HYSTERIA

Chapter 1

Frannie slowed to avoid a dog standing in the middle of the road. It was rooted to the old macadam calmly watching her approach as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She beeped the plastic-sounding horn. The dog didn’t move. Who would for that piddling noise?

Teep, teep a few more times. The dog seemed to be playing chicken with her. To keep from hitting the ragged thing she swung through the small turnout in front of the Johnsontown General Store. She drove through and eased back onto the road.

She checked the rearview mirror. The dog turned around and was glaring at her. For a moment her attention shifted back to the store. It was as dark as a tomb. No one was moving in the usually busy place. All the lights were off. Strangest of all, the front door was ajar, open a wee bit, but open. Almost like something was holding it in place. The store on down the road, Pizza and Pellets, Pies and Stoves, looked vacated too, if such a thing where possible for a Pizza place.

On the hill across from it, the Christ Tabernacle, World Church of God the Creator, Independent and Fundamental appeared to be doing a booming business for a Tuesday morning. Cars filled its parking lot. The roadside message board in front read The Fire Next Time. Be not Deceived; God is not Mocked: For Whatever a Man Soweth, that Shall He also Reap – Galatians 6:7.

Maybe everyone is in church, Frannie thought, returning to her rearview mirror. On a Tuesday morning? Well this is West-by-God-Virginia.

The road behind her was now empty. The dog had slipped away. She could not believe how vacant everything felt. This backstretch of route 109 was never this way, not with all the cabin owners flooding into the panhandle. Traffic moved at a constant, people likewise. This was the only part of the state that operated in the black. The rest of Wild and Wonderful West Virginia hovered near economic despair with a lack of activity exactly like this ­– as the norm. She slowed to a stop and turned in her seat to be sure. Bleak like the middle of the night. Up on the hill no people in sight despite the multitude of church cars.

A muddy yellowish form vaulted onto her hood. Ruffled, of indefinable shape, it skittered, claws digging at the Sentra’s high polish before its own momentum carried it off the slick surface and down into the road. What in the world was that? She didn’t see it? This was not her fault. No way she hit that dog. Now where was it? Then, spotting marks on the paint, slammed on the brakes and rocked to a stop.

Her heart sinking, she got out to inspect the damage. Her new car. It was part of her settlement with Peter and she fused over it like a second child. Usually it was Laurel leaving her spent chewing gum on the seat. Darn people anyway for not taking care of their pets, she thought.

Helplessly running her fingers across the paint feeling for scratches, she traced twin chalk-like marks. The parallel scimitars angled off the opposite side offered no resistance to the touch. No gouge or ripple, they seemed little more than thin white smudges. Maybe this isn’t so bad. She pushed at one and the line disappeared no problem. The damage was superficial. It wasn’t even damage, really. At home she could take a shamie to the marks and be done with it.

She gave the hood a final once over, sighed with relief. “You treat this car better than you ever treated me,” Peter once chided her. Maybe you should name it.” Frannie sniffed at the thought. This was first new car she had ever bought on her own, and she had vowed to take care of it. It was so new the luxurious banana-scented leather was as strong as the day she drove it off the lot. Peter claimed that distinctive fragrance smelled like a young girl’s private parts, which explained why guys had such a thing about cars.

Let him tease me all he wants. It’s about time I tell him what I think about this so-called relationship his private parts have gotten him into.  How can he dare complain about the way I treated him? This Swanie even goes out at night leaving him home – his home – with her daughter. She treats him like a babysitter. He says he doesn’t mind, but I know him better than that. He’s too nice to say anything. Yes, it’s true, he is nice. And he just wants a girlfriend.

I guess I can relate to that. They had both been at loose ends since the divorce. Frannie freely acknowledged this. Still, it had been for the best. They just didn’t get along and it was taxing on them both. They weren’t right for each other. Against everyone’s advice they split up to protect Laurel. Sometimes she wondered about the sense in their mutual decision.

Wait, maybe that dog was rabid and was ready to spring at her. She jumped back in with renewed apprehension, rechecked her mirrors.

Or maybe the poor dog was lying half dead in the culvert by the general store. That seemed more likely. Craning her neck and seeing nothing, she decided she really needed to make sure. It was the proper thing to do. She pressed the seatbelt latch one more time. God, anyone watching her would think she was nuts.

As she started to get out, there was motion to her left. Another thump and dark fur at the window. Her hands flew up defensively to her face. The dog glanced off, picked itself up and charged again. The force of this second blow rammed her door shut. She hit the lock. Her pulse jumped so high she felt it in her throat. Her temples throbbed. The world seemed to collapse in on her. Dogs chased cars. At worse they snapped at the tires. This was far more malevolent than an obsessive tire biter.

