"I went to the bathroom and I heard Kitty and I looked out the window and the werewolf came toward the house and then Thor came and fought with him and chased him away." Tom suppressed a smile. It sounded like a dream all right. He turned to Teddy.
"What do you know about this?" he asked.
"Nothing," Teddy said. "But I wasn"t in the bathroom. Brett wasn"t dreaming, Dad. We were awake the whole time."
What the h.e.l.l? Tom thought.
"Are you sure this werewolf wasn"t Thor?" he asked Brett, hoping the answer would be no. There were not other big dogs in the immediate neighborhood, and no other plausible explanation.
"No, Dad! Thor was in the woods! He came back after the werewolf killed Kitty! He chased him through the neighbors" fence!"
Tom was at a total loss. Whatever was going on, it wasn"t going to be resolved tonight, that much was sure. And he was dying to get back to bed.
"Well, look," he offered, "as long as Thor chased him away, we"re safe, right? And Thor is in the house now, so I"m sure if there is a werewolf out there, he won"t try anything. We can figure this out tomorrow, okay?" He tousled Brett"s hair and hoped his attempt to trivialize the night"s events had some effect.
Brett went through the motions of being rea.s.sured. At least Dad knew, even if he didn"t believe. And now that Brett had unloaded his story, he started feeling tired. He even began to doubt what he"d seen. Werewolves were possible when you were hiding under the covers in the dark, but with a light on and Dad sitting here, they were just movie actors with hair glued on their faces. He relaxed his grip on the covers, and Dad turned off the light, walked to the door, and went to close it.
"Dad?" Brett said.
"Yeah, Brett?"
"Could you leave the door open a crack?"
"Sure," Tom said, thinking Brett wanted the hall light to illuminate his room. In fact, Brett wanted Thor to be able to get in.
Tom left the door open about an inch. "That okay?" he said from the hall.
"Thanks, Dad," Brett said. "Good night."
"Good night, Dad," Teddy said.
"Good night, guys."
Thor waited to hear Mom and Dad"s bedroom door close before going upstairs for one last check on the kids. He sniffed Debbie"s door and pushed it with his nose; it was shut tight, as it should be. But Teddy and Brett"s door was ajar. He wedged it open with his nose and walked over the Teddy"s bed. It was clear from the rhythm of Teddy"s breathing that the boy was upset. He crossed the room and laid his head on Brett"s bed and sniffed Brett"s fingers. Brett reached out and petted him. A slight tremble in Brett"s hand confirmed Thor"s interpretation of his breathing: Brett was scared.
"You know, don"t you, Thor?" Brett whispered.
His words were meaningless. But the fear in his voice was disturbing. Thor hopped onto the bed, putting his body between Brett and the open door, and pretended to settle down for the night.
He lay there for almost half an hour, until Brett"s breathing said he was asleep. Then he carefully crept off the bed and out of the room. He checked Debbie"s door one last time and, ignoring the muted conversation behind Mom and Dad"s door, went downstairs to continue his vigil.
An hour later the house was calm and everyone but Thor was asleep. He lay on the easy chair near the stairs, watching the living room windows and listening to the silence.
The Bad Thing was out there, and when it returned, Thor would be waiting for it. He would not be tricked into leaving the Pack again. And he would not let the Bad Thing near the Pack. Not under any circ.u.mstances, not for any reason.
The Bad Thing had killed Kitty. And while Thor"s feelings toward her weren"t as deep as his feeling toward the rest of the Pack, she was still Pack, and guarding her had been his responsibility. Her death was his fault.
He"d failed in his Duty. His gut felt like an inner tube that had been tied in a knot and stretched tight.
He would not sleep tonight.
Chapter 13.
As dawn approached, the Bad Thing"s presence faded out completely. The Bad Thing was gone again, to wherever it went when it wasn"t around. But it would come back. And Uncle Ted would come back, too.
Thor knew Uncle Ted wasn"t in his apartment, and never would be when the Bad Thing was around. Thor didn"t understand the connection between them, but he knew they were connected.
About a half hour before dawn, the sound of twigs snapping in the woods announced Uncle Ted"s arrival. Thor ran to the kitchen and stood up against the door. He growled quietly to himself as he watched Uncle Ted step naked from the woods wearing only his running shoes. He walked hunched over, clutching his bloodied ankle with one hand.
The sight of the wounded ankle sent a shock of recognition through Thor. Suddenly everything fell into place.
Uncle Ted was the Bad Thing.
