The Hound

by M0rr1gan

 

Nearly seven feet of John Rearden hung desultorily from his threadbare arm chair, his watery eyes pointed at a purloined Magnavox television, where a home improvement program was playing unwatched. His spidery fingers surrounded a chipped mug of steaming, black-as-death coffee. Had someone ben watching, they would have begun urging him to commence downing that high-test brew, for it seemed likely to be his only pathway back to the land of the living.

NNNNNNZZZZTT!

That would be his intercom.

Like footage of a building collapse run in reverse, John set down his cup of atomic coffee and unfolded his lanky form. He scratched his privates as he plodded over to the intercom.

ANNNNZZZZTT!!

"Awright, awright, hold yer fuckin' water," John griped. He leaned on the button and snapped, "Yeah?"

"Is John Rearden there?"

John jerked his head back. Such politeness. Who could this be?

"Who's askin'?"

"Paul Berry. Can I come up?"

John was lost in thought. Paul Berry? What could he want?

"John?"

"Yeah, its open," John muttered, buzzing Paul in. He made for the bedroom and a pair of pants, which he was barely done pulling on when Berry rapped on his apartment door.

Thousands of memories came rushing back as John swung the portal open, revealing a dour little French Canadian. Or, at least, Berry had always claimed to be French Canadian, a descendent of some Montreal clan called St. John.

He had a pointed chin, a mop of greasy black hair cut in a perfunctory Moe Howard, and huge brown doe eyes, which he now turned plaintively on the much taller Rearden.

"Hi John."

"Hey Paul. C'mon in."

Berry sort of ducked or slouched inside, peering around in a professional manner.

"Take it easy, pal. Since when have you known a thief to have anythin' worth stealin'?"

They shared a laugh as John poured Paul a cup of coffee. After a moment's thought, he cut Paul's coffee with a teaspoon or twelve of milk. Few people liked their coffee as strong as John did.

When he turned back to face Paul, the small dark man had set the ugliest little sculpture John had seen in a long time on the kitchen counter.

John let out a strangled cry and gasped, "Oh what the hell is that?"

Berry frowned down at the horrid little thing, which, strange as it seemed, was actually an amulet of some sort, for an oily looking, verdigris crusted gold chain trailed off the counter top behind it.

"I lifted that from this chamber of horrors over by the Aqueduct."

John gestured sharply at the amulet, which seemed to depict a winged dog or toothsome sphinx of some abominable type, "Why the fuck'd you go there?"

Paul shuddered, "Well, I thought these two morbid fags that lived there'd have some top flight goods. Y'no, like those fancy silver sculptures or rubies Goths're supposed ta love?"

John nodded, having just returned from a week in Puerto Rico with his lady love that had been financed by moon metal and bloodstones plundered from the home of an upper west side Goth. He frowned at Paul, "But you didn't find any there?"

Berry shook his head, "Lissen, I gotta get outta town fer a few days. Summer scenes an' all that."

"Sure. I'd like to get away more than I do."

"Can I leave that with ya?"

John spluttered in his coffee, "An' why the fuck d'you think I want it? It's the ugliest damn thing I've seen fer a coon's age!"

"Can I just leave it with ya fer a while?"

"Why? I don't run a dry room. Why'n't ya take it out ta Stoon's place in Queens?"

Berry eyed the monstrosity dubiously, "I think its worth somethin'..."

"Yeah, ta fuckin' Bela Lugosi!"

"...an' I wanted you ta have it if I don't come back an' get it."

Jophn half sat on the counter and held up his long index finger, "One. Why won't you claim it? Are the former owners gonna come lookin' fer it with a buncha gorillas?"

Pauo gave a start, "No man! The place looked half deserted when I went in!"

"So they ain't gonna come lookin'. Two: its awful generous a' ya t'want me t'have a windfall, but what're we ta each other, Paul? We worked together on a couple a' jobs, mostly fer that guy Dortmunder, but we ain't even friends.

"An' three, what makes ya think I want that creepy thing in the same room as me? Christ, its makin' my skin crawl all the way over here!"

Berry eyed first his watch, then the door anxiously, "Look John, I've gotta go..."

"So go then, but take that little nightmare in jade with ya!"

A falsetto shriek heralded a cloud of pungent purple smoke that gulched down the hallway past John's open door.

"Laura," John brayed, springing into the hallway past Paul.