Now a duller thud on the passenger’s side. Ahead, the first dog, the one she was worried about, rose up in the middle of the road, this time with bared teeth and unmistakable signs of wanting to get at her. It coiled and sprang like a black shadow up off the road surface.

Canine teeth malignant with plaque and crud chewed at the glass trying to get through it to get at her. The one clear eye held her with so much cold determination it might as well have been a shark attack.

At least Laurel is safe and not seeing this. Laurel would start having nightmares all over again. The thought of her daughter gave her a pang of fear.

Another dog smacked up onto the trunk, scratched like mad onto the roof. They were coming at her from all sides, snarling wildly to get at her.

She started the car, floored it and sent two dogs careering onto the macadam. She lost sight of the one on the roof. She swung the car into an arc and pushed it up to sixty-five, and left them behind. She hoped – despite it all – she hadn’t run over any of them. This time she didn’t slow down to see. She was focused solely on her daughter.

Chapter 12

Upstream Pari broke into view, splashing heedlessly out of the brush into the water towards them. At first she looked like she might be imitating Frannie’s flailing entrance at Laurel’s Falls. But her face told an altogether different story. Her pallor radiated a slick translucence as the blood drained away. As she rotated in their direction, her mouth slewed open into a warning or a cry of terror. Running hard, she fell flat into the water, got back up again and kept running.

“It’s Pari!” Katie giggled, just about lassoing Peter’s neck with excitement. He slipped his head from under her arm and sat her on the tree trunk beside Laurel and stood tensely beside them wondering what the hell was going on. Even the girls fell silent when they saw her stricken expression.

As she reached knee-deep midstream, three dogs broke over the hill above her and came rolling down its steep slope slicing through the underbrush like it didn’t exist. She glanced back in terror and continued in her flight – straight for her friends. The water slowed her. Her arms churned against it almost like she was trying to row herself ashore.

The dogs streaked down onto her before she could reach the near bank, hit her and took her down. One dog, a Pit Bull, liver colored like Gretchen, sank its teeth into her arm, and hammered its muzzle as though to tear it off. Pari’s head whiplashed from the force and went under. Her jaw snapped helplessly. Her clacking teeth clearly audible.

She came up pulling and twisting in blind adrenal reaction, struggling to fend them off so she could regain her footing. Her T-shirt disintegrated like tissue paper. She managed to get to one knee before a dark-coated German Shepherd latched onto her breast and jerked her onto all fours. She thrust an arm at it while trying to grab onto something substantial and claw her way forward. The dogs massed too much strength and came at her from too many angles for her feeble swipes to do much good. Maybe ten seconds had passed since she burst into view. Her eyes lost their acuity. Her face went doll-like.

Peter was dumbfounded. For long seconds this just didn’t compute. When it finally hit him that he had to act, he was frozen by – of all things – a burdensome sense of sleaziness. Pari, the dogs, the useless onlookers around him populated an unwholesome movie from which he wanted to turn his head. He couldn’t engage. It felt like trying to muster a scream in the middle of a dream.

Katie and Laurel clung to each other just as bewildered as the grown-ups. Animal Planet was never this graphic.

The roar from the dogs was overpowering. Everything felt amped and exaggerated.

Pari managed to haul herself and her attackers out of the water onto the bank only to go face down in the dirt, the dogs lit upon her like vultures at carrion. This brought Gretchen out from behind Peter. Until that moment, she had been behind her master shaking with electrified agitation. She sprang at the nearest dog — a massive, small-eyed Akita — and she and the powerful dog tore into each other. The Akita ripped Gretchen’s ear. She cried out, snapped her head around towards the pain. Blood pin-striped her fur.

Mila grabbed the Pit Bull at its beefy midsection. The dog swung around, bared its dripping fangs, bit him and returned to Pari as though protecting its food bowl.

Peter couldn’t say what it was exactly that finally slapped his trance away. Probably, it was Mila getting bitten. Or Swanie appearing as if from off camera and grappling with the shepherd. The compulsion to run blasted at him like a throbbing headache. If those beasts had turned on him right then, he might have taken flight and left everyone behind. The hands of the devil were crawling up his spine intent upon stealing his will. They almost succeeded but for Katie and Laurel cowering helplessly behind him.  They started screaming.

Frannie gathered in Laurel and submerged everything but her thin blond hair into her side. She reached for Katie and sheltered her as well. The Shepherd and the Pit Bull tore at Pari while Gretchen remained locked with the Akita in a battle she could not possibly win.

