The Mad and the MacAbre (3 page)

He turned around, walked back to the park
bench, and crouched down next to the dog again. Now that he was
looking at it a second time, he seemed to recall that it was named
after a state. Or a city. Something like that.

"Don't bite me," he warned the dog. He was
fine with the animal biting him as part of an experiment in rage
control, but not when he was trying to help it.

Charlie immediately felt like an idiot. Dogs
couldn't talk. And, more importantly, dogs couldn't understand
human speech. He was glad that nobody else was around to hear.

He carefully slid his hands underneath the
dog's side and lifted it off the ground a few inches, then pulled
it out from beneath the bench. The dog whimpered some more, but
lifting it didn't seem to hurt it. He hugged the dog to his chest
and stood up.

The dog licked his face.

Even more disgusting.

He couldn't wipe it off without dropping the
animal, so Charlie merely scowled and left the slobber on his face.
The wet warmth quickly turned uncomfortably cold in the chilly
night air. Stupid dog.

The dog nuzzled its face into his jacket, as
if trying to burrow inside for warmth. Charlie supposed he couldn't
blame the poor creature, though he wasn't about to unzip his jacket
and let it get any closer to him.

It was a bit heavier than he'd expected, but
Charlie was used to dragging corpses around, so he was pretty sure
he'd have no problems carrying the dog home.

As he stepped onto the sidewalk, the
illumination from the streetlights revealed a couple of streaks of
red on the dog's fur. He hadn't noticed the blood before. He
wondered if the dog had gotten into a fight, maybe with a squirrel.
There hadn't been a shredded squirrel carcass lying under the
bench, so it was kind of sad that the dog had been beaten by
something so much smaller than it.

Well, okay, he had no evidence that it was a
squirrel. It could've been a bigger dog. Or a human with a
knife.

Either way, the dog didn't seem to have lost
all that much blood, certainly not enough to account for its
weakened state. Possibly a lack of food and water is what made it
lose the fight. Much of Charlie's success at hunting came from
seeking prey that was hungry and thirsty, so he understood the
dog's plight.

The dog fell asleep in his arms as he
carried it home.

- 3 -

Charlie smiled as he
carried the dog downstairs to his basement. He'd lived in this
house for five years, and the dog would be his first guest that
wasn't going down into the basement to die. At least he hoped it
wasn't--the dog didn't
seem
to be dying, but Charlie couldn't be certain. He'd
never even
met
a
veterinarian.

Actually, as embarrassing as it was to admit
to himself, Charlie was a bit uncomfortable with the idea of the
dog seeing the scene of his many crimes. Not that he thought the
dog was going to run barking to the police, but still, dumb animal
or not, it was another pair of eyes on the table where he'd killed
almost twenty women. Maybe he was being less than meticulous about
his secrecy.

However, that irrational feeling wasn't
enough for him to let the dog bleed all over his upstairs
furniture. He'd upholstered that couch himself.

He placed the dog on the metal table. It
looked as if it wanted to jump to the floor but lacked the
strength. He pressed down on its back to keep it from moving, and
counted the wounds. Five different gashes: two long ones on its
back, two smaller ones on its left side, and one on its back left
leg. None of them were bleeding profusely.

Charlie had plenty of experience tending to
wounds. No medical training, and nothing fancy--just bandages and
antiseptic. He assumed this would work for a dog, too.

Normally his patient was strapped down.
Unfortunately, though his ankle and wrist bracelets could adjust to
accommodate various heights, they were still only designed for a
human. He'd just have to hold the dog down while he applied the
alcohol.

The dog yelped and thrashed and almost got
free. "You'll break your leg if you jump off," he warned it as he
pressed the dog more tightly against the metal surface. Instead of
his usual precise touch, he settled for pouring the antiseptic over
the wounds, and then held the dog against the table for several
more minutes until it calmed down. The bandages didn't stick very
well because of its fur, so Charlie wrapped tape around its legs
and torso, which kept them affixed well enough.

