Bewere the Night

THE GAZE DOGS OF NINE WATERFALL by Kaaron Warren

Rare dog breeds; people will kill for them. I’ve seen it. One stark-nosed curly hair terrier, over-doped and past all use. One ripped-off buyer, one cheating seller. I was just the go-between for that job. I shrank up small into the corner, squeezed my eyes shut, folded my ears over like a Puffin Dog, to keep the dust out.

I sniffed out a window, up and out, while the blood was still spilling. It was a lesson to me, early on, to always check the dog myself.

I called my client on his cell, confirming the details before taking the job.

“Ah, Rosie McDonald! I’ve heard good things about your husband.”

I always have to prove myself. Woman in a man’s world. I say I’m acting for my husband and I tell stories about how awful he is, just for the sympathy.

I’ll bruise my own eye, not with make-up. Show up with an arm in a sling. “Some men don’t like a woman who can do business,” I say. “But he’s good at what he does. An eye for detail. You need that when you’re dealing dogs.”

“I heard that. My friend is the one who was after a Lancashire Large. For his wife.”

I remembered; the man had sent me pictures. Why would he send me pictures?

“He says it was a job well done. So you know what I’m after?”

“You’re after a vampire dog. Very hard to locate. Nocturnal, you know? Skittish with light. My husband will need a lot of equipment.”

“So you’ll catch them in the day when they’re asleep. I don’t care about the money. I want one of those dogs.”

“My husband is curious to know why you’d like one. It helps him in the process.”

“Doesn’t he talk?”

“He’s not good with people. He’s good at plenty, but not people.”

“Anyway, about the dog: thing is, my son’s not well. It’s a blood thing. It’s hard to explain even with a medical degree.”

My ears ring when someone’s lying to me. Even over the phone. I knew he was a doctor; I’d looked him up.

“What’s your son’s name?”

The silence was momentary, but enough to confirm my doubts there was a son. “Raphael,” he said. “Sick little Raphael.” He paused. “And I want to use the dog like a leech. You know? The blood-letting cure.”

“So you just need the one?”

“Could he get more?”

“He could manage three, but your son … ”

“Get me three,” he said.

I thought, Clinic. Five thousand each. Clients in the waiting room reading Nature magazine.

There are dogs rare because of the numbers. Some because of what they are or what they can do.

And some are rare because they are not always seen.

I remember every animal I’ve captured, but not all of my clients. I like to forget them. If I don’t know their faces I can’t remember their expressions or their intent.

The Calalburun. I traveled to Turkey for this puppy. Outside of their birthplace, they don’t thrive, these dogs. There is something about the hunting in Turkey which is good for them. My client wanted this dog because it has a split nose. Entrancing to look at. Like two noses grown together.

The Puffin Dog. Norwegian Lundehound. These dogs were close to extinction when a dog-lover discovered a group of them on a small island. He bred them up from five, then shared some with an enthusiast in America. Not long after that, the European dogs were wiped out, leaving the American dogs the last remaining.

The American sent a breeding pair and some pups back to Europe, not long before her own dogs were wiped out. From those four there are now about a thousand.

The dogs were bred to hunt Puffins. They are so flexible (because they sometimes needed to crawl through caves to hunt) that the back of their head can touch their spine. As a breed, though, they don’t absorb nutrients well, so they die easily and die young. We have a network, the other dealers and I. Our clients want different things at different times so we help each other out. My associate in Europe knew of four Puffin Dogs.

It’s not up to me to ponder why people keep these cripples alive. Animal protection around the world doesn’t like it much; I just heard that the English RSPCA no longer supports Crufts Dog Show because they say there are too many disabled dogs being bred and shown. Dogs like the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, whose skull is too small for its brain. And a lot of boxer dogs are prone to epilepsy, and some bulldogs are unable to mate, or are unable to give birth unassisted.

It’s looks over health. But humans? Same same.

The Basenji is a dog which yodels. My client liked the sound and wanted to be yodeled to. I don’t know how that worked out.

Tea cup dogs aren’t registered and are so fragile and mimsy they need to be carried everywhere. Some say this is the breeders’ way of selling off runts.

Then there’s the other dogs. The Black Dogs, Yellow Dogs, the Sulphurous Beast, the Wide-Eyed Hound, the Wisht Hound, and the Hateful Thing: The Gabriel Hound.

