Dan Simmons - A Winter Haunting

Dale screamed again and slammed his fists into the jackal ears of the hound above him. The dog leaped back.

Rolling onto his knees again and struggling to stand, Dale got a last glimpse of Michelle—just her pale legs and one hand, no longer flailing but dragging limply—as the four black dogs dragged her out of the last light from the open kitchen door, toward the black fields and the unseen barn. The dogs were snarling and snapping, tugging first one part of her and then another.

“You fucking goddamned fucking. . .” screamed Dale, blood running into his eyes and the earth seeming to pitch and roll as he staggered toward the pack of hounds. He could not see them or their victim now. Dale remembered the shotgun, hesitating only a second before turning back to get it. Even if it cost him a few seconds, he would be useless out there in the dark with the beasts unless he had a weapon.

Dale swung back to the concrete stoop and had just stumbled up onto it when the fifth dog hit him again—leaping through the air, its black coat gleaming silver-black in the yellow light from the kitchen—and then both he and the hound were flying off the stoop, striking the wall of the farmhouse once before bouncing away. Dale fell facedown in the black dirt, felt the earth rise like a wall below him, and felt himself sliding backward down it, toward the snarling hound behind him, into darkness.

AND then what happened?”

“I already told you what happened next.”

“Tell us again,” said the deputy sheriff.

Dale sighed. He was very tired and his head hurt. The local anesthetic was wearing off where he had received nine stitches for the cut on his head, and a tetanus shot made his arm ache even through the throb of various bruises. But the headache was the worst part. The nurses had let him get dressed again, and now he and the sheriff’s deputies were talking in an empty lounge just off the emergency room at the Oak Hill Hospital. It was a little after three in the morning, but there were no windows in the lounge and the fluorescent lights were very bright. The air smelled of burned coffee.

“After you left the farmhouse,” prompted Deputy Presser. He was the older of the two men in uniform but still in his twenties, with a florid face and short-cropped blond hair. “How long was that after you say you lost consciousness?”

Dale shrugged and then regretted the movement. His arms and shoulders and ribs ached as if someone had been kicking him with hobnailed boots. The headache stabbed behind his eyes like so many steel darts. “After I left the farmhouse,” Dale said slowly, “I walked to the KWIK’N’EZ at the I-74 exit.”

“But you say you had a cell phone. You could’ve used it before you got to the KWIK’N’EZ.”

“I said that I couldn’t find the cell phone,” Dale said softly, so as not to aggravate the headache. He tried to place words between waves of pain. “I looked in my truck, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it slipped down between the seats. The Land Cruiser’s interior lights weren’t working. I could have looked in the house, but I thought it was important to get out of there and call for help.”

“Your sports utility vehicle would not start,” said the deputy in a monotone. He was glancing at the cheap spiral notepad in his hand. Dale could see the price sticker with its bar code still on the back of the notepad.

“My sports utility would not start,” confirmed Dale. “The battery. . . it wouldn’t even turn over.”

“But Deputy Reiss got it started on the first try using the keys you lent us,” said the sheriff’s deputy. He glanced at the younger deputy sitting on the other side of the table. The younger man nodded seriously in confirmation.

Dale started to shrug again but then nodded. “I don’t know why it didn’t start earlier.”

“And you have no phone at your residence. At the residence you currently lease?”

Dale took a breath. Nodded again. They had been going over this in one form or another since midnight. “You’re sure there’s no sign of Michelle?” he asked the younger deputy.

“Nope,” said Deputy Dick Reiss. His name badge was pinned over his left shirt pocket.

“It’s dark out there,” said Dale. “Did you check the big barn?”

“Taylor and me checked all the barns and sheds,” said Deputy Reiss. Dale saw for the first time that the young man had a small wad of tobacco tucked between his cheek and gum.

The older deputy held up the notepad as a gesture for Deputy Reiss to shut up. “Mr. Stewart—do you prefer ‘Mister’ or ‘Professor’?”

“I don’t care,” Dale said tiredly.

“Mr. Stewart,” continued the deputy, “why did you walk the three miles to the KWIK’N’EZ? Why not to a neighbor’s house? The Fallons live just a mile and a half north of you. The Bachmanns are just three quarters of a mile back toward the Hard Road—right before the cemetery.”

“Bachmanns?” said Dale. “Oh, that’s who live in Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s house now.”

Deputy Brian Presser returned a blank gaze.

Dale shook his head again. “If we’re talking about Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s old house just north of the cemetery, it was dark. There were no vehicles in the driveway. A big dog was barking in the side yard. I kept walking.”

“But why the KWIK’N’EZ rather than into town, Mr. Stewart?”

“I couldn’t remember where there was a pay phone in town,” said Dale. “I thought there might be one at the post office or in front of the bank, but I couldn’t remember. And it seemed darker in that direction. When I got to Jubilee College Road. . . well, I could see the lights of the KWIK’N’EZ just a mile or so ahead along the cutoff past the Hard Road.” He touched his throbbing temple. “It seemed. . . safer. A straight line.”

Deputy Presser wrote something in his tiny notepad. Dale noticed that the deputy’s fingers went white with the tension of holding the pen and that the fingers bent almost concave in the same too-tight way that some of his students at the university had held their pens while taking notes.

Dale cleared his throat. “I didn’t actually make the call,” he said. “I was. . . well, I sort of lost consciousness again when I got to the gas station. I just asked the night man there to call the police and then I sat down on the floor next to the frozen foods until your deputy arrived. Not Deputy Reiss. The other one.”

“Deputy Taylor,” said Deputy Presser.

“The sheriff’s not involved?” asked Dale. He had been relieved to the marrow of his bones when C.J. Congden had not responded to the call.

“No, sir,” said Presser. “The sheriff’s taken his family up to Chicago for the holidays. He’ll be back day after tomorrow. Did you say you knew the sheriff, Mr. Stewart?”

“A long time ago,” said Dale. “We went to school together. A long, long time ago.”

Deputy Presser looked up at this, then made a note in his notepad.

“Jesus Christ,” said Dale, shaking with fatigue and the aftereffects of shock, “aren’t you going to get some people to look for Michelle? Those. . . animals. . . might have dragged her anywhere. She could still be alive!”

“Yes, sir. Come daylight, we’ll have some folks out there. But tonight we’ve still got to get some things straight. You say she drove a white Toyota pickup truck?”

“A Tundra, I think,” said Dale. He looked up at the two deputies. “It must still be parked there at The Jolly. . . at the farm.”

“No,” said Presser. “When Deputy Taylor and Deputy Reiss here drove out to the old McBride place, there was no white pickup. No vehicle whatosever. . . except for your Toyota Land Cruiser, of course. Which started right up when Deputy Reiss tried it with the keys you gave him.”