Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (24 page)

“He thought he was tough before,” Doug muttered, somehow louder than the gunfire, “But I’ll learn him his place. Everything learns its place in the end.”

Doug locked eyes with Laticia, his as blue as the boy’s but deep with forty more years’ tinkering and malevolence. He held her there, through the smoke that hung in the room, and she clenched her teeth, didn’t dare shudder.

“Where you keepin’ him?” Will asked, when Logan paused the game to roll a dollar bill.

“The wolf?”

“Since when was he a wolf?”

“Shut your cunt,” Logan yelled at Chrissy, but Doug was content to stay the center of conversation.

“Had him in the shed but he ‘bout tore a hole through the back. I chained him up to the old Chevy ‘fore we left.”

“He’s gonna tear the bumper up,” piped Irving Cellar.

“He does I’ll kick the shit outta him.”

With a slow blink the boy’s eyes matched the blankness of his daddy’s, pupils narrowing to pinpricks as he asked, “Can I kick it, too, Daddy?”

The laugh came up deep from Doug’s belly and he ruffled Irving’s hair with a mechanic’s hand, greasy nail-beds buried in that straw blond. “Yeah, boy,” he said with not a little pride, “You can kick it, too.”

Laticia reached for her purse and bumped the empty pipe on the table; it spun like a compass needle, pointing to her and the faded furniture and the coke and the weed and the PlayStation, the statue of the Indian chief in the middle of the coffee table, and finally eight-year-old Irving Cellar and his saucer-sized eyes.

“I’m goin’ on home, Will, you can walk it from here, cantcha?” Laticia stood, willed her knees not to knock and her hand to move slow and steady putting her pocketbook strap on her shoulder. All eyes on her, but she just had to make it out of the room, that was all, outside the circle. Just out of the room and all would be well.

“We’re just getting started, Tish,” Will half-whined, but she eluded his grip and in two steps made it to Chrissy’s chair. Four more and she’d make the door.

Four more steps. She leaned in to Chrissy and murmured loud enough for all to hear, “I got my time something fierce, girl. I don’t get home soon this place is gonna look like
Bloodsport.
”

Chrissy laughed, Chester Cheetah’s glasses rising and falling on her tit, and suddenly no eyes were on Laticia; they were anywhere else.

“I’ll see y’all later,” she made her voice steady and counted the four steps to the door, watched her fingers close around the handle, felt the invisible tether snap. She didn’t exhale, not while they called out goodbyes, didn’t exhale until the screen door shut behind her and she was down the trailer steps, until she could see the moon.

The June air smelled like honeysuckle and gasoline. Laticia breathed deep, over and over enough to make herself dizzy, cleaning her lungs of their exhaled breath and the stench of sweat and pot and Lysol. She stood at the car long enough for someone to flip on the porch light across the street, but when Laticia raised her hand the light blinked back off.

The street was a blur, she took the turns too fast and barely tapped the brakes at stop signs, widening the gap between herself and that place. She was out of the trailer court and had clipped a mirror before she slowed, cranking down both windows.

Half a mile out she passed Will’s apartment building and was on Dickason, laying on the brake to avoid a cat when she saw another set of eyes, two points of light reflected in her headlamps on the opposite side of the street the cat had run. Back on the gas, eyes forward, she passed the Cellar house.

“We trimmed him up nice,” she said softly. At the stop sign she gripped the wheel until her knuckles were white as the little boy’s, and couldn’t bring herself to say out loud,
Can I kick him too, Daddy?

She looped the block, headlights off, before she could change her mind and let the car creep, a gravel at a time, back down the Cellars’ block on Dickason Street.

The house to the right of Douglas Cellar’s was boarded up, and the house to the left flashed a For Sale by Owner sign canted to one side in high grass. Across the street, Laticia couldn’t say, only that there was a light on, but whoever might be home at midnight on a Saturday night, would they sic Douglas Cellar on anyone?
Twenty-five and you never done one good thing. Tell yourself you’re better than all this trash, but you smoke their weed and fuck their boys and keep your goddamn mouth shut.

“Hypocrite.”

The word stung, even coming from her own mouth. When she saw eyes again she dropped the car into park and slipped out as quick as she could to cut the interior light.

Crunching up the driveway toward the truck, she held her left hand out, low. Still no dog in sight, but she could make out the chain around the bumper. If it was loose, and the beast they said it was, it would tear her to pieces, eat her up, nothing left in the driveway but eyes and the palms of her hands.