“Get away from her!” Peter screamed. Maybe he whispered it. Maybe he thought it. He crouched, snatched a rock from the shallows and flung it at the Akita. Waited uselessly an hour or more for it to produce results. He felt sluggish and lame. He picked up another one. This one cracked off the dog’s back. Mila and Swanie were able to pull the Shepherd away from Pari. It was a mixed shepherd that Peter’s father would have referred to an All-American Thoroughbred. More like West Virginia Thoroughbred. It skittered against them to get back at its quarry.

Peter blasted a rock at the Pit Bull. He followed with more thrown as hard as he could until the dog began to retreat. His hindquarters rose, the hair along his spine got stiff and aware and it turned partway towards Peter. The skin along its iron jaw was baby pink. It eyes narrowed into slits. Blood and foam fell like drool from its monster mouth. Deciding Peter was no threat, he returned to Pari just as the Shepherd worked itself free.

Larger rocks got scarce. Peter groped the silt for garden-sized stones. Heaving them without standing, his knees planted in the shallows, he dug at the rocks and threw them side arm, one after the other until the supply ran thin. He was so close to the dog, every rock connected with some part of the dog’s head or flanks – except the ones that missed and hit Pari

As if on command, the two dogs laid off Pari and faced the rest of the humans. They looked up from her with eyes no longer blazing with thoughtless fury but settling now into cold hostility.

At their feet, Pari moaned.

Mila grabbed at the shepherd. It coiled and clamped onto his forearm. Mila shook himself free and knelt down beside Pari and lifted her head onto his lap. Her face was marbled white. Only a small necklace of T-shirt remained, a few tattered triangles circling her neck beneath the red scarf now blooded black. The rest of the front, back and sides had been torn away. Her torso, her small breasts were awash in blood, which was flowing freely from a gash in her side. Peter caught Swanie’s eye. She confirmed what he feared: Pari could be dead in minutes.

Their brief connection sent his emotions soaring off in another direction. In that split-second Peter felt an immense swelling of pride in Swanie. She was strong and sure-footed and he admired her for it. Odd to be feeling that way, but the thought stuck with him and gave him strength of his own.

Then the dogs attacked again.

Peter stood with his arm poised like a quarterback, waited until the last instant and threw a baseball-sized rock directly into the dog’s face. The blow popped out an eye. The Shepherd jumped Swanie. She blocked it away.

“No, Mommy!” Katie cried. She sailed away from Frannie off the trunk to put herself between the dog and her mother. Peter grabbed her by the arm and swept her back to Frannie.

“Help her, Frannie,” he yelled. The dogs were not going to get at the girls, no matter what it took.

Gretchen herself and took off crying like a baby. Peter watched her go in the full realization she had probably saved her own life. The Akita jumped at Peter and planted both rows of teeth just above his elbow. They closed on the soft flesh of his arm without any emotion, just brute power as cold and unforgiving as any machine you might care to conjure up. The deadened neutrality of it frightened Peter more than the bite. The quick vise of pain rattled his bones all the way up to his jaws. The dog was beautiful, dun and white, fluffy, well groomed and as feral as a cat.

Sick with fear, Peter drew back, holding his injured arm above his head. The dog lunged for his leg, missed the meat and settled for his pant cuff instead. Peter reeled step, step, step trying to shake it loose, struggling backwards,

He tripped and fell. Hot teeth went into his ankle. Again the deadened neutrality of it registered above the pain. He jumped up spinning and kicking and grabbing spastically at the dog attached to him like Binky in love.

He had little physical feeling. His arm should have hurt more than it did. He might as well have been gobbling Oxycontin for all it registered. He was able to work free and jump onto the dog’s brawny neck. He brought his weight down. The dog, now transformed into prey, struggled to plant its hind legs. Peter jumped up and down with his force centered until the neck muscles gave. The snap was subtle through the thick cord of muscle. He felt it through the sole of his shoes. He had broken the Akita’s neck.

Swanie was on her back fending off the Shepherd. Rude rows of welts rose from her exposed skin. Peter threw himself into the stream at a monitor-sized boulder. He struggled to extract the slippery rock from the muck. The water swirling over his chewed up arm had to belong to someone else. This whole thing had to belong to someone else. Wrenching his fingers into the silt, he got it to come away and lofted it over his head. He splashed over to Swanie, raised it up like a weight lifter and brought it down on the dog’s head. Nothing. He picked it up and crashed it down again. The solid bone gave off a hollow tock. The dog whimpered and backed off.

Mila had faced-off against the Pit Bull, its lips retracted, its tiny ears aggressive against its skull, grinning fearlessly.