I’ve never been asked to catch one of these, nor have I seen one, but godawful stories are told.

The only known habitat of the vampire dog is the island of Viti Levu, Fiji. I’d never been there but I’d heard others talk of the rich pickings. I did as much groundwork as I could over the phone, then visited the client to get a look at him and pick up the money. No paper trail. I wore tight jeans with a tear across the ass and a pink button up shirt.

He was ordinary; they usually are. The ones with a lot of money are always confident but this one seemed overly so. Stolen riches, I wondered. The ones who get rich by stealing think they can get away with everything. Two heads taller then me, he wore a tight blue T-shirt, blank. A rare thing; most people like to plaster jokes on their chests. He didn’t shake my hand but looked behind me for the real person, my husband.

“I’m sorry, my husband was taken ill. He’s told me exactly what I need to do, though,” I said.

The client put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “He’s lucky he’s got someone reliable to do his dirty work,” the guy said.

He gave me a glass of orange soda as if I were a child. That’s fine; making money is making money.

I told him we’d found some dogs, but not for sale. They’d have to be caught and that would take a lot more.

“Whatever … Look, I’ve got a place to keep them.”

He showed me into his backyard, where he had dug a deep hole. Damp. The sides smooth, slippery with mud. One push and I’d be in there.

I stepped back from the edge.

“So, four dogs?” he said. “Ask your husband if he can get me four vampire dogs.”

“I will check.” My husband Joe had his spine bitten half out by a glandular-affected bull dog, and all he could do was nod, nod, nod. Bobble head, I’d call him if I were a cruel person. I had him in an old people’s home where people called him young man and used his tight fists to hold playing cards. When I visit, his eyes follow me adoringly, as if he were a puppy.

My real hunting partner was my sister-in-law Gina. She’s an animal psychologist. An animal psychic, too, but we don’t talk about that much. I pretend I don’t believe in it, but I rely on the woman’s instincts.

The job wouldn’t be easy, but it never is in the world of the rare breed.

My bank account full, our husband and brother safe with a good stock of peppermints, Gina and I boarded a flight for Nadi, Fiji. Ten hours from L.A., long enough to read a book, snooze, maybe meet a dog-lover or two. We transferred to the Suva flight, a plane so small I thought a child could fly it. They gave us fake orange juice and then the flight was done. I listened to people talk, about local politics, gossip. I listened for clues, because you never know when you’ll hear the right word.

Gina rested. She was keen to come to Fiji, thinking of deserted islands, sands, fruit juice with vodka.

The heat as we stepped off the plane was like a blanket had been thrown over our heads. I couldn’t breathe in it and my whole steamed sweat. It was busy but not crazy, and you weren’t attacked by cabbies looking for business, porters, jewelry sellers. I got a lot of smiles and nods.

We took a cab which would not have passed inspection in New York and he drove us to our hotel, on Suva Bay. There were stray dogs everywhere, flaccid, unhealthy looking things. The females had teats to the ground, the pups mangy and unsteady. They didn’t seem aggressive, though. Too hot, perhaps. I bought some cut pineapple from a man at the side of the road and I ate it standing there, the juice dripping off my chin and pooling at my feet. I bought another piece, and another, and then he didn’t have any change so I gave him twenty dollars. Gina couldn’t eat; she said the dogs put her off. That there was too much sickness.

I didn’t sleep well. I felt slick with all the coconut milk I’d had with dinner; with the fish, with the greens, with the dessert. And new noises in a place keep me awake, or they entered my dreams in strange ways.

I got up as the sun rose and swam some laps. The water was warm, almost like bath water, and I had the pool to myself.

After breakfast, Gina and I took a taxi out to the latest sighting of vampire dogs, a farm two hours drive inland. I like to let the locals drive. They know where they’re going and I can absorb the landscape and listen while they tell me stories.

The foliage thickened as we drove, dark leaves waving heavily in what seemed to me a still day. The road was muddy so I had to be patient; driving through puddles at speed can get you bogged. A couple of trucks passed us. Smallish covered vehicles with the stoutest workers in the back. They waved and smiled at me and I knew that four of them could lift our car out of the mud if we got stuck.

The trucks swerved and tilted and I thought that only faith was keeping them on the road.

