Ken Douglas - Death Glitch

She sat on the edge of the bed. It had been a chilly night, but still, and she hated a stuffy room, so she’d cracked the window. She’d been lying awake in sweatpants, sweatshirt and thick running socks, as a hedge against the cold. She pulled off the sweatpants, stepped into her Levi’s. She’d been wearing her favorite Wolf Pack sweatshirt and decided to keep it on. She loved the Wolf Pack, UNR’s football team, and never missed a home game. She’d been going for years and they’d called her their good luck charm. She hoped the sweatshirt would bring her luck tonight.

She picked up her Nikes, then started for the bedroom door with the dog at her heels.

“ No, boy, you’re not coming!”

But the dog was thinking along different lines. As soon as she’d opened the bedroom door, he shot through, scurried down the stairs and was waiting for her by the front door. The door was bolted shut. A sturdy bolt. Izzy thought for a second, she could lock the door after herself, but she couldn’t throw the bolt. Plus, if she did lock up after herself, how would she get back in.

She backed away from the door, went to the kitchen and on into the garage, the dog at her heels.

“ I said you’re not going!”

At the side door, she pulled back the bolt, opened the door and the dog shot out.

“ Well, maybe you are going.” She pulled on her Nikes and followed Hunter out into the night, thinking that at least she wasn’t leaving the front door unlocked. And she’d be back in less than an hour, so she wasn’t too worried about leaving the house unprotected.

Outside, the air was brisk, the sky clear. She looked up, sighed as she spied the Big Dipper. She’d always loved the stars and even at her age, she still gloried in the Star Wars films, even the badly reviewed, “Phantom Menace.” True Anikan should have been older in the film, but even George Lucas can’t get it right all of the time.

“ Beam me up, Scottie.” She hugged herself. Then said, as she’d done countless times before. “I just wish you were out there, that you could take me away.” It had always bothered her that some poor guy from Kansas would complain how he’d been abducted against his will, when she was down here dying to go. If they were out there, why didn’t they pick her? Like life, it was so unfair.

At Sierra, she checked her watch. A quarter to three and the street was deserted. She heard a car coming from the south and stepped behind a tree as it approached. Hunter seemed to understand, because he moved behind her as a police car cruised on by. In her past life, the life before yesterday, she considered the police as friends and protectors. She wasn’t so sure anymore.

“ Come on, boy.” She started up the street, headed in the direction the police car had gone. Two blocks later, she came to the park’s eastern entrance. The park was closed, the gate was down and barred against traffic, but a person could step around it and she did. Hunter did, too.

She’d heard that sometimes kids hung out in the park after dark, but the back of her house bordered on the park and she’d never seen them. Folks said coyotes crossed under McCarren from the hills and came into the park at night, looking to catch the wild geese that hung out there. She’d heard them often enough, but she doubted they caught many of the geese. They were tough birds.

But she didn’t see any geese as she moved along the road and that was odd, because lately they’d been out in force, slowing traffic to a crawl, daring the cars to run them down as they took their own sweet time getting out of the metal monsters’ way. Maybe they went somewhere else at night. Or maybe the coyotes were about and the geese had hightailed it elsewhere, not wanting to do battle with them.

All of a sudden she was glad she had Hunter with her. She didn’t know why, couldn’t wrap her mind around it, but she knew the dog would protect her, that that was why he’d been so eager to come along.

“ Good, boy,” she said.

The further they got into the park, the more eerie it became. The lights on the ranger station, club house and museum were out. She could see them from her bedroom window and she’d never been able to pinpoint exactly when they went off. It seemed no matter how late she stayed up reading, they were on when she fell asleep and when she woke, usually before the dawn, they were out.

There was no breeze. No sound. It was as if she were in another world. Her footsteps were silent, the sound seemingly gobbled up in the night, but when she got to the gate behind her house, the hinges creaked to beat the band, sending a screeching fingernails on blackboard sound jackknifing up her spine, chilling the back of her brain.

She stood stone still, listened to the night, trying to hear if other humans were out, wondering if she’d disturbed anyone, but the night stayed quiet. As far as she could tell, her neighbors were all safely snug in their beds, dreaming away.

All of a sudden a cold breeze, coming from the north, chilled her. She turned, looked up. There were clouds in the northern sky. It seemed a storm was coming in. They hadn’t had any snow yet this year. It was due and it looked like it was coming.

She and the dog went through the gate and she screeched it closed, pushing it against the wind, which was strong now and getting stronger.

She went to the back door, the wind at her back and Hunter at her heels. She keyed the lock, was about to open the door, when the dog moved between it and her, waiting for her to open it.

“ No!” she whispered. “You stay here.” She was only going to be inside for a couple minutes tops and she was going to be stealthy and quiet, in case there were watchers out front. The last thing she needed to be doing was chasing a dog around in there.

The dog looked up at her, whined.

“ No, sit!” Though she was whispering, she was firm.

But the dog didn’t sit. He persisted in trying to block her entry. Either that, or he was being insistent on going in first. Either way, Izzy wasn’t having it.

“ I said sit!” She grabbed the fur on both sides of his ghostly white face and pulled him away from the door. She pushed down on his haunches. “Sit!”

The dog did.

“ That’s better.” But when she went back to the door, the dog was there before her, whining.

“ Sit!” she pointed back to where she’d taken the dog. “Now!”

Hunter gave her a baleful look, moved aside, sat.

“ That’s better.” She turned the key, entered into the kitchen, making sure to close the door after herself. She didn’t want the dog sneaking in.

Inside, she went to the stairs, stopped. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. A smell seemed out of place. A hint of mint. An imaginary spider as real as any she’d ever been afraid of crept up her spine, stinging her back with every frozen footfall.

She made herself into a statue, ears attuned to the house, eyes getting used to the dark. She heard not a sound, save her shallow breathing. Her heart was racing, threatening to thump out of her chest. Cold sweat trickled from under her arms. Her hair felt like it was on fire. She wasn’t alone in the house.

Her first instinct was to turn and run back the way she’d come, lead the intruder into Hunter’s jaws. But she fought it. Whoever was in here with her was being silent as granite.

Why?

She strained her ears. Heard nothing and now even that smell of mint seemed to be gone. Could she have imagined it? She inhaled the night. No, it was there. Barely, but it was there. But did that mean there was somebody inside with her?

No, she was sure there was nobody in the house, because if there were, they’d’ve surely struck by now. More than likely somebody had been and gone, leaving his minty smell behind. She wanted to call out, find out for sure, but she resisted the urge.