Night of the Howling Dogs (5 page)

Tad’s eyes were swollen with tears. The stings must have really hurt. If what Casey said about the wasps going after the water in our eyes was true, then we had to start moving, fast.

Louie squatted above us on the rim. He looked at me and shook his head. “What a laugh you are. You can’t even make two stupits stay together.”

“Not your business, Louie,” Casey said.

Louie turned to Casey and nailed him with his copper eyes. The skull and shark’s tooth swung out over his chest. “That right?”

“We found him. Everything’s fine.”

Louie turned back to me. I felt like I was ten and had just done something to screw up again. I couldn’t look at him. He was right. I was a laugh. I’d let Zach mess up when I should have insisted he go back to Tad right away.

Louie stood and jumped into the depression.

Mike followed, easing down more slowly. I wondered if it bothered him to be Louie’s pet dog. It sure bothered me.

“What’s wrong with his face?” Mike said.

“Wasps,” Casey said. “He got stung.”

“I don’t see any wasps.”

Behind him they were starting to rise off the can. We had to move…
now.

“So Mike,” Louie said, not seeing the wasps either. “You should take over for this punk, ah?”

I edged back, ready to run for it if those wasps came for my eyes. Mike rubbed his chin. The wasps hovered, finished with the peach can. I took another step back.

Mike said, “Listen, don’t say anything to Mr. Bellows or my dad. We could all get in trouble.”

The wasps circled higher, leaving the peach can, moving on. I started to scramble up out of the depression.

Louie stopped me, his hand on my chest. “Who said you could go?”

I slapped his hand away. The wasps were coming.

He shoved me and I stumbled into Casey.

“Hey!” Casey said.

“You like some of that, too?”

The wasps circled higher and higher, spreading out, ready to attack. “Get out of my way,” I said, pushing past Louie, stumbling out of the depression.

Louie came after me, his fists balled.

“Let him alone, Louie,” Mike said. “No need get us in trouble, too, ah?”

“In my school you wouldn’t last one day, haole,” Louie called after me. “My friends would pick their teeth with your
bones
!”

The wasps zoomed down.

Casey, Zach, and Tad scrambled out after me. We ran, leaving Louie and Mike swatting, dodging, ducking, and yelping, and inside I laughed like crazy.

That night we sat around the campfire with light from the flames jumping on our faces. I glanced over at Tad’s swollen stings. He was taking it like a man. So was Louie, who had three nasty welts on his arms and one on the back of his neck. Mike had miraculously escaped.

Earlier, when Reverend Paia and Mr. Bellows had returned from their hike down the coast, Mr. Bellows asked about the stings. “Got into some wasps” was all Louie said.

Mr. Bellows nodded. “My fault, Louie. I forgot to tell you about them…sorry.”

Louie shrugged and looked at Tad. “We can take it, ah, brah?” He put a hand on Tad’s head and ruffled his hair.

Tad nodded, grinning shyly.

Reverend Paia ducked into his tent and came back with a blue jar of Noxema. “I brought this for sunburn, but maybe it will help take some of the sting out.”

Louie took the jar and opened it. “Smells good,” he said, digging a finger into the white paste. He plastered it on Tad’s stings first, and then his own.

“Anything else I should know about, boys?” Mr. Bellows said.

I kept quiet. They got stung. Why say more? What happened today wasn’t going to happen again, not on my watch.

“Dylan?”

I shook my head.

“Mike? Louie?”

I looked up. “Nothing else,” Louie said.

“Great.” Mr. Bellows rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get dinner going.”

We all avoided his eyes as he and Reverend Paia gathered up the driftwood they’d found on their hike and headed over to the fire pit.

“Thanks,” I mumbled to Louie. “You didn’t have to—”

He turned his face away and held up his hand. Without looking at me or anyone else, he strode over to his tent.

“What’s with him?” Casey said.

“He doesn’t like messing up in front of your dad,” Mike said. “Believe it or not, he likes it here.”

I snorted. “Right.”

“Like I said, believe it or not.”

“You like the way he uses you, Mike? Like his pet?”

Mike glared at me a moment, his eyes steady. “Nice,” he said, and headed toward the camp in the coconut grove. The others followed him, heads down, silent.

I stayed where I was, my hands on my hips. Jeese, I thought. What a stupid thing for me to say.

Casey turned back to see if I was coming.

I shook my head and faced the ocean. A billow of clouds sat yellowing in a sun that would set on the other side of the island. I didn’t know what to think. For sure I needed to apologize to Mike. He didn’t deserve that.

When I looked back, I saw Louie alone, walking with his head down toward the grove.
He doesn’t like messing up.
I grabbed a handful of pebbles and started thwacking them into the ocean. I didn’t like messing up, either.

That night we sat around a campfire built with driftwood. The flames burned a bright yellow-orange from the salt in the wood. The air was still warm, but it had cooled down, and the heat from the fire felt good. I sat on a rock with my arms folded into my stomach, leaning toward the jumping flames.

