David Morrell - The Totem

It was something that he'd grown so used to that he'd long ago stopped being aware of it. Except last night when he and Slaughter had been talking in the office, and he'd noticed it, but Slaughter had first turned to it, unconsciously reminding him, and anyway the thing had been so much in keeping with their conversation that of course he would have noticed then, but normally it simply blended with the background, and it wasn't worth consideration. Now when everything that he'd been mulling through distracted him, the sound had changed, had drawn attention to itself.

He stood motionless, his head turned, his hand still outstretched to unlock the trunk. Even when he shifted his body toward the trees back there, his hand remained outstretched and stiff until he noticed it and lowered it slowly to his side. He felt his muscles tighten. He almost couldn't make them work as he walked squinting toward the trees. In all the years he'd worked here, he had never gone back in them, never once been curious. There was a dry streambed, he knew, that in the spring was filled with rushing snowmelt from the mountains. But a flashflood was not a thing to walk near, and he'd always watched it from the distance of his parking space. The trees here all had leaves, their branches bare in the early spring, and there had been no trouble seeing. But in June now, everything was like a jungle back there, the trees thick, drooping, the bushes full and vine enshrouded, not to mention that there was a rusty fence.

He had a fear of snakes, of things that crawled and he couldn't see, but he was thinking only of the sound beyond the trees now as he reached the fence, and glancing at the thick high grass beyond it, he gripped the sagging post to balance for a foothold on the wire.

There was no need to climb the fence. The post continued sagging as he gripped it, and his weight kept pressing, and the post snapped softly, weakly, toppling toward the ground where it hung bobbing in the wires.

He looked down at ants, a hundred of them, next a thousand. They were scurrying to flee the ruptured nest inside the base of the post, rice-shaped eggs gripped by their pincers, rushing off in all directions. He lurched back, revolted. All those ugly crawling things. His skin began to itch. His mouth tasted sour. He was conscious of the irony that he could look at burned and mutilated corpses, maggots on them, and be concerned only about how much damage had occurred within the lungs, and yet he couldn't bear to see these insects and their crazy panicked scurrying below him. Well, he thought, in the morgue he had control, but here the situation governed him, and as the sound beyond the trees became even stranger, he made himself go near the fence. He stepped across the sagging fallen wires, avoiding where the ants were, staring at them even as he worked around them toward the trees.

He felt the bushes clutch his pants, and he was turning forward, stooping underneath a tree branch, soon encircled by the trees. The ground sloped: long grass, vines that clung hard to his pant cuffs. Everything was close and dark and humid. Then the trees gave out, and he was looking at the streambed. It was deep between the banks, dry, with sand, and here and there a rock or water-polished piece of driftwood. He saw tiny tracks of animals in the sand. He glanced along one track and saw movement ten feet to his right along the bank- a chipmunk up on its hind legs staring at him, in an instant darting into a hole beside a tree root. Then the chipmunk poked its head out, blinking at him.

He glanced toward the streambed once more, swallowed, and with one leg cautiously before him, he eased down the loose earth of the bank. The sand at the bottom was soft beneath him, and he didn't like that feeling, didn't like the lacerated tire he saw wedged among the silt and rocks. He was eager to get up on the other side, edging slowly up, then listing off balance, clutching at a tree root up there, but the clutching was instinctive, and abruptly he released his grip, scrambling upward, dropping to his knees and clawing.

At last, he reached the level, and he stood there, breathing, glancing all around. He brushed the dirt from his pantlegs, staring at his hands. The noise was even stranger, though, and slightly to his left, not straight ahead. He angled toward it, stooping past more trees, avoiding bushes, suddenly free of them, stark sunlight on him, open air before him, just the houses past the yards here, the white fence all along this back end of the houses.

He prepared to climb the wooden fence when he thought better. Down there to his left, the sound was even closer, stronger. From that backyard two lawns down. He walked along the fence, and then he saw it, tangled in its chain, the doghouse scratched and bitten, splinters and blood spots on the lawn, an Irish setter, and the sound it made was chilling. Not a growl exactly, not a bark. Much lower, almost speaking, deep within its throat, long and drawn out, suddenly a sequence of quick choking, then that drawl-like laryngitic moaning. He stared at the bloody lips, the froth that dripped in great gobs from their corners, and as it stopped biting at the chain and went back to the bone-revealing sore that it was chewing on its left hind leg, he gripped the fence, peered down at the unmowed yard, and gasped, desperate to control the churning in his stomach. He'd seen what he could only term the face of evil. Later he would recollect how those peculiar words occurred to him. He'd judge and weigh them, hoping to condemn their wild emotion, but he knew that they were fitting. He had never seen such open, brutal, insane evil, and his instinct was to flee, to repel the image from his sight.

Instead, he rushed along the fence until he faced another backyard, climbing over, straining to see every portion of this yard in case there was a dog in here as well, but there was nothing, just a tiny plastic wading pool, and he ran past it, hurrying along the side until he reached the sidewalk in the front, and then he swung across the next yard toward the front door of the house in back of which the dog was baying even more grotesquely.

If he'd been the man he claimed to be, he would have known what next would happen, would have paid attention to the weed-choked lawn, the untrimmed bushes, would have understood the owner here. But he was taken up with urgency. He gripped the wobbly railing, charging up the stairs. On the porch, he pressed the doorbell, but the sound of a television blared out from the open windows so he couldn't hear the doorbell. He couldn't even hear the dog now, and he pressed the button once again, staring through the screen door past the open main door in there, toward the shadowy living room. He realized that the doorbell wasn't working. As a crowd cheered on the television, he banged at the screen door. He shouted, "Hey, is anybody home?", hammering so fiercely that the wood trembled and a shadow moved in there, pale against the murky sofa, a man coming to the door.

The man was husky, naked to the waist, a can of beer in one hand. He was surly, unshaven. "Yeah, what is it?"

"Look, your dog-"

"I know. The bastard won't stop barking.'

"It needs treatment."

"What?"

"You've got to get it to a vet," the medical examiner blurted.

"Up your ass. I told the neighbors I was working on it. Hell, I even got a special collar." "I don't-" "One with batteries. The kind that every time the dog barks sends a shock to stop it barking."

The medical examiner was speechless.

"Who the hell are you? I've never seen you anywhere," the man said.

"I'm…" The medical examiner explained who he was.

"You live around here?"

"No, I-"

"Then up your ass, I said. If this isn't where you live, why don't you mind your own damned business?"

There was no way that the medical examiner was going to make him understand. He gripped the door to pull it open, heading in.