The sound came again, like the trill of a beach whale drying up amongst
the kreas, soap and sagebrush. What the hell is that? It's,
no doubt some kind of flying insect or other, Jimmy reassured his wife Deborah,
who was half covered by a quilt and hair threaded through pink plastic curlers.
It's driving me up the wall. Can you make it shut up?
Jimmy pivoted off the bed and he pulled his legs through a pair of levi,
securing the buckle of the belt he'd left inside the loops. Given the
nature of the mountain lions and dope fiends, he opted to bring us thirty
eight special. If you don't come back in half an hour, Debora joked,
I'm sending search and rescue. The clock read ten point fifteen, and
apart from the occasional hoot of an owl or the chirp of a cricket,
the night had fallen into a hush. Deborah was starting to feel anxious about
her husband going out into the darkness, giving his age and frail condition.
I better not find you, rattlesnake bit, Deborah scoffed, as if a
simple fall wasn't her husband's greatest threat. Woman, I've made it eighty two
years with nary a broken bone. Now go back to bed. Feeling slightly
patronized, Jimmy flashed her a crooked smile and slid his slippers on. He
was suddenly a boy again, preparing to stalk cicadas parked on the fence post.
After a period of pacing and finally parking himself on the aluminum lawn chair,
boredom began to set in. In order to quell it, Jimmy started
kicking over rocks in hopes of discovering scorpions or lizards. However, there were
only beetles and ants to be found, and then he took the spotting constellations
scattered against the tableau of the desert sky. He was ready to call it
a night and head back to bed when someone walked into view. Jimmy and
Deborah's long driveway spilled across their acreage like ribbon unweun from a spool. A
street light lit up their mailbox. At the intersection of the driveway and the
dirt road. There, bathed in light and dust, stood a figure resembling
the bastard child of a coyote and a man, and draped over its chest
was a vest composed of beads, the kind carved out of bone. It
stood upright on two legs, like annibus of old. What in the goddamn
hell, Jimmy whispered to himself. The hair on his arms perked up and
eyes squinty to get a better look. As he advanced in the direction of
the brute, making every effort to stifle the sound of crunching quartz bubbles.
He looked back to make sure the doors and windows of his home were closed.
The Deborah was safe. The air was heavy with the pungent odor of
trees of heaven that bordered their driveway, reminiscent of burnt rubbers smeared with a
rancid peanut butter. The beef's snout quivered as if to catch a whiff.
Jimmy recalled his grandmother's tales of supernatural beings such as these, though he always
assumed the stories were intended to scare the children into returning home before dark.
With a twist of its form, the thing arched its head backward, jaws
gaping wide to the point of dislocation. Jimmy expected it to howl like a
wolf, but instead, like a banshee, it issued the call he'd been
sent out to silence. If he hadn't been watching the scene, he might
have assumed it was steam escaping from a teapot, or the distant whistle of
a freight train. And as he inched closer, adrenaline surged through his veins
and his bowels knotted up inside of him. Has the devil come for me?
He wondered? Would it do me any good to shoot it? We
wrestle, not with flesh and blood, Jimmy thought as he stood motionless,
his fear heightened by the drumbeat of his own heart pounding in his ears.
But against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness and high places. What if I miss, he
pondered. With his hands poised on the trigger, Jimmy stood ready to discharge
his firearm in the event the monster lunged at him. And what if there's
more of them than I've got bullets for? Jimmy's eyes widened as he realized
as the friend was clutching a lifeless mammal maybe a squirrel, and not a
pull, but a hand bearing four primate like fingers and an opposable thumb.
The head of the small prey had been gnawed on to the point where only
a skull remained atop its body. He took a deep breath and closed his
eyes, and under his breath he muttered a prayer, he that Dwelleth in
the secret places of the most High, shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my
fortress, my God, and in him I will trust. Suddenly, the
cane had pricked its ears and cast its gaze in Jimmy's direction. The beast's
expression, whether smile or snarl, was indistinguishable to Jimmy. All he could
make out was the display of bare teeth and the fact that he'd been spotted.
Do you want to play it? Croaked? Jimmy pulled his gun from
its holster and fired two bullets in the entity's direction. Startled and unable to
discern if the bullets found their mark, the shots proved effective. Nonetheless,
the being dropped its prey and lowered down on all fours and took off running,
pitching a wake of dust into the air. No longer illuminated by the
street lamp, the creature vanished into the darkness beyond Jimmy's line of sight.
Jimmy stoodn't shocked for some time, his senses alert to every sound and movement.
Eventually he managed to rouse himself from his days to sit down on the
stoop, and as the minute stretched into an hour there was no sign of
a dog man's return, he decided it was safe to go inside. Jimmy
clicked the bedroom light on, waking up Deborah. What was it, jim
did you get it? She rubbed her eyes. I didn't see nothing dead.
Must have been some heartbroken half drunk on his daddy's after shad, But
I wasn't about to go following him into the Jimmy fell silent. Deborah had
already drifted back to sleep.