John's neighbor, Laura Ambrose, was an undergraduate studying astronomy at Columbia College. She had such tremendous enthusiasm for all John did, while he valued her unconditional friendship. The screech and smoke had come from her apartment.

Probably from one of the odd little experiments she called alchemy.

"Laura?! Laura," John bellowed, his cracker accent slipping back a trifle while he waved the smoke aside.

His young friend sat stunned on the threadbare Oriental rug of her apartment, a shocked expression on her face. Whatever reaction she'd cooked up had bleached a fist-sized mass of her ringleted hair white as virgin snow, and chalky plum smoke continued to billow from the dinged little brass pot that she preferred for her experiments.

John crouched beside her, "Laura! What happened?"

"Whooo," she muttered

"What did you do?"

"I'm not sure."

John waved the smoke aside and peered into her pot, where dozens of thumb-sized waxy red crystals glimmered wetly.

"What's in there," she asked tinily.

"Some kinda crystals made a' wax."

With a grunt, she shifted and peered inside, her eyes glistening, "They're red."

"So?"

"They're the Red King."

"Wassat?"

She brushed a few strands of hair that remained mousey brown out of her eyes, "In order to precipitate the Philosopher's Stone, the Red King is required first."

John regarded her flatly for a moment, then shrugged and helped Laura to stand, "Whatever. Let's get you some air."

The apartments in their building all had minuscule balconies. John thrust a window open and began dragging Laura out it.

"John, what're you doing?"

"Why?"

He gestured angrily at the fumes, "Whatever that shit is, its gotta be toxic."

Laura frowned thoughtfully, "I don't think so."

"Even if it ain't, its gotta be bad fer ya," John pressed, feeling superior.

Laura glared up - way up - at him, "And just what are you up to?"

John rolled his eyes, "Aw, a guy I worked with...cripes, he's still here!"

John bounded out into the hall to his apartment. All that remained of Paul Berry was the hideous little amulet.

Well, that and a note.

Laura wobbled into the hallway behind him while John read the note. She even held her tongue from laughing as his thin lips moved. As soon as she spied the dog-griffin-sphinx thing, she emitted the same little strangled 'squark' a frog did as it was run over.

"My God, what the Hell is that?"

"That sonofabich!"

Laura frowned some more, "Do I get to learn more about that spooky little creep or should I just make up a story?"

John rubbed the back of his neck, "Oh this guy I worked with a coupla times..."

"Yes, we covered that."

"...named Paul Berry wanted t'leave that ugly thing here fer a coupla days. He said he hadda leave town fer a while."

"If he's such a shit poor thief that he's gotta steal scary things like that, I can see why he has to leave town.

They both studied Paul Berry's purloined nightmare for a while, feeling their skin crawl.

"Where'd he get it anyway?"

"He said from some place out by the Aqueduct."

"The racetrack?"

John frowned, "No, the one them Romans built.

Then he eyed her dubiously, "You know these Goths doncha?"

"I know some Goths, but probably not the ones you're thinking of."

"Why?"

As she inspected the alchemy-wrought damage to her tresses, Laura explained, "First, the Goth community isn't like some union, where everyone knows everyone. People don't have 'reps'. Second, how d'you know he stole it from Goths?"

"They'd be the only people weird enough t'have somethin' like that", John yelped, gesturing angrily at the amulet.

"Why d'you say that?"

"C'mon...grown men wearin' mascara? Alla that death imagery. What'm I supposed t'think?"

"Anyway, why d'ya wanna find the people your boy Paul took that...that...erm...'canosphinx' from?"

Laura beamed in self-satisfaction.

John ignored her, "Well, I don't remember Paul Berry that well, but what I do remember of 'im was that he was pretty steady."

"So?"

"It's not his reputation t'get spooked."

"Yeah?"

John nodded, "In fact, he called the place where he took this thing a 'chamber a' horrors'."

Laura rolled her eyes, "'A chamber of horrors'? What's the New York underworld going in for melodrama now?"

"Is there any way t'track down any Goths what live near the Aqueduct," John muttered.

Laura gaped at him, "Are you serious?"

"Sure. How hard could it be?"

"Real hard."

"Why?"

"This is New York, John. Home of about three bazillion people, and that's just in the metropolitan area!"

John, however, seemed to be warming to his topic, "There's gotta be a way t'track 'em down.

Although it seemed to pain him, John picked up the hideous thing and turned it over.