But my eyes were on Louie.

He stood across the fire, just beyond Billy, Tad, and Sam, who were looking over their shoulders at him. He knew they were looking.

Over and over, Louie threw his knife into a coconut tree. It landed each time with a point-perfect
thunk.
After each toss he slowly walked over to pull it out, glancing at me briefly, cleaning the pulp off the blade before going back to toss it again.

Thunk!

I got the feeling Mr. Bellows wanted to say something. But he was silent.

Thunk!

I looked away when Zach said, “Reverend, tell us a story.” Billy, Sam, and Tad turned back to the fire.

Reverend Paia stretched and yawned. He’d been keeping an eye on Louie, too. But Mr. Bellows was the leader, and if anyone was going to say anything, it had to be him.

“What do you have in mind, Zach?” Reverend Paia said.

“Something spooky?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Billy said. “Spooky.”

Thunk!

“Well…let me think.”

Because he was a minister, Reverend Paia was full of stories, and he could really tell the scary ones. Mike could, too, and he used to tell them all the time before Louie showed up. I guessed he thought it wasn’t cool now.

Thunk!

“Tell them about the two brothers and the night marchers, Pop. They’ve been seen around here, right?” Mike glanced at Sam, Billy, and Tad, adding in a whisper, “They come out at night, you know. And if you look directly at them…you die.”

Thunk!

“Yah!” Billy said, grinning.

Reverend Paia chuckled. “Don’t scare them, Mike.”

“No,” Billy said. “Scare us!”

“Well,” Reverend Paia said, leaning forward, pinching his jaw with his fingers as if he were about to reveal a long-held secret.

Thunk!

“Louie,” Mr. Bellows said, “why don’t you come sit by the fire now? I think that tree has enough holes in it.”

Louie pulled the blade out and wiped the tip on his shorts. He looked at me one last time, then shrugged and put the knife back into its leather sheath and stuck it in his back pocket.

“I think you’ll like the Reverend’s stories,” Mr. Bellows added. “Come on, sit.”

Louie found a spot on the sand behind Sam, Billy, and Tad. He sat with his knees up and his arms crossed over them, the blank why-am-I-here look plastered on his face.

Likes it here, huh, Mike?

“Well,” Reverend Paia said, glancing around at us. “I’ve actually never seen any night marchers, you understand. Sightings are rare. But I’ve spoken to people who have…out of the corners of their eyes, of course, because Mike is right. If you look directly at them, they won’t let you live to tell about it. That’s the first thing you need to know about night marchers—if you see them, don’t look directly at them. Never, never, never.”

Reverend Paia let a moment of silence swell.

“You sure you want to hear this? Might give you nightmares.”

“We can take it, Reverend,” Zach said.

Tad got up. “Wait. Be right back.” He hurried over to his tent.

Louie lay back on the sand and clasped his hands behind his head, gazing up at the stars. He rolled to the side, pulled the knife out of his pocket, and set it on his chest.

I poked the fire with a stick. Sparks flew, fading into the night. How did this day get so messed up?

Tad returned with his backpack. He set it down on the sand and used it as a backrest. Hoping no one would notice, he slowly pulled out his blue blanket.

“Okay,” Reverend Paia said, holding up one finger. “First, this area was once a sacred place. Maybe it still is. There’s an old Hawaiian
heiau
just down the coast. You boys know what that is? A place where the old Hawaiians held their sacred ceremonies. Spirits wander all over this area.”

“Even now?” Tad said.

“Even now. They never really leave, you see. This is their home.”

“Are they the night marchers?” Billy asked.

Reverend Paia opened his hands. “I don’t know…but listen, I heard of two brothers who came down here to Halape one time a while back. They came to fish, planned to stay three nights. But they only stayed one. Actually, only one brother did. The other one…well…”

“The other one vanished…never seen again,” Mike said, almost in a whisper.

Reverend Paia shook his head sadly. “They’d just gotten into their sleeping bags on that first night. It was late, about midnight. They’d fished into the darkness and were tired. Their fire was just a dim glow when the younger brother popped up on his elbow and nodded toward the slope—the same one we came down today. ‘Look!’ was all he said.”

Billy and Tad turned and looked up at Pu’u Kapukapu, now a massive black silhouette against the starry sky.

Reverend Paia went on. “The older boy sat up to see what his brother was pointing at. In the distance he saw a snake of flashlights winding down the trail from the pali above. He watched the lights, at first thinking it was more fishermen, or maybe some campers coming in late. But then he realized they weren’t lights at all…they were torches.
‘Get down!’
he gasped, pushing his brother into the sand. ‘Those are night marchers!’ And the younger brother says, ‘Get outta here, there’s no such thing.’

“But he got down low anyway, because he wasn’t sure about that, and his brother really did seem scared.

“‘If they come close,’ the older one said, ‘you got to lie flat with your face in the sand, and whatever you do, don’t look at them, promise me….
Do not look at them….
If we’re lucky, they won’t see us.’

