And Bay the Moon

by K.C. Ball

Four months, slipping after-hours into Ravenna Park to take five turns along the narrow path that twisted through the ravine; four months, and tonight was the first time Borden had encountered another runner.

He listened to the quick footfalls upon the gravel path behind him. Maybe it was a fluke; maybe he wouldn’t have to find another place to run.

A flat, straight stretch afforded a chance to look back. His pulse jumped. It wasn’t another person behind him. It was a dog, a huge mutt, and it was gaining. Borden fought away an impulse to pick up his pace; he focused upon his breathing and his heart rate dropped.

“Easy, Jimmy,” he said. Talking to himself  “You can handle a dog. No big deal.”

Borden was a tall man, long-limbed and graceful, with an endurance developed through years of exercise. Running was an integral piece of his regime and he wouldn’t allow a mange-riddled mutt to upset the program.

A snoutful of oleoresin capsicum would wrap the mutt’s tail around his behind and send him whining. Borden’s fingers slit the Velcro of the nylon pouch at his waist and he settled the aerosol can of pepper spray into his left hand.

“Come catch me, if you can,” he said. Grinning.

Then, the pattern of footfalls changed; Borden risked a glance and his breath quickened. The dog, some sort of flop-eared hound, was twenty-five yards back and three other mutts, almost as large as the first, had joined him. They were strung out along the back trail but gaining with jointless ease.

The hound’s eyes were fixed upon Borden’s face, would not look away, and as it ran, it lifted its muzzle and howled. The sound raised the hairs on Borden’s neck and he picked up his pace, despite his resolve not to do so. He risked another look back. There were seven of them now, all intent upon catching him.

Too many to do battle. He pushed the pepper spray back into the fanny pack. It was just under a mile back to his waiting automobile; it was time to run, perhaps for his life.

And so, the night’s run became a race. The crunch of gravel under paws grew louder, but Borden focused on the sound of his own footfalls, the swelling pressure within his chest and the glow of the lights ahead.

A glimpse of yellow light reflected from his car’s windows gave Borden courage to look back; the hound was less than ten paces away. As it saw his face, the dog renewed it’s baying, and Borden shuddered. He was not going to reach his automobile, the pack was going to run him down and rip him to bloody pieces.

Then, as he burst into the clearing, someone stumbled into his path. Borden did a hasty stutter-step and managed to hold his footing, but the other man dropped into a heap of rags and alcoholic curses. The curses became screams, as all seven dogs fell upon the ragged man and tore at him with teeth and claws.

Not a single dog followed Borden as he sprinted across the clearing and skidded to a gasping stop beside his car. He had his key out of the fanny pack and ready. In an instant, he was inside and the growl of the engine drowned the ragged man’s screams. Borden caught one final image of the hound’s muzzle pointed toward the sky, as he skidded from the lot.

Running made sleep come easier; running away did not. Nightmare images of the dogs tearing at the ragged man kept Borden just at the edge of slumber. Twice he awoke, safe in the bedroom of his condominium on University Way, to discover himself out of bed, panting, face pressed against the cold reality of window glass; looking across the trees to the northeast toward the park.

In the morning, Borden was exhausted and angry with himself for fleeing. At the office, he scoured the internet and the newspapers, but could find no mention of the incident. He left at noon, claiming meetings after lunch, made a quick stop at home and spent the rest of the day getting ready to return to the park.

***

Despite his preparation, Borden’s heart rate had spiked when he slipped onto the graveled path, just after midnight. Now, he was well into the final lap and he was calm. The weight of his pistol, nestled in the holster strapped across his chest, comforted him. As he ran, the musty aroma of sweated leather helped him to remember that payback was a bitch.

A bag lady had been scavenging trashcans when he arrived, but she was gone when he completed his first loop; Borden hadn’t seen another living creature since. Then the moon broke through the cloud cover and a single dog was silhouetted against the trees upon a rise to Borden’s left. It was the hound, and Borden was certain he heard a note of anticipation as the dog arched its neck and howled.

Within seconds, all seven mutts were on the trail behind him.

Borden ran with ease, buoyed by anticipation. He knew the pack was just yards behind him, but he did not care, did not look back. As he hurdled into the clearing near his car, he turned in mid-stride, drawing the pistol from its holster as he spun, and slid to a halt against a wooden post. The weapon was up and aimed as the hound leapt. Borden squeezed the trigger. The dog was knocked from the air by the point-blank shot that opened its chest. And as the other dogs reached him, Borden shot each one.