Movement beneath the truck, the shifting of gravel. She stopped. “Hey, boy,” she whispered. “Just wanna turn you loose. Just wanna let you . . . ”

What emerged from beneath the pick-up was too large to be a dog. In the almost-pitch she could only see its shape, and her heart thumped
A bear, A bear, A bear
. Little by little it manifested a dog-shape after all, and she whispered large breeds: “St Bernard. Sheep dog. Great Dane. That whatchamacallit from
Turner and Hooch
,” in the softest voice she could and willed her feet move forward. Her other hand went out, and with ten feet between herself and the mass she braced for a growl. “Cujo was a St. Bernard. But you’re not Cujo. You’re a wolf, aren’t you? A big, black wolf . . . with no tail. Oh Christ.” The chain could’ve been fifteen feet or two, but Laticia’s horror trumped fear and she left it behind, shuffling forward and dropping to her knees as the dog inched forward.

Pennies and Blu-Cote, and pine needles and the earth after it rained, her nose was full of its scent. She released a whine from between her teeth as the monster, half-slain, limped into the light.

“Trimmed you up good,” she heard herself whisper, and the dog released a rolling growl, then raised its wolf-snout into the air and howled. From their kennels, the hounds joined the cry.

The plan had been to turn the dog loose, to fuck over Douglas Cellar good and proper, to give whatever they’d trapped an honest shot. When she parked there’d been no intention to dig for bolt cutters in the bed of the truck, to let the dog smell her legs and feet, smearing her with blood as she worked the chain loose, tears streaming down her face, the Cellars’ hounds continuing to howl from the pens in the backyard, careful not to touch its ears or feet or—or the place its tail had been. She’d had no intention to crouch beside it, beside this thing almost as big as she was, spread her beach towel in the backseat and coax it into her car with a piece of leftover cheeseburger from a fast food bag on the floor.

Laticia stood at her refrigerator at one in the morning, the dog silent at her feet with glassy brown eyes cautious, and fed it leftover fried chicken. It ate from her hands, crunching the bones with huge white teeth, licking the floor for grease with a tongue nearly the size of her hand. She sang to it, cooed to it, all the while mindless of the tacky brown mess on the linoleum and the size of its jaws. When the chicken was gone she opened cans of ravioli and dumped them in an empty Tupperware dish, singing under the fluorescents in her little house as the dog lapped at the sauce, its coat shining black with blood.

When the food was gone it lowered itself to the floor, nose between its paws. “What do I do now?” Laticia whispered, and far off a dog bayed. The monster pricked jagged ears at the sound, its lip sliding back like the lid over piano keys. She took a quilt from the closet and spread it on the screen porch. “Safe,” she whispered. “We’re both safe.” It followed her out, eyes on her as she locked the outer door, then the porch door between them.

Wet hair masked her face in the shower.
It’s over. All of it
. She could end it with Will in the morning. If she had her way, their whatever-it-had-been would die a quick and quiet death in the quicksand of the inevitable, but it wasn’t his way. She dreaded the begging, and crying and conversations about love that were rooted less in reality than Will’s inner stock of Things to Say When a Girl Leaves You that had come with her first two break-up attempts in the short few months they’d shared a bed and a pipe. But she’d bear it this time, and it would pass—and with what lay quiet on the screen porch, if the betrayal and the severed ties were laid open in tomorrow’s light, maybe it would go quicker than she dared hope. Maybe Will wouldn’t hump the dead horse until he was sore and limp. Maybe he’d slink away to the next girl, knowing when the screen door shut behind her she was shutting it on all of them.

She dressed and strained to hear, but the dog didn’t make a sound as far as she could tell. Laticia climbed into her mother’s old bed and began to outline the next day’s possible scenarios, tracing their paths in the ceiling tiles.

The clock on the nightstand read 5 a.m. when she threw off the covers and padded through the house, through the smeared blood, and peered out the door. On the quilt, under the half-moon light, the beast slept.

***

Dawn crept up grey and foggy; she added the smells of Pine-sol and coffee to the stink of cigarette smoke when she put on a pot and mopped the dried blood off the kitchen floor with a dishrag. Sun picked at the gold flecks in the pink Formica table, drew a bright line on the glass Las Vegas ashtray, too full to reveal its Flamingo bottom. She scrubbed her hands and lit another cigarette, poured another cup of coffee, flicked through the phonebook’s marked pages one more time. At seven on the dot she called Ben Miller, three houses down, catching him before he left for work. When he walked over it was in uniform.

