Flawed Dogs (8 page)

Sam walked carefully toward the man in the pajamas. Hamish swept the dog up into his large hands and held him toward the lamp. With quiet awe, he moved his eyes over the perfect lines of Sam’s profile. “A once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece,” Hamish murmured.

“Thanks,”
said Sam, licking Hamish under the nose.

Hamish looked startled. For a moment he considered returning the kiss but instead ran a hand across the top of the Duüglitz tuft, down Sam’s neck and across the length of his lanky back. “You and I are going to be great friends,” said Hamish. “And you are going to go great places.”

Hamish cradled Sam across his arm and walked to the open French doors looking out over the estate and the rolling hills glowing a milky blue below an autumn Vermont moon. He leaned his knees against the stone railing high above the ground, holding Sam up and out so he too could see to the horizon. “The McClouds are back, Sam. You’re going to be the champion of the world, dear boy.
My
champion.”

Sam hadn’t the slightest clue what that meant. But he knew the hands that held him firmly and that stroked his head with warmth and strength were not unkind. And he liked it.

But there was someone else in the shadows of the great room who had heard these words but did not like any part of them.

Cassius stepped forward out of the shadows of an alcove, the flickering firelight dancing across lips curled up with rage. His teeth—polished to a glistening brilliance with Dr. Doogie’s Doggy Dental Powder—sparkled. His eyes glowed with more than malice.

Murder.

“There is only one champion in this family,”
whispered the huge poodle as he crept toward the back of Hamish, still holding Sam into the chilly sky against the low stone railing.
“And it is not a ridiculous frankfurter on feet with a bit of laundry lint on his head.”

He stopped two yards from Hamish and Sam, facing the sky, breathing heavily, his breath misting from the cool air of the open window. A single impact at the man’s shoulder blades would send him and this new creature toward the stone porch far below. He hesitated for only one reason:

This was going to scuff his nails.

Still. Sacrifices had to be made.

Cassius bent his rear legs, preparing to spring.

Heidy awoke in her huge room, thirsty. She reached for Sam behind her knees. Not there.

She padded in bare feet out of the room and into the hall, whispering Sam’s name. So many rooms.

Heidy saw light at the end of the hall in her uncle’s study. She moved toward it, a faint feeling of unease urging her feet toward the light.

“Hot cocoa?” said Mrs. Beaglehole, stepping out from the hall’s darkness and in front of Heidy, scaring her. The large woman held a glass in front of the girl.

She was blocking her.

Heidy felt the hair on her neck rise.

“Poor dear,” said Mrs. Beaglehole. “You can’t sleep after the excitement today. This will help.”

“Have you seen Sam?” asked Heidy, suddenly suspicious and ignoring the glass.

“Why, no. But I’m sure he’s near. Go back to bed and I’ll look, dear.”

Heidy nudged the big woman aside and moved toward her uncle’s door. Reaching it, she flipped on the light switch, bathing the room in brilliance. Outside the French window on the veranda, Hamish spun around, Sam in his arms. He looked down to see Cassius behind him, crouched, ears down.

Cassius froze . . . then dropped to the floor, feigning a yawn to mask his murderous rage.

“Heidy. It’s so late,” said her uncle, surprised.

Heidy stood in the study doorway, blinking in the light. “Sam was gone. I didn’t know where he went.”

Mrs. Beaglehole and a pale Miss Violett came up behind Heidy.

“We do now,” Mrs. Beaglehole said with an odd, dark smile. She held up baby Bruno’s knitted sweater.

It had been violently shredded by sharp teeth.

Several months had stripped the trees of all their color, and winter was descending.

The school bus stopped at the gates of the McCloud estate. The door swung open while a dozen faces pushed up against the windows, staring, waiting, expectant.

Inside, the bus driver turned around to face Heidy, sitting three rows back. The girl looked terrified. The bus driver raised an eyebrow:
Out.

Heidy took her backpack and held it to her chest. Like a shield. She stepped hesitantly down the steps and onto the dirt driveway, looking around nervously. She looked up at the kids staring down at her from the windows, waiting for something to happen.

Heidy moved toward the house slowly, trying not to make any sounds on the gravel with her shoes. She watched the afternoon shadows of the shrubbery and gate for any sign of movement. The kids’ eyes in the bus did the same.

The driver quickly shut the door . . . but didn’t drive off. She too stared out with wide eyes. Watching. Waiting. Looking.

Heidy glanced up at the looming topiary bushes carved into the shape of huge dogs and shuddered, but not from the growing chill of the late autumn. No, it was from fear of the thing that was surely near.

It waited for her.

Somewhere close.

It
watched.

Heidy knew, as did the others, that it would soon attack. Without mercy.

Heidy spun. A figure leapt toward her neck from the nose of the huge dog bush overhead.

The kids in the bus screamed, “RUN!”

She did. The beast hit the ground behind her and she could hear its foul, murderous breath exhale. Heidy slipped on the gravel, landing painfully on one knee, her backpack slipping off. She left it behind and made for the safety of the house a hundred yards up the hill.

The beast followed, snapping at her heels, teeth flashing, voice screaming in a primordial howl.

The kids screamed again and pounded the bus’s windows.

She wasn’t going to make it.

As usual.

The beast leapt, its claws digging deep into her argyle sweater. Heidy dropped from the impact, hitting the grassy berm beside the drive. Rolling onto her back, she fought off the snapping jaws while the horrified audience in the bus continued to scream.

The beast’s terrible mouth reached Heidy’s neck and she surrendered to the inevitable, lying back against the ground while his tongue did what it always did at 3:40 P.M. every school day and lathered the lower part of her nose with dog saliva.

The kids in the bus shifted from screaming to cheering. Michael Green turned to Shayla Morphy with a look of triumph: “She made it to the third sprinkler head.
She’s getting better!
”

The bus drove away, the voices of the kids fading.

Heidy lay on her back in the cold grass, Sam sprawled across her chest, front feet on either side of her neck, licking above her top lip.

“Sam the Lion. Missed me?” asked Heidy.

“Did,”
said Sam.

“You wonder how my day was? Ah. Well. Esther Newberg asked to borrow my gym locker because she’d forgotten her combination and then she stole my gym underwear, wrote my name all over it in big letters and pulled it over a helium balloon and sent it up over the school assembly while we sang the national anthem.”

“This is why I like dogs,” Heidy said.

“How was your day?” she asked Sam.

“You didn’t rip up any more of baby Bruno’s clothes?”

“I told you,”
sighed Sam.
“That wasn’t me.”

“You didn’t puncture his baby bottle with your teeth? Or leave gnawing marks on his crib yesterday?”

“Uncle doesn’t know what to think. Miss Violett thinks it’s Cassius. Mrs. Beaglehole told Uncle that it must have been you. She wanted to check your gums for splinters.”

“Anyone check Beaglehole’s gums?”
asked Sam.

Heidy studied Sam’s eyes, not his teeth. She laid her head back down and stared up at the gathering clouds. A snowflake landed on her nose. “You just wouldn’t do those things. I know it. You couldn’t hurt anyone.”

Heidy stroked Sam’s head, kissed him on his forehead and then gently pushed his head down so his long nose lay under her ear, where she could feel his breath on her neck, warm, moist, safe. She laid both her hands across his back as if someone were about to pluck him from her grasp. She felt his chest rise and fall with his breathing. Now snoring.

She couldn’t help but match her breaths with his. They breathed as one.

And slept.

From the second-story window of Mrs. Beaglehole’s room, Cassius sat staring down at Heidy below with Sam sprawled across her neck. One thought circulated through his beautiful head:
That should be me.