His eyes stung from the gun smoke, his hands shook from the pressure of his grip on the pistol and his ear rang, but Borden couldn’t remember ever feeling better. He stepped toward the mess of canine bodies, prepared to savor his handiwork.

And the hound began to struggle to its feet.

Borden screamed and fired two remaining .38-caliber slugs into the animal, but even as the hound once more collapsed, the other beasts began to stir. The second and third dogs were up and staggering toward him before Borden stumbled to his car and fish-tailed from the park.

***

Every crackpot site on the internet had said Professor Morton Thorn was the last word on strange.

And so, Borden had expected something leaning toward the arcane; a cramped basement office, perhaps, with battered furniture and flickering light fixtures, odd-shaped skulls and dusty artifacts scattered atop stacks of brittle manuscripts.

Instead, Thorn’s office at the University of Washington was full of light and painted in soothing pastels. Books and journals were organized in gleaming, shoulder-high bookcases along all the walls and plants hung at two windows. No skulls, of any kind, were in evidence, and Borden didn’t see a speck of dust.

“You were expecting Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, weren’t you?” Thorn said. He was compact and fit, maybe thirty-five, with a tidy thatch of blond hair.

“I didn’t mean to stare,” Borden said. “I haven’t had much sleep since Tuesday.” Thorn waved away the apology.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Have a seat. You said on the phone that you had questions.”

Borden settled into the offered chair; Now that he was here, he found he wasn’t certain how to couch the questions he wanted to ask.

“I run five nights a week in Ravenna Park,” he said.

Thorn propped his elbows on his desk and leaned forward; his eyes were bright, expectant.

“I know the place,” he said.

“For the past two nights, while I ran, I’ve been chased, no, that’s not the right word. I’ve been hunted.”

Borden paused, afraid now to say the words. Thorn was quiet, waiting. Borden thought he saw a certain expectation in the professor’s expression. He sighed and plunged ahead.

“I was hunted by some sort of creatures.” 

“Creatures?”

Borden couldn’t sense even a bit of condescension in Thorn’s voice.

“They looked like dogs, big dogs,” he said. “But they weren’t any such thing.”

“Did they attack you?”

“No; I got away, but I think they killed a homeless man Tuesday night.”

“You think?”

“He and I ran into each other and he fell. The creatures jumped him and I escaped; drove away without doing a thing to help him.”

Borden watched Thorn, waiting for the professor to reach for the telephone. Instead, Thorn sat back in his chair and rocked from side to side.

“What could you have done, Mr. Borden?”

“I don’t know.” Borden voice sounded rusty. “Something.”

“You said you were chased twice,” he said. “Did you go back last night?”

“Yes,” Borden said; whispering.

“Why?”

“They were strays. And they killed a man in my park! I took a gun with me, I planned to shoot them.”

“To salve your conscience?”

Borden studied Thorn’s face for a time, eyes and mouth held tight. At last, he sighed.

“I suppose.”

“You said you planned to shoot them.”

“I did shoot them; all seven,” Borden said. “They were dead; and then they came back to life.”

Borden knew how that sounded; he waited for Thorn to tell him he was crazy.

Instead, Thorn stopped rocking; he sat up straight and slid his chair closer to the desk. Borden pulled back; Thorn did not look quite so harmless now.

“You’re messing with something nasty, Mr. Borden,” Thorn said. “You should find someplace else to run.”

“Then you believe me!”

“Oh, yes. You’re not the first to come to me with the tale. I know for fact that there are several packs of these beasts scattered around the city, but the one at Ravenna Park is the largest.”

He stood, walked to a bookcase and began to search titles.

“They are lycanthropes,” he said. “It’s a genetic abnormality; those afflicted with it can transform into any sort of carnivore they want. Dogs. Big cats. Wolves.”

He pulled a book from its place and returned to his chair; he laid the book upon the desk between them.

“That is not a work of fiction, Mr. Borden,” Thorn said. “Believe what it says. Protect it, too; there aren’t many copies around and writing it cost a man his life.”

Borden reached to slide the book toward him; Thorn laid his hand upon it.

“Don’t take it unless you intend to see this through.”

“Even if it kills me,” Borden said. “I have to finish this.” Thorn took away his hand.

