Maybe the dog had woken the target.
She moved from the alley, pulled her hood down tightly over her ballcap – the brim keeping the hood from affecting her field of vision. She liked the dark. She had never been afraid of the night. Not like her sister, who would whimper and complain each night when they were growing up. Sister always needed a light on to sleep. A lamp, or just the wedge of light coming into the room from a hallway.
She loved the dark. It was like putting on a cool, comforting cloak. She knew there was nothing in the dark that could harm her, even from a young age. She had never been a good sleeper. While her family slumbered, she would roam the silent house. Taking in the shapes made in the shadows – enjoying the familiar and yet strange angles of the rooms and furniture as they were transformed by the darkness and made anew. Moonlight seemed beautiful to her. It was the devil’s neon.
Thunder cracked.
The rain came like someone turning on a shower. A heavy, thick downpour. Momentarily, she raised her face to the heavens, letting the rain fall on her cheeks – reinvigorating her with its cold caress.
She removed the backpack, held it in front of her as she opened the zip and drew out the knife. Flicking open the blade, she locked it in place and carefully put it in her jacket pocket.
It was time.
The dog barked again as she put her foot on the first step at the front entrance. Then another step, applauded by a volley of barks. She counted five stone steps to the front door. A porch light activated, illuminating her. She glanced around.
No one on the street.
The dog’s barking abated, leaving only calm and the whisper of the wind in the branches of the trees that lined the other side of the street.
She checked the street again. It was empty. She knocked on the door, put down her bag. The bag was half open. Ready if she needed to dive in for the Taser.
She heard nothing more, didn’t notice any lights coming on in the hallway. She would have seen them in the narrow window above the door.
She knocked again. Waited.
Stepping closer, she turned her head. Rested it against the door. She could hear the faint, rhythmic creak of feet on the stairs. Not a quick descent. Steady. Cautious because of the time of night.
Her heart began beating faster as she sensed a presence moving toward her, now only a few feet away, on the other side of the door. She stood straight. Forced down the excitement. She knew, in a matter of seconds, she would be inside, and hot blood would roll over her wrist as she turned the blade in soft flesh.
HARRY
He knew he was in the same damn dream, again.
In that strange, twilight state between dreaming and waking he told himself he was safe. It was just a dream. He wasn’t really kneeling in that foxhole in a jungle twenty miles from Hanoi. The sweat that glued his combat fatigues to his skin wasn’t real. His M-16 wasn’t really sliding from his dripping wet hands. Hands bathed in the blood of his lieutenant, who’d stepped on a mine and lost both legs in a deafening, visceral flash.
He was dreaming.
He woke, like he did most nights, puffing and panting. Sitting straight up in bed and heaving great gulps of air into his lungs. Tonight he resisted the urge to check his hands, to make sure it wasn’t real. Harry heard a whimper from Clarence, and the dog unfolded itself from the bottom of the bed and gently came toward him. Clarence’s wet nose brushed Harry’s cheek, and then he felt that rough, cold tongue on his own nose.
‘It’s okay, there’s a good boy,’ said Harry, patting the dog.
After a few minutes, Harry’s breathing had returned to normal. It was then he noticed he really was soaking in sweat. His white vest was awash. He took it off, threw it in the corner. He would pick it up in the morning and add it to the laundry. The most recent, former Mrs. Ford would have yelled at him for such a thing. She was in Hawaii now, presumably with her tennis coach.
‘It was just a dream, boy,’ said Harry, stroking Clarence.
But it had been real once. Many years ago. And it would never leave him. No matter how long he lived, there was always a part of Harry Ford that never left that foxhole.
Clarence’s head turned around, sharply, toward the bedroom door. A low growl came from him and then he leapt from the bed and barked at the door. Harry turned on the lamp on the nightstand, found his glasses next to it and put them on.
‘What is it, Clarence?’
The dog turned to Harry, barked once, then returned his watchful gaze to the door.
Throwing back the bed covers, Harry felt the chill air on his legs. He swung his feet out of the bed and stood up.
‘Well, it ain’t the Viet Cong, that’s for damn sure,’ he muttered, under his breath.
Thunder cracked.
Almost immediately Harry heard a deluge of rain hitting the roof. Clarence didn’t flinch, his gaze unwavering from the door.
He felt the need for the bathroom. Old age. He used the en suite, and listened while Clarence continued to growl and bark at the door. Harry told him to be quiet, but now he was sure the dog had heard or sensed something other than the thunder, and that he should check it out. He flushed the toilet, then washed his hands and splashed water on his face for good measure. Already the images from the dream had faded from his mind, for another night at least.
Harry came out of the bathroom and saw Clarence scratching at the door with his paws. Something was wrong. For a second he thought about his old army service weapon, safely secured in a lock box in his closet. The key was in a pot on the bureau, buried beneath a layer of coins.
He shook his head, opened the bedroom door. Clarence twisted and jammed his nose into the open door space and wriggled through it as fast as he could then ran down the stairs.
Harry was about to follow when he heard something. He stopped. Listened again.
There it was. A faint knocking sound.
As Harry descended the stairs he couldn’t tell if the groaning sound was coming from the old staircase or his knees. It didn’t matter. Neither was about to get fixed anytime soon. He got to the bottom of the steps, expecting to see Clarence standing guard at the front door.
Only Clarence wasn’t there.
He looked around and saw him, cowering in the corner of the hallway. His little head was down, his tail between his legs. His body was quivering. He didn’t growl, or pant. He was silent. Frozen in what Harry thought was fear at whatever lay on the other side of the door. Clarence was a street dog, and God only knows what he’d been through, or who might have harmed him in the past, but Harry now saw fear in his little dog’s face for the first time. It was clear he was afraid of whatever was outside, because as terrified as the animal was, he never took his eyes from the front door.
Harry moved forward, toward the door. His mouth felt dry. The hallway felt cold, and the gold chain around his neck seemed to amplify the chill, hanging around his body like an icy noose.
He turned the deadlock bolt, took hold of the door handle and began to turn it.
BLOCH
Sleep never came easily to Bloch. Even when she was little, she would lie awake in bed for hours on end, staring at the light fitting on the ceiling and the shadows it threw across the room from the glint of streetlights outside.
Now she lay in what had been her parents’ bedroom. She had moved in months ago, but she’d yet to unpack or properly furnish the place. A futon, some bedroom furniture and a couch made up the sole items of furnishing for the entire house. She’d driven past three home and garden stores, but the thought of putting new furniture in her childhood home was still a little weird. Somehow, her mom and dad wouldn’t approve. She knew this didn’t make sense, but it was enough for now to keep the place sparse. What if she bought something and it didn’t quite fit with her sense of the place? That worried her. She wanted everything to be perfect.