No answers. All the interior voices had fallen silent. That was bad-they were company, at least-but the panic had also gone, leaving only its heavy-metal aftertaste, and that was good.
I’ll sleep for awhile, she thought, amazed to find she could actually do just that if she wanted to. I’ll sleep for awhile, and when Iwake up, maybe I’ll have an idea. At the very least, I can get away fromthe fear for awhile.
The tiny strain-lines at the corners of her closed eyes and the two more noticeable ones between her brows began to smooth out. She could feel herself beginning to drift. She let herself go toward that refuge from self-regard with feelings of relief and gratitude. When the wind gusted this time, it seemed distant, and the restless sound of the door was even farther away: bang-bang,bang-bang, bang.
Her breathing, which had been deepening and slowing as she slipped into a doze, suddenly stopped. Her eyes sprang open. The only emotion she was aware of in that first moment of sleepsnatched-away disorientation was a kind of puzzled pique: she had almost made it, damn it all, and then that damned door-
What about that damned door? Just what about it?
The damned door hadn’t finished its usual double bang, that was what about it. As if this thought-had brought them into being, Jessie now heard the distinctive click of a dog’s toenails on the floor of the entryway. The stray had come in through the unlatched door. It was in the house.
Her reaction was instant and unequivocal. “You get out!” she screamed at it, unaware that her overstrained voice had taken on a hoarse foghorn quality. “Get out, motherfucker! Do youhear me? YOU GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
She stopped, breathing fast, eyes wide. Her skin seemed woven through with copper wires carrying a low electrical charge; the top two or three layers buzzed and crawled. She was distantly aware that the hairs on the nape of her neck were standing as erect as porcupine quills. The idea of sleep had disappeared right off the map.
She heard the initial startled scrabble of the dog’s nails on the entry floor… then nothing. I must have scared it away. It probablyscatted right out the door again. I mean, it’s got to be afraid of peopleand houses, a stray like that.
I dunno, toots, Ruth’s voice said. It sounded uncharacteristically doubtful. I don’t see its shadow in the driveway.
Of course you don’t. It probably went right around the other side of thehouse and back into the woods. Or down by the lake. Scared to death andrunning like hell. Doesn’t that make sense?
Ruth’s voice didn’t answer. Neither did Goody’s, although at this point Jessie would have welcomed either one of them.
“I did scare it away,” she said. “I’m sure I did.”
But still she lay there, listening as hard as she could, hearing nothing but the hush-thump of blood in her ears. At least, not yet.
CHAPTER SIX
She hadn’t scared it away.
It was afraid of people and houses, Jessie had been right about that, but she had underestimated its desperate condition. Its former name-Prince-was hideously ironic now. It had encountered a great many garbage bins just like the Burlingames” in its long, starving circuit of Kashwakamak Lake this fall, and it had quickly dismissed the smell of salami, cheese, and olive oil coming from this one. The aroma was tantalizing, but bitter experience had taught the former Prince that the source of it was beyond its reach.
There were other smells, however; the dog got a whiff of them each time the wind lazed the back door open. These smells were fainter than the ones coming from the box, and their source was inside the house, but they were too good to ignore. The dog knew it would probably be driven off by shouting masters who chased and kicked with their strange, hard feet, but the smells were stronger than its fear. One thing might have countered its terrible hunger, but it as yet knew nothing of guns. That would change if it lived until deer-season, but that was still two weeks away and the shouting masters with their hard, hurtful feet were the worst things it could imagine for now.
It slipped through the door when the wind opened it and trotted into the entryway… but not too far. It was ready to beat a hasty retreat the instant danger threatened.
Its ears told it that the inhabitant of this house was a bitchmaster, and she was clearly aware of the dog because she had shouted at it, but what the stray heard in the bitchmaster’s raised voice was fear, not anger. After its initial-backward jerk of fright, the dog stood its ground. It waited for some other master to join its cries to those of the bitchmaster or to come running, and when this didn’t happen, the dog stretched its neck forward, sniffing at the slightly stale air of the house.
At first it turned to the right, in the direction of the kitchen. It was from this direction that the puffs of scent dispersed by the flapping door had come. The smells were dry but pleasant: peanut butter, Ry-Krisp crackers, raisins, cereal (this latter smell was drifting from a box of Special K in one of the cupboards-a hungry fieldmouse had gnawed a hole in the bottom of the box).
The dog took a step in that direction, then swung its head back the other way to make sure no master was creeping up on it masters most frequently shouted, but they could be sly, too. There was no one in the halfway leading down to the left, but the dog caught a much stronger scent coming from that direction, one that caused its stomach to cramp with terrible longing.
The dog stared down the hall, its eyes sparkling with a mad mixture of fear and desire, its snout wrinkled backward like a rumpled throw-rug, its long upper lip rising and falling in a nervous, spasmodic sneer that revealed its teeth in small white winks. A stream of anxious urine squirted from it and patterned on the floor, marking the front hall-and thus the whole house-as the dog’s territory. This sound was too small and too brief for even Jessie’s straining ears to catch.
What it smelled was blood. The scent was both strong and wrong. In the end, the dog’s extreme hunger tipped the scales; it must eat soon or die. The former Prince began to walk slowly down the hall toward the bedroom. The smell grew stronger as it went. It was blood, all right, but it was the wrong blood. It was the blood of a master. Nevertheless, that smell, one far too rich and compelling to deny, had gotten into its small, desperate brain. The dog kept walking, and as it neared the bedroom door, it began to growl.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jessie heard the click of the dog’s nails and understood it was indeed still in the house, and coming this way. She began to scream. She knew this was probably the worst thing a person could do-it went against all the advice she’d ever heard about never showing a potentially dangerous animal that you were afraid-but she couldn’t help it. She had too good an idea of what was drawing the stray toward the bedroom.
She pulled her legs up, using the handcuffs to yank herself back against the headboard at the same time. Her eyes never left the door to the hallway as she did this. Now she could hear the dog growling. The sound made her bowels feel loose and hot and liquid.
It halted in the doorway. Here the shadows had already begun to gather, and to Jessie the dog was only a vague shape low to the floor-not a big one, but no toy poodle or Chihuahua, either. Two orange-yellow crescents of reflected sunlight marked its eyes.
“Go away!” Jessie screamed at it. “Go away! Get out! You’re…you’re not welcome here!” That was a ridiculous thing to say… but under the circumstances, what wasn’t? I’ll be asking it to fetch methe keys from the top of the bureau before you know it, she thought.