Dale rubbed his head. It was beginning to ache. “A little thing,” he said. “About ten, twelve inches tall, I guess. Not much longer. Black. I thought that maybe it was a terrier.”

“Did it have longer hair?” said Sandy.

“No, it didn’t really have hair.”

“No hair?” said Sandy. She sounded shocked, as if he’d said something obscene.

“I mean really short hair,” said Dale. “Very short. Black.”

“Well, American staffordshire terriers and toy terriers and pit bull terriers and Boston terriers and their type all have very short hair,” Sandy said dubiously, “but none of them are all black. And no one in the county owns any of those breeds. Did you see the dog’s head?”

“Sort of,” said Dale.

“Was the snout long, thin? Or sort of pushed in?”

“Sort of pushed in, I think,” said Dale. He had to grin. He felt like a crime witness being grilled by a relentless cop. “Sort of like a bulldog’s.”

“Hmmm,” said Sandy Whittaker, sounding judicious. “American bulldogs and Old English bulldogs are larger than you described, unless you saw a puppy. . .”

“I don’t think it was a puppy,” said Dale, no longer sure what he’d seen.

“Then it could have been a pug or a French bulldog. Was it slim and sleek, or did it have a sort of barrel chest?”

Dale was tempted to close his eyes to remember. A pickup passed the other way. Dale kept his eyes open. “It did sort of have a barrel chest—powerful—and little tiny legs, but solid—not like one of those ratty little Chihuahuas.”

There were several seconds of silence. “Two of my five dogs are Chihuahuas, Dale.”

Dale rolled his eyes. “Well, gosh, thanks for your help, Sandy. . .”

“What kind of tail did this black dog have?” she asked, all business now.

“Tail?” He called back the memory of the little dog’s black ass retreating toward the chicken coop. “I didn’t see a tail. I don’t think it had a tail.”

“Pugs have curled tails that sort of sit up on their backs,” said Sandy Whittaker. “What about this dog’s ears? Were they flat or raised?”

“Raised,” said Dale, not really caring any longer. “Triangular. They stuck up.”

“Then it’s not a pug,” Sandy Whittaker said. “Their ears curl down. Do you remember anything else about the black dog?”

“It had sort of a pink splotch on its face, muzzle, whatever,” said Dale. He was almost to the outskirts of Oak Hill. He could just stop by Sandy Whittaker’s office if he wanted. He had no intention of doing so.

“Yesss,” said the woman, “it sounds like a French bulldog. They grow about twelve inches tall, weigh about twenty-five pounds. They have a puglike face, barrel chest, and pointy ears. And they have a broad, short, snubby nose with slanting nostrils and a pink flush to their muzzle.”

“Well, thanks, Sandy. You’ve been a big help and. . .”

“The only problem,” interrupted Sandy Whittaker, “is that French bulldogs come in fawn coloring, pied—that’s black and white—red brindle and black brindle—that’s sort of reddish and black. Never pure black. Are you sure that the dog you saw wasn’t pied?”

Absolutely, positively coal blackthought Dale with absolute, positive certainty. “It could have been pied, I guess,” he said. “Well, thanks again, Sandy, you’ve really. . .”

“The other problem with a French bulldog,” said Sandy Whittaker, “is that there aren’t any around here. Not in Elm Haven. Not in Oak Hill. Not anywhere around here. Not even on any of the farms in your part of the county. I would have noticed.”

After confronting C.J. Congden in the garage and paying for the new tires, Dale drove back to the farm. He had always hated confrontations, especially confrontations with any sort of authority, but rather than being rattled by the encounter, he found himself slightly amused by it. And the previous night’s sense of being displaced far from the center of things—even from himself—had receded. He had his truck back, the farmhouse was full of food and drink, and if he wanted, he could drive west—or east—anytime he wanted. Things looked better.

But the weather did not. Dark clouds were moving in from the west. The warm autumn day slid slowly but exorably into a winterish chill.

He was almost back to Elm Haven when he noticed how low he was on gas. There was nothing for it, he thought. He had to deal with the KWIK’N’EZ.

It was raining when he got to the gas station/convenience store. Trucks hissed past on I-74 just down the slope. Dale pumped the gas and cleaned his windows. There was no pay-at-the-pump option, so he took out his American Express card and walked into the store to pay.

Derek, the skinhead nephew, looked up from behind the counter. He was wearing a brown and orange KWIK’N’EZ shirt and a cap with the company logo on it. His face froze when he saw Dale.

Dale laughed out loud.

“What’s so fucking funny?” said the boy.

Dale shook his head and set cash down instead of his credit card. “Derek,” he said, “the day just keeps getting better and better.”

The day got worse and worse. The clouds lowered, the breeze turned into a windstorm, and the temperature dropped forty degrees by nightfall. That evening Dale retreated early to the relative warmth of the basement to read in Duane’s old bed and listen to the old-time radio station being picked up by the big console radio. Outside, the wind howled.

Inside, the wind howled. Dale lowered his book and listened to the sound—first a whistling, then dropping suddenly to a bass growl. He walked from one of the high windows to the next, checking for cracks or broken panes, but the sound was not coming from any of the windows. It was coming from the darkened coal bin behind the furnace.

Dale took out the Dunhill lighter that Clare had given him, flicked it on, and peered into the lightless hole. There had been a hanging light there once, but the bulb had long since been removed. The noise was very loud in the small space. Dale stepped up into the coal bin and moved the lighter flame in a circle, looking at the floor and walls. Traces of coal dust remained on the concrete floor all these decades later. The gap where the coal hopper had been before Mr. McBride had switched to gas had been bricked up, as had the opening to the coal chute itself. There were no windows in the cramped space. There was a huge, square board, probably four feet by four feet, screwed into the bricks on the west wall. The howling was coming from there.

Dale bent low to cross to the west wall. He set his hand against the thick square of plywood. The wood pulsed as if something on the other side was pushing back. Cold air gusted through chinks along the top of the rotted wood and the howl returned, then rose to a whistle.

It took Dale only a minute to use his fingers to pry the old screws out of the decaying mortar between the bricks. Parts of the wood splintered when he pulled the barricade back and away.

Cold air blew freely now, carrying with it the dank stench of cold earth—the smell of the grave. Dale held his flickering lighter forward, throwing pale light down what had to be a tunnel—perhaps three feet wide, almost four feet tall. Corrugated red earth and stone were visible for twenty-five feet or more, to a dirt wall where the tunnel either ended or doglegged to the right.

It can’t end there. The wind’s coming from somewhere.

Dale considered exploring the tunnel for a full two milliseconds. No way was he going crawling into that wet, half-caved-in hole in the ground. Bringing a screwdriver, hammer, and nails from the workbench in the basement, Dale set the barricade back in place, reset the long screws in the crumbling mortar as best he could, and then drove in ten of the longest nails he could find. The wind continued to push and pulse against the wood, whistling through the splintered gap at the top.

Replacing the tools and washing his hands in the basement utility sink, Dale thought, What the hell is that? Where does it go?