David Wong - John Dies at the End

Drake said, “Fine. Now let’s get one thing clear. I don’t want to hear any more about this after tonight. This gets written up as a dog attack. Somebody’ll be here later to clean up the scene and there’ll be a funeral and all of these here men will go home to their wives and try to act like the world ain’t gone crazy.”

I said, “Yeah that’s probably for the best-”

Drake’s head snapped toward me.

“Shut up. I ain’t done.”

Back to John he said, “Between you and me, I need to know some things. That was your dog, right?”

“Well, Dave’s dog. But she’s belonged to several people…”

“Hey. Look in there . He’s dead. You understand me? Now, you and I both know, things… happen around here. In this town. Always have. My daddy wore this uniform before me, he told me stories. But I ain’t never seen anything like that.”

John put up his hands defensively and said, “Neither have we.”

“But the last time things got weird, you were there. With the party and all those kids that died, the detective that left and never came back. Don’t be playin’ games with me. If you know somethin’, tell me. Tell me so I can prepare for it.”

John said, “We don’t know the situation. Not yet.”

On the word “yet” I had the urge to punch John in the kidneys.

“But let us take a shot at the girl.” We all glanced toward Krissy, still frozen on the sofa. “Before the psychiatrist gets here or whoever you bring in to reboot people like her.”

Drake stared John down, then decided to roll the dice. “You got two minutes.”

“Great.” John ducked through the front door. Drake reached out and grabbed his elbow.

“Hey.”

“Yeah.”

“This the end of the world?”

He said it in the earnest, stiff-jawed manner of a middle-aged man asking the doc if it’s cancer. It scared the fuck out of me.

John said, “We’ll give you a call if we find out.”

John went to the couch, but I couldn’t resist stopping by the red, six-foot circle of dog mush.

I found Molly’s collar near her head. The bloodstained tag:

I’m Molly.

Please return me to…

“Good-bye, Molly,” I muttered. “Of all the dogs I’ve known in my life, I’ve never seen a better driver.”

Just before I turned away, I noticed something else. Out of the pile of dog salsa stuck one of the paws, straight up into the air. On the foot, on the pad where the palm would be on a human hand, was a marking, like a tattoo.

It was a little black symbol, something like the mathematical symbol for pi. I pointed this out to John, who suggested I take the severed paw home for further study. I decided it wasn’t that important. Maybe something the breeder put on there, I didn’t know. I hadn’t noticed it before but how often do you look at a dog’s feet?

Krissy Lovelace wouldn’t make eye contact with us and she wouldn’t respond to our voices, but we did get her to her feet and led her outside. We took her to the backyard, saying generic, soothing words to her the whole way.

Once we were out of sight of the cops, John put his hands on Krissy’s shoulders and turned her to face him. He held up his smoldering cigarette.

“Miss? You see this? You start talkin’ or I’m gonna burn you with it.”

No response.

“Ma’am,” I offered. “I’d do what he says. I’m a good guy, a reasonable guy, but my friend here? He’s a wild man. And once he gets goin’ I can’t stop him. Now wouldn’t you rather talk to me?”

Nothing.

John jammed the lit cigarette into the back of her hand with a pssssst sound.

She yelped and yanked her hand back, shaking it madly. “What the heck are you doing ?” she screeched.

“Ma’am, we got a serious situation here,” John said, in a voice devoid of sympathy. “We got a dead guy and maybe a lot worse on the horizon if you can’t help us. Now I’m real sorry you saw what you saw but we ain’t got time for you to curl up into some psychological shell. Help us and you can just repress the memory later.”

She looked around for a moment, bewildered. Then:

“Molly!” she gasped. “Molly attacked Ken!”

“Yes, we know,” I said. “But we don’t get why-”

“And you say he died?”

“It’s-yes, he died. It’s a strange thing and we need you to tell us-”

“I’m gonna puke.” She leaned over. “Can I go to jail for this? Because it was my dog? Can they charge me with murder?”

“No. I-look, I don’t know. But we need to-”

“Miss,” John interrupted. “We have reason to believe your dog was possessed by some kind of Hell demon. Has Molly ever spoken to you before?”

Pause.

“Who are you guys?”

“Just answer the question. Please,” John said. “Has there ever been any levitation?”

“What? No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ma’am,” I said, “if your dog was dabbling in the occult while you had her it’s best you tell us now. We’re experts.”

“What? No, no. I’ve only had her for a few weeks, she showed up at my house and I went to return her to the address on her tag but the owner was this weird girl and she told me to keep her. I was just walking her and we ran into Danny Wexler.”

She said that name like we should know it, like it was a mutual friend or something. She saw the look of nonrecognition on our faces and said, “The Channel Five sports guy. I… know him. He goes to my church. He pulled up alongside the road, like he was gonna stop at Ken Phillipe’s house because, you know, they work together. He gets out and he pets Molly and then he drives off. Just like that.”

I glanced at John, then turned to her.

“Ma’am-”

“Please stop calling me that. You sound like a cop when you do it. Call me Krissy.”

“Krissy,” I said, “tell me exactly what Wexler said to you. Word for word.”

“I don’t think he said much of anything. Just, ‘pretty dog you got there.’ Then he drove away. A second later Molly went nuts.”

“After he touched her?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just to pet her, though.”

I flashed back to the beer truck, John touching Molly and waking up with a jolt, his soul jumping from her to him like a spark of static electricity.

“And he didn’t say anything else?” I asked. “Didn’t use the word ‘Korrok’ or anything like that?”

“Um, no, I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”

“Okay.” I turned to walk away.

“Wait!” said Krissy. “There’s something else. When Danny drove up, he was wearing a mask. Or it looked like it, all black. But he must have taken it off because when he pulled up it was off. But I know I saw it. That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Could you see any of his face? When he had the mask on?”

“No, but… it was dark. Why would he do that? Is Molly okay? Do you think they’ll take her to the pound?”

“Uh, if you go around and talk to the police, they’ll explain everything.”

As I walked away, John thanked Krissy for her cooperation and let her know that we would contact her if any more leads developed. He hurried to catch up with me and said, “Fuck! Dave! The shadow people. She saw a fucking shadow people… person.”

“The what people?”

“You know goddamned well. Those things, the men made of shadow we saw in Vegas. They’re here. Or at least one of them is. I’ve seen them, Dave. I’ve seen them around.”

“No, they’re not and no, you haven’t.”

When our butts landed in my car a minute later, John lit up another cigarette and asked, “Okay, what now?”

THE THING ABOUTvideo game basketball is that the computer decides whether or not the ball goes in when you shoot. So say you’re playing against the computer team, you’re down by one and let’s say you take a last-second shot to win the game. It’s the same program you’re playing against that decides whether or not the digital ball goes through the digital hoop on that final shot. So it can arbitrarily make you lose or arbitrarily let you win. The whole thing is bullshit.