The farm fielded dairy cows and taro. It seemed prosperous; there was a letter box rather than an old juice bottle, and white painted rocks lined the path.

There was no phone here, so I hadn’t been able to call ahead. Usually I’d gain permission to enter, but that could take weeks, and I wanted to get on with the job.

I told the taxi driver to wait. A fetid smell filled the car; rotting flesh.

“Oh, Jesus,” Gina said. “I think I’ll wait, too.” I saw a pile of dead animals at the side of a dilapidated shed; a cow, a cat, two mongooses. They could’ve been there since the attack a week ago.

“Wait there,” I told Gina. “I’ll call you if I need you”

Breathing through my mouth, I walked to the pile. I could see bite marks on the cow and all the animals appeared to be bloodless, sunken.

“You are who?” I heard. An old Fijian woman, wearing a faded green T-shirt that said Nurses Know Better pointed at me. She looked startled. They didn’t see many white people out here.

“Are you from the Fiji Times?” she said. “We already talked to them.”

I considered for a moment how best to get the information. She seemed suspicious of the newsmakers, tired of them.

“No, I’m from the SPCA. I’m here to inspect the animals and see if we can help you with some money. If there is a person hurting the animals, we need to find that person and punish them.”

“It’s not a person. It is the vampire dogs. I saw them with my own eyes.”

“This was done by dogs?”

She nodded. “A pack of them. They come out of there barking and yelping with hunger and they run here and there sucking their food out of any creature they find. They travel a long way sometimes, for new blood.”

“So they live in the hills?” I thought she’d pointed at the mountains in the background. When she nodded, I realized my mistake. I should have said, “Where do they live?”

It was too late now; she knew what she thought I wanted to hear.

“They live in the hills.”

“Doesn’t anyone try to stop them?”

“They don’t stop good. They are hot to the touch and if you get too near you might burn up.”

“Shooting?”

“No guns. Who has a gun these days?”

“What about a club, or a spear? What about a cane knife? What I mean is, can they be killed?”

“Of course they can be killed. They’re dogs, not ghosts.”

“Do they bite people?”

She nodded. “If they can get close enough.”

“Have they killed anyone? Or turned anyone into a vampire?”

She laughed, a big, belching laugh which brought tears to her eyes. “A person can’t turn into a vampire dog! If they bite you, you clean out the wound so it doesn’t go nasty. That’s all. If they suck for long enough you’ll die. But you clean it out and it’s okay.”

“So what did they look like?”

She stared at me.

“Were they big dogs or small?” I measured with my hand, up and down until she grunted; knee high.

“Fur? What color fur?”

“No fur. Just skin. Blue skin. Loose and wrinkly.”

“Ears? What were their ears like?”

She held her fingers up to her head. “Like this.”

“And they latched onto your animals and sucked their blood?”

“Yes. I didn’t know at first. I thought they were just biting. I tried to shoo them. I took a big stick and poked them. Their bellies. I could hear something sloshing away in there.”

She shivered. “Then one of them lifted its head and I saw how red its teeth were. And the teeth were sharp, two rows atop and bottom, so many teeth. I ran inside to get my husband but he had too much kava. He wouldn’t even sit up.”

“Can I see what they did?” I said. The woman looked at me.

“You want to see the dead ones? The bokola?”

“I do. It might help your claim.”

“My claim?”

“You know, the SPCA.” I walked back to the shed.

Their bellies had been ripped out and devoured and the blood drained, she said.

There were bite marks, purplish, all over their backs and legs, as if the attacking dogs were seeking a good spot.

The insects and the birds had worked on the ears and other soft bits.

I took a stick to shift them around a bit.

“The dogs will come for those bokola. You leave them alone.” She waved at the pile of corpses.

“The dogs?”

“Clean-up dogs. First the vampires, then the clean-up. Their yellow master sends them.”

“Yellow master?” She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut. Taboo subject.

“You wouldn’t eat this meat? It seems a waste.”

“The vampire dogs leave a taste behind,” the woman told me. “A kamikamica taste the other animals like. One of the men in my village cooked and ate one of those cows. He said it made him feel very good but now he smells of cowhide. He can’t get the smell off himself.”

“Are any of your animals left alive?”

The woman shook her head. “Not the bitten ones. They didn’t touch them all, though.”

