Stoneskin's Revenge (5 page)

“Sir? I'll have to charge you if you want to leave a message…”

“Huh? Oh…sorry. I'll try again later.” And with that Calvin hung up and returned his gaze to the sky, seeing no sign of the falcon that was his totem.

An electric-blue Z-28 Camaro roared down the highway, going at least ninety. The Caprice followed it, lights blazing, siren a-wail. Calvin was not there when it returned alone.

Chapter III: The Hunter
and the Hunted

(Stone Mountain, Georgia—late afternoon)

Forrest was lost, had been for over a day now, and wasn't very happy about it.

It was pretty silly, too; because he wasn't
that
far from home
—couldn't
have been, because he'd started out from there when he ran away, and he hadn't been gone very long at all before he'd gotten control of himself and begun trying to retrace his trail. Trouble was, he was nearly at the Big Rock by then, and there were so many scents around—oil and gasoline and people by the thousands and grass and trees and asphalt, and all so thickly layered and confused—that he doubted he'd
ever
be able to nose out one that was familiar. And now he was hungry and lonesome and tired, and that made paying attention even harder.

It wasn't as if he hadn't had
reason
for bolting, either: like somebody ramming their moving metal box right through the chainlink fence around the yard where he'd been playing with his friends—and smashing right on through to the other side, almost into the woods. And then there were those great big birds that had been flying around right after—the ones that had changed into men while he was looking right at 'em
. They'd
be enough to make anybody take leave of their senses and run off through the trees. Why, it made Forrest's tail stop wagging every time he thought about 'em.

Fortunately he was calmer now, and trying to figure, as best his canine mind allowed, how to get back home. So far he had narrowed his search to places where there were trees, because there'd been trees around the place he'd fled from.
Unfortunately
there were a
lot
of trees around; though often only in small patches. The only thing he was sure of was that he hadn't crossed the big smooth-stone trail the metal boxes ran on, the one with the strip of grass captive in the middle. He'd have remembered crossing that because the one other time he'd run off he'd wound up there, and Master had just about worn him out with a switch when he found him.

But if he hadn't come upon it
again,
he was a puppy. Just to make sure, though, he poked his tan-and-white nose out of a stand of azaleas at the edge of somebody's yard and trotted up a short, grassy hill. The sun was waiting for him there, reflecting back at him off a familiar hard white surface, and it brought those thick, bitter smells he identified with the metal boxes.
Figured as much,
he grumbled, and turned back.

A short while later he found forest once more, dense with pine and poplar and maple, the underbrush mostly dogwood. For a while he sauntered along, nose to the ground; and as he ran, he gradually worked his way into older suburbs, threading between yards, along fence lines, ever alert for the right sort of cover.

He caught something then: his own spoor undiluted. And he followed it, first uphill through a stand of pines, then through a thicket of blackberry briars, and finally to a veritable wall of woody debris overgrown with kudzu. He searched there until he found the place where he'd burst through in his terror; cautiously retraced his steps back inside…

…and came into a tiny, grassy clearing completely encircled by trees—except on the side he'd entered from, where the kudzu made a sort of rampart. There were stones there, too: low, flat slabs of gray granite like Big Rock over to the right—the one with the carving on it—all pushing through the earth like bones wearing through a week-old kill.

And there were more familiar odors: his own—and another that he recalled from long ago. An image swam into his mind: a black-haired boy kneeling before him, scratching his head, bringing him food, wrestling with him, throwing him sticks. And a series of sounds came with it:
Calvin.

But there were other human smells here as well: three of them—two male and one female, all young. Forrest found where someone had poured colored earth on the ground in a pattern that, when he traced it with his nose, proved to be a circle quartered by a cross. A fire had been built in the middle of it, and there were a
lot
of unfamiliar odors there: oils and blood and resins. There was also a bit of food about—or the wrappers it had come in: candy bars and chips and—and the wild-smelling stuff he'd tasted only once before: deer meat. He nosed up the morsel, swallowed it, though it was sun-dry and someone had burned it and rubbed vegetable stuff all over it. Not as juicy as the rabbits he loved to chase that Master sometimes took him long distances to pursue, but sufficient to a stomach that had not been properly tended for over a day.

Something else caught his attention then: a slab of brown leather. A poke of his nose flopped it open, revealing bits of greenish-white paper with pictures on them. He took it in his mouth, ran a dozen or so yards uphill to the largest of the boulders—and froze.

Something wasn't right. He could not fix on it, but there was definitely a wrongness here. He dropped the leather, raised his head, gazed around, hearing, sniffing, finding nothing to indicate what had made his hair stand suddenly on end.

And then, unbelievably: “Forrest, yo! Forrest! Here, boy!”

It was Master!—jogging out of the woods at the top of the hill and loping down toward him, his footfalls heavy on the ground. He was middle-sized for a man, stocky and dark-skinned, though not in the way most folks around here were, because his had a coppery cast. His hair
was
black like theirs, however, and closely cropped. The clink of metal accompanied him, from the tools that hung from his waist on another strip of leather. He smelled upset, and Forrest was ashamed he hadn't noticed his approach. Why, the wind should have brought him the scent long ago! But he didn't care now, because he was running and frolicking, and Master was running too.

“Forrest! Hey, boy!” And then Master was upon him, kneeling down to reach out and fondle his ears, while Forrest nearly peed from joy, leapt up to put both front paws on the man's shoulders, and licked him, tasting sweat and tobacco.

“Where you
been,
boy?” But Forrest couldn't tell him, didn't care, he was so happy to be almost home.

