Whisper in the Dark (3 page)

W
HAT’S THIS ABOUT
, Mad?” Roger’s fingers reached out to touch the letters, which could only have been been scored so deeply by a very sharp blade—or a claw. There was a little smile on his face. I knew it was because he was getting a thrill from the creepiness of the situation.

It was the same smile Roger had on his face when I had taken him on my own special Running and Eating Horror Tour of Providence after finding out that not only was he an ace Cross-country Crazy, he was also a nut for supernatural stuff.

The two of us set out that day from Waterplace Park. We did the whole Banner Trail, up and down Smithy Hill, back and forth across the bridges, sprinting and sightseeing, taking in not just the museums and the urban architecture, but also
those special places sacred to scarydom. East Side, West Side, College Hill always in sight.

I can still see him holding a Dell’s Lemonade in one hand while reaching out with the other to lightly caress the door frame of the Atheneum.

“Man oh man! Edgar Allan Poe touched this here, ah’ll bet,” he said in a soft voice as he stared through the door of the old library.

As Roger ate his third Al’s New York System weiner, proving once again that all Cross-country runners are bottomless pits, I introduced him to a certain gabled New England colonial on Benefit Street. “The Shunned House” was the abode of a buried vampire in HPL’s creepy yarn. Then, after devouring one of Newport Creameries’ Awful Awful Sundaes, I pointed out the steeple of that church on Federal Hill where a dreaded winged monster perched in yet another of the Master’s hair-raising tales.

After running Blackstone Boulevard, we jogged and then slowed to a stroll to enter Swan Point Cemetery, where the cliffs look out over the Seekonk River, toward where the excavations were just starting into a recently discovered cave in the
steepest part of the cliff face. I’d read about it in the papers and knew that it was sponsored by some wealthy guy who was convinced that the ancient Chinese had landed here a century before Columbus. Our Narragansett Tribal Council had been concerned that the cave might contain some ancestral graves. But the people in charge had assured them that they were certain the cave wasn’t the site of any Indian burials. As if we’d never heard that before. Any time archaeologists start digging up the ground here in New England, they usually come across Indian burial sites. Over the last few years, our people had managed to put a stop to much of this. My dad had been very involved. We’d also been able to get back a lot of the bones of our ancestors from museums and colleges so they could be decently reburied.

Roger and I walked past the graves of Rhode Island Volunteers who gave their lives in the Civil War.

And then we came at last to
the
grave. Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s last resting place. H. P. Lovecraft, author of some of the most chilling Gothic tales of ancient evil ever written. 1890–1937. Roger went
down on one knee, and his long fingers traced the letters on the stone.

“‘I am Providence,’” he read aloud—with no trace at all of that weird New Orleans accent that sounds like you put a street kid from Brooklyn into a bottle with a Georgia Cracker and then shook it. And then that smile came over his face.

The same smile was on Roger’s face now as he looked at the words “I am here” on my door.

For just a moment, I wondered if this
was
all just a joke and if Roger really did do it. Was it possible that he was the one who called me the first two times, even though he said he didn’t? Was it his hand that scratched the words into the back door? As soon as I asked myself those questions, I shook my head. Even though he loves weird stuff to death, Roger is my friend and wouldn’t try to really freak me out. He isn’t a mean practical joker. He was probably smiling because he thought I’d set this up to show him that the supernatural was still alive and well in Rogue Island.

And there is no way that he could have gotten around front to knock on the door only a heartbeat
after I heard the scratching stop. The back gate was still closed and locked from the inside. The high fence was around my backyard. It was meant to keep in Bootsie, who like all year-old Irish setters would have been running her fool head off halfway across town, following her goofy nose, without that barrier.

Where was Bootsie? Why hadn’t she barked when the doorbell rang? She always barked like crazy whenever she heard or saw anyone. And if something scared her—like the crack of thunder or the sudden ground-shaking rumble from the blasting going on a couple of blocks away from us—as soon as anyone opened the door she was in the house like a shot, woofing and whining and trying to crawl under my bed. Why wasn’t she making a sound now, and where the heck was she? The only reason a hyperactive dog like Bootsie would be quiet would be because she was asleep or…

“Bootsie,” I called, looking wildly around the yard. “Bootsie? BOOTSIE!”

R
OGER AND I
searched the backyard. We checked the back gate. It was still locked. There was no way Bootsie could have gotten out. Maybe a really athletic person—or something that had the kind of claws that allowed it to climb chain link—could have gotten over it, but not a dog like Boots. The kind of fence Aunt Lyssa had put in was meant to be dog-proof. It was even buried two feet deep so Bootsie couldn’t dig under it.

We both started whistling and calling her name.

“Boots, here, girl. Come on, Bootsie.”

But she didn’t come. The sick feeling in my stomach got worse and worse.

“Mad,” Roger said in an urgent voice. I turned. He was on his knees, looking under the shed. “There’s something here. Got a torch?”

I grabbed the big flashlight Aunt Lyssa kept in the kitchen cupboard and sprinted back to where Roger was squinting into the darkness of the crawl-space below the shed. The first thing my flashlight beam picked up was a dark, wet spot in the dirt. I touched it and then looked at the red stain on my finger.

“Oh no,” I said, “it’s blood.”

Roger nudged my shoulder. “Back farther, Mad, way back under there. I think I see something else.”

I was really dreading what I’d see, but I directed the bright shaft of light back to the farthest corner under the shed. There was a huddled shape with a matted red coat. Bootsie. I felt numb. I just knew that she was dead. I handed the flashlight to Roger.

“I’m going after her,” I said. “Hold the light so I can see.”