“Can I see the others?” I would look for signs of disease, something to explain the sudden death. I wanted to be sure I was in the right place.

One cow was up against the back wall of the house, leaning close to catch the shade. There was a sheen of sweat on my body. I could feel it drip down my back.

“Kata kata,” the woman said, pointing to the cow. “She is very hot.”

It looked all right, apart from that.

I could get no more out of her.

Gina was sweating in the taxi. It was a hot day, but she felt the heat of the cow as well. “Any luck?” she said.

“Some. There’s a few local taboos I’ll need to get through to get the info we need, though.”

“Ask him,” she said, pointing at the driver. “He’s Hindu.”

Our taxi driver said, “I could have saved you the journey. No Fijian will talk about that. We Hindus know about those dogs.”

He told us the vampire dogs lived at the bottom of Ciwa Waidekeulu. “Thiwa Why Ndeke Ulu,” he said. Nine Waterfall. In the rainforest twenty minutes from where we were staying.

“She said something about a yellow master?”

“A great yellow dog who is worse than the worst man you’ve ever met.”

I didn’t tell him I’d met some bad men.

“You should keep away from him. He can give great boons to the successful, but there is no one successful. No one can defeat the yellow dog. Those who fail will vanish, as if they have never been.” He stopped at a jetty, where some children sold us roti filled with a soft, sweet potato curry. Very, very good.

The girl who cleaned my room was not chatty at first, but I wanted to ask her questions. She answered most of them happily once I gave her a can of Coke. “Where do I park near Ciwa Waidekeulu? How do I ask the chief for permission to enter? Is there fresh water?”

When I asked her if she knew if the vampire dogs were down there, she went back to her housework, cleaning a bench already spotless. “These are not creatures to be captured,” she said. “They should be poisoned.” To distract me, she told me that her neighbors had five dogs, every last one of them a mongrel, barking all night and scaring her children. I know what I’d do if I were her. The council puts out notices of dog poisonings, Keep Your Dogs In While We Kill the Strays, so all she’d have to do is let their dogs out while the cull was happening. Those dogs’d be happy to run; they used to leap the fence, tearing their guts, until her neighbor built his fence higher. They’re desperate to get out.

They do a good job with the poisoning, she told me, but not so good with the clean up. Bloated bodies line the streets, float down the river, clog the drains.

They don’t understand about repercussions, and that things don’t just go away.

The client was pleased with my progress when I called him. “So, when will you go in?”

With the land taboo, I needed permission from the local chief or risk trouble. This took time. Most didn’t want to discuss the vampire dogs, or the yellow dog king; he was forbidden, also. “It may be a couple of weeks. Depends on how I manage to deal with the locals.”

“Surely a man would manage better,” he said. “I know your husband doesn’t like to talk, but most men will listen to a man better. Maybe I should send someone else.”

“Listen,” I told him, hoping to win him back, “I’ve heard they run with a fat cock of a dog. Have you heard that? People have seen the vampire dogs drop sheep hearts at this dog’s feet. He tossed the heart up like it was a ball, snapped it up.”

The man smacked his lips. I could hear it over the phone. “I’ve got a place for him, if you catch him as well.”

“If you pay us, we’ll get him. There are no bonus dogs.”

“Check with your husband on that.”

I thought of the slimy black hole he’d dug.

“They say that if you take a piece of him, good things will come your way. People don’t like to talk about him. He’s taboo.”

“They just don’t want anyone else taking a piece of him.”

We moved to a new hotel set amongst the rainforest. The walls were dark green in patches, the smell of mold strong, but it was pretty with birdsong and close to the waterfalls which meant we could make an early start.

We ate in their open air restaurant, fried fish, more coconut milk, Greek meatballs. Gina didn’t like mosquito repellent, thinking it clogged her pores with chemicals, so she was eaten alive by them.

“Have you called Joe?” she asked me over banana custard.

“Have you?” We smiled at each other; wife and sister ignoring him, back home and alone.

“We should call him. Does he know what we’re doing?”

“I told him, but you know how he is.” She was a good sister, visiting him weekly, reading to him, taking him treats he chewed but didn’t seem to enjoy.

We drank too much Fijian beer and we danced around the snooker table, using the cues as microphones. No one seemed bothered, least of all the waiters.