"What're you doing?"

John peered at its oily jade surface, "Tryin' t'find a maker's mark."

Around the base of the ghastly figure ran an inscription in some unidentifiable language, while, on the bottom, in place of a mark, grinned a grotesque and formidable skull.

They both gasped a trifle. The only speech either could muster in that infinite instant was Laura's strangled, "Jesus!"

After they'd recovered, John using a few fingers of bourbon, they addressed the object once more.

"Well, its ugly...," Laura began.

"Damn ugly," John quipped.

"...we know that," Laura finished.

"You recognize any a' that writin'?"

Laura shook her head, making her newfound alabaster pompadour quiver, "Nope. I doubt it's a living language, though, and it's not any of the dead ones I know. I do have a feeling its Dutch, although, if it is, is not a common dialect."

John stood frowning for a moment before he sighed, "Okay, whadda we know?"

Laura folded her arms across her chest, "Well, I don't know of any store'd sell that damn thing. I has to be an antique, and there's too many antique dealers in the city, too."

John scraped his lower lip with teeth yellowed by countless gallons of coffee, "I could beat the bushes fer my guys, but that thing'd be too rare fer any fence I know."

Laura poured herself a glass of milk while John placed a telephone call.

"Hey Stoon...John Rearden here...aw not bad. Things've been a little slow lately. Lissen, could you see if anybody's been lookin' fer this little idol I got? No I didn't swipe it. Paul Berry left it here."

Laura didn't pay much attention to the rest of John's conversation, but she nearly jumped a mile when he hung up.

"So?"

John stood up, "Stoon says he'll have a look, if we show 'im that thing."

Laura eyed the 'canosphinx' dubiously, "The less I have to do with it, the better. Isn't Stoon's place way out in Queens, near Shea Stadium or something?"

"So?"

"Well, I don't want to be around it more'n I have to, and wouldn't we be in possession of stolen property if we took it all the way out there?"

John kneaded the back of his neck some more, "Hadn't thought of that."

It was Laura's turn to think for a moment. Then her face brightened, "D'you have Stoon's fax number?"

"Yeah..."

"Then we can send him a picture of it!"

"We can?"

"Sure. A nice clear black and white should do it."

"I don't have a camera though."

That stopped Laura, "Oh. Geez, and I don't either.

She tapped her front teeth absently, "I wonder...I wonder...

She brightened considerable, "Beverly's got a camera."

"She does?"

"Sure. I think's about a thousand dollars, too."

In a flash, Laura had snatched up the abomination and was thudding off down the hall, to a particular door which seemed to barely contain a furious rock'n roll tumult that blasted from sources unseen within.

"Wow. She's in fine form today," Laura laughed over the din, rapping on the door.

Some minutes passed without a response.

Laura knocked harder.

Still no response.

John rolled his eyes and applied a thin sheet of metal, about the side and shape of a credit card to the door beside the knob.

Presently, they stood behind Miss Beverly Fallon, of Massapequa, Long Island. Beverly looked, acted, and dressed like an extra from a 1980s rock video.

Before her were arrayed a quartet of high end computer monitors, two feet across if they were an inch. The bewildering array of mainframes that Beverly had constructed herself, and which bestowed Beverly with her astounding computing power glowered all around her like a squad of trolls.

"Hey Bev," Laura chirped.

Things began happening quickly. Laura's day, off to a bad start already after her alchemical break-through and its hair-bleaching consequences, took another turn for the worse when, upon surprising the redoubtable Beverly Fallon, she became intimately acquainted with Beverly's famous - perhaps infamous - armor-piercing right cross, which seemed to be forever on a hair trigger and ensured that Beverly enjoyed essentially unrestricted freedom of Manhattan's meaner streets, no matter what the hour. Had Laura not been small and light enough not to really absorb much of the titanic energy of that whiplash haymaker, and had some splinter of prescience not bade her flinch as soon as Beverly began uncoiling, she might have enjoyed the same fate as a deer who lingered too long before a freight train, a situation which tended to end explosively.

Instead, that thunderous wrecking ball punch sent the spunky nineteen year old rocketing back out the door of late opened by John's gentle caresses. A jumble of words spilled from the mouths of John and Beverly, while blood spilled from Laura's.

"How the Hell'd you get in here...?"

"...picked the lock. Its what I do..."

"...aw geez I fink by node id brokken..."

