Jigsaw World

2 Claws in the Night-2

TOM WOKE UP AND REALIZED that it was only a dream, a dream that Bailey was apparently still having if the little dog sounds and trotting foot movements were any indications. Tom spent a couple of moments contemplating the sheer incongruity of the dream components, and then he returned to sleep.

When he woke up, it was after 4 PM, and Susan was still sleeping in the bedroom. Bailey was pretending to be asleep, but Tom could see him open his eyes briefly from time to time, hoping to find that Tom had miraculously produced a fine dog dinner. After finding the makings for an egg, pancake, and bacon breakfast, and starting a pot of coffee to perk, Tom proceeded to do exactly that.

When he finished making the pancakes and the omelets, Tom forcefully shook Susan awake, and once she was seated at the table, he filled her and Bailey’s plates with the egg and bread concoctions, sided with strips of dead pig. Soon enough, all parties were engaged with the comforting task of filling their empty stomachs.

When they finally had finished eating, it was about 5:30, and the shadows were starting to get longer, sliding down toward the dark of night. As they sat with their coffees in hand, Susan started discussing her potential plans. She had decided that she wanted to go to her sister’s in Dilbert, New Mexico. She didn’t explicitly say so, but her plans seemed to include Tom coming along on the trip. Tom didn’t want to go with her, but he didn’t see a good opening for saying so.

Susan said that she had an old Caravan Voyager in the garage and that her last boyfriend had fancied himself a mechanic, so he had stocked the garage with tools and supplies. Would Tom check the van out, and see if it was up to the trip? Of course, he would.

By six o’clock, he was busy in the garage, checking the fluid levels, tires, hoses, and belts on the van. The hour saw the van with a new oil change, a new set of spark plug wires, and a retouch of the coolant. Tom gave her the once-over but could find nothing else significant to improve. Bailey panted his approval of a job well done.

Tom and Bailey went back to the house after Tom had washed up in the shop sink that Susan’s Ex had installed in the garage. Soon enough, he was nursing his fifth cup of coffee of the day, and the sun had done its setting thing. Susan looked as though she would be ready to go on her little adventure in another hour or so. Tom still had not come up with an excellent way to beg off the trip and was starting to think that maybe going east wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Once she got where she was going, He and Bailey could hitch across the country until he got somewhere in the Mississippi Delta.

Tom spent the next hour gathering up things that he thought they might need on the trip. He placed a box of tools and a gas can in the back of the van. He put together a bag of travel goodies, including food, reading materials, a can of orange spray paint that he found in the garage, some candles, and other miscellaneous items. This bag was currently in the living room, in case he found something else that needed to go into it. By this time, it was a little after eight in the evening.

Now that he had a chance to think about it, he was kind of looking forward to the trip. It would be good to be traveling again. He was sure that Susan would not be a great traveling companion, but she really needed his help, and he would be nearly a fifth of the way across the country, and if he had to, he could always pick a convenient fight with her.

He was ready to go. She wasn’t ready, and for the next forty-five minutes, she kept him waiting. Just about the time he was starting to rethink his plans, she came into the living room with a packed bag. It looked like she was finally ready. At this worst possible time, that was when it started.

A growling sound started outside. It sounded like unseen predators surrounded the house. Looking out of the window, Tom thought that he saw yellow eyes reflecting in the darkness, but he could not be sure. Once the sounds started, it took Susan about ten seconds to turn into a full-blown basket case.

Tom turned to see if there was anything in the travel bag that he could use in this situation, and that is when he saw him. There was a small, dark-haired man with arcane symbols tattooed across every bit of skin he could see. He was calmly sitting on the couch as though he had been there all day, watching football games.

“Who the hell are you?” He asked Tom.

“Just what I was going to ask you. There is some sort of growling animals outside, and we were about to take a powder,” Tom replied.

“Last I remember I was lying down to take a nap,” The man said. “Oh, I get it. You are in my dream.”

The man listened to the sounds of the growling for a bit. “They sound a bit like the Dark Stalkers that hang out around Ulthar. All you have to do is draw a square or a circle and stay inside it. They can’t cross them. Running water works, too.”

Tom went to the bag and rummaged around until he found the can of spray paint. He quickly laid down a square with the paint that included the couch and extended to the front wall just inside the door.

“I understand now. You are in my dream, and this is the hard world adjacent to the dreamlands,” the man said. “I am going to wake up now.” He silently disappeared as soon as he completed saying this. Tom was looking directly at him as he did so, but he could not distinguish any stages of the process of disappearing; one second he was there, and the next second he was not.

Tom looked over at Susan, who seemed to be frozen in place just in front of the coffee table in front of the couch. She apparently did not even notice their brief visitor, and she looked about ready to bolt in a wild panic run at any moment. Tom went over and took her by the arm.

“Susan, come over and sit on the couch. I have it on good authority that we will be safe as long as we stay inside the square that I painted on the floor.” Tom gave her arm another tug toward the square.