The next morning, we called a cab to drop us at the top of the waterfall. You couldn’t drive down any further. In the car park, souvenir sellers sat listlessly, their day’s takings a few coins that jangled in their pockets. Their faces marked with lines, boils on their shins, they leaned back and stared as we gathered our things together.

“I have shells,” one boy said.

“No turtles,” Gina said, flipping her head at him to show how disgusting that trade was to her.

“Not turtles. Beetles. The size of a turtle.”

He held up the shell to her. There was a smell about it, almost like an office smell; cleaning fluids, correcting fluids, coffee brewed too long. The shell was metallic gray and marbled with black lines. Claws out the side, small, odd, clutching snipers. I had seen, had eaten, prawns with claws like this. Bluish and fleshy, I felt like I was eating a sea monster.

“From the third waterfall,” the seller said. “All the other creatures moved up when the dogs moved into Nine Waterfall.”

I’m in the right place, I thought. “So there are dogs in the waterfall?”

“Vampire dogs. They only come out for food. They live way down.”

An older vendor hissed at him. “Don’t scare the nice ladies. They don’t believe in vampire dogs.”

“You’d be surprised what I believe in,” Gina said. She touched one finger to the man’s throat. “I believe that you have a secret not even your wife knows. If she learns of it, she will take your children away.”

“No.”

“Yes.” She gave the boy money for one of the shells and opened her large bag to place it inside.

He said, “You watch out for yellow dog. If you sacrifice a part of him you”ll never be hungry again. But if you fail you will die on the spot and no one will know you ever lived. If you take the right bit you will never be lonely again.”

I didn’t know that I wanted a companion for life.

As we walked, I said, “How did you know he had a secret?”

“All men have secrets.”

The first waterfall was overhung by flowering trees. It was a very popular picnic site. Although it took 20 minutes to reach, Indian women were there with huge pots and pans, cooking roti and warming dhal while the men and children swam. I trailed my hand in the water; very cool, not the pleasant body-temperature water of the islands, but a refreshing briskness.

Birdsong here was high and pretty. More birds than I’d seen elsewhere. Broadbills, honey-eaters, crimson and masked parrots, and velvet doves. Safe here, perhaps. The ground was soft and writhing with worms. The children collected them for bait, although the fish were sparse. Down below, the children told us, were fish big enough to feed a family of ten for a week. They liked human bait, so men would dangle their toes in. I guessed they were teasing us about this.

The path to the second waterfall was well-trodden. The bridge had been built with good, treated timber and seemed sturdy.

The waterfall fell quietly here. It was a gentler place. Only the fisherman sat by the water’s edge; children and women not welcome. The fish were so thick in the water they could barely move. The fishermen didn’t bother with lines; they reached in and grabbed what they wanted.

Gina breathed heavily.

“Do you want to slow down a bit? I don’t think we should dawdle, but we can slow down,” I said.

“It’s not that. It’s the fish. I don’t usually get anything from fish, but I guess there’s so many of them. I’m finding it hard to breathe.”

The men stood up to let us past.

“There are a lot of fish,” I said. Sometimes the obvious is the only thing to say. “Where do they come from?” I asked one of the men. “There are so few up there.” I pointed up to the first waterfall.

“They come from underground. The center of the earth. They are already cooked when we catch them, from the heat inside.”

He cut one open to demonstrate and it was true; inside was white, fluffy, warm flesh. He gestured it at me and I took a piece. Gina refused. The meat was delicate and sweet and I knew I would seek without finding it wherever else I went in the world.

“American?” the man said.

“New Zealand,” Gina lied.

“Ah, Kiwi!” he said. “Sister!” They liked the New Zealanders better than Australians and Americans because of closer distance, and because they shared a migratory path. Gina could put on any accent; it was like she absorbed the vowel sounds.

I could have stayed at the second waterfall but we had a job to do, and Gina found the place claustrophobic.

“It’s only going to get worse,” I said. “The trees will close in on us and the sky will vanish.”

She grunted. Sometimes, I think, she found me very stupid and shallow. She liked me better than almost anyelse did, but sometimes even she rolled her eyes at me.

The third waterfall was small. There was a thick buzz of insects over it. I hoped not mosquitoes; I’d had dengue fever once before and did not want hemorrhagic fever. I stopped to slather repellent on, strong stuff which repelled people as well.

