Chapter Thirty-Two #5
And Scout. Mazelle’s dog had been standing on the kitchen porch staring at him from nearly the same spot where Mazelle was watching him now.
But he hadn’t been Scout as he’d known him.
In his dream, Scout had been growling at him, gnashing his teeth, his eyes flashing pale white.
And blood had caked the dog’s nose and mouth.
It had seemed so real, had scared him so much, that he couldn’t stop thinking about Mazelle all day.
And he’d told her about his dream that night in his office.
The rest was the booze, too awful to remember.
Now she wanted to kill him. And now he was here, yanked into that long-ago nightmare by strings he couldn’t see. The dream had been trying to warn him even back then.
He had to get to the road.
Instead of being loud, now Jerry sought silence.
He crept down the porch steps, avoiding snapping twigs and ice.
He glanced at the kitchen door’s window to see if Mazelle was still watching him—and her neck swiveled to track him like a falcon’s as he ran toward the gate.
Her face was gleeful with that awful grin.
Jerry ran as far as the middle cabin, then he heard snow shifting parallel to him, on the other side of the cottage. It sounded like something being dragged fast by machinery. When he stopped running to try to assess the threat, the sound stopped.
He bent over, his hands on his knees. His rising clouds of breath made him realize he might die here.
Mazelle wouldn’t need a shotgun—the strain of his presence here was already killing him.
When he inhaled, his chest hitched when he’d only taken half a good breath.
He might be having a fucking heart attack.
But he couldn’t shame Maria by dying here, so he started running again, one leg loping wildly as he searched for a gait that didn’t squeeze tears into his eyes from the pain. His hand was on his chest, pressing as if to keep his ribs from seeping through his fingers.
The odd racing sound beside him started again, but this time Jerry clocked the movement. Nothing was being dragged—something was racing with him. Whatever it was, it was fast. It moved in short bursts, changing direction slightly in rhythmic pauses, but it wasn’t Grady.
Something low to the ground. The size of a dog.
“Scout?” he coughed, half forgetting he wasn’t in his dream.
Even as Jerry called out hopefully for a dog that probably had been dead for nearly thirty years, his legs kept up their awkward running. The gate was still yards away, but it was closer with every step.
Whatever it was kept pace with him, racing forward, doubling back. He saw white chunks fly when it moved and realized it was buried in the shadowy snow. The shaft of bright sunlight splaying across the driveway ahead appeared like a sanctuary, promising warmth.
Jerry’s arms pumped as he forgot his pain and focused on making it to the sun.
Something flung itself from the snow into his path, shaking itself steady. At first he did see Scout, or at least a dog who looked just like him, but when he blinked, he realized the white-furred creature in front of him wasn’t a dog.
It preened by outstretching its nearly translucent bat-like arms, yawning its mouth open like a swamp alligator displaying vicious teeth—two rows, not one, nearly too many teeth for its mouth. The bigger teeth looked like daggers three inches long. A nightmare creature.
Jerry screamed, a full-throated sound he had never made in his life. He nearly couldn’t avoid falling into the thing, but he was so repelled by its claws and teeth that he willed his legs to change direction to try to get around it. Somehow, he stayed on his feet.
He had no more theories or a plan. His feet blindly stomped into snow as he ran. His chest was caving, choking his breath. He sobbed at the prospect of those teeth touching his skin, panic nearly overtaking him.
Still, rational thought prevailed: Whatever this thing was, it was only the size of a dog!
Jerry tugged at a dead branch dangling above him, pulling twice to yank it loose and test its weight in his hand.
The creature was gliding across the snow toward him with its arms folded flat like a seal, reinventing its form.
But the teeth in that wide-open mouth were the same.
“Fuck you!” Jerry screamed as he swung the branch. With his adrenaline surging, he swung too wide, too hard. His arc missed the creature, and the weight of the branch carried him off balance.
He heard his right ankle snap and thought, What was that?—and saw that his foot was separated from his ankle’s bloody stump. He gaped at the muddy sole of his shoe clenched in the creature’s mouth (Not your shoe, your FOOT), and then the gale of pain blotted his thoughts.
Jerry shrieked. Without a right foot to balance him, he fell against a tree trunk, hitting his head so hard that the crack echoed in the grove.
In the end, it wasn’t his heart or Scout that killed Jerry Lorenzo—it was the tree.
But watching it unfold through her picture window like a movie screen, Mazelle had never been so proud.