Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

'Now see, you just skipped ahead to rule number three, Eddie. You gave yourself away by hesitating. And you never hesitate when you make a threat. It's too late - the other guy knows he's got you.'

'You can't threaten me! I'll call the cops!'

'Yes, you call the cops, Eddie. File a report if you like. Do whatever makes you feel like a man, Eddie, so long as you stay away from Nadia. Because here's what will happen. Are you listening? If you come around here again, if you drive by and maybe decide to poke your nose into the Grums' house or make any more threatening phone calls or do anything other than mind your own sad business, I will come to your house and I will beat you silly with a cinder block. I'll drop it on your chest, Eddie. I will leave you bleeding and alone, unable to jerk off with your two broken arms. Now, is that what you want?'

Eddie was crying. It couldn't be from this speech, either. There was a lot more behind it. Most likely a broken heart. Conrad's stomach lurched.

'Let me know you understand what I'm telling you, Eddie.'

'C-C-Can I please! S-S-s-speak with Nadia?'

Unbelievable. The kid had crossed over from stupid to pathetic and brought stupid with him along the way.

'Eddie, give it up. The girl is gone. Gone gone gone. Now please, for everyone's sake, go away.'

'She's a whore! Tell the whore that the father of her--'

Nadia reached for the phone and Conrad clicked off.

'Sorry, he had to go.'

She yanked the phone away. 'Asshole!'

'What? Are you telling me you still like this creep?'

'You don't know him!'

'What's to know?'

She stormed upstairs. Conrad stood in the kitchen and finished his coffee, staring at the IN USE light on the phone's cradle. The light was off. Unless she was using a cell, she did not call Eddie back.

Time to go. He'd done enough work for one day.

He went to Dick's and bought some groceries. More iced tea and one of those sun tea bottles to brew it on the deck. He paused in front of the newsstand and flipped through baby magazines. Threw three in the cart for Nadia. He paid for his groceries and drove around front to wait for them to be loaded - they had a number system and you just sat there while the kid in the apron filled your trunk. No tips allowed.

The front door was unlocked. He made a mental note to start locking it. He was halfway to the kitchen when he noticed the blood and shattered glass on the floor. The frames were broken, three of Jo's matching mirrors from the front living room destroyed. Leading out of the glass shards, the paw prints.

When had he last seen the dogs? Had he fed them this morning? He could not remember.

'Alice! Luther!'

He ran yelling their names as he searched the house, at once hoping and fearing that the perpetrator was still in the house.

25

His dogs were bleeding, and had been bleeding for some time judging by the paw prints and smudges and stripes of blood on the floors, walls and couch. He ran calling their names into the dining room and made a U-turn into the front parlor. The TV room. The kitchen.

No dogs.

Conrad's pulse went off the chart. If something has happened to my dogs, he thought, if someone hurt my first and only real babies, I will simply run amok.

He'd hung the mirrors high on the walls. No way the dogs jumped up and dragged them down - and why would they? Someone was here, broke them, and left the dogs to cut themselves. Or worse. Someone - Eddie! That little fucking shit, Eddie! - broke in and went fucking nuts and maybe there was a struggle. Maybe the dogs attacked him and he had pulled the mirrors down, scaring them before--

When he had checked the entire first floor, he circled back to the front stairway.

'Alice, Luther! Daddy's home!'

He stopped halfway up the stairs and listened. Was that . . . ? Yes, familiar whining. He pounded up the stairs and lurched into the library bent over at a forty-five-degree angle, head turning like a cop in a police drama. The library was clear.

The upstairs felt wrong. You learned to sense where your dogs were at all times and the upstairs felt empty.

The master bedroom was also empty.

'Alice! Luther! Come on, babies!'

A sound like rocks falling on hollow walls - whock-whock-whock!

The basement.

Jesus, he hadn't even thought of the basement. He had been meaning to take the broom down and give the whole works a good spring-cleaning and refill the water softener system with salt pellets while he was at it, but, like most things he had been meaning to do, he had forgotten.

He took the front stairs two at a time, rounded the foyer and careened back into the kitchen, yanked the basement open and tripped over her.

Alice had been at the door, scraping her paws on the wooden steps and the door. His feet caught on her legs and he tripped, then skated down two more steps, his hand snapping the rail as he slammed down tailbone first, lost his wind, and slid down the six remaining stairs until his feet stopped against the foundation wall and sprawled him on the landing.

He saw more blood on the door above him and trailing from her as Alice came down after him.

She's on her feet, how bad can it be?

And where is Luther?

Alice's claws scratched his chest and legs as he stood and sucked in the first, pained breath, getting his wind back. He inspected her through watery eyes. He couldn't see a wound that required immediate attention, but she was shaking, her bristly brindle coat bunching up more in confusion than in pain. Maybe anger for being banished to the basement.

Then he saw her ear. The seam where the ear connected to her head was gaping pink and white tissue like a second, smaller mouth. Pat-pat-pat went the blood on the floor, but it wasn't flowing, so that was something.

'Okay, baby, calm down, calm down. Where's Luther?' Like she could tell him.

Conrad ducked under the ventilation ducts and wooden crossbeams in the basement proper, peeking around makeshift walls and unfinished rooms. There weren't many hiding places. He charged forward, knocking into the water heater and doorframes. The only closed room was Laski's abandoned workshop: a wall of pegboard, a plywood bench set upon four by fours, scraps of indoor-outdoor carpet. No blood.

There was another, deeper space left of the shop's entrance, with a separate light. Conrad flailed for the beaded string hanging below the bulb. Cha-chink .

Luther wasn't in here. There was still the backyard. On the way to the short wooden door that opened to the backyard, he stopped and pivoted, heading back to the one place he hadn't checked.

In the basement at the front of the house was a smaller space, lower to the ground, where the furnace was tucked behind the stone support wall under the fireplace and chimney. At the very front of that, in the deepest recess where the foundation floor became a pile of dirt and cast aside rocks, the ground sloped up as if reaching toward some forgotten cellar door or coal chute.

Conrad crouched, shimmied forth, and found his dog.

Luther was huddled in the corner, hopping gecko-like from one front paw to the other as if the ground were too hot to stand on. He was staring at the wall, like the teacher had called him a bad boy and sent him to stand in the corner.

'Luther? Luther!'

When Luther turned, the dog's eyes were two pinpoints of gleaming white, his black and white cow spots shivering. The dog had been intent on something on the stone foundation wall. Now he looked confused, and Conrad's skin crawled. He took a step and Luther growled. It broke his heart and worried him all over, but he needed to get past the dog's fear and tend to the wounds, if there were any.

Conrad came in fast but steady, speaking in his gentlest voice, 'It's me, Luther, it's okay, good dog . . .'