Lost Dog
Lost Dog
“Where do you think he could’ve gone, mom?” Priscilla asked in a broken-hearted voice.
“I don’t know, baby. That’s why we have to keep looking,” Lauren replied as she stapled a flier to the wooden utility pole. The flier’s said, “Lost Dog,” and had a picture of a German Shephard. Underneath it was the name “Max” and Lauren’s cell number.
Priscilla stomped her food and said, “But, I don’t want to keep looking.” She looked up at her mother with tears in her eyes. “We’ve been putting these fliers up all over our neighborhood for the whole morning. I think he doesn’t love us anymore.” Priscilla’s face bunched up and she sobbed.
“Shhh, don’t cry, sweetie. I know Max still loves us, and I’m sure he’s just lost. The only way to find him is to keep looking.”
Priscilla sniffled and said, “Ok.”
The sun was setting by the time they returned home, and by then every utility pole in their neighborhood had a flier attached. They stepped off the sidewalk and began to walk up the driveway to their house. Lauren saw that her next-door neighbor, Petunia, was watering her garden in her front year.
Petunia turned at the sound of their footsteps and looked at them. Lauren saw her notice them and frowned then looked away, dejected. Petunia’s face lit up and she rushed over to them as she said, “Well, hello there, neighbors! How are my darlings doing today?”
Lauren sighed, then fake-smiled as she said, “We’re fine, Petunia. How are you?”
Priscilla made a grumpy face and crossed her arms as she said, “No, Mom, we’re not fine.”
“Heavens, why not?” Petunia said.
“Because our doggy, Max ran away.”
“Oh my! That’s absolutely dreadful! I’m very sorry to hear that! Max is such a wonderful dog! Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Well, actually, Petunia,” