David Wong - John Dies at the End

“Hey, Johnny. I really appreciate you comin’ by like this.”

He gave John a hard, manly handshake.

“So what’s goin’ on?”

“Do you, uh, know whose house this is?”

“Strom Cuzewon?” John offered.

A moment of confused silence from Drake.

“Um, no. It’s Ken Phillipe, the Channel Five weather guy.”

“Oh,” said John, seeming unsatisfied. I glanced back at the plates, STRMQQ 1.

“The Qs are supposed to look like a pair of eyes,” I informed John. “The license plate means ‘Storm Watcher.’ ”

John looked at the plates, then back at me, then at the plates again. I noticed for the first time that the big bay window into the living room of the house had been bashed in, the curtains behind it rustling in the breeze. Finally John said, “So somebody killed the weather guy?”

Drake grunted. “Sorta. Damnedest thing you ever saw.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“We ain’t been inside the house yet. There’s this, dog.” To me he said, “John here said he thought it sounded like yours.”

I couldn’t see around the bay window curtains, so I walked up to the front door and peered into the decorative little window, into the living room. A girl sat on an overstuffed leather couch, maybe a few years younger than me, silken auburn hair pulled into a ponytail. Little wisps of bangs drifted down over her smooth forehead, just above her gorgeous almond eyes. She wore cutoff sweatshorts and had the most perfect pair of tanned thighs I have ever seen. I felt my hand instinctively go up to straighten my hair and I was suddenly horribly aware of every physical flaw on my body. Every ounce of fat, the little scar on my cheek.

If I looked like that, I would wear shorts in October, too. I’d quit my job and spend all day at home, gently caressing myself. Did I shave today?

On the floor next to the couch was a bloody dead person.

“That’s the weather guy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” confirmed Drake.

“Do you see the girl sitting on the couch?”

“Look, buddy, I told ya we’ve tried to get to her in there, but the dog…”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic. I just wanted to know if you could see her.”

“That’s Krissy Lovelace, their neighbor. She’s been sitting like that since we got here, frozen. We even tried to signal to her but she won’t respond. Like she’s just blanked out.”

“So she killed him?”

“No, his throat was torn out. By the dog. It’s still in there. That’s the problem. Every time we try to get in, it-”

“Damn,” I interrupted. “It’s too bad this city doesn’t have a special department to, you know, control animals. Oh, wait. We do. It’s called Animal Control. Do you want their number?”

“Wait a second,” said John. “You’re saying Molly did that?” He turned to me. “Dave, we sat there and poked at Molly with a stick for exactly twenty-three minutes that one time before she even growled. She couldn’t do that to a man.”

“No,” Drake said. “You still don’t understand. My guys won’t even go in and I don’t blame ’em. It’s somethin’… unnatural.”

I peered in again. “Well, I don’t see a dog. And I’m not seeing why we can’t just-”

Molly came into view. It was her all right, the rusty coat of an Irish retriever or whatever she was, now shampooed and combed to perfection. Her new owner apparently groomed her more than I had. This combination of girl and dog could make a good living as models in the dog-supply industry.

The only other thing that was different about Molly was the blood staining her muzzle and the fact that she was floating three feet off the floor.

Molly’s legs were stiff below her as she moved, buzzing slowly across the room as if on a track and hung by invisible threads. When Molly came near the door she turned her head my way and in a clear but guttural voice said, “I serve none but Korrok.”

Molly continued to float around the room like a shaggy little blimp.

Here. We. Go. Again.

I TURNED FROMthe door. John had this look on his face like this was all routine. Ah, yes, a floating-dog scenario. We have the parts in the truck.

Drake said, “A neighbor saw it, said Krissy was just walking the dog along the street out there and all of a sudden the thing takes off. The damned thing breaks its leash and races across the lawn like it was fired from a cannon. It then jumps through the plate-glass window. She said the dog jumped into the air and tore out Phillipe’s throat in half a second. I guess Ms. Lovelace ran inside after it, started bawling and then she just shut down. Too much for her. I kinda feel like doing that myself. Not the bawling part, mind you.”

I said, “Wait. Did you hear what the dog said just now?”

“Said? She barked…”

“Ah. Okay. And when you look at the dog right now, she’s…”

“Floatin’ a few feet off the floor.”

You’d think the fact that other people could witness the weirdness would have comforted me. It didn’t. It meant the rules had changed already.

“John and I need to have a word about this. We’ll, uh, be right back.”

On the way back to my car, I said, “We’re driving away as fast as we can. Right to the bakery counter at the grocery store.”

“Dave, those guys could see her. All the cops. They saw her floatin’ around and doing supernatural shit. That’s new.”

“ That’s new? Why is she floating at all, John?”

“Gotta be the sauce, right? She got more of it than any of us. I was always amazed she survived. Maybe, you know, they got to her finally.”

“After all this time? None of this makes sense.”

“Did you hear what she said?”

“She said, ‘I serve none but Korrok.’”

Speaking that meaningless word made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, though I couldn’t pin down why. My mind almost made a connection, then abruptly steered clear of it nearly hard enough to make the train of thought go flying out of my ear.

“You sure?” said John. “I thought she said, ‘I serve none but to rock.’ I was about to agree with her.”

“Whatever, John.”

“So who’s Korrok?”

“Don’t know.”

And keeping it that way is making my brain’s denial gland work overtime.

“You still got the mints in your car?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

John dug around in the glove compartment and pulled out a little roll of candies somebody had mailed to me a while back. Crazy people mail me things. Most of it I throw on a shelf in my toolshed and forget.

We went back to the front door of the house, and I shook one of the candies out into my palm. I very slowly turned the knob and pushed the door in, just enough to lean my head and my right arm through.

Molly the Hoverdog was about ten feet away, behind the couch and her incredibly hot new owner. I held out the candy, which immediately caught Molly’s attention.

I tossed the candy on the floor and quickly ducked back out. Molly floated over to it, tilted in midair until her snout was just over the white morsel. She lapped it up.

For a moment, nothing. John was about to supply the “it’s not working” when, with a wet, tearing KERRRAAAAACTCH sound, Molly exploded like a meat piñata at a birthday party for very strong, invisible children.

A couple of cops behind us cheered. Drake walked up. “What the hell was that?”

John answered for me. “It was a TestaMint. Little candies with Bible verses printed on them. You can get them at your local Christian bookstore. We were sort of hoping it would just drive the evil out of her, but…” John shrugged, businesslike. These things happen sometimes.