Charles Grant - The Pet

He turned to walk away, turned back and pointed at the street, his arm so rigid it began to tremble.

“And she goes away with him, just when I need her! What the hell kind of love is that, huh? What the goddamned hell kind of love is that when you …”

The fog. And the red. And the black shadow in the trees.

“What am I going to do?” he asked. “What am I going to do?”

A hoof pawed at the ground ( greenfire ), the eyes narrowed, the head raised.

He stepped away, and blinked, and suddenly knew what he had said when the red vanished and the fire died away.

“No, wait a minute,” he said, and stretched out a hand. “God, no, I didn’t mean—”

It was gone.

Don’s mouth opened, and no sound came out.

It was gone, the fog swirling around black laced with fire, and there was no question, now, about what Tracey meant.

It wasn’t helping him at all. It was protecting him against hurt, and it didn’t make any difference whether he willed it or not. When he hurt, he was rid of whatever had caused it. Imagined or not.

Tracey? Oh Jesus, please not Tracey!

Anguish twisted his features, fear jerked him around, and whatever he cried was lost in the wind, and the sheeting cold rain that bore down on his head.

She saw it in the outside mirror.

The sudden downpour had startled Jeff into slowing, the store and streetlights broken into kaleidoscopic shards that smeared on the blacktop and ran down the windshield. The wipers worked as fast as they could, but it was nearly impossible to see where they were going, and she was about to ask him if he’d pull over and wait when she rubbed the back of her neck and glanced to her right.

And saw it.

And suddenly it was too late to talk, too late to turn around, and too late to explain why the air in her lungs was suddenly barbed and the rain had suddenly grown intolerably loud.

Twisting around, a hand braced on the dashboard, she saw the empty street behind her, reflections and distortions and blossoms of water short-lived on the tarmac. And the pocket of dense fog that moved steadily toward them, ragged edges ripped away by the wind, its bottom spilling under parked cars to the gutters to mingle with the rain. It reached no higher than the telephone poles, did not spread to the sidewalk — it followed them as though being towed, and when they slipped through a stretch of unlighted shops, she saw in its center the greeneyes, the greenfire, the suggestion of shadow darker than itself.

“Jeff,” she said fearfully.

“Boy, he looked terrible,” Jeff said, fighting with the wheel to keep the car from sliding on the oil-slick avenue. “God. I don’t know how he keeps it together, y’know? If I were him, I’d probably look for the nearest cliff, you know what I mean?”

“Jeff, please.”

“Trace, I’m doing the best I can, but I can’t pull over here. There isn’t any room. You want a bus to come up and bash us into New York? Take it easy, we’re almost there.”

Thunder was the rain that slammed on the roof; lightning was the flare of swinging traffic signals straining against their wires.

“Jeff, go faster.”

He looked at her, amazed. “What? In this? But you just told me to slow down, Tracey!”

“Jesus, Jeff, don’t argue!”

He saw her looking out the back and checked the rearview mirror, frowning at the white that filled the back window. “What the hell is that? It can’t be spray, I’m not going that fast.”

Greenfire that licked and curled toward the car.

Tracey closed her eyes and prayed. Even in talking with Don she didn’t believe it, was more inclined to think she had been infected by his own fantasy, his understandable and unnecessary need to get away for a while. She’d known those moments herself, but never so intensely, never so importantly that she’d thought them real.

A white ribbon drifted over her window and she rubbed at it frantically, hoping it was only condensation from her shallow breathing. It didn’t leave, she couldn’t banish it, and she turned to Jeff and urged him to hurry.

“Tracey, look—”

The fog dropped a strand over the windshield and she muffled a scream, jammed her foot down on his, and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Jeff yelled in alarm and shoved her away, and the car began to slide from one side of the street to the other, narrowly missing a parked car, a tipped garbage can, the point of a curb. He sawed at the steering wheel, touched and released the brake, his mouth open and swearing while he stared at the road ahead.

Alongside, then. It was coming up on her side and she whimpered Don’s name.

“Tracey,” he said nervously, “what’s going on?”

She had to look away. She had to look at him because of the abrupt fear that pitched his voice high and pulled his lips away from his teeth. His glasses were slipping down his nose, and he kept tossing his head back because he didn’t dare release his hands. He was pale, and in the stuffy car his face was running perspiration.

The wind buffeted them, shoved them, and the wiper on her side stuck midway to the top.

“I gotta stop,” he said. “We’re going too fast, I gotta stop or we’ll crack—”

“No!” she screamed, and lunged for the accelerator again.

He swung out a frantic arm and caught her across the throat. She gagged and fell back, gulping for a breath, shaking the tears from her eyes, turned her head slowly and inhaled a scream when she saw the stallion’s left shoulder even with her door.

It lowered its head, and she saw the green unwinking eye.

Jeff yelled then and the car swung into a skid, helped by the wind and pummeled by the rain. Tracey slapped one hand to the dashboard to brace herself, put her right hand over the door handle in case she had to leap out.

The car slewed, spun, and they were thrown to the roof when it thumped over a curb, were thrown back, then snapped forward when it crashed into a tree that loomed out of the fog. Tracey’s arm took the shock to her shoulder, and she moaned but kept her head from striking the windshield. Jeff, however, had been knocked into the wheel and he was slumped over it when she was able to clear her vision, a sliver of blood at the corner of his mouth, his arms limp at his sides.

“Jeff! Oh, Jeff, please!”

She tugged at him, pushed him, but he only sagged back and slid over, landing partially on her lap. The fog seeped through a crack in his window.

“Jeff, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She eased him upright, kicked open her door, and fell to her knees into the street. The car was half up one of the boulevard islands, a maple cracked over its top and scraping the roof with its branches. Shading her eyes against the rain, she tried to see how close she was to home, how close the stallion was. But there was only the mist being shredded by the rain and the dark bulk of the car rocking slowly in the wind.

On your feet, she ordered, and did it; find yourself, she demanded, and she did it, gasping when she realized they were far past her street, had jumped the island across from the park’s entrance.

The boulevard was empty.

She staggered around the back of the car and held her hair away from her eyes as she reached for the driver’s door. The wind kicked her against it, and hot needles of pain spun around her shoulder and spiraled her back. She gasped. Her mouth opened and filled with rain. She spat and reached again, and uttered a short cry.

The boulevard was empty, except for the stallion galloping down the east-bound lane — neck stretched and greenfire, ears back and greeneyes, billows of smoke-fog filling the air around it, the sound of its hooves replacing the rain’s thunder.