“Ma’am,” I offered. “I’d do what he says. I’m a good guy, a reasonable guy, but my friend here? He’s a wild man. And once he gets goin’ I can’t stop him. Now wouldn’t you rather talk to me?”
Nothing.
John jammed the lit cigarette into the back of her hand with a
She yelped and yanked her hand back, shaking it madly. “What the heck
“Ma’am, we got a serious situation here,” John said, in a voice devoid of sympathy. “We got a dead guy and maybe a lot worse on the horizon if you can’t help us. Now I’m real sorry you saw what you saw but we ain’t got time for you to curl up into some psychological shell. Help us and you can just repress the memory later.”
She looked around for a moment, bewildered. Then:
“Molly!” she gasped. “Molly attacked Ken!”
“Yes, we know,” I said. “But we don’t get why—”
“And you say he died?”
“It’s—yes, he died. It’s a strange thing and we need you to tell us—”
“I’m gonna puke.” She leaned over. “Can I go to jail for this? Because it was my dog? Can they charge me with murder?”
“No. I—look, I don’t know. But we need to—”
“Miss,” John interrupted. “We have reason to believe your dog was possessed by some kind of Hell demon. Has Molly ever spoken to you before?”
Pause.
“Who are you guys?”
“Just answer the question. Please,” John said. “Has there ever been any levitation?”
“What? No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ma’am,” I said, “if your dog was dabbling in the occult while you had her it’s best you tell us now. We’re experts.”
“What? No, no. I’ve only had her for a few weeks, she showed up at my house and I went to return her to the address on her tag but the owner was this weird girl and she told me to keep her. I was just walking her and we ran into Danny Wexler.”
She said that name like we should know it, like it was a mutual friend or something. She saw the look of nonrecognition on our faces and said, “The Channel Five sports guy. I . . . know him. He goes to my church. He pulled up alongside the road, like he was gonna stop at Ken Phillipe’s house because, you know, they work together. He gets out and he pets Molly and then he drives off. Just like that.”
I glanced at John, then turned to her.
“Ma’am—”
“Please stop calling me that. You sound like a cop when you do it. Call me Krissy.”
“Krissy,” I said, “tell me exactly what Wexler said to you. Word for word.”
“I don’t think he said much of anything. Just, ‘pretty dog you got there.’ Then he drove away. A second later Molly went nuts.”
“After he touched her?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just to pet her, though.”
I flashed back to the beer truck, John touching Molly and waking up with a jolt, his soul jumping from her to him like a spark of static electricity.
“And he didn’t say anything else?” I asked. “Didn’t use the word ‘Korrok’ or anything like that?”
“Um, no, I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”
“Okay.” I turned to walk away.
“Wait!” said Krissy. “There’s something else. When Danny drove up, he was wearing a mask. Or it looked like it, all black. But he must have taken it off because when he pulled up it was off. But I know I saw it. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Could you see any of his face? When he had the mask on?”
“No, but . . . it was dark. Why would he do that? Is Molly okay? Do you think they’ll take her to the pound?”
“Uh, if you go around and talk to the police, they’ll explain everything.”
As I walked away, John thanked Krissy for her cooperation and let her know that we would contact her if any more leads developed. He hurried to catch up with me and said, “Fuck! Dave! The shadow people. She saw a fucking shadow people . . . person.”
“The what people?”
“You know goddamned well. Those things, the men made of shadow we saw in Vegas. They’re here. Or at least one of them is. I’ve seen them, Dave. I’ve seen them around.”
“No, they’re not and no, you haven’t.”
When our butts landed in my car a minute later, John lit up another cigarette and asked, “Okay, what now?”
THE THING ABOUT video game basketball is that the computer decides whether or not the ball goes in when you shoot. So say you’re playing against the computer team, you’re down by one and let’s say you take a last-second shot to win the game. It’s the same program you’re playing against that decides whether or not the digital ball goes through the digital hoop on that final shot. So it can arbitrarily make you lose or arbitrarily let you win. The whole thing is bullshit.
But we were playing anyway, on my sofa. John was Kobe Bryant’s Lakers and I was the Chicago Bulls, led by Pierre Manslapper (you can name your own players if you want). It was an hour after the thing with Molly and the dead weather guy.
“So,” John said, glancing at his watch. “You think the cops talked to Wexler?”
“Who?”
“Danny Wexler, the sports guy? Because of the thing with the weather guy getting killed?”
“The weather guy was killed by Molly. That’s how it’ll go down, dog attack. Case closed. And Molly is dead so . . .”
“You’re being stupid, you know that? You think we should call Marconi?”
I shrugged. “You do what you want. Hey, did you know that the number-one all-time rated show in Korea was the premiere of that ’80s show
John paused the game.
“It’s after ten. I wanna flip over, see if the news has got anything about it.”
He did, before I could object, and I was immediately reminded of why I hated local newscasts. We sat through a lengthy tribute to the departed Ken Phillipe, showing old video clips of the idiot standing knee-deep in rushing floodwater while wind pummeled his microphone, another shot of a shaky camera trying to track a tornado on the horizon while Ken shouted his report.
They transitioned from that to a scandal at a local nursing home where dishwashers rinsed bedpans and dinner plates in the same load, then to a house fire that wouldn’t have made the newscast at all had their crew not arrived in time to get video of the pretty flames. Then they got to sports and I admit, that part was . . . different.
The first thing that was strange was when they cut to the two-shot of Danny Wexler and the anchor, Danny’s face was black. I saw immediately why Krissy thought he was wearing a mask earlier. At first glance it would look like he had on a black ski mask, one without the eyeholes.
But when they cut to the closer one-shot of his head, you could see the effect went way beyond that; Danny Wexler appeared to be a statue carved from solid shadow. Only John and I saw this, of course, because the other anchors didn’t react in horror. Or at least, not until Danny Wexler opened his mouth:
“I’m Danny Wexler and this is Channel Five sports! The [Undisclosed] football team has been raped in the ass by fate once again, booted from the first round of the playoffs as they failed to carry their inflatable turd past a chalk line in the grass as often as their opponents did. Here’s Hornets quarterback Mikey Wolford, flopping that right
