John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

But Jared was no longer looking at Luke. His eyes were fixed on the cabin. It cowered in the humid afternoon heat like an exhausted, dying dog. Every one of its windows was cracked-several panes were missing entirely-and whatever paint the weathered boards might once have worn was long gone. There was a sagging front porch with no railing, and most of the roof was covered with corrugated metal, badly rusted by the Louisiana heat and rain.

Though he wasn't certain why, Jared knew the cabin was empty.

His eyes shifted from the cabin itself to the two hounds.

As if sensing his gaze, both dogs scrambled to their feet, tensing. As they caught sight of him, they went on point, tails held straight back, eyes fixed on him. As Jared took a step toward them, the wind shifted and the two dogs caught his scent.

He moved a step closer, and now the dogs lunged forward, the wail of their baying ripping the quiet of the afternoon.

"You nuts, Jared?" Luke Roberts demanded. "What if Jake's in there?"

"He's not," Jared said. "He's nowhere around here."

"How the hell do you know?" Luke asked, but Jared didn't bother to reply.

He moved closer to the two dogs, now struggling at the end of their chains, their teeth bared, their baying dropping to low snarls as they tried to get at him.

He stopped a foot beyond the reach of the nearest dog-the one whose chain was a foot or so shorter than the first, who leaped and thrashed as it struggled to get closer.

"You want me?" Jared asked, squatting low and extending his right hand out toward the snarling animal. "That what you want? You think you want a piece of me?"

The dog howled with rage and threw itself against its chain, lost its balance, and skidded in the mud the morning's rainstorm had left. Writhing for several seconds, it regained its footing and lunged at Jared once more.

Jared extended his fingers until they were within inches of the dog's snapping teeth. "That it?" he taunted. "That what you want?"

"Are you crazy?" Luke called. "If he gets loose-"

But Jared wasn't listening. "Try it," he whispered. "Go on, just try it. See what happens."

He darted his fingers out, and the dog's jaws snapped shut on them.

Luke howled as if he himself had been bitten. "Jesus!"

"Got a taste?" Jared whispered, his eyes fixed on the dog. Abruptly, the dog dropped back to cower on the ground. While the other animal continued its baying, still twisting to get at Jared, he reached down and put his fingers around the cowering dog's neck. "Not gonna do that again," he said softly. "Not ever gonna do that again!"

His fingers tightened around the animal's neck, and then he gave it a fast, hard jerk.

The animal screamed once, a high-pitched shriek of pain that was cut off as its neck snapped. It dropped back into the mud.

Luke stared mutely at the limp animal. "You killed him," he whispered.

Jared turned to look at him. "He bit me," he said, his voice reflecting no emotion. "What did you expect me to do, pat him on the head?"

The second dog, silent now, sniffed at its litter mate's lifeless corpse. Then it slunk back until it was huddled against the wall of the cabin.

Removing the chain from the dog's neck, Jared picked it up.

"What are you going to do with it?" Luke asked, his voice trembling.

Jared made no reply. Instead, he turned and carried the dead dog into Jake Cumberland's cabin.

The door closed behind him.

Jake Cumberland had been out on the lake most of the afternoon. The battered bucket that served him as a makeshift creel held half a dozen catfish-plenty for him and the two hounds. After he'd caught the last fish, about an hour ago, he thought about heading back home and taking the hounds out for a while. Check a few traps, maybe even do some hunting. But after being up most of last night, he felt tired; what his ma would have called bone-weary. It would've been okay if he'd slept through once he got home last night, but after the dogs had set to baying long before dawn, he'd been unable to get back to sleep. Just sort of lay there, trying to figure out what might have spooked them.

Probably just some critter, he'd told himself over and over again. A possum, maybe, or a 'coon. Except he'd known right away it wasn't a critter. The hounds had a different sound to them when they were on the scent of something they wanted to hunt. And this morning, when they jerked him awake with their first howl, he'd recognized it right away.

They were warning him.

That was why he'd lit the lantern and gone to the door.

He hadn't seen anybody.

Hadn't even heard anything.

But he'd still known someone was out there.

Out there, watching his cabin.

As he'd stood in the doorway, peering out into the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was hiding in the night, he heard an echo of his ma's voice whispering to him when he was just a boy: " You can feel him, child. When he's around, you can feel him. And you gotta be careful, real careful. 'Cause he's stronger'n you, child. Never forget that. He's stronger." So even after the dogs finally quieted, Jake had stayed awake, the lantern turned low, waiting for the dawn to come. When the eastern sky began to brighten, he didn't go to bed, but instead set about his usual chores. He tidied up the cabin and fed the dogs. Checked the traps he'd baited the day before, then spent the hour when the thunderstorm tore through skinning and cleaning the three rabbits that were all the traps had produced.

Finally, after frying up some of the rabbit meat to tide him over till supper, he'd headed out in the rowboat, telling himself he was going fishing, but knowing he'd probably spend most of the afternoon just dozing in the sun. But he hadn't really dozed, because even in the daylight his ma's words kept rolling around in his head like the last few beans in a coffee can.

" When he's around, you can feel him."

Who'd she been talking about? When he was a little boy, he always figured it must have been Mr. Conway. But even back then, he'd never really been sure what his ma was talking about, because he never felt much of anything at all when he saw his ma's boss. Not until that night.

That last night, back when he was only a boy…

Jake woke up to the smell of smoke and the flicker of candlelight, and knew before he even saw her what his mama was doing.

Getting ready to work her magic.

That was what she called it - workin' her magic. "But don't you be tryin' it," she'd warned him the first time he'd awakened in the middle of the night and found her sitting at the little table in the corner of their cabin. "Little boys got no business with this kind of magic." She sent him back to bed that night, but he stayed awake, peeking at her from beneath the folds of the single thin blanket that was all he had to keep him warm, even on the coldest nights.

And ever since, whenever he awakened to find his mama hunched over the scarred table, her hair wrapped in the blue bandanna he himself had saved up to buy her for Christmas one year, he tried not even to stir in bed, so she wouldn't know he was awake. Tonight, though, he slipped out of the bed and went to stand by his mama, watching worriedly as she prepared the effigy.

That, he knew, was what it was called.

An effigy.

To him, it looked like nothing more than a doll - and not really a very good one - but his mama had explained to him that it wasn't really a doll. "With an effigy, you can make things happen to people," she'd told him. Now, as he watched her fingers stitch the material around the stuffing, he remembered what his teacher had said in school a few days ago.

"Sister says magic's wrong," he said worriedly. "She says if you try to work voodoo on people, you'll go to Hell."