Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Runty and Scarry
You want to hear something Scarry? “Allting Runt Onkring.” That’s the name of a Richard Scarry book my friends have for their very young daughter. The book is just like all the Richard Scarry books, with adorable pink-cheeked domestic animals driving firetrucks and spreading cement – except this book is entirely in Icelandic for some reason. The words are all in an alphabet I understand, and sometimes root words are similar enough to ones I know that I try to understand what’s being described – but there is a wonderful profusion throughout of funny syllables and apparent gibberish, and I just can’t take it seriously. Allting Runt Onkring indeed. Heh.
For those of you who want something scarrier, I’ll put a little story in extended comments. Read it by the light of a new moon, and keep the wolfsbane handy.
From when he broke the window, he knew he’d have three and a half, four minutes tops – he’d have to make every second count. His information was good, thankfully – for what he’d paid it ought to be. He scooped up the precious baubles and cash and stuffed as much as he could into a big waist pack. As he slipped back out the side window he heard sly footsteps at the front. He tried to land gracefully but instead he stumbled, just half a step – and kicked a shard from the shattered pane. Voices in the front whispered urgently; leather shoes rushed carefully toward his location. He started sprinting toward the back alley, trusting its darkness to protect him. It did seem awfully dark.
The little gem shop was in a complex of strip malls near the freeway. In front of the stores was the typical arcaded parking lot, fronted by a broad busy street with unsullied sidewalks; to the rear was a dingy service ally. That alley tracked behind the shops, curved under a freeway onramp, continued behind an abandoned bank building, and then – he noticed as he ran, breathless and exhilarated – behind a cemetery. This portion of the cemetery was poorly tended, with soiled monuments, broken crosses, tumbled headstones, unruly brambles and sere yellow weeds like beckoning skeletal fingers. There was a gate, keypad operated, topped with rusty concertina; he ran past, hearing footsteps less far behind him than he’d hoped. The alley dead-ended at another electrically-locked gate, this one higher and topped with nasty spikes. He was behind the kennels, he realized. The dog training school. Rich bitches. Locking him out.
Damned if he was going to lose at this again, he swore to himself, searching the murky night for another way to escape capture and incarceration. Like this gate – one he’d overlooked before. Atop this one were jagged broken bottles sent into concrete, but the gate itself seemed weak – wooden, with a drawcord. He pulled the cord; it snapped in his hand. With an oath he shouldered against the gate and it collapsed. He ran in, not knowing at first if it was the cemetery or the kennel he’d broken into, and certainly not caring.
It looked like the kennel, but he saw no dogs. Just a long row of concrete runs, hemmed in on both sides with hurricane fencing, wanly lit by an unseen yellow light, weak and pallid. He moved slowly, hiding his whereabouts with silence, walking cautiously down the open-air corridor that separated two long rows of identical, empty dog cages. The sky above him was black as a grave. He cast no shadow in the dread gloom.
The place stank. Old waste soured the air, powerful and corrosive, burning his nostrils as he tried to catch his breath. He moved slower still. The stink was getting to him. And it wasn’t just waste – something sweet and rancid festered beneath it. Meat gone bad. It pulled his light supper back up his throat; with a supreme effort he choked back a retch, knowing it would have echoed down the concrete corridor and brought the heat. He stopped to calm his bile and gather his wits.
Ahead of him, the corridor stretched forward into a pitch darkness trapped between tall wire fences on either side. The dog runs consisted of four foot wide, six foot deep pens separated by wire fencing. The sides of the kennel buildings formed the back walls of the runs. These walls were punctured with small low openings that provided access to the portion of each run that was inside the utter blackness of the kennel structures themselves. Each run was like a little cell, with one exit into the stygian darkness of the building’s interior. His breath, still coming in hard gasps, rasped down the empty corridor, echoing against the pale kennel walls. He turned to look behind him, but couldn’t see as far back as the gate by which he’d entered; the view expired in dimness and dark. He turned again to the front, ready to creep slowly toward escape, or at least a place of temporary safety. But he didn’t go any farther. He heard something that stopped him dead.
Another breathing had joined his own. Faster than his. Throatier, hard to pin down – he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It seemed to surround him. He stood motionless, eyes straining to resolve details in the darkness. He heard a rustling, a clicking – clicks in groups, first several together, then, after a very brief pause, several more, in regular procession. He saw nothing, glanced left and right at the empty runs to either side, the black blind eyes of the inside passages staring at him unblinkingly from either kennel wall. He took a moment, staring into one of those maws, to calm his heart and quiet his pulse. He turned to the front again. That’s when he saw it.
A dog – a big one. Black. Blacker than the back alley in which he’d sought escape; blacker than the openings in the backs of the dog runs. Its eyes shone blackly; its coat hoarded all the light in the heavens. He didn’t know one breed from another but this was an awfully big dog. And getting bigger, it seemed. This thing was a freaking bear, broad shoulders lowering, broad brow furrowing, black legs stiff and rippling with each step. Everything was black save for its teeth, which shone luridly, reflecting more light than anything else in the kennel. The dog was silent, except for its strained breathing and the steady clicking of nails against the concrete as it came closer and got bigger.
He stood very still. “Good boy,” he whispered. Without warning, the massive blackness flew at him, silently, faster than sin. Huge jaws clamped around his throat. He fell to the ground, unable to fill his lungs. The dog weighed a ton; it was as if it were made of marble or granite, not flesh and gristle. His fingers flailed at the megalithic head, seeking a weak spot, something to hold or pry open. Things got darker. His fingers fell from their efforts. He couldn’t fight it. Things went black.
The next morning the kennel staff was shocked to find a body in the alley behind their loading dock. He lay on his back, wearing dark clothes and a black waist pack. His eyes were open to the early morning sun, pupils huge with a blackness that threatened to swallow his face. His throat was torn completely out with ragged violence. There was no blood. When the police arrived they wondered what had happened to him, how they’d missed him in the alley the night before. The jewels and cash were returned to the grateful shopkeeper. The thief’s death was investigated but remains unresolved.
