The dog waited for Dale to begin walking again before it followed. Dale slid down the steep creek bank and jumped the narrow, half-frozen stream. The dog picked its way across twenty yards to the north and scrambled up the steep slope.
Dale followed his usual route back to County 6, following old cow paths along the rim of a narrow ridge that ran between two gullies. The stream in the south gully had been named Corpse Creek by Dale and his buddies forty-five years earlier. There had been a three-foot-deep pool on the east side of the gravel road where the creek ran through a tall culvert—a favorite hiding place for the boys—and frequently, dead animals hit by speeding cars on County 6 had ended up in the pool. Thus, Corpse Creek.
The black dog stayed twenty yards back, picking its way across frozen grass in that tenderfooted way that some dogs have outdoors. At one point, Dale stopped and threw a rock in the dog’s general direction—not trying to hit it, merely trying to get it to go away. The black dog sat on its haunches and stared at him.
Then the dog licked its muzzle and showed its teeth—not, Dale thought, in any sort of snarl, merely in a doggy grin.
Dale felt a chill of unease flow through him. He knew it must be a trick of the overcast day and distance, but for an instance it looked as if the black dog’s teeth were wrong.
It looked as if the dog had human teeth.
Dale shook his head, angry at himself for generating the image, and when he looked back, the dog was no longer showing any teeth. He climbed over Johnson’s wire fence at a sturdy fence post and walked out onto the asphalt of County 6 in front of the hilltop cemetery. It was a cold day, and windy. Usually the cemetery was empty of visitors during Dale’s weekday afternoon walks, but he realized with a start that this day someone was standing thirty or forty yards into the graveyard. The lone figure was male and oddly dressed—wearing what appeared to be high leather boots, khaki wool as in old military uniforms, and a Boy Scout–type broad-brimmed hat. An old veteran ? thought Dale. It was impossible to tell the age of the man at this distance, but the slimness and suppleness of his silhouette suggested someone younger.
There was no car in the grass parking berm along the black iron fence.
The man in the cemetery looked up from the headstone he was contemplating and stared in Dale’s direction. Dale waved. He wondered if it was someone local—perhaps the male half of the young couple who had bought Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena’s farm—or someone else who lived within walking distance of the cemetery. It would be nice to meet someone normal around Elm Haven.
The man stared but did not wave back.
Dale mentally shrugged and began his walk north down the steep incline, making sure, as always, that no car or pickup was roaring down behind him on the narrow asphalt road. When he thought to check, there was no sign of the black dog.
It was an hour later, after he’d finished some tomato soup and returned to his computer in the study, that he realized that someone had been in the house.
The IBM ThinkPad had been left on. The last sentence Dale had typed was still on the screen—
The summer lies ahead like a great banquet and the days are filled with rich, slow time in which to enjoy each course.
Dale had thought about that sentence during his walk and decided that the simile might be too flowery, but it was not the possible excess in the writing that concerned him now. Below his sentence had been typed—
gabbleretchetsyethwishthounds
hehaefdehundeshaefod&hisloccaswaeronofer
gemetside&hiseaganscinonswaleohteswamorgensteorra
&histethwaeronswascearpeswaeoforestexas
He didn’t pay any attention to the gibberish yet. He was more interested in who had written it. Dale reached under the sleigh bed in the study and pulled out the new baseball bat he’d put there. The crowbar was heavier, but it was in the kitchen cupboard.
Hefting the bat, walking as lightly as he could, Dale went down the hall to the kitchen, through the kitchen and out onto the side stoop. It had begun to rain again, but it was light enough for him to see the muddy turnaround area. It had been wet and muddy before he left. The only car tracks led to his parked Land Cruiser. The only footprints were the ones he had left coming and going.
Not satisfied, Dale went back into the house. He traded the bat for the crowbar, locked the door, and went from room to room, switching on lights as he went. He checked behind furniture and drapes and under the bed. He opened closets. He went down the basement stairs and checked behind the furnace and under Duane’s old brass bed. He checked the empty coal bin.
Upstairs again, he rechecked all of the ground-floor rooms. Then he went up the stairs to the second floor.
The heavy plastic remained stapled firmly in place. The second-floor hallway was dim behind the yellowed sheets of construction plastic.
Dale checked everything again. Nothing. No one. The house was so empty and silent that the sound of the furnace kicking on made him jump and hold the crowbar at port arms.
He retrieved the baseball bat and went back to the study, hoping that the words would be gone from his screen. They were still there.
Dale sighed, sat in the old swivel chair, and printed out the page.
As he saw it, there were only two possibilities—either someone had been in the house while he was walking, or he had typed these lines without being conscious of it. Either possibility made him slightly ill.
He looked at the first line—gabbleretchetsyethwishthounds.The word “hounds” leaped out of the line. Whoever had typed this mess had not taken time to hit the space bar.
Dale went through the manuscript with his blue pen, setting diagonal slashes where he thought the breaks should be. The message became—
gabble retchets yeth wisht hounds
he haefde hundes haefod & his loccas waeron
ofer gemet side & his eagan scinon swa leohte
swa morgensteorra & his teth waeron swa scearpe
swa eofores texas
Unfortunately, most of it made sense to the English professor.
Dale Stewart’s expertise was in twentieth-century literature, but he had taught his share of Chaucer and enjoyed his seminars on Beowulf. This Old English was closer to Beowulf’s. “Gabble retchets” rang vague bells, but did not immediately translate. He didn’t believe that was Old English—Welsh, perhaps. “Yeth” meant “heath,” so the end of the first line meant something like “heath or wisht hounds.” He would have to check references for the “wisht.”
The rest of the message was straight old English. “He haefde hundes haefod”—“he had the head of a hound.”
Dale lowered the paper and rubbed his cheek, hearing the stubble there scrape. His hand was shaking ever so slightly.
“& his loccas waeron ofer gemet side”—“and his locks were extremely long.”
Dale smiled. When he had first seen the typing, he’d been afraid that Derek and the other skinheads, or even Sheriff C.J. Congden, had sneaked into the place to spook him. He felt he could safely rule them out. He doubted if any of the locals he’d met so far were literate in Old English. Careful, Dale old boy, he warned himself, intellectual pride goeth before a fall.
“& his eagan scinon swa leohte swa morgensteorra”—“and his eyes shone as bright as the morning star.” Someone with the head of a hound, long locks, and blazing eyes. Lovely.
“& his teth waeron swa scearpe swa eofores texas.” Texas. Dale wished it was a note about Texas. This line translated as “. . . and his teeth were as sharp as a boar’s tusks.” Texas.