The ground was covered with small, green shelled cockroaches. They were not bothered by us and I could ignore them. The ones on the tree trunks, though; at first I thought they were bark, but then one moved. It was as big as my head and I couldn’t tell how many legs. It had a jaw which seemed to click and a tail like a scorpion which it kept coiled.

“I wouldn’t touch one,” Gina said.

“Really? Is that a vision you had?”

“No, they just look nasty,” and we shared a small laugh. We often shared moments like that, even at Joe’s bedside.

Gina stumbled on a tree root the size of a man’s thigh.

“You need to keep your eyes down,” I said. “Downcast. Modest. Can you do that?”

“Can you?”

“Not really.”

“Joe always liked ’em feisty.”

Gina’s breath came heavy now and her cheeks reddened.

“It’s going to be tough walking back up.”

“It always is. I don’t even know why you’re dragging me along. You could manage this alone.”

“You know I need you to gauge the mood. That’s why.”

“Still. I’d rather not be here.”

“I’ll pay you well. You know that.”

“It’s not the money, Rosie. It’s what we’re doing. Every time I come out with you it feels like we’re going against nature. Like we’re siding with the wrong people.”

“You didn’t meet the client. He’s a nice guy. Wants to save his kid.”

“Of course he does, Rosie. You keep telling yourself that.”

I didn’t like that; I’ve been able to read people since I was twelve and it became necessary. Gina’s sarcasm always confused me, though.

At the fourth waterfall, we found huge, stinking mushrooms, which seemed to turn to face us.

Vines hung from the trees, thick enough we had to push them aside to walk through. They were covered with a sticky substance. I’d seen this stuff before, used as rope, to tie bundles. You needed a bush knife to cut it. I’d realized within a day of being here you should never be without a bush knife and I’d bought one at the local shop. I cut a dozen vines, then coiled them around my waist.

Gina nodded. “Very practical.” She was over her moment, which was good. Hard to work as a team with someone who didn’t want to be there.

What did we see at the fifth waterfall? The path here was very narrow. We had to walk one foot in front of the other, fashion models showing off.

There were no vines here. The water was taken by one huge fish, the size of a Shetland pony. The surface of the water was covered with roe and I wondered where the mate was. Another underground channel? It would have to be a big one. It would be big but confining. My husband is confined. I’m happy with him that way. He can’t interfere with my business. Tell me how to do things.

At the sixth waterfall, we saw our first dog. It was very small and had no legs. Born that way? It lay in the pathway unmoving, and when I nudged it, I realized it was dead.

Gina clutched my arm. Her icy fingers hurt and I could feel the cold through my layers of clothing.

“Graveyard,” she said. “This is their graveyard.”

The surface of the sixth pool was thick with belly-up fish. At the base of the trees, dead insects like autumn leaves raked into a pile.

And one dead dog. I wondered why there weren’t more.

“He has passed through the veil,” Gina said, as if she were saying a prayer. “We should bury him.”

“We could take him home to the client. He already has a hole dug in his backyard. He’s kind of excited at the idea of keeping dogs there.”

Is there a name for a person who takes pleasure in the confinement of others?

We reached the seventh waterfall.

We heard yapping, and I stiffened. I opened my bag and put my hand on a dog collar, ready. Gina stopped, closed her eyes.

“Puppies,” she said. “Hungry.”

“What sort?”

Gina shook her head. We walked on, through a dense short tunnel of wet leaves.

At the edge of the seventh waterfall there was a cluster of small brown dogs. Their tongues lapped the water (small fish, I thought) and when we approached, the dogs lifted their heads, widened their eyes, and stared.

“Gaze dogs,” I said.

These were gaze dogs like I’d never seen before. Huge eyes. Reminded me of the spaniel with the brain too big.

“Let’s rest here, let them get used to us,” Gina said.

I glanced at my watch. We were making good time; assuming we caught a vampire dog with little trouble, we could easily make it back up by the sunfall.

“Five minutes.”

We leaned against a moss-covered rock. Very soft, damp, with a smell of underground.

The gaze dogs came over and sniffled at us. One of the puppies had deep red furrows on its back; dragging teeth marks. I had seen this sort of thing after dog fights, dog attacks. Another had a deep dent in its side, filled with dark red scab and small yellow pustules. Close up, we could see most of the dogs were damaged in some way.