"...the Hell d'you want..."

"...like t'borrow yer bloody camera..."

"...by node IZ brokken!"

"What d'ya want my camera for," Beverly shrieked.

John crossed to his semi-conscious side kick and retrieved the hideous jade effigy from her slack-fingered grasp. With the nightmare laying in his creased palm, John thrust his long-fingered hand at Beverly, along with the explanation, "That. We wanna take a pitcher a' that"

"What the great German Jesus is it," Beverly whooped, "A little bit a' snot from the Devil's nose?"

"Kad I pleed hag zumfink bore by node," Laura whined.

John swaggered to her side and helped Laura to stand. As he escorted her to Beverly's kitchenette, he called back over his shoulder, "A past associate left that with me. The whole thing screams bad news, so a guy I know's gonna see if anyone's lookin' fer it. He needs a pitcher ta show around, 'coz neither a' us wants ta trek all the way out ta Queens with that little hoodoo, 'specially if its stolen."

"Queens," Beverly muttered, "D'you mean Stoon?"

John's silence answered in the affirmative.

"Y'no, you don't need to take a picture of this thing...or get ol' Stoon involved," Beverly opined, eying the ugly trinket with a skeptical eye.

John and Laura emerged from the kitchenette. John had a towel full of ice pressed to Laura's face, and held her head like a bowler addressing the foul line.

"Whaddaya mean?"

Acting like it was a clod of manure or something radioactive, Beverly set the amulet down inside a peculiar glass-lined box, about the size of a lunch box, and shut the lid.

"Da hell is dat," Laura groaned, looking around John's hands.

Beverly had resumed her seat, shut off her music, and begun the semaphore that opened a new program, "It's a three dimensional scanner, like they use at the grocery store."

Presently, shafted light began flashing out around the scanner's lid. The canosphinx appeared on Beverly's center-most monitor in greyscale.

"You know, its even uglier on the computer."

"John glowered at the image, "So now what? Ya got a picture of it on yer computer. Now ya can scare yerself any time ya want to."

Beverly held up her finger, "Ah, but I can do this."

Beverly rattled off several dozen keystrokes, making various multicolored symbols appear on another monitor.

"What'd you do?"

Beverly pointed at a slowly revolving blue "e" on the screen, "Searching the Internet."

Laura crowded close, "You can do that?"

Beverly sneered at her.

"So whadda we do now," John injected, forestalling an argument.

Beverly pointed at the screen once more, "I wrote a little program that'll match that image up with anything on the net. We just have to wait for it to find a match."

"An how long's that gonna take?"

Beverly's little program was still whirring away days later. Acutely uncomfortable in the same country as the oily jade canosphinx, John had consigned it to obscurity in his stash, along with the proceeds of his last two jobs, a lead lined space beneath his kitchen floor.

He was giving serious thought to simply throwing the awful thing in the trash, or even worse, gifting it to someone he actively disliked - the idea of burglarizing a place to put something back held a certain cockeyed appeal to him - because of an ominous new development.

The first night that John and the amulet spent under the same roof, there came a faint but insistent disturbance at his bedroom window - and the apartment that Mr. John Percival Rearden shared with his common-law wife was on the seventh floor of an eleven story building, and on the side away from the fire escape, no less. Part of it was a nightmarish whirring and flapping, as though something monstrous and filled with inhuman vigor were attempting to fly in the window. The second, infinitely more frightening aspect of the visitation - for what else could it be? - was the faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound.

It sound like it was coming from New Jersey.

The first night it happened, John was far from sure that the entire episode was not a dream, brought on by a day full of stress. When it occurred the next night, John was quite sure that his dreams played no part in the episode.

For one thing, the second night, he was wide awake, and not even the warm comfort of his lady love, Mary Sparks, beside him could comfort John as...whatever it was fluttered against the besieged pane. John had not known such soul-shrinking fear since the last time he was a guest of the state in Ossining. He clutched the threadbare sheets tightly below his long chin, bony form a-quiver with fright.

The first night, that titan baying had been distant, as though whatever gargantua authored those noises were advancing upon the King of Cities out of the scrub pine barrens of the Garden State. The second night, a sleep-short John was sure that whatever authored the awful uluation now stood astride the Verrazano Narrows, eying Manhattan hungrily.

It was that proximity, that terrifying sense of hovering menace, that chased the amulet from the kitchen counter to John's lead-lined loot-drawer beneath the floor.