Roger didn’t try to protest. He knew how I was when I set my mind to something. That was why I went back to running two months after the accident, even though the doctors had said it’d be a year before I could exercise again. They doubted I’d even be much of a runner again with one hand so messed up. But I set my mind to it and proved
them wrong, winning my first ten K before the end of that year.

I squeezed myself farther under the shed. The space was so low that I scraped my back as I crawled forward on my elbows. It was only a dozen feet, but it seemed to take forever. At last I could reach my good right hand out far enough. When it touched Bootsie’s back, my heart leaped. Her skin was warm.

She trembled at my touch and whimpered. It was the same sound she used to make when she was a tiny puppy hiding from the rumble of thunder. I got hold of her collar and began to inch back, trying to drag her limp, unresisting body with me. Roger grabbed my ankles and pulled. Between the two of us, we managed to get her out into the sunlight.

As soon as Bootsie felt the light, it was if her On button had been pushed. She scrambled to her feet and started to bark. She licked my face and Roger’s hands, jumping around us in the kind of glad hysteria that Irish setters go into when they’ve been alone a really long time—like say five minutes. Roger helped me calm her down.

“Mad,” he said, getting down on his knees, “check this out.” He gently lifted her right front paw. As he did so, Bootsie whined and made a little chewing motion toward his hand, but she didn’t bite.

“Here’s where the blood came from, Mad,” Roger said. “Once a dog gets a cut on its pad, it just bleeds like a stuck pig. Probably caught it on a loose nail.”

The cut was clean, as clean as if it had been made with a razor. But it didn’t explain her fear. There had to be something more. I slid my right hand carefully along Bootsie’s body. She began to tremble as I got close to her right hip, where the fur was matted and dark. She went down onto her side and tried to roll away, but Roger kept a firm grip on her collar.

“Look here,” I whispered.

Roger let out a soft whistle. There on Bootsie’s flank were four more slash wounds. No loose nail made them. It was if they were made by a handful of knives—or by four razor-sharp claws.

M
Y FINGERS WERE
turning red from the blood welling out of the deep cuts on Bootsie’s flank. Everything around me began to slow down. I knew that Bootsie was still whimpering, but I could no longer hear her. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t breathe.

When I was six years old, I fell into the deep end of the swimming pool at the park and sank to the cool bottom. I didn’t think to try to use my arms or legs to save myself. My eyes were open, and I could see the blurry shapes of other people swimming, their legs kicking above me. None of them seemed to know I was there. I could no longer hear voices, and there was just a soft roaring in my ears. It wasn’t scary. It was kind of calm at the cold bottom of the pool, peaceful. Then, just as I couldn’t hold
my breath any longer and was about to close my eyes, someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me up to the surface. There was a rush of water, then the cold touch of the air and people shouting and shaking me.

Shaking me. The way Roger was shaking me, making me breathe. A trembling breath that was almost a sob.

“What should we do, Mad?” Roger was saying.

I looked up at him. Roger is tall for his age, taller than a lot of grown men. He’s really strong and his shoulders are broad, much broader than the usual kid who’s a good long-distance runner. That’s why the high school football coaches kept trying to get him to come out for the team. But Roger was determined to be a runner, even if he wasn’t built right for it. And he succeeded. That determination of his kept him going when others would quit in that last uphill half mile before the line. Determined as he was, though, Roger was looking at me, expecting me to tell him what to do. I reached into the shed and pulled out an old, clean beach towel.

“Take this,” I said to Roger. “I’ll lift her up a little, and you can wrap it around her like a bandage.
We’ve got to get her to Dr. Fox.”

Then I ran back inside and grabbed my backpack and cell phone. As I walked around the house closing it up, I used the phone to first call for a taxi. Then I tried Aunt Lyssa’s office. As I expected, I just got her machine. Everything that was happening was too complicated and confusing to explain in the twenty seconds I had to leave her a message, so I just said that Bootsie got hurt, but she’d probably be all right, and that Roger and I were taking her to our vet. I made sure the windows were latched—upstairs and down. I locked all the doors, not just the front and back, but also the big heavy one that leads down to our old stone-walled, earth-floor cellar. But I was still feeling nervous.

I felt a little better when the taxi driver arrived. He’d been to my house before, and he knew us. His name was Raj Patel, and he was from India. He was a nice man with a shy, friendly smile and a gentle voice. He didn’t object one bit when Roger climbed in with Bootsie, even though it was clear from the red stain on the towel that she was still bleeding. He just shook his head and said, “We must hurry her to the veterinarian.”

It was only a couple of miles to our vet’s clinic, but it was long enough for me to reach his receptionist on the cell phone and tell her we were coming in with Bootsie and it was an emergency. It also took us longer than usual because we had to take a detour just before the
TURN OFF RADIOS BLASTING IN PROGRESS
sign. As a result, good old Doc Fox was waiting outside when we pulled into his driveway, looking like a big, unkempt bear that had somehow been thrust into a neat white surgeon’s coat.

“Here,” Doc Fox rumbled, thrusting out his huge arms to take Bootsie and whisking her back into the clinic.

I tried to pay Mr. Patel, but he waved his hand at me.

“It is all right,” he said. “You are a regular customer.”

“Thank you,” I said. I was feeling emotional, and his kindness touched me so much that it was hard not to start crying.

Mr. Patel smiled. “Don’t mention it. I am just glad to see that your dog was not killed like all the other ones.”

“All
what
other ones?” Even though it was a warm day, I felt a chill, like cold water trickling down my back.

Mr. Patel shook his head. “Have you not heard? There have been several dogs killed, just near where you are living. Some fierce animal, it appears, attacked them. Most strange, indeed.”

I could hardly feel my feet touching the sidewalk. I was back in the deep end of the pool.