Joy morphed into concern when Gypsy stopped, sniffed, then disappeared through an opening into the forest that crowded down to the tracks. “Gypsy!” Harry yelled. “Come!” But the dog was gone. He’s caught scent of something. No telling where he’ll end up if he’s on the chase. Anywhere a rabbit or a squirrel might scamper, Gypsy would follow.
The opening was small, the trail uneven, latticed with the exposed roots of towering conifers, and hemmed in by sword fern and salal. But Harry didn’t hesitate. He hunkered down and plunged in, pushing through the resisting vegetation, using the tortured roots as steps. It opened into a colonnade of tree trunks farther in, domed by overarching branches, carpeted with needles, cones and leaves. They thudded along anxiously, Harry gone silent.
Instinct, Buddy sensed. Fear.
“Gypsy!” Harry called out. No response.
Then, off to their right, Gypsy started yapping. Down toward Askew Creek. The trail branched, and they forked right, back into the underbrush, down a steep, muddy embankment, until they burst into a small clearing. “Gypsy! Stop it!” Harry commanded, but the dog wouldn’t listen.
“You know, there’s places in the world where they eat dogs, eh?” said the spot’s lone inhabitant, a gaunt, sinewy character, his eyes sunken into sockets dark as a racoon’s. He sat on a log, his small campfire snapping inside a ring of stones at his feet.
“Sorry, mister,” Harry said. “Gypsy, come!”
The vagrant glared at Gypsy, then Harry.
“Gypsy!” Harry pleaded.
“Then there’s those places where people eat other people, eh?” the man grinned. “Shove a sharp stick up their arse-hole and out their mouths, then roast ‘em like pigs.” His grin seemed to split the man’s face; it had become so taught, so purposeful. “Of course they like to have a little fun with their dinner before the cooking, eh? Know the kind of fun I’m talkin’ about?”
Don’t answer. Don’t even think of answering.
“Well,” the man said. “Enough with talkin’. If you can’t shut that little fucker up, I will.”
Harry hadn’t noticed the knife sheathed to the man’s belt. The vagrant brandished it like a fighter, crouching slightly on the balls of his feet, the knife held out at an angle from his body, ready to strike.
Holy shit!
“Don’t!” Harry yelled.
The vagrant turned slowly, his crazed look locking-on, his body swinging round as if a sort of perverse magnetism was controlling him—an appalling force he had no desire to resist.
Run! Harry backed away. Run! But his muscles wouldn’t obey. A horrified fascination gripped him—the petrifying stasis of disbelieving what he knew was about to happen.
Suddenly, Gypsy attacked, latching onto the man’s calf, twisting and pulling ferociously.
“Argh!” the vagrant bellowed, slashing with his knife, but missing, the momentum of his swing carrying him into a ghastly pirouette as he toppled into his fire. “You fucker!” he roared.
Run! Harry turned and fled, the vagrant’s spell broken. “Gypsy!” he hollered over his shoulder. “Gypsy!”
First they heard snarling and yipping, sounds Harry had never heard Gypsy make before. Then a sudden, definitive howl echoed through the forest. Then silence.
“The little fucker got what he deserved, d’ya hear me!” the vagrant taunted. “You’re lucky you got away, you little bastard!”
They burst onto the E&N right of way, weeping, running, grieving. Ran beyond the point of exhaustion, but not far enough, Buddy realized. Never far enough.
Next: Stone by Stone – Part 3