John's companion in the task was a redoubtable character name Joe Mancuso, a plebeian sort known for his practical skills, among them a more than passing capability in carpentry.

So, one sunny Friday morning saw the lofty duo crouched over a cavity in John's kitchen floor, a patch of parquet set aside against the stove.

"Just how'd you come to have a lead strongbox in your floor anyway," Joe, a heroic red-head, rumbled in his seismic voice. He applied a screwdriver every bit as impressive as he was to the screws which kept the void shut.

"Well, I started havin' enough loot around that it didn't all fit in my old spot."

"Yer...ungh...toilet...gah...tank," Joe grunted, straining the screws loose.

John smirked, "Havin' some trouble there, big fella?"

Joe exhaled sharply and rocked back on his haunches, "How the fuck'd you get those so tight?"

John was not known for his muscle power, you see. He smirked again, in his hangdog way, and lifted a pipe-wrench from his tool box.

Joe frowned like a hillside slumping and rumbled, "Cheater.

Joe applied himself to the screws once more, "Just what're we puttin' in here, Johnny? Been a while since your last job, ain't it?"

John hung his head and produced the storied amulet. As soon as he laid eyes on it, Joe collapsed against the cupboards with a gasp, "Christ on a crutch! Da fuck is that?!"

"We're tryin' t'find that out."

"'We'? We who?"

"Me an' Laura an' Beverly."

Joe wiped his mouth, "Y'no John, yet little advantures have this tendency t'take on a life a' their own, eh? I mean, I still remember that fracas at Atlas Trading with them Africans an' the Devil's Foot. This gonna be like that?"

"This is my fault," John gasped at him, "I didn't ask fucking Paul Berry t'pick me as his drop fer that stupid thing!"

Joe folded his spade hands and glared at John, "An' just why did he leave that shit with you?"

"I dunno. We don't even know each other that well. We just worked together a coupla times."

"See?"

"See what?"

"Yer past strings're comin' back t'haunt ya."

John watched Joe in silence for a time before he hissed, "And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"Well..."

WHAM

went John's door and into the room thudded blonde-from-the-bottle Beverly Fallon.

"John? John!"

Two heads popped up over the counter.

"Wassup, Bev?"

Beverly clutched several pages of computer print out in her hand. She flapped these at the pair, "I found it."

"That's great, Bev," Joe rumbled, "What did you find?"

"What that spooky piece of jewelry is.

Both men looked down at the nightmare in jade resting between them. Beverly spied the open floorboards and the leaden casket within.

"What're you two doin'?"

"Puttin' that spook in my strongbox."

Beverly put her hands on her boyish hips, thrust out her vulpine chin, and purred, "Why?'

John looked bashful and more than a little embarrassed...so Joe spoke up, "Aw, he's been havin' nightmares, an' he figgers this thing's the cause of 'em."

John slapped the big man on the arm, "Thanks a whole bunch, shit head!"

Beverly's face crinkled cutely, her version of a frown, "You've been having nightmares?"

John kneaded the back of his long neck, "Every night me an' it've been under the same roof."

"Shit," Beverly hissed under her breath.

Joe jabbed his stubbly chin at her, "Whacha find out, Bev?"

She spread her print out on the counter and pushed her felt hat further back on her head, "Four days. It took four bloody days for my bot to dig anything up at all."

"'Bot"," Joe rumbled at John, "Wasshe got a robot'r somethin'?"

Beverly glared up at him, "A bot is a small, custom program. They do some little job for you, then die."

"Die?"

"So what'd this one do afore it went ta software heaven," John pressed.

Beverly gestured at the print-out, "It found all of this in the online archives of Rotterdam's daily newspaper."

"Rotterdam," John wondered.

"'s in Holland," Joe offered.

John's frown merely deepened.

"So what's it say?"

Beverly pushed her fedora around a bit on here double-process blonde locks and scratched her scalp, "My Dutch is pretty poor..."

John glanced sharply at her, then straightened up, "So ya don't know much, then?"

Beverly smacked the pages on a picture of the amulet, "That's it, isn't it?'

The two men turned shuddersome eyes to the grainy black and white image.

"I guess," John muttered, "How old'r these pictures?'

"They were taken in 1909."

Joe let out a low whistle, "Shite, that's almost a hunnert years ago."

John glared at him, "An' that means what, exactly?"