The growling outside suddenly became much louder, almost as if the monsters were about to break into a fight to see which one got to eat us first. The sound was almost deafening, and it was exactly the wrong time. Susan shook Tom hands off her arm and ran for the door. Reaching the door, she grabbed the doorknob and jerked the door open.

With a small sound somewhere a scream and a whimper, she darted out into the darkness. Almost as soon as she crossed the threshold, she was suddenly jerked to the left. A tormented scream came from her as parts of the darkness seemed to form claws and ripped her body apart, in front of Tom’s eyes. In seconds, it was over, and she was gone.

Tom eased over and used a broom to push the door closed. Even Bailey seemed to have no desire to go out to confront the owners of those claws. They sat in quietness until the darkness had fled the countryside. Somewhere in the darkness, they slept where they sat.

With the dawn, Tom and Bailey woke. While Tom made coffee, he cooked up the last of the bacon, giving a few strips of it to Bailey. Tom made a mental note to pick up some dog food on the road, although he preferred to give dogs actual meat as a nod to their carnivorous natures. When they stopped at nights, he planned on buying ten-pound bags of Chicken thighs at the Walmarts he found. That would give the dog a decent supper and a heavy breakfast each day. If people ate cereal as a meal, then the meat flavored dry gravy that serves as American dog food would probably be okay for Bailey once a day.

“Okay, Bailey. Susan won’t be coming, but we will still be driving east in the van, just you and me. Everything is packed up and loaded, the van is healthy and full of gas, and time is a wasting. Did I miss anything?”

Bailey looked into Tom’s face and barked. He started wagging his tail and frisking about the place. He went over to the door and gave it an exploratory scratch.

“I guess that means that you are ready to go. I’ll get the lights and the bag. Why don’t you drive for the first few hours?” Tom quipped. He opened the door, and he and the dog headed for the van.

An hour later, he and the dog were whipping down Interstate 10 at a steady 70 miles an hour. Bailey spent about fifty percent of his time with his head out the window, and half the time curled up on the seat getting a bit more beauty sleep. He had steadfastly refused to drive at all so far, even though that loaded Tom down with the total responsibility for the trip.

Another hour saw them past Tucson and starting to head east to New Mexico southern edition. Just before they got to Benson, Arizona, Tom stopped to pick up a middle-aged hitchhiker carrying a briefcase and wearing a slightly threadbare suit. Tom tried to engage the passenger in conversation without much success, at least until the conversational gambit he used broached the subject of food. For the first time, the hitchhiker looked genuinely animated.

“I love cheese; I love Roquefort and Monterey Jack and Feta and Cotija and Gouda and Mozzarella and Chèvre and Parmigiano-Reggiano and Camembert and Emmental and Cheddar and Taleggio and Manchego. I never go anywhere without them. See?” The Hitcher unsnapped his briefcase and opened it. Inside, the case contained nothing but slices of cheese.

.For the rest of the ride, until they got to Wilcox, the Hitcher continued to speak at length about the virtues of cheese. Bailey successfully conveyed by his facial expression the little-known emotion of bemusement. At last, Tom pulled over and let him know that they were now at his stop. He looked a little confused, but he relocked his briefcase of pungent dairy products and got out of the van.

On the other side of Wilcox, Tom parked the Van at a rest stop and got out to stretch his legs. Bailey piled out of the van to keep Tom company, and they spent a few moments admiring the assortment of buildings and landscaping that always seemed to crop up in these places. They followed the trail into a small canyon-like area filled with a variety of fern-like plants ranging from ground level to a small to medium-sized tree height. It looked like a mixture of Cycads and actual ferns. Bailey gave out a couple of happy barks, which pointed out to Tom some movement in some of the undergrowth.

First one, then another, and finally a small herd of low-slung Dimetrodon-looking animals wandered into sight, actually grazing on the ferns they were passing by on the road. Obviously not carnivores, then, so not Dimetrodons, but their plant-eating cousins called Edaphosaurus, complete with back sails and all. What were they doing here? Why were there any still alive? As far as Tom knew, the last of these six-foot long 150-pound sail-back iguanas should have been extinct for 300 million years or so. Yet here was a whole herd of them!

The dog was having a jolly old time, he had made his way down into the herd, and was joyfully nipping at their almost dainty legs, making them mill about in a sort of indifferent alarm that only an extinct reptile could carry off. Hopefully, there wasn’t something else living in the area that enjoyed eating dog sandwiches.

Bailey and Tom spent another thirty minutes or so just watching the herd of impossible animals. Tom spent another thirty minutes trying to find someone that knew why they were here, but all he found were other tourists that had no idea why he thought their presence to be odd. As far as he could discover, no one worked at the rest stop. Even if they did, he had no reason to believe that they would be aware of what was happening under their noses. Maybe this was some alternative form of ‘the events,' and so the ordinary folks just didn’t see it. It didn’t feel that way, though.

Finally, they got tired of watching impossibly living, extinct reptiles grazing, and man and dog regained the path and returned to the parking area. A stop at the restrooms and a shot of water from the drinking fountain for each of them, and they were off down the interstate once more.