The basement had a sink that Charlie
primarily used to rinse blood off his tools. He found a small
plastic bowl, emptied out the screws and nails that were inside,
filled it with water, and placed it in front of the dog. The dog
frantically lapped up the water, drinking so vigorously that
Charlie had to hold the bowl steady to keep the dog from knocking
it off the table. When the dog finished, he refilled the bowl and
let it drink some more.

He lifted the dog off the table, causing it
to yelp in pain, and set it down on the floor. "Stay," he told it
in a firm voice, as he walked toward the staircase.

The dog followed him. Slowly and shakily,
but it followed.

"I said, stay." Charlie pointed to the dog.
"Stay."

The dog barked.

"Don't bark at me," he told it. "Stay." He
decided to try something else: "Sit."

The dog did not sit. It barked again.

Charlie walked up the stairs and shut the
basement door. He didn't want blood and dog hair upstairs. The only
untidy part of his house was his basement, and then only when he
had a victim down there. That dog was lucky it wasn't still
freezing in the park; it would just have to deal with being kept
downstairs until he returned it to its rightful owner.

He opened the cupboard and looked through
the shelves. He didn't have any dog food. What was the next best
thing?

Breakfast cereal? That sort of looked like
dog food.

He filled a bowl with dry cereal, then
reopened the door to the basement. The dog sat on the bottom step,
looking up at him expectantly. Charlie walked down the stairs and
placed the bowl on the floor next to the dog. It sniffed the
cereal, looked back at up at him, and whined softly.

"Eat it," Charlie said.

The dog continued to stare at him.

"Eat it," Charlie repeated. "They're Cocoa
Puffs."

The dog sneezed. Charlie wasn't sure if it
was a derisive sneeze or just a regular sneeze. Either way, he
didn't have a lot of sympathy for a starving creature that wouldn't
eat the food that was right in front of it. If it wanted to die,
he'd let it die. If it expired in his basement, his only regret
would be that it had sneezed all over his perfectly good Cocoa
Puffs.

Maybe he was being unfair. Charlie wouldn't
eat a bowl of dog food, so perhaps it was unreasonable to expect
this dog to eat a bowl of human cereal, especially without milk. It
was only around eight o'clock, so the pet store was probably still
open. He'd pick up some real dog food and then bill the cost to the
owner.

"Stay," he told the dog, then walked back
upstairs and shut the door.

* * *

Before he went to the food
aisle, Charlie stopped at the revolving metal book rack. He looked
at the various covers, trying to figure out what kind of dog he had
in his basement. It wasn't a schnauzer, dachshund, beagle
(
That
was a beagle
on the cover? They didn't look anything like Snoopy!), pit bull,
shih tzu, Japanese chin...there it was.
Caring For Your Boston Terrier.
He
knew
it
was named after a city or a state.

He didn't take the book off the rack. He had
no intention of learning how to care for the dog--he was just
curious about what kind it was.

He wandered over to the food aisle and
frowned. There were several dozen different varieties. Were they
breed specific? Was it all the same garbage with different
packaging? What was wrong with just having one bag and labeling it
"Dog Food?"

Charlie decided to make this into a much
easier decision. He scanned the aisle, searching for the lowest
price.

"Looking for something in particular?" asked
an employee, a young cute brunette, maybe twenty-two or
twenty-three.

"Just food."

"How old is your dog?"

Charlie shrugged.

"Is it a puppy?"

"No." Charlie picked up the closest bag of
food, hoping that the employee would think he'd made his final
decision and go away.

"If you're looking for anything else, toys,
treats, or whatever, just let me know," said the employee with a
friendly smile.

"Okay."

After she left, Charlie put the bag of food
back on the shelf and traded it out for a cheaper one. Actually,
for some reason he'd expected dog food to be a lot more expensive;
still, no need to risk spending unnecessary money in case he never
found the owner and had to abandon the dog.

