CHAPTER FOUR

At first glance, David would have assumed a semi had struck the animal. Just from the sheer devastation of the scene.

But David had seen the dogs.

Hampshire Road was a winding shot through a heavily-forested patch of Brighton. Trees arched mightily from both sides of the road as a forlorn gray sky peaked through the deep green leaves, shuddering in the strong wind.

He was still riding a wave of exhilaration since leaving the school. Her smile still glowing brightly in his mind. That’s until he turned the corner of a soft bend and noticed the dark shapes in the road.

It was pack of dogs; an odd assortment of indistinct breeds, dirty and feral looking. There were seven that he counted.

Blood was sprayed across the drying-wet asphalt. Thick as paint, where a deer carcass was laid out, broken and mutilated. It was a large doe, nearly split in half with her guts ripped out. Several of the dogs feasted on her, while others sniffed about the gore that had been gruesomely splayed across the road.

As David drew closer, he saw the blood-stained faces and red matted fur. He stopped not ten feet away from them, but the dogs refused to move.

They glared up from their bloody kill with wild eyes and teeth bare. One dog, a black and brown Shepard, charged the SUV with a rabid ferocity of barks and growls. As if it were challenging him.

David blared his horn.

The dogs did not move.

He hit the siren.

They gave a wince.

But did not give way.

David sat there for a moment in this strange standoff, when he finally hit the gas and slammed the brakes, stopping a mere three feet from the first dog. He was laying into his horn and had the siren screaming like an angry banshee. The dogs scattered from the carcass and raced off into the woods.

He’d won the standoff, but what he’d seen from the pack worried him.

It took a while for David to step out of the SUV, wanting to be sure they were gone first. He followed the trail of blood and viscera to the mutilated carcass with his hand on his gun. When he finally got to the animal he had to fight off a surge of nausea.

The ruined fur was wet and muddy. The face had been torn apart and the eyes were missing. The mouth hung horribly open where the dogs had eaten her tongue, along with all the soft parts of the poor creature.

Puncture wounds covered the torso. They were gaping and deep from savage jaws and teeth. The left hind leg was broken and mauled. It’s how David figured they brought it down on the road. And then they ate her alive.

The woods were quiet. Every sound that did trickle out was amplified and echoed. There was a heaviness to the air, when there was a sudden loud CRACK from somewhere deep in the forest and it scared David enough that he pulled his gun. He kept his aim down as he scanned the trees, the thick brush and dense vegetation. There was no telling what was lurking there.

And they were lurking. David was sure of it. He could feel their dark eyes on him from somewhere out the woods.

He walked back to the SUV and radioed Brenda to call Harold Myers at Animal Control to come remove the animal. It wasn’t long before Harold called him. After listening to Harold’s grievances about not getting a raise while he answered calls at all hours, David urged him to bring someone along to the scene because of the dogs. But Harold gave an irritated explanation that detailed his responsibilities and for how long he’d been carrying them out compared to David before hanging up. David thought for a moment that if the dogs came back he didn’t want to find Harold lying out here like that doe.

David called in for an officer to wait by the carcass while Harold picked it up. Tyrell answered back that he was on his way, but not before he asked, “Did you say dogs?”

Another round of hazy rain came down as David pulled into Brighton. The town always seemed to be riding the edge of depression since Arrow Star Lumber went belly up just after the Reagan administration left office. Another hit was when the Sonic Air Condition plant in North Ridge relocated to Mexico. That one was bitter. And 300 of the 7,411 souls that made up the population departed Brighton not soon after as well.

There were more empty buildings than occupied, though there were still enough rich folks living on the edges of town that they could maintain the lights, clean the streets and hold a respectable Holiday overlay. There was word the town was fighting to land a Portland Tech firm to move in with the promise of a sweet tax deal and whispered "off the books" deals.