Thor needed no further explanation.
Unlike humans, Thor"s reality was based on observations, not explanations. He had no explanation for birds or b.u.t.terflies or cars or rain, but that didn"t cause him to doubt their reality.
He watched Uncle Ted with growing hostility as the naked man hopped up the stairs to his garage apartment. The apartment door quietly closed behind him, and Thor lay down on the floor. The Pack was safe for a while.
The morning sky lightened, and Thor relaxed.
His head settled onto his crossed forepaws, he sighed deeply, and his eyes fluttered closed.
They opened an hour after sunrise, when his biological clock told him Mom was overdue for her morning jog.
The house was completely still. He rushed up the stairs and poked the bedroom doors. Mom and Dad"s door was shut tight, and there was no fresh scent of her in the upstairs hall. Mom hadn"t left without waking him (which was just about impossible, anyway). She was still in bed.
Brett and Teddy"s door was open, and the boys were asleep in their beds. Debbie"s door was closed, and like Mom and Dad"s, it bore no recent scent trail. She was in bed, too.
Thor went downstairs and was on his way back to the kitchen, wondering why Mom wasn"t up, when he realized it was Sat.u.r.day. For the first time, a weekend had arrived without his antic.i.p.ating it. And for the first time, he didn"t care. He was in no mood for fun. He was too busy with the problem of protecting the Pack.
He"d made a lot of mistakes, and each one had increased the danger to the Pack. He"d respected the Pack"s rules and allowed Uncle Ted free run of the Pack"s territory, and now Kitty was dead. And it was Thor"s fault. He"d failed to protect her.
The enemy was in their midst, but Thor was torn between his instinct to protect the Pack at all costs and his instinctual prohibition of violence within the Pack. For whatever else Uncle Ted might be, Thor felt he was a Pack member. And in the end, it was feelings - and only feelings - that held the Pack together.
Why didn"t Dad resolve this problem? How could Thor deal with such complex issues, issues he couldn"t begin to understand, issues any human could (he was sure) breeze through without effort? Why did they burden him with unsolvable problems?
And yet they did. They acted as if nothing was wrong.
How could they fail to see the danger in their midst?
But they did fail to see it. Only Thor saw.
And Thor"s only solution to the problem was Bad. It required actions only a Bad Dog could take. Actions only a Bad Dog would even contemplate.
It wasn"t fair. It wasn"t right.
But Thor"s Duty wouldn"t go away, and Uncle Ted wouldn"t go away, and Dad wouldn"t intervene. It was Thor"s problem, and no one else"s.
He could not allow Uncle Ted to get to the Pack again, not under any circ.u.mstances, not for any reason.
If Thor had to be a Bad Dog to protect the Pack, then he had to be a Bad Dog. There was no other option.
Mom and Dad eventually came down to the kitchen together. Thor immediately noticed that Dad was quietly keeping an eye on him.
Unsure of his position with Dad, Thor lay on the kitchen floor and wagged his tail instead of getting up to greet him.
"Hi, Thor," Dad said, but the cheerfulness in his voice was false. He reached down to pet him, but he watched Thor warily, as if he might have to withdraw his hand at a moment"s notice.
Thor could see that Dad was afraid of him. The realization pierced his heart like a knife.
He was already a Bad Dog just for thinking about protecting them from Uncle Ted.
Dad touched Thor without much feeling, but with increasing confidence. It made Thor feel a little better, but it didn"t make him feel good.
Nothing would ever make him feel good again. He was going to commit Badness on a monumental scale today. Badness for which there could be no redemption or forgiveness.
Today was his last day with the Pack.
Tom was worried. Thor was acting strange, secretive, possibly guilty, he couldn"t be sure. Had Thor killed the cat? Had Tom endangered the family by letting him back in the house last night? Thor hadn"t looked guilty then, but he sure did now. Thor hadn"t shown any sign of sickness, no fever or foaming at the mouth. But then again, he hadn"t been eating much lately. What if Thor had some strange disorder that was causing personality changes? That would explain Brett"s "werewolf." Maybe he should take a closer look at Kitty"s remains, and Thor"s reaction to them.
Maybe he should get the dog out of the house - now.
"C"mon out," Dad said with a false geniality that Thor heard clearly. Dad opened the back door and watched Thor trot out to the garage stairs, where he sat down and tried to look casual.
He walked across the yard and called for Thor to follow him to the back of the garage. Thor glanced up at Uncle Ted"s door and followed Dad. He didn"t have to be at the base of the stairs to hear the door, should it open.