“Food supply?” Gina said.

I shuddered. Not much worried me, but these dogs were awful to look at.

One very small dog nuzzled my shoe, whimpering. I picked it up; it was light, weak. I tucked it into my jacket front. Gina smiled at me. “You’re not so tough!”

“Study purposes.” I put four more in there; they snuggled up and went to sleep.

She seemed blurry to me; it was darker than before. Surely the sun wasn’t further away. We hadn’t walked that far. My legs ached as if I had been hiking for days.

At the eighth waterfall we found the vampire dogs. Big, gazing eyes, unblinking, watching every move we made. The dogs looked hungry, ribs showing, stomachs concave.

“They move fast,” Gina whispered, her eyes closed. “They move like the waterfall.”

The dogs swarmed forward and knocked me down. Had their teeth into me in a second, maybe two.

The feeling of them on me, their cold, wet paws heavy into my flesh, but the heat of them, the fiery touch of their skin, their sharp teeth, was so shocking I couldn’t think for a moment, then I pulled a puppy from my jacket and threw it.

Their teeth already at work, the dogs saw the brown flash and followed it.

They moved so fast I could still see fur when they were gone.

I threw another puppy and another vampire dog peeled off with a howl. The first puppy was almost drained, its flatter, as if the vampires sucked out muscle, too.

“Quick,” Gina said. “Quick.” She had tears in her eyes, feeling the pain of the puppies, their deaths, in her veins.

I threw a third puppy and we ran down, away from them. We should have run up, but they filled the path that way.

I needed a place to unpack my bag, pull out the things I’d need to drop three of them. Or four.

We heard a huffing noise; an old man coughing up a lifetime. We were close to the base and the air was so hard to breathe we both panted. Gina looked at me.

“It must be the alpha. The yellow dog.”

It seemed to me she stopped breathing for a moment.

“We could try to take a piece of him. We’d never be lonely again, if we did that.”

The vampire dogs growled at us, wanting more puppies. The last two were right against my belly; I couldn’t reach them easily and I didn’t want to.

“I don’t want to see the ninth waterfall,” Gina said. I shook my head. If the vampire dogs were this powerful, how strong would he be?

“It’s okay. I’m ready now. I’ll take three of them down quietly; the others won’t even notice. Then we’ll have to kick our way out.”

She nodded.

We turned around and he was waiting. That dog.

He was crippled and pitiful but still powerful. His tail, his ears and his toes had been cut off by somebrave. Chunks of flesh were gone from his side. People using him as sacrifice for gain.

Gina was impressive; I could see she was in pain. Was she feeling the dog’s pain? She was quiet with it, small grunts. She walked towards him.

The closer she got to the dog the worse it seemed to get. “I want to lay hands on him, give him comfort,” Gina said.

The dog was the ugliest I’ve ever seen. Of all the strays who’ve crossed my path here, this one was the most aggressive. This dog would make a frightening man, I thought. A man I couldn’t control. Drool streamed down his chin.

He sat slouched, rolled against his lower back. Even sitting he reached to my waist.

All four legs were sprawled. He reminded me of an almost-drunk young man, wanting a woman for the night and willing to forgo that last drink, those last ten drinks, to achieve one. Sprawled against the bar, legs wide, making the kind of display men can.

His fur was the color of piss, that golden color you don’t want to look at too hard, and splotched with mud, grease, and something darker.

One ear was half bitten off. The other seemed to stand straight up, unmoving, like a badly made wooden prosthetic.

One lip was split, I think; it seemed blurry at this distance.

He licked his balls. And his dog’s lipstick stuck out, fully twelve centimeters long, pink and waving.

Thousands of unwanted puppies in there.

He wasn’t threatening; I felt sorry for him. He was like a big boy with the reputation of being a bully, who has never hurt anyone.

But when we got close to the yellow dog I realized he was perfect, no bits missing. An illusion to seduce us to come closer. Gina stepped right up to him.

“Gina! Come back!” but she wouldn’t.

“If I comfort him, he will send me a companion. A lifetime companion,” she said.

“Come live with me!” I said. “We’ll take some gaze dogs, rescue them. We’ll live okay.”

He reared back on his hind legs and his huge skull seemed to reach the trees. He lifted his great paw high.