Then for no apparent reason it lost interest. Just discontinued the attack and stood there like an obedient dog before its master, waiting for his command.

Mila cast about wildly, Now what? How do we bring her back? Pari was turning blue. How do we make this go away? He shot a question from Peter to Swanie now holding Katie.

It ain’t going away, folks. No time soon anyway – and there’s something worse afoot. The two canines sensed it first. They turned to face this new threat. In that instant all eyes, human and canine, fixed in the same direction.

Another pack of dogs was topping the hill. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty, spread like cavalry along the ridge, poised to sweep down on them with pure hellfire – if anything these canines were even more frenzied.

They looked to be anything but well-tended pedigrees. They bore the colors of Third World dogs, mostly dun and yellow with some black and darker brown ticking. Dull mutts with random, untamed fur and in various shapes and sizes. One or two would-be pedigrees mixed in: A Boxer, a Setter, maybe a Dobe. But that was it. An SPCA gas chamber full of mongrels. None of the rest were contenders. All of them were hostile. The Pit Bull and Shepherd that had been so ferocious had their tails planted between their hind legs protecting their third eye. The Pit Bull actually circled behind Peter for protection.

Peter drew in a breath. Felt it go sour. The Shepherd crowded close to Mila. He batted it away.

In one great motion, the ridge collapsed and swept down upon them in an avalanche of fur.

Mila let go of Pari. She collapsed to the ground.

Peter moved back to Frannie. She had her head down over Laurel’s to protect her. He tried to speak evenly. All that came out was “… now!” He snatched up Katie and shoved Swanie in the direction of the cabin. Katie was chewing the inside of her cheek, her head darting around horrified at what her world had suddenly become. Peter put his hand at his sister’s back and pushed her after Swanie. “Go over the crest. It comes up below the cabin,” Peter shouted in a voice dry with panic. “Get Katie and Laurel in the cabin.”

Mila turned back and took Pari by the arms and began to drag her. The dogs were closing. At the last instant he lost his nerve. He dropped her and took off. He didn’t see her hand raise towards him in wan desperation. Peter did ­– and it was a sight he never wanted to see again, in this world or the next.

They hadn’t gotten fifteen feet before the pack struck Pari’s attackers, all of them converging on the two living dogs. It was over in seconds and more thoroughly terminal than a fox hunt.

Swanie and Katie were already across the crest of the hill. Mila lagged to turn once more and for the final time towards the spot Pari had gone down. The pack covered its victims and broke towards them. They left the clearing to reveal the dead dogs and … My God, she was gone! No torn clothing, no ravaged body, no bloody mess, no pulpy body, nothing but scribed up dirt and brown water. Scant evidence she was there to begin with. What happened to her? Had she been pushed back into the water? Torn apart? Dragged away? Hiding somehow? Where was she?

Peter doubled back to Mila. Its claim guaranteed, one at a time, in twos, then as a group, the pack shifted its attention to the fleeing humans. At first, a lone canine, standing as an outlier by the pack, saw Peter and Mila. This one was enough to trigger them all.

“They’re coming!” he screamed, grabbing Mila and pulling him along. “Keep running no matter what.” He sounded to himself like he was mumbling. If it was possible to mumble a scream.

He took Laurel from Frannie and threw her over his shoulder. Her luminous immature eyes shone as she looked back at the hill and the tragedy it obscured. She bounced heavily on Peter’s shoulder.

They mounted the crest. The cabin was a solitary fortress fifty yards above them. Its high windows dark and empty and forbidding. Hardly the Welcome Wagon. More like Neighborhood Watch resentful of the intrusion. That would disappear once they were inside. The sun was behind them now, slipping under the tree tops into his face, clouding his vision when he dared shoot another glance over Laurel’s head, checking her, checking their pursuers.

Taut as a wire, Frannie ran along side. Brittle underbrush pinched their legs through the tangles.

Swanie, Katie and Mila became Peter’s markers, his goal lines. Swanie’s stride was strong and masculine. Even with Katie beside her they shot away from danger. Mila was several paces behind, his head bent with effort.

Making for the steps.

Halfway up the last rise, almost there, almost to their impregnable fortress in the woods. Peter had confidence enough to put Laurel down. “Go on,” he said. He had his voice back, winded but his once again nonetheless. “Stay with mommy. I’m right behind you.”

“Where are they?” Frannie exclaimed.

“Go,” Peter said to her. She didn’t need to be told twice. She and Laurel made safe haven and disappeared in the cabin’s imposing darkness.

What was going on? He was no longer sure anything was coming from that direction. Were they coming? Peter couldn’t hear them. Suddenly, he couldn’t feel them any longer.

He paused.