“Come here, boy, let me look at you!” the man continued. “Let's get out of these weeds!” And with that Master picked him up and carried him over to the slab of rock, where he sat down with Forrest in his lap and began giving him a good going-over, muttering all the time about how he'd been afraid he'd lost his favorite beagle, about how some low-down sorry so-and-sos had smashed down the dog lot fence with a car, and how he hadn't found out about it until just a minute ago 'cause he'd had to stay at the construction site
he
was working on all night and the boy he'd paid to check on the hounds hadn't bothered. Soon as he got the rest of the pack rounded up, he was gonna call the cops, Master informed Forrest as he examined his ears for ticks (finding five), but he didn't have much confidence in 'em. Maybe they could at least find out what kinda car had run through the yard, though, and use that for a starting place to chase down the culprit. All
he
could tell was that it had been a smallish one and had to have been red, from the paint he'd found all over the chainlink.

“Hey, what'cha got there?” Master asked abruptly, freeing one hand to stretch across the stone toward the slab of leather Forrest had just been playing with.

Still securing Forrest with his elbow, Master reached further, practically lying on his back across the boulder when it would have been a lot easier to get up and walk around, though Forrest didn't care about that either, because it meant Master was more interested in him than a bunch of old dead cowhide.

“Got it!” And then: “Well I'll be damned! It's my boy's billfold! Must've been
him
that busted down my fence and left all this shit lyin' round here.” Forrest felt Master's heart rate increase, then slow back down as he stuffed the leather thing in his shirt pocket. “First off, though,” Master added more lightly, “let's take a look at them footsies.”

And then Forrest sensed it once more: that strange uneasiness. His hair prickled and danced all across his body. He still couldn't tell what caused it, except that there was some sort of vibration in the ground, almost like the rocks were sliding along each other. He didn't like it, either; not at all. He had to get away, had to warn Master…

“Easy, boy!” Master cried as Forrest tried to struggle free, baying loudly in sudden alarm, then changing to the sort of whiny growl that was both fear and warning. “Hey, what's got
into
you?”

But Master held him firm, asking over and over what the matter was when it should be obvious, because something was wrong with the whole
place
here, something he couldn't name because he had no name
for
it.

“Shit!”
Master hollered all at once, leaping to his feet. He dropped Forrest in the process, who then proceeded to run in circles around the stone, sniffing it suspiciously and whimpering. A sharp, bitter smell reached him from Master—the one that meant he was hurt or scared, but with it Forrest caught another, stranger scent: dry mud and sunbaked rocks and the briefest hint of fresh blood. But Master exhaled suddenly and chuckled, rubbing his hand along his side as if it itched. He picked Forrest up then, and started toward the house. “Boy,
that
'uz
a weird 'un,” he whispered. “Got the granddaddy of all great stitches in my side! Still,” he added as he increased his pace through a grove of trees Forrest recognized, “I reckon the
first
thing I gotta do is give you a bath and take you to the vet. See if you et anything you shouldn't, or if anything 'sides ticks took a nibble outta you.
Then
I'm gonna call the cops.”

They were in sight of home now: a line of fencing around the familiar low brick house, a long section lying flat along the ground. Forrest had expected that. But something wasn't right! Master wasn't walking as surely as he ought. He was stumbling, and Forrest could feel his grip growing weaker.

They reached the fence, picked their way across the flattened part; and Master held onto him with one hand while he fumbled at the metal thing on the back door with the other. The door opened, and Master put Forrest down. He loped onto the linoleum-floored kitchen beyond, then turned around in alarm, ignoring the yips of his fellow refugees as they came up to renew their acquaintance.

He was staring at Master. But Master hadn't come inside yet; he was just standing there on the stoop, clutching his side, then suddenly ripping his shirttail up and staring at where something was hanging out there, right below his ribs: something reddish-brown and bloody.

Forrest caught the odor of blood much more strongly, and with it the thicker scent of viscera—and then the bitterness of fear again, which came exactly as Master screamed.

Chapter IV: Dreams and Visions

(east of Whidden, Georgia—two hours before sunset)

“Thanks again, guys,” Calvin whispered. “Thanks a bunch for your lives.” He licked his fingers and stared appreciatively at the prickly white remains of the last of the three catfish he'd hooked earlier that day, watched the westering sunlight play off the ribs and vertebrae, and contemplated their pearly beauty as if they were works of art. It was the right thing to do: to ask living things for their lives before pursuing them, and to thank them again when they laid those lives down in his behalf. Sometimes one even covered the blood, but that depended on the prey. The blood of these three fish, along with their innards and their heads, was already well on its way back to the earth—either that, or was food for turtles like the fine-looking grandpa snapper he'd spotted earlier when he'd taken a long cool soak in the creek on whose sandy banks he had made camp.

“Like I said, guys, it's been fun—truly your meat was delicious.” And with that Calvin laid the skeletons on the dull inside of a large magnolia leaf, rose from where he'd been sitting cross-legged by the tiny fire on which he'd cooked them, then deposited them back in the tannin-dark waters a foot beyond his bare feet. That done, he reduced the fire to steam and sludge with water from his peanut can, and—satisfied the flames would not incarnate again should he fall to napping—flopped back against the trunk of the vast live oak that over the past few hours had become a sort of surrogate for his rocker on Sandy's porch.

The view wasn't bad either: the creek, maybe thirty feet wide here; the opposite bank a mass of live oaks and red cedars, their branches weighted with Spanish moss that dragged along the lazy water like fraying snake-skins—exactly like this side, except the trees were taller here and a little more widely spaced. It was a symphony of dark green and glossy brown—and of blue sky and metallic-black dragonflies. Vaguely melancholy, maybe; or perhaps that merely reflected Calvin's mood.