Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

She saw Wraith then, standing a few feet away, a dark shape in the deepening gray, so still he might have been carved from stone. She didn't know his name then, or what he was, or where he had come from. She stared at him, unable to look away, riveted by the sight of him. She thought he was the biggest creature she had ever seen this close up, bigger even, it seemed to her at that moment, than the horses she had petted once on a visit to the Lehman farm. He appeared to be some sort of dog, immense and fierce–looking and as immovable as the massive shade trees that grew in her backyard. He was brindle in color; his muzzle and head bore tiger–stripe markings and his body hair bristled like a porcupine's quills. Oddly enough, she was not frightened by him. She would always remember that. She was awestruck, but she was not frightened. Not in the way she was of the feeders. He was there, she realized, without quite being sure why, to protect her from them.

Then he disappeared, and she was alone. He simply faded away, as if composed of smoke scattered by a sudden gust of wind. She stared into the space he had occupied, wondering at him. The park stretched away before her, silent and empty in the failing light. Then the rain began to fall in earnest, and she made a dash for the house.

She saw Wraith often after that, possibly because she was looking for him, possibly because he had decided to reveal himself. She still didn't know what he was, and neither did anyone else. Pick told her later that he was some sort of crossbreed, a mix of dog and wolf. But really, since he was created from and held together by magic, his genetic origins didn't make any difference. Whatever he was, he was probably the only one of his kind. Pick confirmed her impression that he was there to protect her. Matter of fact, he advised rather solemnly, Wraith had been shadowing her since the first time she had come into the park, still a baby in her stroller. She wondered at first how she could have missed seeing him, but then discovered that she had missed seeing a lot of other things as well, and it didn't seem so odd.

When she finally told her grandmother about Wraith, her grandmother's response was strange. She didn't question what Nest was telling her. She didn't suggest that Nest might be mistaken or confused. She went all still for a moment, her eyes assumed a distant look, and her thin, old hands tightened about the mittens she was knitting.

"Did you see anything else?" she asked softly.

"No," said Nest, wondering suddenly if there was something she should have seen.

"He just appeared, this dog did? The feeders came close to you, and the dog appeared?" Gran's eyes were sharp and bright.

"Yes. That first time. Now I just see him following me sometimes, watching me. He doesn't come too close. He always stays back. But the feeders are afraid of him. I can tell."

Her grandmother was silent.

"Do you know what he is?" Nest pressed anxiously.

Her grandmother held her gaze. "Perhaps."

"Is he there to protect me?"

"I think we have to find that out."

Nest frowned. "Who sent him, Gran?"

But her grandmother only shook her head and turned away. "I don't know," she answered, but the way she said it made Nest think that maybe she did.

For a long tune, Nest was the only one who saw the dog. Sometimes her grandmother would come into the park with her, but the dog did not show himself on those occasions.

Then one day, for no reason that Nest could ever determine, he appeared out of a cluster of spruce at twilight while the old woman and her granddaughter walked through the west–end play area toward the cliffs. Her grandmother froze, holding on to the little girl's hand tightly.

"Gran?" Nest said uncertainly.

"Wait here for me, Nest," her grandmother replied. "Don't move."

The old woman walked up to the big animal and knelt before him. It was growing dark, and it was hard to see clearly, but it seemed to Nest as if her grandmother was speaking to the beast. It was very quiet, and she could almost hear the old woman's words. She remained standing for a while, but then she grew tired and sat down on the grass to wait. There was no one else around. Stars began to appear in the sky and shadows to swallow the last of the fading light. Her grandmother and the dog were staring at each other, locked hi a strange, silent communication that went on for a very long time.

Finally her grandmother rose and came back to her. The strange dog watched for a moment, then slowly melted back into the shadows.

"It's all right, Nest," her grandmother whispered in a thin, weary voice, taking her hand once more. "His name is Wraith. He is here to protect you."

She never spoke of the meeting again.

As Nest wriggled her way through the hedgerow at the back of her yard, she paused for a moment at the edge of the rutted dirt service road that ran parallel to the south boundary of the lot and recalled anew how Sinnissippi Park had appeared to her that first time. So long ago, she thought, and smiled at the memory. The park had seemed much bigger then, a vast, sprawling, mysterious world of secrets waiting to be discovered and adventures begging to be lived. At night, sometimes, when she was abroad with Pick, she still felt as she had when she was five, and the park, with its dark woods and gloomy ravines, with its murky sloughs and massive cliffs, seemed as large and unfathomable as it had then.

But now, in the harsh light of the July midday, the sun blazing down out of another cloudless sky, the heat a faint shimmer rising off the burned–out flats, the park seemed small and constrained. The ball fields lay just beyond the service road, their parched diamonds turned dusty and hardened and dry, their grassy outfields gray–tipped and spiky. There were four altogether, two close and two across the way east. Farther on, a cluster of hardwoods and spruce shaded a play area for small children, replete with swings and monkey bars and teeter–totters and painted animals on heavy springs set in concrete that you could climb aboard and ride.

The entrance to the park was to Nest's immediate right, and the blacktop road leading into the park ran under the crossbar toward the river before splitting off in two directions. If you went right, you traveled to the turnaround and the cliffs, where the previous night she had rescued Bennett Scott. Beyond the turnaround, separated from the park by a high chain–link fence that any kid over the age of seven who was worth his salt could climb, was Riverside Cemetery, rolling, tree–shaded, and sublimely peaceful. The cemetery was where her mother was buried. If you turned left off the blacktop, you either looped down under a bridge to the riverbank at the bottom of the cliffs, where a few picnic tables were situated, or you continued on some distance to the east end of the park where a large, sheltered pavilion, a toboggan slide, a playground, and the deep woods waited. The toboggan slide ran all the way from the heights beyond the parking lot to the reedy depths of the bayou. A good run hi deep winter would take you out across the ice all the way to the embankment that supported the railroad tracks running east to Chicago and west to the plains. Stretching a ran to the embankment was every toboggan rider's goal. Nest had done it three times. There were large brick–chimney and smaller iron hibachi–style cooking stations and wooden picnic tables all over the park, so that any number of church outings or family reunions could be carried on at one tune. Farther east, back in the deep woods, there were nature trails that ran from the Woodland Heights subdivision where Robert Heppler lived down to the banks of the Rock River. There were trees that were well over two hundred years old. Some of the oaks and elms and shagbark hickories rose over a hundred feet, and the park was filled with dark, mysterious places that whispered of things you couldn't see, but could only imagine and secretly wish for.