“That could happen,” he said. “These creatures are people, but they aren’t poor souls with a curse. They like what they become and they can change at will. And they’ll come looking for you, now that you’ve seen what they are.”

“Can you tell me how to kill them?”

“If you wish.”

“Do I have to use silver bullets?” Borden asked. Thorn smiled.

“No,” he said. “They do the job but they’re damned expensive. Lead slugs will do fine.”

“But I—” Borden said. Thorn held up his index finger and kept talking.

“That little gun of yours just irritated them,” Thorn said, sounding more now like a preacher than a professor. “You’ve got to have something big with bullets that shatter on impact.”

Thorn drew a breath and ran his hand through his hair.

“Look,” he said. “Here’s better advice. Give me the book back and move away from here; far away.”

“I can’t do that,” Borden said. Thorn settled back in his chair.

“All right,” he said. “After they’re down, shoot them in the head. Destroy the brain and they won’t get back up.”

Borden nodded; he picked up the book and stood. Thorn did not stand; outside, clouds drifted over the sun and the office darkened.

“Just in case, Mr. Borden,” Thorn said. “You might consider saving a bullet for yourself.”

***

Minutes before midnight. 

Ravenna Park was deserted, as Borden climbed from his car, but in the distance he heard a drawn-out howl. He fought back an urge to respond, as he trotted to the path and began to run. There was no waiting tonight. He was just into the tree line when all seven mutts materialized upon the path behind him; Borden knew they were intent upon finishing this business, too.

As they ran, the others stretched into a line behind him, but the hound would not fall away. Stride by stride, the dog closed distance until it was less than twenty feet behind Borden, and both were gasping for breath when they completed the circuit and broke from beneath the trees.

Borden slid to a stop against the post once more, turned to face his pursuers and drew his new weapon from its holster.

It was a Desert Eagle; seventy ounces of nickel-plated steel with an eight-inch barrel topped by a laser sight. Its magazine held seven steel-jacketed .44-caliber hollow-point shells and a second loaded magazine rested in his windbreaker pocket.

The hound never slowed, but threw itself at him. The red dot of the laser sight glowed on the dog’s chest and the muzzle flash of the big pistol was almost blinding. Borden was certain the boom of the Desert Eagle could be heard across Lake Washington.

The hound dropped to the path and skidded toward Borden on a ribbon of blood, turned black by sodium security lights. Six more times the red dot touched dog flesh and the gun roared.

Even with the firepower of the Desert Eagle, the hound was struggling to its feet, as the seventh animal dropped, but Borden stalked closer, snapped the second magazine into place and fired another hollow-point slug into its head.

“Not tonight,” Borden said; growling. He moved from dog to dog, finishing his wet work.

Thorn had been right. The bodies began to twitch in transformation and Borden watched as the seven dead canines were remolded into human form.

It was then, as he listened to the approaching wail of sirens, that he realized the true nature of the feud in which he had fallen. Before him lay the naked bodies of seven ragged-haired children. Four boys and three girls; the oldest was perhaps thirteen and the youngest, seven.

Borden knew the police would not understand he had killed to save his life and his sanity. They would arrest him for murdering seven waifs and would commit him to a mental institution if he were foolish enough to tell the truth. He would have to run away again.

As he turned toward his escape, Borden collided with the homeless woman he had seen scavenging the trash bins the night before. She plumped to the ground and sat, spread kneed and open-mouthed. Her shopping bags were a forgotten mound about her and, as she stared at the seven still forms, tears blurred the dirt smudged on her cheeks.

Borden took three strides past her before the notion struck him. He spun in time to see the giant wolfhound struggle from the pile of rags she had worn in human form.

The sirens’ volume climbed as Borden pulled the gun into line one last time. He drew a breath and the red dot dropped onto the dog’s breast. The monster hurled herself at his throat, as he pulled the trigger one more time.

And heard the dead click of the hammer as it fell upon the empty chamber.

About the Author

K.C. is a retired newspaper reporter and media relations coordinator, now living in Seattle. She began writing fiction this past January. Since then, her fiction has been published, or accepted for publication, at Boston Literary Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Fear & Trembling, Murky Depths, Morpheus Tales, Resident Aliens, Static Movement and A Thousand Faces. Her flash fiction, Hair of the Dog, is included in the 2008 Best of Every Day Fiction collection due out in December.

©2009 K.C. Ball