Dog Tricks

Ok, calm down. That’s it. A dog trick.

My brother never really liked the whole dog trick thing. He was of the opinion he was taking up learning space in his dog’s brain with useless rutines. But he still taught the dog a particular trick, a favorite of his. Playing dead, he said, could get it out of any situation, so he taught it how.

It works out. Ralphie must be playing dead on the other line, and the first snag in the plan is passed.

For a moment, I conjure up an image of  Ralphie lying in the ground, really dead, with Mary steeping on him after she decided to add a little irony in her test. I push it away.

Think Fast

It is her. Mary Worth. Ok, here we go.

“Hello, sir. About the message that you left on in my machine… you said I have your dog!”

“Yes!”

A weird sound comes through the airucular. A sort of angry clacking sound like made by a giant bug. Someone else would think it was just noise in the line, but I knew better. No time for hesitation, just ignore it and continue.

“He fits the description in your sign! I’m pretty positive that’s my Ralphie!”

Heh. “Ralphie”. Almost had forgotten how much of a nerd my brother was. He certainly did not have talent for naming dogs.

“Can you prove it?”

Oh, crap. Think fast.

The Plan – Phase One

The dog’s owner let slip than she forgot to leave her number when Mary’s answering machine came up, and said she would call her again later. I decide to take this chance and call Mary’s phone inmediately, and leave a new message posing as the woman’s husband, calling to give a contact number. I give her my own. With this, I should be able to organize the meeting for the returning of the dog the way I need.

And there is the phone, right on cue.

Paranoia

I should have some time to pull this off. Mary knows she killed the dog’s owner a long time ago, so she probably will think the call must be a mistake or a trick. Soon, however, her greed for souls will outweight her paranoia.

Dangerous Oportunity

The phone rings. None other than the family mother my brother gave his dog to. How adequate. They found the dog. Apparently Mary was considerate enough to put up found dog signs. A ruse to attract new victims, no doubt.

This is just like in that Spider-Man comic. The crisis solves itself. Don’t I wish. But if I just let the woman walk into Charterstone for her dog, she will not walk out with it. She will not walk out, period. The woman tells me she has already called the kind elderly woman that found her dog. I will have to run with it, now. Okay.

I can make this work. I can help this woman get the dog back and get out alive with it. My brother will find rest again.

The Dog

I know that dog.

It seemed impossible at first. I thought that, well, all beagles look kind of alike. This had to be a coincidence. But there are no coincidences around this woman. I look at it, and now I am sure. That was my brother’s dog.

He gave it away years ago, long before he embarked on his doomed mission to destroy Mary Worth. He wanted to protect him from the twisted duty that had consumed our lives. I remember that around the time of my brother’s death, the family that adopted it called me, and told me the dog had escaped. They had looked everywhere for him, posted advertisements in local newspapers, everything, but it never appeared. The dog had vanished from the surface of the earth.

Now, nearly a year later, the dog just suddenly appears casually being walked by its master’s murderer? I do not know what is the meaning of this, but I am not going to idly sit while that monster parades my brother’s dog around the city as a trophy of her victory. I may have let her crimes go unpunished, not I am not about to let her continue to mock my brother even after his death.

The Feeding

Good. Things are going the way I hoped. The woman is ranting at Mary Worth the same way she has ranted in the past at many other dog owners, without realizing the true shape of the woman she is confronting. If things keep like this, hopefully she never will.

If the woman is very, very lucky, Mary will snap her neck right there and feast on her raw flesh. If she is a little bit less lucky, Mary will drag her back to Charterstone, and devour her more calmly. The doctor told me once about it, how he had once witnessed the entire process. Mary would grind the woman into a thin paste, than the she would cook into a strange beige-colored casserole to be shared by the residents of Charterstone. If she is not enough lucky for that, either… I hope she will be.

Wait. There she goes. Turns out she was in the very lucky group after all. I look away. I cannot stand the sight of Mary’s feeding. I never truly understood how it worked. Mary would sink her teeth into the flesh of her victim, but no one would notice. In only a few seconds, the victim was completely consumed, and then no one would ever remember she once existed. But if one knows the true shape of Mary, and forces himself to look while she fed, the process will seem to go on for hours, and he will hear Mary screaming in inhuman languages, even if far away, as she bites large chunks of meat off the body.

I look again. As I expected, everything is over now. Now that this is out of the way, I can concentrate on things of greater importance. It has been bothering me since Mary entered the scene of the sacrifice. She seems to be walking a dog herself. But no dog should be able to stand the presence of Mary Worth, and she herself lacks the human emotions that might incline someone to take one as a pet. What is the meaning of this?

Looking out the window

I get up, and approach the window. It is a beautiful afternoon. This is a good city. Clean, low crime, a couple traffic accidents a year. Kids play around in the park, a young couple walks happy under the window. An old lady feeding pigeons. If only they knew the terrible cost of their calm lives.

I set my mind apart from all that. I must look now into the truly dark side of the town, the side only me and a few other know of. I look into the horizon and see the silhouette of The Building. I tear my eyes from It. I avoid looking at It unless it is necessary, I always feel the damn place looking back at me. And what I must pay attention to now is that unremarkable hill in the park. The hill of sacrifices. My brother used to jokingly call it the Hill of the Worthy. That is how he was, able to laugh even in the face of horror. Maybe if he wasn’t like that he would be sitting here today, helping me carry this burden. Wait, something is happening.

A few years ago, the city council saw fit to build a massive concrete stairwell here, despite the fact that there isn’t actually anything on top. Now, it gives the place the eerie appearance of a sacrificial altar, which is what it has become. And there comes the sacrifice. The woman with the tiny dog was looking for a place where she could go for a walk without worrying of getting in fights with other dogs, and I was happy to oblige. No dog would ever come close to a place that reeks of death as much as this. The tiny dog didn’t seem to have any problem, but then again, it looked kind of stupid.

The woman was loud and annoying, I remember. She would constantly complain about how the other dogs were attacking his little honey, even tough it was hers who started all the fights. This is why she was picked. Not because she annoyed me, personally. I am not the monster. It was because annoying people usually enjoy the best of the fates that can be found in this place. A quick death.

And there she is. That woman. The Creature, the Avatar of Charterstone. Mary Worth.