“No, no, I got coffee on, don’t stand out there.” Coffee on, but no bra under her tank top. Baby blue terry cloth shorts and long legs in the doorway, she flipped her robe wide open before closing and tying it in a prim bow. Every little bit helped.

“Will in there?” Ben took off his hat like a good boy, and took two steps forward.

“No, and not likely to be, ever again,” she sniffed at the air, turning, and Deputy Miller made the kitchen before gravity caught the door.

“Something bad happen? That why you called?”

Laticia clattered a clean mug from the dish rack, her back to him. “Yes and no. No—not with Will—I—that’s just done. Sugar? And sit down. Please.”

“Okay. And yes, yes to sugar. Laticia, are you okay? You never called—”

“It’s fine—just keep your voice down,” she looked sideways, but heard no movement. She was beginning to think it was dead. “Just sit with me for a minute. It’s been a long night.” Dropping into the chair opposite him, she pushed the mug to him across the table with the tips of her fingers. “Long night,” she repeated, and was back on her feet. She dumped the ashtray, lit a cigarette, pushed up the kitchen window and stood with her hip bones against the counter, looking out over the sink, over the town.

“I haven’t been inside since your mom passed,” Ben said, too lightly, too carefully. “What’s it been, five years? You haven’t changed much, around the house I mean. Or you—you don’t look any different, either, I just meant—well, all the pink. I remember the . . . but you took the pictures all down, didn’t you?”

“I stole Douglas Cellar’s dog.” She took a long drag off her cigarette, exhaling out the window and casting clouds across the town. With a careful puff, she sent a smoke ring that hung in a perfect circle around the steeple of the Baptist church. “I have to get it to the vet, Ben. He tried to clip it—cut its ears, tail. It’s disgusting. He might never of knew I did it, but I gotta take it to the vet. Its leg is all fucked up, he caught it in a bear trap up in the woods.”

Discarding his optimistic ease, police posture crept up his spine, straightening him in the chair. “Jesus, Tish. When?”

“He’s had it a few days, but I took it last night. I meant to let it loose, but it was all bloody, so I put it in the car and brought it home.”

“It’s here now?” The cigarette he’d been smoking lay forgotten in the ashtray. He rubbed the heel of his hand on his forehead.

“Yeah, it’s out on the porch. Been here all night . . . ” She almost added “I think,” remembering the torn screen in the door, but that could’ve happened anytime. “Look, you got a police camera or whatever? You gotta take crime scene pictures and stuff, right? Just take pictures of it, of what he did, so—”

“You didn’t do anything illegal, Tish. I mean, no more than move a wild animal with no permit to someplace else with no permit. You think he’d go through the police? He’ll be over here if he figures it out. Ah, hell.”

“I know. Help me.”

Beyond the door noises commenced. A low groan, weaker than a howl, and skittering noises.

“Just take the pictures, so it’s like on record or whatever, in case something happens. It’s not like a pet dog, it’s a—part coyote or part wolf, or one of them mastiffs, that size. But wild.”

“So you brought it home and put it on the back porch.”

“Yes.” Laticia sipped her coffee. “That’s exactly what I did. Fuck that whole bunch of white trash.”

“Doug’s on parole, but—”

“—but he’d kill me for spite if he found out, he doesn’t give a shit.”

Ben was nodding slowly, his mouth pulled down at the corners, she didn’t need to look at him to know that. He’d stretch his legs under the table and cross his ankles, like somehow uninterrupted blood flow would make a logical answer appear from thin air.

Laticia kept her eyes on the window. Across the valley on the other side of town the face of the hill was dotted with little houses, just like this one. Just like Ben’s.

First they’d been a cluster of mining shacks, clinging to the slopes. Eventually rebuilt by the mining company, they became pretty and cheap cookie cutter tract houses with foundations of balsa wood and hope. But the mines always close. Fifteen years passed and the houses still gripped the hills that crept up behind them little by little, barnacles on a sinking ship. Eventually it would roll over them, swallow everything like one efficient and merciless typhoon wave. In the town below, the men that hadn’t followed the next lode would look up from the purr of the lumber mill, glance left to right, and bend back to the saws. She curled her toes into the linoleum, hanging on.