"Lot can happen in a hunnert years."

"Right," Beverly groaned, "Anyway, I can try to translate this...maybe get the computer to do it, and once I do, we'll know, but at least we know that the booger's turned up on the radar before."

"We do not," Joe grunted.

"Hunh?"

"That could be a duplicate. Could be hundreds a' them things."

Beverly shook her head, "When I wrote the bot, I told it to look for an exact match."

"An' that's an exact match?"

Beverly nodded, "I set the tolerances way up, too, so there was, like, one chance in ten billion of there not being a match. Takes time, but you're sure."

John tapped a grainy photo which accompanied the amulet's picture, "Those look like cemetery gates."

Joe bent to look, "An' old ones, too. Lookit how shaggy those trees've gotten."

John sighed, "Anyway, we gotta wait fer a translation, an' while I'm waitin', I wanna put that goober in my strongbox."

"Sorry I didn't have more now, John."

"S'okay, Bev."

After she'd left, John knelt beside Joe at the strongbox once more.

"Hunnert year old cursed amulet," the big man rumbled, "Oh aren't we havin' fun."

"Just get it in there."

"An' how exactly is it that you have a lead strongbox in your kitchen floor?"

"I toldja, my other cache got too small."

"I don't mean that...lead, John?"

"I heard that the police sometimes use them portable x-ray machines, so I got this lead thing made up. Spooky thought it was a Hell of an idea."

Joe snorted, "The biggest smart aleck in the CIA? Sure he'll think somethin' like this is a good idea."

John consigned the amulet to the cavity within and replaced the lid, "Close 'er up."

John only breathed a sigh of relief once the lid was back in place.

"Maybe I'll get some peace."

"How long ya gonna leave it in there?"

"'Til I think of a way ta get rid of it. Maybe I'l throw it inna river."

Joe began tightening the screws, "If ya were gonna consign it ta the river, ya'd have done it by now.

He looked up, "An' I'm wonderin' why ya haven't?"

John sighed again, "I keep hopin' that Paul Berry'll come back fer it."

A smaller, apricot- haired women who always reminded Joe of Susan Sarandon, even though they looked nothing alike, bustled into John's apartment.

"Hey Mary," the lofty duo chirped.

"Are you waiting for Paul Berry," she drawled in her thick Bronx accent.

"Yeah," John answered with a nod.

"He's dead, you know."

"Hunh?"

"Yeah. Paul Berry died last night."

John stood, "How d'you know that?"

Mary unbuttoned her blazer - she was still dressed for her job as a teller at Chemical Bank - and perched on the arm of the sofa, "You remember Katie at the bank?"

"The one who always goes nuts when she sees me because she thinks I'll hold the bank up?"

Mary scratched her chin, "That's right. I shouldn't have told her you've been to prison. Live and learn. Anyway, she picks up these hot sheets from the police precinct every morning before work."

"Right..."

"This morning, she had this notice that a guy named Paul Berry had been killed over night."

Joe reached up and slapped John on the leg, "Think it's the same guy?"

John glanced from Joe to his wife, "I dunno. Did you see the picture, Mar?"

Mary stood, adopted a bleak expression, and kicked off her mules, "Uh, yeah."

"Was it a little guy with black hair in this 'Moe Howard' cut," John pushed.

Mary frowned and shrugged her jacket off. She was solidly built for a lifelong city girl, full of wiry strength. In fact, the word muscular would not be inappropriate, "It was hard to tell."

John frowned, "Why?"

"Well, the hot sheet said he'd been in some kinda road accident, and it musta been a doozy t'leave him in the shape he was in."

Joe stood up and stopped looking like a severed head resting on the counter. Both men scowled and asked, "Why?"

Mary threw her blazer over her shoulder and made for the bedroom.

"He was all chewed up, like a dog bone'r somethin'," she called over her shoulder.

John slapped Joe on the shoulder, "A dog! Don't you see?"

Joe clutched his arm, "Oww! No, I don't see!"

"I've been hearing a thousand ton hound dog since he left that thing here."

Joe kept rubbing his arm, "So? If you slept like a normal person, maybe you wouldn't hear shit in your sleep."

"I stay up late? This is coming from the guy I always hear busting a gut watching Jimmy Kimmel when I get home from pulling a job."

"At least I'm not breaking any laws watchin' Jimmy. What the hell d'you mean, anyway?"

