John Saul - Nathaniel

It had been so strange, so flat. Had he really heard it at all?

He tried to picture it all in his mind: the blackness of the barn and the faint traces of silvery moonlight that had filtered through the wall.

How could he have seen anything? And he hadn't, he realized, really heard anything. That voice had been in his head, like the voice he had heard just now. Besides, he'd had a headache that night, and he could never quite remember exactly what happened when he had one of those headaches.

Maybe Ryan was right. Maybe he was crazy.

He decided he wouldn't talk anymore about what had happened last night, not to anybody. Still, he wished he could talk to his dad about it. His father had always been able to help him figure things out, but now he couldn't do that. Nor could he talk to his grandfather. He shuddered as he remembered the beating a couple of days ago-never his grandfather. But maybe his grandmother. Maybe sometime when he was alone with his grandmother, he'd talk to her about it.

Maybe…

As soon as Janet and Michael had left the house that morning, Amos had begun calling around Prairie Bend, trying to find Shadow's owner.

No one, however, was missing a dog, nor did anyone respond to Amos's description of Shadow. He hung up the phone after the last call and turned to Anna. "Well, I guess it's a stray. I'm gonna get my gun."

Anna glared at her husband. "You mean you're going to shoot that dog?"

"That's what I mean to do," Amos replied, his voice grim.

"No."

Amos turned baleful eyes on his wife. "What did you say?"

"There's no reason to shoot it. What's it done to you?"

"I don't like dogs."

"Sometimes I don't like you, either," Anna retorted, her voice low but steady. "Does that mean I should shoot you?"

"Anna-"

"It's not your dog, Amos. It's Michael's dog. It may have saved his life, and if you do anything to that animal, Michael will never forgive you. Your daughter hates you, and your son ran away from you. Do you want your grandson to hate you, too?"

"He'll never know," Amos told her. "By the time he gets home, the dog will be dead and buried. We'll tell him it ran away. He'll believe us."

"He might," Anna agreed. "He might believe us if we both told him that, but if you tell him the dog ran off, and I tell him you shot it, who's he going to believe?"

Amos's eyes hardened. "You wouldn't do that, Anna. You've never gone against my wishes, and you won't now."

"I will," Anna told him, folding her hands in her lap. "This time I will. You leave that dog alone."

Amos left the house without another word, but he felt his wife's eyes oh him as he crossed the yard to the barn.

His wife's eyes, and Shadow's eyes.

The dog was curled up next to the back porch, his habitual post when Michael either was in the house or had left him behind. When the kitchen door suddenly swung open, and Amos's heavy tread struck the porch, Shadow's body tensed, and a vaguely menacing sound rumbled from his throat. His hackles raised slightly, but he made no move to get up. Amos regarded the dog with angry eyes.

"Get out of here," he said. He drew his right foot back, then swung it forward. Before the kick could land, Shadow had leapt to his feet and moved a few yards from the house. Amos followed him.

A yard at a time, Shadow backed away toward the barn. Amos kept steady pace with him, softly cursing at the dog, constantly trying to land one of his boots on Shadow's flank. But each time he lashed out with his foot, Shadow dodged away from him.

Suddenly the barn was between them and the house, and Shadow stopped backing away. He crouched low to the ground, and his ears lay back flat against his head. His snarl was loud now, and to Amos it appeared that a cunning had come into the animal's eyes.

Amos tried one more kick.

This time, Shadow made no attempt to leap away from Amos's foot. Instead, he seemed to wait until the last possible instant, then whipped his body to one side, at the same time twisting his neck so he could clamp his massive jaws down on Amos's ankle. With a lunge, he threw Amos off balance, and the big man fell heavily to the ground, grunting in a combination of pain and anger. In another second Shadow had abandoned his grip on Amos's ankle, and was at his throat, his fangs bared, saliva glistening on his tongue. For a long moment, Amos stared into the animal's eyes, only inches from his own, sure that those sharp canine teeth were about to begin slashing at him.

But it didn't happen. Instead of attacking Amos, Shadow suddenly moved forward, raising his leg.

A stream of hot yellow fluid spurted over Amos, drenching his shirt front, stinging his eyes, gagging him as some of it penetrated his mouth to trickle down his throat. And then, when he was through, Shadow moved off to sit on the ground a few feet away, his tail curled around his legs, his ears up, his tongue hanging from his open mouth.

Enraged, Amos lay still for a moment, then rose to his feet and started toward the house. But when he emerged a few minutes later, one hand gripping his gun, the yard was empty.

Shadow had disappeared.

The weeks passed quickly. Janet spent her time working on the little farmhouse that she was fast coming to think of as home. Prairie Bend itself was also becoming home, giving Janet a sense of belonging she hadn't felt since her childhood.

The village seemed to be making a project of her little farm. Every day, as she and Michael worked on the house, people dropped by. Some of them came to work, some of them came bearing supplies.

"Found this linoleum out in the shed. Just been sitting there for a couple of years now. Do me a favor and use it before it rots."

"Got an old wood-electric the missus won't use anymore. Think you might be able to find a place for it? It's not much, but it should last a year or two."

"Thought I'd use this lumber to build a new hog-shed, but I found a prefab I couldn't pass up. Maybe you can use it to brace up that old cyclone cellar. Fact is, I've got some time, and I could show you how it's done." That man spent the rest of the day and half of the next rebuilding her storm cellar with his own lumber, and acted as if she was doing him a favor by "getting him away from work for a couple of days."

And so it went. With each day Janet came to feel more a part of the community, came to feel the closeness of the people in Prairie Bend.

For Michael, though, it was a difficult time. He'd searched everywhere for Shadow, but been unable to find even a trace of the dog. The shepherd seemed to have vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. Every day, Michael asked his grandfather what had happened, and every day, Amos told him the same thing: "That's the way with dogs. They come and they go, and you can't count on them. Be glad that pain-in-the-neck beast's gone." But Michael was not glad, and no matter how Janet tried to cheer him up, his low spirits persisted.

Amos Hall pulled his Olds to a halt just before the driveway and waved the truck past him. That morning, the moving van had arrived from New York. Finally, after much delay and frustration, Janet and Michael were going to move into their own house. From the back seat, Amos heard Janet's sigh of satisfaction.

"Just look at it," she said. "It's perfect-just perfect."

"It did come out nice," Amos agreed. He glanced at Michael, beside him, but the boy remained silent. "We better get on up there before the movers wreck everything," Amos said. He started to put the car in gear, but Janet stopped him.

"No! I want to walk. I want to enjoy every second of it. After all the work, I just want to soak in what we've done. Come on, Michael!"

While the elder Halls drove on up to the house, Janet and Michael strolled slowly, enjoying the crunch of gravel under their feet.