Page 13 of Things We Hide from the Light
I could smell the clean scent of her detergent and focused my attention on those full, rosy lips as if they alone could anchor me to this world.
Something stirred in my gut. An echo of yesterday’s embers.
A noise to my right snapped me out of my bizarre roadside fantasy.
My hand flew to the butt of my gun.
A yelp. Or maybe it was a whimper. Nerves and adrenaline made the buzzing in my ears louder. Was it a hallucination? A memory? A fucking rabid squirrel coming to bite my face off?
“Anybody out there?” I called.
Stillness was my only response.
The property that ran parallel to the road sloped down a few feet toward a drainage ditch. Beyond it was a thicket of thorns, weeds, and sumac trees that eventually turned into a patch of woods. On the other side was Hessler’s farm, which did a hell of a business with their annual corn maze and pumpkin patch.
I listened hard, trying to calm my heart, my breathing.
My instincts were fine-tuned. At least, I’d thought they had been. Growing up the son of an addict had taught me to gaugemoods, to watch for signs that everything was about to go to hell. My law enforcement training had built on that, teaching me to read situations and people better than most.
But that was before. Now my senses were dulled, my instincts muffled by the low roar of panic that simmered just beneath the surface. By the incessant, meaningless crunch I heard on repeat in my head.
“Any rabid squirrels out there, you best keep movin’,” I announced to the empty countryside.
Then I heard it for real. The faint jangle of metal on metal.
That was no squirrel.
Drawing my service weapon, I made my way down the gentle slope. The frozen grass crunched under my feet. Each heavy pant of breath was made visible in a puff of silver. My heart drummed out a tattoo in my ears.
“Knockemout PD,” I called, sweeping the area with gaze and gun.
A cold breeze stirred the leaves, making the woods whisper and the sweat freeze against my skin. I was alone here. A ghost.
Feeling like an idiot, I holstered my weapon.
I swiped my forearm over my sweat-soaked brow. “This is ridiculous.”
I wanted to go back to my car and drive away. I wanted to pretend this place didn’t exist, to pretendIdidn’t exist.
“Okay, squirrel. You win this round,” I grumbled.
But I didn’t leave. There was no sound, no blur of rabid squirrel tail barreling toward me. Just an invisible stop sign ordering me to stand my ground.
On a whim, I brought my fingers to my mouth and gave a short, shrill whistle.
This time, there was no mistaking the plaintive yelp and the scrabble of metal against metal. Well, hell. Maybe my instincts weren’t so shot after all.
I whistled again and followed the noise to the mouth of the drainage pipe. I crouched down and there, five feet in, I found it. A dirty, bedraggled dog sat on a bed of leaves and debris. It was on the small side and might have been white at one time but was now a mottled, muddy brown with curly tufts of matted fur.
Relief coursed through me. I wasn’t fucking insane. And it wasn’t a fucking rabid squirrel.
“Hey, buddy. What are you doin’ in here?”
The dog cocked its head and the tip of its filthy tail tapped tentatively.
“I’m just gonna turn on my flashlight and get a better look at you, okay?” With slow, careful motions, I slipped the flashlight out of my belt and played the beam over the dog.
It shivered pathetically.