"Okay. Paul swiped that damn thing, an' now he's all chewed up. He probably heard that hound. Now I got the amulet, I'm hearin' a hound dog, an' I'm gonna get chewed up."

Mary emerged from the bedroom and helped Joe stare at John.

"Are you crazy," they eventually asked.

Evidently, John felt that a precipice-like frown was the best answer.

"Like Joe said, maybe if you kept regular hours and slept normally, you wouldn't hear things."

"Mar," John groaned, shaking his head, "Not you too."

"I sleep right beside you. Why haven't I heard anything?"

John gaped, "You sleep like a fuckin' log a' wood! If you died in yer sleep, the only way I'd know'd be when ya stopped movin'!

John stormed over to the couch and flopped down on it, "I'm gonna get eaten by a giant ghost dog an' no one cares!"

A mutual friend, Priscilla Clarke, worked as a bartender at the Coyote Ugly Saloon, which lay almost precisely a mile east of the apartment where John and Mary and Joe and Beverly dwelled. Normally, John or Joe or another of Pris' male friends either picked her up from work or walked her home.

That very night, Joe and Priscilla were returning from the East Village and Coyote Ugly when the last act of the drama was played out.

"If you're going to get into fights, you can stop coming," she chided her titan companion in a voice like many tiny bells.

"That guy threw his beer on me!"

"It was an accident, Joe. Steve is in every night and he gets sloppy like that."

"He should learn to handle his liquor."

Priscilla rolled her eyes, "Whatever. Besides, so you got beer on yourself. Since when is that an excuse to lay the boots to someone?"

Joe frowned and rolled his slabby shoulders. Then he looked about quizzically, "What's that noise?"

Priscilla rummaged in her bag for her keys, "Spooky's watching television."

Joe pressed his ear to the door of Spooky's apartment, Spooky being one Benjamin James Ferrin, "Well, he is watchin' the tube, but that ain't what I'm hearin'."

Priscilla was too busy unlocking her door to offer more than an absent, "No?"

"Sounds more like someone cryin'...an' a dog."

Still busy with her lock, Priscilla murmured, "There's no pets allowed in the building."

"Where's that comin' from?

He rattled his hairy knuckles against Ben's door, "Hey Spooky, whacha watchin'?"

PUM PUM PUM

Ben peered out the crack between his door and the frame, "I was watchin' 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' until my King Kong neighbor decided t'beat on my door at four in the bloody mornin'."

"D'you hear somethin'?"

"I c'n hear you pulverizin' my door..."

Joe scowled, "Naw, like a dog'r someone cryin'."

Ben opend his door wider and poked his head out.

"I don't...

Then he frowned and half shut his eyes to listen.

"...y'no, I do hear a dog.

He glanced south down the hall, towards the apartment of John Rearden.

"Sounds like its comin' from Johnny's place."

Priscilla and Joe both followed his crackling blue eyes in the direction of John's apartment. As the brawny spy emerged into the hallway, the sounds seemed to intensify, a queer combination of rustling, tittering and articulate chattering. Most frightening of all was that it was not simple, chaotic rustling, overlain with the cry of a hound and inexplicable grief, but a language.

The Dutch language.

"Oh shit," Ben hissed, shrugging into a t-shirt, "What the Hell's that?"

All three trembled slightly as they drew up outside John's door, for only their imaginations could populate the space on the other side, and those imaginings were none too pleasant.

Priscilla tried the knob.

"'S locked."

Joe made a sour expression and slammed his booted foot into the door. After the door had rocketed against the internal wall, they looked around the apartment, concluding that it could not have looked more normal. On odd stillness and the indescribable fetor of an open grave hung in the air, the only indications, aside from those damnable sounds, that some drama might yet unfold.

"Congradulations, Joey," Ben chided, "You just wrecked John's door fer the fun of it."

"Shhh! You guys," Priscilla hissed, clobbering to the bedroom door, "Its happening in there."

Joe made to kick the bedroom door in, too, but Priscilla held up a forestalling hand. As the big man juddered to a halt, she winsomely turned the knob and pushed the door open.

A malign awareness, lean, hungry, and a-thirst was turned their way and they beheld an eldritch sight. The bedroom window had been caved in as the entity had forced its way within. Shards of glass and the shattered frame lay strewn all about. John and Mary huddled at the head of their bed, frighted out of the ability to speak articulately, as something crouched slaveringly at the foot of the bed, seeming to snap at them like Cerberus or Garm.

