X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

The rod almost fell from my hands. Across the river we could see a girl skidding in the leaves and dirt down to the bank. She got back on her feet and started running along the bank. She wasn’t wearing much of anything. Her dark hair was long and looked wild in the moonlight.

Seconds behind her something came crashing down from the trees and almost rolled itself into the river. It was a dog and it was the size of a small bear. It got back on its four feet quickly and started chasing the girl. It didn’t take long for it to catch up to her. The girl’s screams were cut short but the few that she got out were the most terrible sounds I’d ever heard. Sounds that would stay with me for many years and echo inside my deepest darkest dreams. It was at that moment that I dropped my rod.

First it fell on the dock with a thud that shook all of us back to life. The metal of the reel clattered. The rod tipped over the edge and since I hadn’t reeled it in completely, the current took the weight and pulled the rod in as quickly as a vacuum sucking up a dust bunny. The splash shouldn’t have been so loud.

I looked back across the river and saw two men standing on the bank. We couldn’t make out their faces but we could tell they were facing our direction. Lights were suddenly beaming toward us where we stood on the dock. They had flashlights. Then the dog jumped into the river with a splash that told us exactly how big it was.

“Go! Go! Go!” Denby was half yelling, half whispering. The brothers were grabbing everything they could. The tackle box wasn’t latched and half of the lures and hooks and weights came spilling out when Denby tried to scoop it up. He left the spilled items there and put the box under his arm, with his rod in the other hand, and started running up the path into the woods. I was in front of Reggie and tried following Denby when I realized that was impossible, my heel was still broken. My leg twisted on the path and I went down. An incredible pain lanced up my leg. I grabbed at it and tried my best to be a tough guy.

Then Reggie was pulling me up and had his arm around my waist and we were moving. We couldn’t exactly run but I was skipping furiously. It didn’t make any sense that the dog had jumped into the water. I couldn’t believe it would make it across the river, and even if it were strong enough, the current would take it much further down than where we’d been spotted. It would never catch us in time. All that logic did little to ease the incredible measure of fear pounding inside of me.

We stayed on the path through the forest, more or less. I felt my legs being ripped by shrubs and branches as we stumbled along, made blind by terror and adrenaline. I couldn’t hear anything; I was breathing too hard.

The trees cleared away once again and there was still another hundred or so yards to the car. We could see Derby already at the car with the trunk open, throwing whatever he’d managed to grab inside. He slammed the trunk and then jumped behind the wheel. Instead of bringing the car to us, he sat inside and screamed from the window, “Come on! Hurry up!” I really didn’t want to keep him waiting.

Reggie got me to the door, opened it, and all but threw me in. Then he jumped in next to me, not even bothering to run around the car to sit shotgun. The vehicle started moving before Reggie got the door closed.

“Roll up the fucking windows!” Denby was screaming.

Reggie and I both looked toward the trees. If we could have rolled up the windows with a handle we would have. But all any of us could do was put our finger on a button and wait for it to come up at its own pace. The monster of a dog was moving full speed from the black of the trees. It had a savage way of running. I could see dirt hiking up from where its claws were tearing the earth. The lights in the parking lot showed us that the animal’s thick fur was reddish-brown and, even with the water it had just swam through matting down most of it, already beginning to puff back out. Its tail had a peculiar way of curling. Its face, which I could barely see, was stretched back across its teeth. We couldn’t see its eyes.

Denby put the car in reverse and we swung back wildly. By the time he shifted gears again we heard the dog smash into the back of us and felt the car dip with its weight. It clawed against the metal and started crawling forward. We screamed at Denby to start driving. He did. The dog was on the roof of the car then. The tires made a horrible sound as they went over the train tracks we’d passed to get to the docks. Then Denby came to a sharp stop. Reggie and I almost kissed the windshield with our foreheads. The dog didn’t have any windshield. It went flying in front of the car. Denby stomped on the pedal. We heard a piercing whine and felt the car thud viciously over something much larger than a speed bump. I turned in my seat and looked back out the window. The dog lay very still in the street. It still looked huge.

“What the hell just happened? Does someone want to tell me?” Denby was yelling from behind the wheel.

The brothers began talking over one another heatedly, each with his own theories. I sat quietly for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I felt like I had asthma. I needed a bellows shoved down my throat. We didn’t realize we could put the windows down until we were halfway to the brothers’ house. My shirt was soaked in sweat. It dawned on me I only had one of my crutches.

I wasn’t very vocal during the ride home. The brothers were doing enough talking. I was trying to wrap my head around what we’d just witnessed. A girl running around in her underwear next to the river. Sure, it was warm enough. So what about Cujo? More importantly, what about the guys who’d sicced him on the girl? The thought put a miserable taste in my mouth and I didn’t know how many drinks it would take to get it out. I wanted to take my throbbing foot and throw it out the window.

“Sorry about the fishing rod, guys.”

“Did the dog rip the throat out of that chick? What the hell do we do now?” Reggie was leaning forward, clutching the seat.

“I don’t know what all we can do. Call the cops, I guess.”

Maybe the body would still be there. Maybe both bodies.

“Do you think they got a good look at us?” Reggie asked.

“No shot in hell. No way. Not from all the way over there,” Denby said.

I thought briefly about how easy it was to run into somebody you didn’t want to see in Richmond. An asshole, an ex-girlfriend, a murderer. The city could be awfully small.

We turned into Oregon Hill. We’d been driving very fast up until then, but when we came to where the neighborhood started, Denby pulled it back to a crawl. I couldn’t make up my mind about whether this was the adrenaline leaving him or because he realized we were coming back into Oregon Hill. I would’ve felt safer driving around Richmond in the car or, even better, out of the city altogether, but I kept my mouth shut. It was very late by then. A few kids passed us on bicycles as we got out of the car. The bars were closed. We stood still until they rode off the block.

The living room held a large collection of DVDs and a flat screen on the wall. The television was a gift from their mother. Several framed posters of horror flicks hung on the walls. I sat on the leather sofa and took out a cigarette and lit it. It didn’t taste right in my mouth. I put it out in one of the empty beer cans on their glass coffee table. The room was cold, even in the summertime. Denby sat next to me on the sofa and Reggie took a seat in the corner of the room. We all stared at the floor or the wall or our shoelaces but avoided looking at each other. No one had anything to say, so we just sat there in the silence. Then we heard the kitchen door open. Reggie and I looked at Denby, as if it were his responsibility to lock the door. My eyes were all but bulging out.