Dan Simmons - A Winter Haunting

Why is the black dog back? Dale went into the bathroom, ran some tap water into one of the little plastic glasses—sanitarily wrapped for his protection—and came back and sat on the small couch and thought about it.

I don’t like running away from here. From Duane’s place. Why not? Duane’s farm and Elm Haven and Oak Hill and C.J. Congden and even Michelle Staffney were depressing enough in their own right. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to leave now?

No. Missoula and the ranch were out of bounds for him now. He knew that. If he returned, it was probable that he would finish what he started on November 4 a year earlier.

But why Duane’s drafty old place? Why Elm Haven? Because he had old connections there. Because the place had changed—for the worse—but so had he, and perhaps it was necessary for him to find that connection to his childhood, to something good about himself, to Duane, to the reason he became a writer and a teacher.

And there’s the book. This is the only place I can write it. For the first time, he consciously acknowledged that he was going to spend his sabbatical year writing a novel about Duane, about Elm Haven, about 1960, about the summer he had so much trouble remembering, and, ultimately, about himself.

Vanity, vanity, vanity. He knew better. It would take great humility to write this novel: humility, not the professorial, historical, commercial, and auctorial cleverness that went into his Jim Bridger mountain man books. This novel would be just for him. And he would need both Duane’s notebooks and a connection with Duane’s life to write it.

The heater hummed on. A big truck roared up through its endless gears out on War Memorial Drive. Dale turned the light out and went back to sleep, even without his Prozac and flurazepam and doxepin.

Stewart! Dale. . . Stewart!”

Dale paused just outside the garage where the mechanics were finishing mounting the Land Cruiser’s wheels with his two new tires. He looked over his shoulder, but he had recognized the voice.

Sheriff C.J. Congden was strolling across the oily concrete driveway toward him. Congden had one hand on the revolver in his holster. He was wheezing slightly as he came. Dale waited.

“Miller, huh?” said Congden. “ Tom Miller. Yeah, cute. Well, I knew I’d seen your ugly-ass face before.”

“Do you want something, Sheriff?” Unlike the day before, Dale’s pulse did not race. He felt completely calm.

“Why’d you lie to me, Stewart?” snapped Congden. “I ought to fucking arrest you.”

“For not telling you my real name?” said Dale and smiled.

“For misrepresenting yourself to a peace officer,” wheezed Congden. His fat fingers continued tapping at the grip of his revolver. Leather creaked.

Dale shrugged and waited.

Congden squinted at him. “I remember you, Stewart. You and that fucking bunch of weasel friends of yours.”

“Watch your language, Sheriff,” said Dale. “You’re a public servant now, not the town bully. Get nasty with me and I’ll swear out a complaint.”

“ Fuck your complaint,” growled Congden, but he looked around the garage to see who was listening. The brrrpp-brrrppp of the air wrench putting on the Land Cruiser’s lug nuts sufficiently covered the conversation. “And fuck you, Stewart.”

“You have a nice day, too, Sheriff,” said Dale and turned back to watch them lower his truck on the lift.

Congden walked toward the open garage door and then paused. “I know where you’re staying.”

Dale was sure that he did. It was a small county.

Congden walked away and Dale called after him, “Hey, Sheriff—any luck finding those punks who just cost me more than three hundred dollars?”

C.J. Congden did not look back.

The beautiful morning had shamed Dale. The snow had turned into sleet during the night, the sleet into rain, but the morning dawned sunny and warmer and sweet-smelling. Dale went out to breakfast at a pancake house across the parking lot from the Comfort Suites. The food was good, the coffee was good, and the waitress was friendly. Dale read the morning Peoria Journal Star and felt better than he had in weeks.

War Memorial Drive became Highway 150 outside of Peoria, and Dale drove the Buick the back way to Elm Haven, leaving the window open to air the cigarette smell out of the car. He was surprised to note that half of the trees still had their leaves and that those leaves still held deep fall colors. It was a beautiful day.

Just at the edge of Peoria’s western limits—about ten miles beyond the city he’d known as a boy in Elm Haven—there was a plaza with a hardware and a sports store. Dale visited both and came out with a thirty-six-inch crowbar and a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He tossed both in the trunk of the Buick and drove on to Duane’s farmhouse.

The fields on either side of the approach lane were wet and sweet-smelling. Dale stopped the Buick in front of the house, but there was no way he could tell if the upstairs light was on in all that blazing daylight. He pulled to the side, parked the Buick, retrieved the baseball bat from the trunk, and walked up to the side door.

It was locked, just as he’d left it. Dale let himself in and stood in the kitchen a moment.

“Hello?” He heard the slightest echo of his own voice and had to smile. He’d be damned if he’d yell “Is anyone there?” just before the supernatural killer in the hockey mask jumped out to cut him down.

He searched the first floor. Everything seemed to be as he’d left it. He went down into the basement. No hockey-mask killers there. He remembered that he’d stored his Savage over-and-under down here in two pieces, but after checking that the pieces were where he’d put them, he decided not to add it to his Louisville Slugger arsenal. Besides, he’d thrown away the only shotgun shell.

Dale went up the stairs.

The layers of yellowing plastic were intact. Dale checked the nails and staples around the wood frame, but they had not been pulled out or replaced. The frame itself had been nailed into the door frame at the head of the stairs—decades ago. Dale pushed against the plastic, but it yielded only slightly, crackling a bit. If someone had visited the upstairs, they’d not come this way.

Not if they’re human.

Dale had deliberately phrased that thought to amuse himself, but in the darkness of the stairway, it didn’t seem that funny. He leaned closer to peer through the heavy plastic. The vague outlines of a hallway and a table. Sunlight through thick curtains. Nothing moved.

Dale pulled out his multi-use knife and set the longest blade against the plastic. He hesitated a second and then folded the blade back and set the knife back in his pocket. He laid the baseball bat against the yellowed plastic and tapped it lightly. Let sleeping dogs lie.

As if on cue, there came the scrabble of claws against the linoleum downstairs.

Dale whirled, bat raised, just in time to see a very small black dog run from the parlor hall into the kitchen.

“Jesus Christ!” said Dale, his heart pounding.

He clattered down the stairs and ran into the kitchen just in time to see the outer screen bang shut. He’d left the inner door open and the little dog had been able to push the screen door out.

Dale ran outside and stood on the stoop, bat ready. He half expected the small black dog to be out of sight—a delusion—but there it went, running hellbent-for-leather toward the outbuildings behind the farm, its little black ass wiggling as it ran.

Dale almost laughed. He’d been ready for the undead killer in the hockey mask and instead he’d found a lap dog. Whatever the little thing was, it was definitely a dog and definitely a shrimp—terrier-sized, but short-haired. All black except for a glimpse of pale or pink on its muzzle. Short ears.