It was neither animal nor man, not even a solid object, but a sort of smoky indestinctness whose wisps seemed to curl into the nightmarish suggestions of wings and paws and mighty jaws and great goggle eyes and thousands of other canine blasphemies. Although nothing remotely resembling a face, let alone a mouth was to be found within that gaseous potential, all three new arrivals were as certain as death that drooling lips drew back to expose wicked fangs taught with grotesque glee at the though of further warm flesh to rend.

"Ulp! I can see you're busy, John. I'll talk to you in the morning," Joe chattered, his eyes grown very wide and his jaw fallen slack.

Whatever it was - a cloud not of smoke but of blackness that could be man, mist, or monster as it chose - belled its hound of hell cry once more and surged towards the newcomers. It chose Joe as its target, since he was the biggest, although its wings - unseen and unformed, little more than wisps of smoke but undeniably there, just as grief and fear were hard to tough but existent nonetheless - tumbled Priscilla and Ben along with him, in a great cursing convulsion, into John's living room.

"YAA," Joe cried, batting and flailing at the nighted vapor that seemed to squat upon his broad chest.

Ben sprang at the stuff to try to tackle it off his tormented friend, but merely sailed into John's television.

"That was fun. Can we do it again," he murmured dazedly, standing amid a shower of sparks.

"GAA! Get it off," Joe cried, his hands flailing away like trireme oars.

Frantically, Priscilla caught him beneath the arms and yanked the big red head to his feet.

"It can't hurt you," Ben spat amidst a chorus of savage growls emerging from the midnight mist.

"What!!"

Ben dabbed blood from his split lip and edged around the crouching black bulk. They were all sure they could see a huge canine form within.

"Its not solid enough, or in the right ways, to hurt any of us."

"How can you possibly know that?"

Still edging towards the door, Ben gestured at Joe and John and Mary, "If it could hurt us - if it was able to hurt us, there'd be three corpses here right now.

"Keep it waitin'," he grunted, ducking out the door.

"Keep it waiting," Priscilla shrieked after him, "How'r we supposed to do that?!"

Warily, she turned back to the intruder.

"What'd going on," came a sleepy voice, "Where did Ben run...EEEEEKK!!"

Laura had crawled out of bed to witness the nebulous black blasphemy, which grew no less vaporous but more suggestive of a colossal winged hound and surged towards her, shattering the door frame as it came.

She spun and fled down the hall, screaming as the smoke specter swept after her.

"Ahhhhhh!"

"Hey! Bad dog," Ben snapped, stepping into the hallway between girl and ghost.

The man monster mist juddered to a halt before him, a low growl gurgling from some skirl of smoke that passed for its throat. Ben stood with his hands folded behind his back. He shook a finger at the intruder.

"You've been a bad doggy. Do I have to get a rolled up paper?"

The thing seemed to crouch, as though gathering itself to spring. Quick as a wink, Ben produced his blocky .45 automatic, all customized titanium and ominous.

The intruder - the hound - seemed to settle, the cloud of nightmare possibility drawing in on itself to take on an altogether hideous physicality.

Not a dog, as had been haunting John for days but some charnel-reeking revnant risen from the grave.

Although freshness could never describe it, amazingly much remained to cling to its strangely crushed bones, and remained surprisingly firm, caked with blood and shreds of alien flesh and stringy, mold crusted hair, leering hungrily with phosphorescent eye sockets and finger- long, blood-stained fangs.

Ben thrust his cannon at it as a priest might brandish a crucifix, his hand trembling, "O-okay, that's far enough."

Those slack, skeletal jaws twisted sardonically and the hell-hound cry belled once more.

So Ben shot it.

Not that half...well, three quarters...of its skull exploding into a cloud of pulverized blood and bone and grave dirt seemed to really inconvenience that revnant It merely drew back a a savage claw and prepared to gouge Ben's heart out.

"Here, ya fuckin' freak," John snarled, slapping the equally hideous oily jade amulet into it palm.

The corpse thing turned towards John.

John angrily gestured down the hallway, "Ya got what ya bloody well came for, ya fuck! Take yer dirty damn bones back t'yer crypt an' leave us the fuck alone!"

Wrapping its bony fingers around the amulet, the corpse thing slunk off. John stared after it, shaking his head, "Fucking zombies!"

 

END

  

  

  

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