He walked past the toy section on his way to
the checkout counter. Maybe he should buy something to keep the dog
occupied during the day. He picked up a bone-shaped squeak toy,
decided against the expenditure, then paid for the food and went
home.

* * *

The dog gobbled the bowl of food as if it
hadn't eaten in months. It didn't even seem to be taking time to
breathe, which was funny to watch because it had a flat little nose
that didn't seem like it would be easy to breathe through.

It finished off the contents of the bowl in
no time, ate the pieces that had spilled over the side, then looked
up at Charlie. He shrugged and filled its bowl again. This time it
finished half of the food, then let out what sounded like a happy
bark.

Charlie had nothing to say to the dog, so he
went back upstairs to make some signs.

* * *

Charlie wrote
"
Found Boston Terrier
" and his phone number in black magic marker on twenty pieces
of paper. The notice would probably be more effective if he
attached a picture of the dog, but he didn't own a camera. The
whole idea of photographs made Charlie uncomfortable. Not that he
believed that they'd steal his soul or anything like that--he just
didn't like them. He might have owned a cell phone with a camera,
if he ever had anybody to call.

After he finished making the twentieth sign,
he questioned his judgment in putting "Boston Terrier" on there. If
those were valuable dogs, people might try to falsely claim the one
in his basement. Though he could certainly figure out a way to make
potential owners prove that the dog truly belonged to them, he
didn't want to be bothered with scam artists.

He crumpled up all twenty
signs and began the process again, writing simply
"
Found Dog
" and
his phone number. Then, armed with his signs and some scotch tape,
he walked around the area for about half an hour, taping the signs
to streetlamps, mailboxes, and newspaper boxes, as well as on the
park bench where he'd found the dog. He returned home, turned up
the heat, and went to sleep.

* * *

Charlie woke up out of a sound sleep and
glanced over at the alarm clock. 1:21 AM.

There was a strange noise in the house. He
listened carefully for a moment, and then figured out what he was
hearing: scratching.

Why was that stupid dog scratching on the
basement door? What could it possibly want at this time of
night?

He closed his eyes and tried to go back to
sleep, but the scratching didn't stop. The dog had food and it had
water--did it just have an attitude problem? Charlie was a big
believer in the merits of a good night's sleep, and if this dog
didn't knock off the scratching, he'd kick it in the face.

He counted slowly to five
hundred. The scratching continued. With all the soundproofing,
scratching on the door was pretty much the only sound he
would
hear from the
basement. Figured.

Charlie cursed, got out of bed, then walked
in his underwear through the kitchen over to the basement door. He
opened it and glared at the dog, which sat on the top step.

"Don't do that," he said.

The dog barked.

"Don't do that, either," he told it.

The dog pushed past his leg and ran into the
kitchen. Charlie cursed again and went after it. If that dog
wrecked any of his things, he was going to withdraw his objections
to torturing a dumb animal. With Charlie in hot pursuit, the dog
ran into the living room and jumped up on the couch.

Charlie pointed to the floor. "Get
down."

The dog lay down in the crevice between the
two couch cushions.

"Get down," Charlie repeated, more
sternly.

Charlie realized that he'd left the basement
door open. It wasn't as if he had a victim down there who might
escape or be discovered, but still, he liked to keep the door
closed at all times.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean
they aren't out to get you," he said out loud, closing the basement
door and causing a waft of cool air to brush against his face.

It
was
pretty cold down there, he
supposed. He couldn't blame the dog for wanting to come upstairs
where it was warmer. The basement was surely a lot better than
being outside in the park, but if the dog was used to a warm home
with a rich master...

Charlie poured himself a glass of milk,
drank it, rinsed out the glass, and then returned to the living
room.

"Hey," he said to the dog. It looked like it
was about to fall asleep. "You can stay up here, but if you..." He
trailed off. Why in the world was he trying to speak a complete
sentence to a dog? He was losing his mind. Many of his victims had
claimed that he was insane, and now he was trying to prove them
right!