David drove past the old Brighton staples that were still kicking. The Movie Theater, The Bar, The Bowling Alley and of course Melanie’s Restaurant. An old local hang out that had been converted from the Soda Shop that departed this life well before David’s time. But it was where his mother and father had their first date. David recalled Red Harris would smile every time he passed it.

There was the bank, also. It was where, in 1973, Red Harris stopped a robbery, killing one robber and injuring another, while taking bullets in the shoulder and hip. The latter had left its mark in the limp Red carried for the rest of his life.

The bullet holes were still visible in the buildings around the street; a makeshift, but proudly kept monument to the town’s native son who had brought a fleeting moment of national attention to Brighton before being forgotten just as quickly.

David pulled to the front of Brighton Police Station. A one-level, shotgun style brick building with an American flagpole sitting proudly out front. He stepped out of the SUV and towards the tinted glass doors when he noticed The Man standing at the side of the building. David recognized him by his scraggly beard and skinny frame.

“Ray?” David asked.

Raymond Anderson, a skinny whip of a man, peeled away from the building, wearing dirty denim jeans and matching jacket that hadn’t been washed in only God knows how long. He wore a salt stained ratty blue ball cap and his long wet brown hair fell down to his shoulders.

He shambled towards David with his head down, his arms crossed and his body slightly hunched. His beard had grown unruly on his filthy skin that David thought held a sickly hue. David could just make out his badly bloodshot eyes from under the shadow of his ball cap. As he drew closer David saw that his eyes were disturbingly more red than white.

“He’s either sick or tweaked.” David thought.

“Aye, David.” Raymond mumbled, his voice gruff and scratchy, like he was getting over a sore throat.

“What’s this I hear about your brother, Ray?”

Raymond shuffled his feet, nervously. His mouth was slightly ajar, set in an odd frozen pose of what David thought looked like shock.

“I can’t get him on the phone. Damndest thing. I tried going up there but... They wouldn’t let me out of the truck.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Raymond hesitated, trying to form the words and get them out into the air before he changed his mind.

“The Dogs.” Ray answered. His red eyes met David’s and it wasn’t shock that David saw in them. It was fear.

“Where did the dogs come from, Ray?”

Raymond looked worried now, as if he were ready to bolt. His arms hung at his sides for a moment, like he was patting his pockets. Then his right hand shot to his left forearm and he began itching at it.

“Ray, where did the dogs come from?”

Ray drew in a long, haggard breath, before looking at the sky, catching a fine spray of misty rain his on face, as if forgetting David was there.

Then David remembered Red’s conversations with the old timers about all the Town’s no-account rabble along with every known and suspicioned sin they were guilty of. And he knew what the Anderson’s sins were.

“Were you fighting dogs up there, Ray?”

Ray looked at him. His silence said everything.

“Goddamn it, Ray. And now are you telling me those dogs got loose?”

Ray studied David, as a look of horrific clarity came over his cloudy, red eyes.

“There’s something wrong with those dogs.”

A cold shot of dread rode down David’s back. It was that intuition that told him about Charlie Selvie. There was something else going on here and Ray wasn’t saying it.

“What do you mean, Ray? What’s wrong with them?”

Ray looked distraught, holding back a flood of tears. His mouth still locked in that strange open yawn.

“I just need you to check on my brother, David. And Evelyn. Please... I just can’t get him to answer his phone. I just...”

Ray’s voice trailed off as his eyes darkened. David took in his condition and started to worry about what exactly was wrong with Raymond.

“Why don’t you come inside and out of the rain, Ray? And we can talk about it some more.”

An odd look of bewilderment crossed Raymond’s face, as he absently began shaking his head and backing away.

“Ray, come inside.”

At that, Ray Anderson ran.

He took off in a lurching scramble, never responding to David’s calls as he slipped off down the side of the empty “Melvin’s Garage” building and vanished into the woods.

“He looked like a frightened animal,” David thought, morbidly.

Like when they sense a violent storm approaching. And this one was going to be devastating. David thought about that doe again.