John Dies at the End

Molly’s legs were stiff below her as she moved, buzzing slowly across the room as if on a track and hung by invisible threads. When Molly came near the door she turned her head my way and in a clear but guttural voice said, “I serve none but Korrok.”

Molly continued to float around the room like a shaggy little blimp.

Here. We. Go. Again.

I TURNED FROM the door. John had this look on his face like this was all routine. Ah, yes, a floating-dog scenario. We have the parts in the truck.

Drake said, “A neighbor saw it, said Krissy was just walking the dog along the street out there and all of a sudden the thing takes off. The damned thing breaks its leash and races across the lawn like it was fired from a cannon. It then jumps through the plate-glass window. She said the dog jumped into the air and tore out Phillipe’s throat in half a second. I guess Ms. Lovelace ran inside after it, started bawling and then she just shut down. Too much for her. I kinda feel like doing that myself. Not the bawling part, mind you.”

I said, “Wait. Did you hear what the dog said just now?”

“Said? She barked . . .”

“Ah. Okay. And when you look at the dog right now, she’s . . .”

“Floatin’ a few feet off the floor.”

You’d think the fact that other people could witness the weirdness would have comforted me. It didn’t. It meant the rules had changed already.

“John and I need to have a word about this. We’ll, uh, be right back.”

On the way back to my car, I said, “We’re driving away as fast as we can. Right to the bakery counter at the grocery store.”

“Dave, those guys could see her. All the cops. They saw her floatin’ around and doing supernatural shit. That’s new.”

“That’s new? Why is she floating at all, John?”

“Gotta be the sauce, right? She got more of it than any of us. I was always amazed she survived. Maybe, you know, they got to her finally.”

“After all this time? None of this makes sense.”

“Did you hear what she said?”

“She said, ‘I serve none but Korrok.’”

Speaking that meaningless word made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, though I couldn’t pin down why. My mind almost made a connection, then abruptly steered clear of it nearly hard enough to make the train of thought go flying out of my ear.

“You sure?” said John. “I thought she said, ‘I serve none but to rock.’ I was about to agree with her.”

“Whatever, John.”

“So who’s Korrok?”

“Don’t know.”

And keeping it that way is making my brain’s denial gland work overtime.

“You still got the mints in your car?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

John dug around in the glove compartment and pulled out a little roll of candies somebody had mailed to me a while back. Crazy people mail me things. Most of it I throw on a shelf in my toolshed and forget.

We went back to the front door of the house, and I shook one of the candies out into my palm. I very slowly turned the knob and pushed the door in, just enough to lean my head and my right arm through.

Molly the Hoverdog was about ten feet away, behind the couch and her incredibly hot new owner. I held out the candy, which immediately caught Molly’s attention.

I tossed the candy on the floor and quickly ducked back out. Molly floated over to it, tilted in midair until her snout was just over the white morsel. She lapped it up.

For a moment, nothing. John was about to supply the “it’s not working” when, with a wet, tearing KERRRAAAAACTCH sound, Molly exploded like a meat pinata at a birthday party for very strong, invisible children.

A couple of cops behind us cheered. Drake walked up. “What the hell was that?”

John answered for me. “It was a TestaMint. Little candies with Bible verses printed on them. You can get them at your local Christian bookstore. We were sort of hoping it would just drive the evil out of her, but . . .” John shrugged, businesslike. These things happen sometimes.

Drake said, “Fine. Now let’s get one thing clear. I don’t want to hear any more about this after tonight. This gets written up as a dog attack. Somebody’ll be here later to clean up the scene and there’ll be a funeral and all of these here men will go home to their wives and try to act like the world ain’t gone crazy.”

I said, “Yeah that’s probably for the best—”

Drake’s head snapped toward me.

“Shut up. I ain’t done.”

Back to John he said, “Between you and me, I need to know some things. That was your dog, right?”

“Well, Dave’s dog. But she’s belonged to several people . . .”

“Hey. Look in there. He’s dead. You understand me? Now, you and I both know, things . . . happen around here. In this town. Always have. My daddy wore this uniform before me, he told me stories. But I ain’t never seen anything like that.”

John put up his hands defensively and said, “Neither have we.”

“But the last time things got weird, you were there. With the party and all those kids that died, the detective that left and never came back. Don’t be playin’ games with me. If you know somethin’, tell me. Tell me so I can prepare for it.”

John said, “We don’t know the situation. Not yet.”

On the word “yet” I had the urge to punch John in the kidneys.

“But let us take a shot at the girl.” We all glanced toward Krissy, still frozen on the sofa. “Before the psychiatrist gets here or whoever you bring in to reboot people like her.”

Drake stared John down, then decided to roll the dice. “You got two minutes.”

“Great.” John ducked through the front door. Drake reached out and grabbed his elbow.

“Hey.”

“Yeah.”

“This the end of the world?”

He said it in the earnest, stiff-jawed manner of a middle-aged man asking the doc if it’s cancer. It scared the fuck out of me.

John said, “We’ll give you a call if we find out.”

John went to the couch, but I couldn’t resist stopping by the red, six-foot circle of dog mush.

I found Molly’s collar near her head. The bloodstained tag:I’m Molly.Please return me to . . .

“Good-bye, Molly,” I muttered. “Of all the dogs I’ve known in my life, I’ve never seen a better driver.”

Just before I turned away, I noticed something else. Out of the pile of dog salsa stuck one of the paws, straight up into the air. On the foot, on the pad where the palm would be on a human hand, was a marking, like a tattoo.

It was a little black symbol, something like the mathematical symbol for pi. I pointed this out to John, who suggested I take the severed paw home for further study. I decided it wasn’t that important. Maybe something the breeder put on there, I didn’t know. I hadn’t noticed it before but how often do you look at a dog’s feet?

Krissy Lovelace wouldn’t make eye contact with us and she wouldn’t respond to our voices, but we did get her to her feet and led her outside. We took her to the backyard, saying generic, soothing words to her the whole way.

Once we were out of sight of the cops, John put his hands on Krissy’s shoulders and turned her to face him. He held up his smoldering cigarette.

“Miss? You see this? You start talkin’ or I’m gonna burn you with it.”

No response.