Around our feet, the vampire dogs swarmed. I grabbed one. Another. I sedated them and shoved them in my carry bag.

The yellow dog pinned Gina with his paws. The vampire dogs surrounded him, a thick blue snarling band around him.

I threw my last two gaze dogs at them but they snapped at them too quickly. I had no gun. I picked up three rocks and threw one, hard. Pretended it was a baseball and it was three balls two strikes.

The vampire dogs swatted the rock away as if it were a dandelion. I threw another, and the last, stepping closer each time.

The yellow dog had his teeth at Gina’s throat and I ran forward, thinking only to tear her away, at least drag her away from his teeth.

The vampire dogs, though, all over me, biting my eyes, my ears, my lips.

I managed to throw them off, though perhaps they let me.

The yellow dog sat crouched, his mouth covered with blood. At his paws, I thought I saw hair, but I wondered: What human has been down here? Who else but me would come this far?

I backed away. Two sleeping vampire dogs in my bag made no noise and emitted no odor; I was getting away with it. They watched me go, their tongues pink and wet. The yellow dog; again, from afar he looked kindly. A dear old faithful dog. I took two more vampire dogs down, simple knock out stuff in a needle, and I put them in my bag. A soft blanket waited there; no need to damage the goods.

I picked up another gaze dog as I walked. This one had a gouge in his back, but his fur was pale brown, the color of milk chocolate. He licked me. I put him down my jacket, then picked up another for a companion.

It took me hours to reach the top. Time did not seem to pass, though. Unless I’d lost a whole day. When I reached second waterfall, there were the same fishermen. And the families at first waterfall, swimming, cooking and eating as if there was no horror below them. They all waved at me but none offered me food or drink.

The souvenir salesmen were there at the top. “Shells?” they said. “Buy a shell. No sale for a week, you know. No sale. You will be the first.” I didn’t want a shell; they came from the insects I’d seen below and didn’t want to be reminded of them.

I called a cabbie to take me to my hotel. I spent another day, finalizing arrangements for getting the dogs home (you just need to know who to call) then I checked out of my room.

The doctor was happier than I’d thought he’d be. Only two dogs had survived, but they were fit and healthy and happily sucked the blood out of the live chicken he provided them.

“You were right; you work well alone,” he said. “You should dump that husband of yours. You can manage alone.”

I’d just come from visiting Joe and his dry-eyed gaze, his flaccid fingers, seemed deader than ever. The nurses praised me up, glad there was somefor him. “Oh, you’re so good,” they said. “So patient and loyal. He has no one else.” Neither do I, I told them.

A month or so later, the doctor called me. He wanted to show me the dogs; prove he was looking after them properly.

A young woman dressed in crisp, white clothes answered the door.

“Come in!” she said.

“You know who I am?”

Leading me through the house, she gave me a small wink. “Of course.”

I wasn’t sure I liked that.

She led me outside to the backyard; it was different. He’d tiled the hole and it was now a fish pond. The yard was neater, and lounge chairs and what looked like a bar were placed in a circle. Six people sat in the armchairs, reading magazines, sipping long drinks.

“He didn’t tell me there was a party.”

“Take a seat. Doctor will be with you shortly,” the young woman said. Three of the guests looked at their watches as if waiting for an appointment.

I studied them. They were not a well group. Quiet and pale, all of them spoke slowly and lifted their glasses gently as if in pain or lacking strength. They all had good, expensive shoes. Gold jewelry worn with ease. The doctor had some wealthy friends.

They made me want to leap up, jump around, show off my health.

The young woman came back and called a name. An elderly woman stood up.

“Thank you, nurse,” she said. It all clicked in then; I’d been right. The doctor was charging these people for treatment.

It was an hour before he dealt with his patients and called me in.

The vampire dogs rested on soft blankets. They were bloated, their eyes rolling. They could barely lift their heads.

“You see my dogs are doing well.”

“And so are you, I take it. How’s your son?”

He laughed. “You know there’s no son.”

He gave me another drink. His head didn’t bobble. We drank vodka together, watching the vampire dogs prowl his yard, and a therapist would say my self-loathing led me to sleep with him.

I crawled out of the client’s bed at two or three a.m., home to my gaze dogs. They were healing well and liked to chew my couch. They jumped up at me, licking and yapping, and the three of us sat on the floor, waiting for the next call to come in.