Monsters
My new granddad’s hand was still on my shoulder. He patted me, looked ahead of us, and said it wasn’t my fault, not really. I looked up to him but he was just staring down the sidewalk as if already deciding where to place each foot.
“Sid should just quit taking those in,” he said, tottering forward.
By the time they came for Christmas he would be on a cane, but, that summer anyway, he was still pretending.
“Taking what in?” I said.
“Those dogs,” he said. “He not tell you?”
“They’re… police,” I said like a question.
He pulled his lower lip into his mouth, took another step — it was going to take us forever to get back to the house — and said, “Those are — those dogs he takes. What do you call them, that smell out people who have been…”
He made a motion with his hand, like dumping something out.
Cadaver dogs.
Trained to find dead people.
I breathed in once and held it, remembering the way the guy in the leather pants’ hand hadn’t bled. How he’d smiled from what should have hurt. How cold he’d been when he’d pulled me to him, how he’d got in my room. How — how… His breath.
Did I want to be number five?
I swallowed, my eyes full with what had happened, with who, or what, I’d led to Elaine, with what he might be picking from his teeth right now in whatever dark place he was holed up in for the daylight hours, and then, to make up for it, to start making up, I draped my new granddad’s arm across my shoulders, to help him up the hill, and understood a little even then, I think, about what it might be like to have spent your whole life alone, so that just one person reaching up to help you along could mean the world, and save your life, and make everything all right for a few moments.
But yeah, then we got home, and the only thing really different about the next few years, about all the years since that summer, is that I still wake at night, sure I’ve just heard the creak of leather, and I can close my eyes, sure, but then Elaine’s waiting for me at the top of the stairs, like she understands, her gashed open throat just white, not even bleeding.
The first girl I ever kissed.
The last girl I ever kissed.
What I’m waiting for now, I think, is for her to walk down in her nightgown, take me by the elbow and lead me back to that night the guy in the leather pants asked me if I knew what I had to do here, or if I wanted to be number five?
The first time I made that decision, I was twelve, and didn’t know I was going to have to live with it.
When my mom calls these days, she tells me I should consider getting a dog, maybe. That it would be good for me. A nice first step.
Thanks, Mom, but I’ve already got a dog, really.
His name is Matey. He lives in my head.
Maybe we’ll come see you one of these days.
Stephen Graham Jones‘ most recent novel is The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, currently a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Before that it was Ledfeather, where he explored whether a moose can be used a time travel capsule, and before that it was the horror novel Demon Theory. Three more novels before that as well, and one story collection, with another collection on the way, from Prime: The Ones That Almost Got Away. Horror. Updates and more at http://demontheory.net