s punishment for what we did the other night at my house. The night of her birthday.

“You know. …” she says, sniffling, “on the couch.”

Because of everything else that’s been going on, I have no doubt that her uncle’s death is the direct result of getting to second base in my living room.

“No,” I say. “It’s just a coincidence.” But it’s a lie. I have no doubt that anything I do now will eventually lead to more pain and death.

***

Colt Stribal waits outside the doors of our school at the end of the day. We make eye contact, and he smiles, exposing yellow teeth. His hand bandage is black with filth. I walk faster and hear the heavy plodding of his boots following me. I don’t run. Occasionally, he’ll laugh and my heart will skip.

He follows me all the way home.

I finally get to my door and lock it quickly behind me. Colt must have lost interest because when I look out the window, nobody’s there.

***

I sleep on the sofa now. Even Brian’s room is too haunted. Plus, I keep hearing scratching through the wall and strange wheezing sounds that remind me of laughter.

I wake up one cold, blue morning to find Dad watching me. He sits in the recliner and the chair creaks. His eyes are wide and bloodshot. He mumbles under his breath. We both stare at each other in the pale dawn. The silence accentuates the creaking.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says, his voice hushed and slurry. “I had a nightmare. I was watching two babies: one was a good baby and the other was evil. One of the babies started to cry because the other one was clawing and biting him.

“I ran over to stop it,” he says. “I picked up the biting baby and hit it—to punish it for being evil. I hit it until it was dead.” Dad’s voice quivers. “As I was holding the dead infant in my arms, the other baby’s crying turned into laughter, and I realized that I had killed the good baby.”

Dad plunges his fists into his eyes and rubs frantically, like he’s trying to erase the image. “That evil infant just sat there laughing at me, black drool running out of its toothless mouth. Before I woke up, I looked down to see that I was cradling a tiny skeleton and the laughing had turned into growling.

“I opened my eyes, and Brock was sitting in the corner of my room, making the growling sounds from my dream. He was in the worst shape I’ve ever seen a dog, Jason. I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. His eyes were dead pale and his arms were so chewed through it looked like the animal was walking on sticks.

“I lured the creature into the basement with a piece of meat,” he says. “Don’t go down there.”

I want to tell him about the other reasons why I don’t go down there anymore: the camera. The noises. I want to rush into his arms, and even though I don’t really have anything to confess to him, I feel like telling him everything.

All I say is: “I wish Mom was home.”

“Me too,” he says, with the same sadness that I feel hearing it.

The conversation ends and the silence is suffocating.

***

The next night I jerk off in the shower, the softness of Ally’s breast still easily accessible in my mind. I fondle the bar of soap until my hand gets slippery, and I start off slow. Moving faster, I replay the images: her lips, her breast, squeezing her nipple between my fingers, her soft moans. She grinds into me. In my fantasy I say
yeah bitch
through clenched teeth. This is the best material I’ve had in a long time.

The bathroom door opens and closes.

I stand listening, expecting something to grab me through the shower curtain, roll me up and discard my remains in it.

Against all inclinations, I call out: “Hello?” Nothing. Then, the door opens and closes again.

My brain spills out movie trivia to numb the fear:
There are over ninety cuts in the
Psycho
shower scene
, I think. Damn it.

I wait fifteen more minutes before shutting the water off.

I clutch the curtain and fling it back with so much force I almost slip in the water.
That would be good
,
I think.
Save the killer the trouble.

No one is there. Everything is the same.

Everything except the face in the mirror.

Written in the steam, there is a frowning face staring back at me. Condensation drips from the eyes, the mouth. It looks like the face is melting. Or growing fangs.

I smear the face with my hand and rub the whole mirror down with the towel. I tell myself that this has got to stop. These monsters. The missing kids. My brother.

This is horror business.

I bring the phone over to the window and dial Ally’s number. Across the street, her father’s silhouette enters the window frame to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Can I talk to Ally?”

The shadow turns to look at me. After some deliberation, he calls her name, and a smaller shadow enters the frame. There’s some muffled talking and he gives up the phone. The big shadow leaves.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing. I was just getting ready for bed.”

I look at the clock and it reads 10:30. Too late to be calling, especially on a school night. I forget these things without the parental structure. “Well, can I come over? I need to use your Ouija board.”

“Right now? Jason, it’s—”

“Please. It’s important.”

She mulls this over. “All right. Fine, come over in an hour or so, and I’ll let you in the back.”

An hour passes, and I cross the blustery street. Even at this hour, a minivan rushes by. I run to avoid the swerving death machine.

Ally arrives at the backdoor in her pajamas.
She smiles but backs off when I go in for a hug.

“Shhh. We have to be super quiet. I’ll be in so much trouble if we wake my dad up.”

She makes me take off my shoes and we tiptoe up the stairs. One of them squeaks and we cover our mouths to keep from laughing. Outside her parents’ room, we listen to her father snore, and I’m suddenly overcome with sadness and nostalgia for the nights when my entire family slept under the same roof. I swallow hard. I never realized how heavy the weight of loneliness feels.

At the end of the hall, we enter her room. It’s the first time I’ve been here. First time I’ve been in any girl’s room, for that matter. Save for a giant poster of a cat hanging on a wire, the walls are completely bare. Her bedspread is blue and androgynous; this room could easily be a guest room. It’s hardly what I was expecting, but then again, I’m not completely sure what I was expecting—probably something soft and frilly. Maybe I expect the kind of room that, when viewed from a killer’s shaky POV—standing outside the window—connotes vulnerability. All my perceptions of girls are that of a monster looking in.

She closes the door behind her. “So, what’s this all about?” she asks in a harsh whisper.

I’m busy looking at her bookshelf, noting the random
Goosebumps
that show up between Stephen King novels. “I need to use the board.”