Excavation

Chapter 7

The old dog stretched his body as far as he could alongside the hickory root, trying to get the kinks out, get his bones working, loosen skin that had tightened from hours baking under the afternoon sun. One eye opened slightly, then the other a bit wider, and he stared at the dark doorway leading into the back of the store. He saw the man opening the door, a wide grin on his face… his man… carrying the can of water for Buck.

But then he was gone. It was dark now, cooler; the man had left a long time ago. Buck snorted. More and more the old dog knew he saw things that weren’t there.

He hunched his shoulders and began pushing up his aged frame. Then stopped. Sniffed the air, knowing vaguely his nose didn’t work anymore. But he still sensed it… something… was wrong. He growled softly to himself, then rose to a standing position and looked around the yard.

No changes here.

The door to the shed began to creak. Buck turned swiftly and barked. The branches of the tree were swaying, the dark moving swiftly over the ground. Air moving around Buck’s stiff shoulders… moving the shed door back and forth. No problem here…

But something was wrong. The old dog fixed his eyes on the dark beyond the fence. Trying to see with the weak old eyes… see through the dark…

Something was out there.

The bear moved quietly through the brush. He knew this place. But he had never been here. More and more there were human beings inside him, and their dwelling places, and he was seeing some of these dwelling places outside him now, here, in this place. He did not understand and it made him angry. He growled low in his throat and would have roared, but somehow knew he dared not roar in this place.

He sniffed the air. Something… ahead of him. A picture came into his mind. He would have stopped, turned around and run away. But this time he was confused. A picture he saw inside him of a friend. And another picture of the same thing, but an enemy. He was confused and it made him very angry.

Forgetting the danger, he roared. Then he charged.

Buck swung around to face the fence, the dark and the roar coming across it. The hair rose up on the back of his neck and he suddenly found his own roar.

A few buildings away, Ben Taylor was having a nightmare, moaning in his sleep. In another house, Alice Parkey bolted upright in bed, listening to the night with widening eyes. She poked her husband vigorously with her fist, but he would not wake up.

And on the top floor of Inez Pierce’s boardinghouse, her brother Hector sat up in bed with two words on his lips. “Bloody teeth!”