Keepers

EIGHT

By the time I arrived at the group home, NPR was reporting that seventeen whales had beached themselves along the Maine coastline, and the local newsbreak reported that a group of hikers had seen what was described as a “dragon” near a wooded area at Buckeye Lake.

Okay, it wasn’t an elephant at the Twenty-first Street exit, but it was still funny. I’d have to make sure to tell Carson. After I finished being angry. And scared.

Suddenly so scared.

Cindy, one of the certified habilitation specialists who stayed at the group home, was waiting for me.

The neighborhood was amazingly quiet; no birds sang, no dogs barked, no cats yowled.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Cindy said as I joined her on the porch. “He complained about having a headache right after lunch and asked to be excused from afternoon workshop duties today. I sent him up to his room so he could lie down. I went up to give him your message after you called and-well, come on in, you can see for yourself.”

We went up to Carson’s room. Cindy showed me how he’d tied his bedsheets together and used them to shimmy down from his window onto the roof of the back porch. From there it was simple to grab one of the thick branches of the tree beside the house and climb down to the ground. I shook my head at the sight. Carson might have Down’s syndrome but it didn’t exclude him from possessing the same adventurous-sometimes even devious-imagination of a typical nine-year-old boy.

“I found this on his pillow.” Cindy offered me a folded slip of paper. I opened the note and read it, then became dizzy.

Carson’s spelling needed work, but the meaning was clear enough:

Longlost sayz the keeperz are comeing n he kneedz to talk to yoo.

Leaning on the windowsill and blinking the dizziness away, I saw a hand-sized cluster of what looked like small sticks lying near the roof gutter. If Cindy noticed them she gave no indication. But I knew damned well what they meant.

“I might have an idea where to find him.”

Cindy rubbed her eyes, her shoulders slumping in relief. “I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

“Have you called anyone else?”

She shook her head. “Only the sheriff. It’s standard procedure when one of the residents wanders off-not that it happens all that much but-”

I raised a hand, stopping her. “You don’t need to defend yourself to me, okay? I’m not upset and I won’t lodge any complaints with the AARC board.” My guess was she needed to hear that. The Association for the Advancement of Retarded Citizens sponsored this group home, which at any given time was staffed by two specialists and three trained volunteers, all of whom were expected to keep precise tabs on twelve residents. I couldn’t blame them. No one can be expected to keep track of twelve developmentally disabled human beings-ranging in age from thirteen to sixty-every second of every minute of every day.

I turned back and examined Carson’s room, which he shared with two other male residents.

“He took his comic books.”

Cindy looked over at the bookshelf that hung over the head of Carson’s bed. “I didn’t notice that before.” This said in the same tone of voice usually reserved for phrases such as “So what?”

“No reason you should have.” I glanced out the window once again at the cluster of sticks and saw the head of a black mastiff duck down from behind a hedge across the street.

I gave my own head a little shake.

No. No way.

I forced a smile onto my face and turned toward Cindy, then squeezed her shoulder in what must have seemed like a condescending gesture and said, “I’ll call you in about an hour or so and let you know if I found him.”

“If you think you know where he is, then we should let the sheriff-”

“No. If he’s where I think he is, the sheriff’d never find him. Give me ninety minutes. There’s no use bothering the sheriff if it turns out I’m wrong.”

Driving away, I hoped that Cindy wouldn’t notice the little cluster on the roof. The significance of the comic books was known only to Carson and myself, no problem there, but the bones on the roof might set some Gothic bells ringing.

I knew where he was. What I didn’t know was why.

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the black mastiffs following me.

Whenever I slowed, they slowed.

One of them darted across the road into the path of an oncoming car that slammed on its brakes and laid on its horn.

Jesus.

I wasn’t imagining them.

I looked in the rearview mirror again and saw one of the mastiffs running toward me, its teeth bared, foamy spit jetting from its mouth. At the last moment it spun around, claws scraping the asphalt with such power they sliced grooves into the surface, and then it took off at an even faster run toward the car that had nearly hit it a moment ago, legs pumping, muscles rippling, foam spraying, howling and snarling as it pushed forward on its hind legs and leaped into the air, landing on the hood of the car and hurtling its mass through the windshield.

I threw open my door and jumped out. In the distance, the driver was thrashing and screaming as the mastiff closed its jaws on his face. A slash of blood cut across the inside of the car, then another, then another, but still the man fought against his attacker.

The second mastiff ran to the car, repeatedly slamming its head against the driver’s-side door, fracturing the steel. Then it rose up on its hind legs and began clawing at the window and handle.

Jesus Christ, it’s trying to open the door.

It was a crazy thought, I knew it was a crazy thought, but it was enough to force me into action: I pushed my arm into my car and pulled the trunk release, then ran back and grabbed the crowbar beneath the spare tire, spun around, and ran toward the dogs.

The second mastiff was smashing its head against the side window now, having all but demolished the lower portion of the door, its claws tearing at the handle. And as I came closer I saw-I saw -the dog manipulate the digits of its paw to press down the release and wrench open the door.

Dogs cannot cannot CANNOT do that. They can’t.

The first mastiff released its grip on the driver’s face and the man fell to the side, his bloodied arm flopping toward the ground where the second mastiff sank his teeth into the wrist and began heaving backward, pulling the driver from inside.

Gripping the crowbar in both hands, I pulled back my arms and pitched forward with all my weight, swinging down and connecting with the center of the second mastiff’s skull. There was a hard crack! when the business end of the crowbar hit home, sending an iron wave up my arm and into my shoulder. The dog released its grip on the driver’s arm and staggered backward but didn’t fall.