“So…they wait…and wait…crouching down behind the rocks with their faces in the sand.”

Reverend Paia pointed to a spot just past Louie. “Maybe they were right over there behind those rocks.”

Tad rocked back and forth, hugging his blue blanket. Billy had his T-shirt up over his head, laughing.

Louie snickered, his eyes covered in the crook of his arm.

“What’s so funny?” Casey said.

Louie lifted his arm and peeked up. “I just thinking about tonight when I going hear you crying from your tents—‘Mommy!’”

“Shuddup!” Zach said.

Mr. Bellows smiled and tossed another piece of driftwood onto the fire. Louie put his arm back over his eyes, chuckling.

“So what happened, Reverend?” Zach said.

Reverend Paia waited a moment to get everyone’s complete attention. Silence had a way of doing that. “So, as the line of torches came closer, the older brother dug deeper into the sand and covered his head with his arms. But the younger one just had to see if they were real. Maybe night marchers weren’t ghosts at all, but real people trying to scare other people away. So he peeked up to look and…
boom!
”

Everyone jumped. Billy yelped.

“Right there in front of him were the night marchers, their torches shining on his face! The guy’s mouth was hanging open, because they had sunken holes where their eyes should have been. And they were floating because they had no feet. The guy tried to scream, but all that would come out was this choking sound, like he couldn’t breathe!”

Reverend Paia put his hands around his neck and made gagging sounds. “Aggh, aggh!”

Sam’s eyes bugged out. “Ho!”

Reverend Paia jumped back into he story. “The older brother with his face in the dirt was shaking, because he could hear his brother choking, but he knew that if he looked up, he would die. He hoped his brother’s noises were only the sounds of fear and nothing was happening to him.

“Suddenly, everything…went…silent.”

Louie raised his arm off his eyes and peeked up again.

“The older brother waited for fifteen minutes,” Reverend Paia whispered. “He was afraid to move, even an inch. Then…slowly, slowly, slowly…he looked up.”

Reverend Paia shook his head, as if recalling a painful memory.

“What!” Billy said.

“Gone…his brother was gone. And so were the night marchers and their torches. All over Halape there was only the land, the ocean, and the stars, as peaceful as it is right now.”

We all gazed up.

“He never saw his younger brother again. He no longer existed.”

“Wow,” Billy whispered.

“That older brother is an old man now. But he never went fishing again. Anywhere.”

“Ho, man,” Sam said.

Tad was hidden under his blue blanket.

“Is that true, Reverend?” Billy said. “I mean, really?”

Reverend Paia stared into the fire, flame light wobbling on his face. He shook his head once, thinking deeply. “Who’s to say, Billy? That’s what I heard.”

I wondered if he believed…Naah. Not a reverend.

Louie looked as if he’d fallen asleep, the knife resting on his chest.

“So if you see torches tonight,” Mike added, “stay inside your tents. You come out…nobody ever going see you again.”

Louie snorted.

I stood and brushed the sand from the back of my shorts. “Good story, Reverend.”

“Yeah,” the others said, all getting up to head to their tents. “Good story.”

Louie eased up on one elbow. “Watch out tonight when you go out for make
shi-shi,
ah?”

Mike laughed.

“Come on, Louie,” Billy pleaded.

Louie tapped Billy’s leg with his foot. “No worry, brah. I protec’ you.” He pushed himself up and headed over to his tent with Mike.

Mr. Bellows kicked sand over the last of the fire.

Casey, Zach, and I said goodnight and walked over to our shelter. “Man, that was creepy,” Zach said.

Casey flicked on his flashlight. “He just made it up.”

“How do you know?”

“Well…think about it. How could the older brother know that the night marchers had sunken eyes and no feet if the only one who actually saw them disappeared? The older brother never looked up, right? That’s why he lived. He couldn’t know.”

“Hey, you’re right.”

“Of course I am, and anyway, there’s no such thing as night marchers.”

I wasn’t so sure. Who knew what went on around us that we couldn’t see? This place could be crawling with spirits. I looked up at Pu’u Kapukapu and shivered. “Let’s talk about something else, all right? I don’t want to go to sleep with creepy things on my mind.”

“Me either,” Casey said.

“I thought you said there were no such things as night marchers,” Zach said.

Casey grinned, shining the flashlight up under his chin. “You never know.”

Late that night I bolted up.

Something was crawling on my face.

I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and grabbed my glasses and flashlight.

Roaches!

All over the dirt floor of the shelter, scattering in the light.

Casey propped himself up on one elbow, blinking into the light.

“Look!” I said.

Roaches the size of my big toe were running for cover, ugly brown, with slick, shiny wings. Casey flew out of his sleeping bag and stood in his boxers. “I hate those things!”

We slapped the roaches out with anything we could grab, sprayed new moats of bug repellent around us, and tried to go back to sleep.

This
place.
Jeese.