The trees mostly formed a canopy over my head, so whatever sunlight came through was dappled. I liked that. I was really into the dapples. On a windy day, the light came through as moving dapples. If it was really windy, I could hear trees creak, and sometimes one would break with a noise like the crack of a rifle, then tumble down. On quiet days I walked as softly as possible to sneak up on the deer. Not because I wanted to hurt one. I just liked being able to get that close. When they finally heard me, they would take off crashing through the brush, sounding like they were fleeing on pogo sticks.
It was a quiet day that day—my tipping day. No wind. Hardly any birds. The leaves on the trees didn’t so much as shudder.
The only sound I could hear was the sound I was making by crunching old pine needles and small branches under my feet. So I stopped. And I just listened to all that silence.
It was like Connor’s house, except this silence couldn’t hurt anybody.
I hadn’t realized until that moment why I walked back here. But it was painfully obvious once I stopped to listen.
I got lost that day for the first time.
It made me think of my mom, who had told me over and over that I was never to go out into those woods. It was a warning that had started when I was barely in kindergarten.
“You’ll get lost,” she’d say. “Maybe nobody will ever hear from you again.”
It had sounded pretty silly. At the time.
Eventually I crossed the paved River Road and hit the river, which helped me get my bearings.
At first I just stood there and watched it flow. It was wide and muddy, with a current I could see. Not beautiful or inviting in any way. The banks were perpetually slippery. Now and then, when the rainy season got out of hand, it had been known to overflow and flood the town. It hadn’t recently—not in more than fourteen years—so I’d never seen that with my own eyes. Still, I knew it had. There was an unmistakable sense that it cared nothing for people at best, and sided against us at worst. I guess all of nature is like that.
I turned back into the woods, more sure now that I knew how to get home. But it was past lunchtime, and I was starving, so I took a shortcut that I knew might only get me into more trouble.
If I hadn’t, none of the rest of this would have happened.
I was crossing the metal bar that supported the middle of the teeter-totter, figuratively speaking. The tipping place would be right in front of me, and at any minute I would put my weight on it. Only this time I didn’t know.
I looked up and saw the cabin.
It startled me, because I thought it was a given that there was nothing and no one back there. I just stood a moment, staring at it. Then I moved a little closer. Quietly, like I was trying not to tip off a deer.
It was a genuine log cabin, made with rough-hewn logs, cut unevenly at the ends. No big power tools had been involved in its building—that much was obvious. It was unpainted. But it was good work, too. Everything fit together just right. It had what looked like a good, solid roof of blue metal shingles. A plain pipe chimney rose out of it, probably to accommodate a woodstove inside.
I moved around the cabin to try to get a better look at the front.
There was a pickup truck parked near it. Which seemed odd, since there wasn’t exactly what you might call a road. But I did see a strip of tire tracks that had worn down the forest floor into what I supposed could double as one. In a pinch.
There was a porch made of wood boards, well crafted and neat. No stairs up to it. You just stepped up once to get onto the porch and one more time at the threshold of the door.
Beside the porch was a small outbuilding that I couldn’t quite figure out. It was whitewashed, and too small to be any kind of decent shed. If you stepped into it, you wouldn’t even be able to straighten up. It was too small.
I moved a little farther toward the front of the place, still working hard to be silent, and looked at the entrance to the tiny outbuilding. And it struck me, in that moment, what it was. It hit my belly like a fast softball made of ice. The entryway was just an open arch.
It wasn’t a small shed. It was a massive doghouse.
I shivered slightly, and I remember thinking, I never want to meet the dog who lives in that thing.
I turned to get myself out of there. But in my hurry I forgot to be perfectly quiet. I stepped on a small branch and snapped it.
Just as I was thinking, Please let the dog be inside the cabin, I saw him. And then, a second later, it wasn’t a him. It was a them. Two dogs came spilling out. Pouring out like water. In my shock over the size of them, and even as my blood felt like it was turning to ice, I still observed that about them. They seemed to flow like some kind of thick, smooth liquid. Like the current of that muddy river.
They were huge. Easily a hundred pounds each. Their coats were short and flat, a color like silver. Or maybe more of a gunmetal gray. They stood high on their paws, as though