It shook its head, blinked its eyes, then gave me a look that might have said, Don’t you know that hurts? before lunging toward my crotch.

I spun to the side just before the dog connected and was able to ram the other end of the crowbar into its breastplate before it tore into my hip with its claws and gripped my forearm in its teeth – but it did not break the skin. Its jaws had a powerhouse grip on my arm, but the thing wasn’t biting into me, wasn’t sinking those teeth through flesh and tendon all the way to the bone and ripping my arm from its socket; instead, it began to shake its head back and forth, drenching me in spit, jerking my arm this way and that, ripping through my jacket and shirt with its claws, tearing at my skin underneath, all the while whipping its head from side to side until I could no longer keep my grip on the crowbar and it went flying out of my hand to hit the pavement with a loud, ringing thud! and skittered over against the curb.

Once the crowbar was out of my hands and reach, the second mastiff stopped shaking its head but did not release its vise-grip on my arm. It pushed forward, forcing me to stumble back, then shifted its weight until I had no choice but to go to my knees or keel over.

The first mastiff was working on the driver. The man was dead. His face was now a pulpy, bloody mass of glistening meat and bone. His legs spasmed as his bowels evacuated. His fingers trembled, then were still.

The second mastiff released its grip on my arm and backed away a few inches, staring at me. Our faces were now on the same level. That’s what it had wanted all along.

I looked at it.

Its eyes were the same deep shade of red as those of the dead birds in Audubon’s Graveyard.

Its lips kept pulling back in a half-snarl, a deep, rumbling growl crawling around the back of its throat, ready to explode if I so much as moved.

I could feel the blood tricking down the side of my legs where its claws had torn through my clothes. The old wound on my left shoulder throbbed from the kickback force of the first crowbar strike. My heart slammed against my chest. I gulped for air, shuddering.

The mastiff moved to the side, huffing its harsh, hot breath against the side of my neck, still halfsnarling, dribbling thick rivulets of slobber-spit onto my arm.

That’s when I knew what was happening.

It wanted me to watch.

I remained as still as I possibly could, trying to ignore the pain, the fear, and the sickness welling up from my stomach.

The first mastiff waited until it was sure it had a captive audience, and then, slowly, with a deliberation you’d never attribute to an animal, began to disassemble the driver.

Not tear him apart: disassemble.

Using its teeth and claws, it worked on the man’s right arm until the shoulder was loosened and the scapula could be easily separated from the clavicle. Once the arm was removed, the mastiff carefully picked it up and carried it to the side of the road, licking the blood from the flesh until it was clean, then came back and began to remove the left arm.

Good God, I thought, where are the police? Someone must have heard all the noise, someone must have seen this and called the police. Where are they?

I saw the strobe-flash of the visibar lights approaching from the distance.

Why weren’t they using their sirens?

The vehicle approached; large, dark, boxlike.

It could only be something like a SWAT team.

Good.

The dogs looked at the vehicle, then calmly went back to their respective tasks of disassembling the driver and guarding me.

Dusk was coming fast. There was maybe an hour of daylight remaining.

Still, the vehicle shone its headlights directly into my eyes. I blinked, pulled back my head, and tried to turn away, only to find the face of the second mastiff batting its nose into mine to turn my head forward.

There was the sound of a metal door sliding open. A figure stepped from inside the van. It was difficult to make out any features because of the headlights’ glare, but I could make out some if his shape.

Not a police officer. Not unless the Cedar Hill Police Department was now issuing bowler hats as official head gear.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted something in a language like no other I’d heard before. It sounded like an amalgamation of languages; guttural clicks of Basque, monosyllabic tones of Mandarin, retroflex consonants of Gondi and Kurukh, even the musical complexities of Welsh.

Over two decades, and now my World Language minor comes in useful.

Whatever language he spoke, the dogs understood.

They both stopped what they were doing and trotted over to the man with steps that were almost light and happy.

“You need to go,” said the blurry figure behind the lights.

“B-but… but they killed that man!” I said, pointing toward the body as if the other man didn’t have a clear view of it already.

“Raw material is a bitch to get hold of these days, Gil. You’ll remember soon enough. Now, you’d best be on your way to get Carson.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the two mastiffs came lumbering out of the light, their red eyes glaring, their lips pulled back in full snarls.

I staggered back to my feet, stumbling toward my car, not wanting to take my eyes away from the dogs.

When my opened car door hit me in the ass, I twisted around and fell into the seat, slamming the door closed, putting the car in gear, and tearing away from there in a squeal of tires.

I ran two stop signs and least one red light on my way toward Audubon’s Graveyard. How I didn’t get pulled over by the police, I’ll never know. I only know that I was so far beyond scared that it would have taken the light from scared a thousand years to reach me.

I need to concentrate, to find something concrete, something real, something of the world I knew and understood to grab hold of and not let go, to ground me, to let me know that I wasn’t cracking up again.

(Again? Did I hear the word “again”? Does that mean you’re finally going to let it come back to you, pal?)

Ignoring you.

I pressed a hand against my chest as if that would help slow the jackhammering of my heart, then slid it up to press against my screaming shoulder. Even through the jacket and shirt I could feel the old scar tissue beginning to swell, and suddenly I had it, the one thing I could latch onto, the one thing that might keep me in one piece until I’d found Carson and could start making sense out of all of this.

The promise of seeing Beth again.

Because if it hadn’t been for this old wound, I never would have met her…