They rounded the garage and Dad scanned the ground.
Kitty"s body was gone.
Tom studied Thor for some clue as to what the h.e.l.l was going on. He saw nothing. The dog"s expression seemed to mirror his own feelings: tension, confusion, and nothing else.
Tom walked back to the house as Thor resumed his watch at the foot of the garage stairs. Tom wasn"t planning on letting Thor back in the house, not until he had some idea what was happening. He wasn"t worried about Thor bothering Uncle Ted. Ted had been sleeping in later and later in the last few days. Before he"d come to live with the family, Ted had made it clear that he sometimes stayed up all night, and he wanted to be left alone on those occasions.
But he"d apparently slept through the events of last night and the night before, Tom remembered suddenly. The lights had been on in the apartment both times, but Uncle Ted had never once stuck his head out the door, or even looked out a window to see what the commotion was. What was he doing all night? Tom wished he could think of a subtle way to ask Ted about it. Maybe later.
He"d completely forgotten the question that was on his mind when he woke up: How did Thor get out last night?
Tom stood on the kitchen steps and took a last look at the strange tableau in the backyard. Whatever this obsession with Uncle Ted was all about, things looked placid enough for the moment. And Ted wouldn"t be up for hours. Tom went inside, closing the kitchen door behind him. He had an important football game to watch.
Deep in the fourth quarter, Tom had no idea why he was still watching. His team would have to make three touchdowns and two field goals just to tie up the score, and in the meantime the opposing team had possession and was well on its way to another TD.
So when the doorbell rang, it was a relief instead of a nuisance to be pulled away from the slaughter.
The man on the porch looked vaguely nervous but determined. Tom instantly recognized the posture of the process-server. Immediately his heart started thumping in his chest.
The man cleared his throat and began: "Are you . . ?" he said, and recited Tom"s full name, middle name and all.
Tom"s mouth felt suddenly dry and he found himself unable to swallow. He nodded in response to the man"s inquiry. The process-server took it in stride. He"d obviously seen all this before.
The situation seemed somehow unreal to Tom, even though he"d half-expected this for some time now - ever since Flopsy failed to show up at his office.
I probably shouldn"t have humiliated him, he thought, even if he didn"t have a case. So now I"m getting sued. Great. After all the suits I"ve threatened, filed, deflected, and defended for other people, it"s finally happening to me. He felt almost as if he were in a state of shock.
Then a strange question popped incongruously into his head.
What"s wrong with this picture?
The man on the porch seemed to deflate a little as it became obvious that there would be no shouting, screaming, threats, or violence. He was almost apologetic as he handed Tom the papers.
What"s wrong with this picture? a tiny voice in his head repeated as he tried to keep his mind on the business at hand. What"s missing?
Tom watched the man turn to go as another idiotic thought entered his mind: Do you tip process-servers?
He closed the door and scanned the papers nervously as he walked to the kitchen, noticing that his hands were shaking slightly. The details of the suit was sketchy, as he"d expected. There was no mention of physical injury, which was good. If Flopsy had been p.i.s.sed enough, he might have gone and gotten another dog to bite him, then sworn it was Thor. But then, if he could get another dog to bite him, why waste it - why not sue that dog"s owner? No, Flopsy wasn"t attempting any large-scale deception. The suit was primarily for the "traumatizing effect" of Thor"s "unprovoked attack."
He flipped through the papers impatiently and found what he was looking for. A motion to have the dog destroyed. Of course. Flopsy didn"t stand a chance in h.e.l.l of winning the suit, but he had a very good shot at having Thor killed. Tom sat down at the kitchen table with the papers in hand, wondering exactly what he was going to do about this, when suddenly he realized what had been missing during the encounter with the process-server.
Thor.
He hadn"t come to the door. He was in the backyard when Tom last saw him, so it wasn"t surprising that he hadn"t heard the man approach the front door, but even from the backyard Thor would have heard the doorbell and come running, the way he always did.
What the h.e.l.l?
Tom went to the kitchen window and pushed the little curtain aside. Thor was still lying at the foot of the garage stairs, apparently asleep.
Then, as Tom watched, the apartment door at the top of the stairs opened.
The click of the latch at the top of the stairs snapped Thor awake instantly. Uncle Ted stepped onto the landing fully dressed, his wound concealed. He looked at Thor and took a tentative step down the stairs. Thor showed no animosity.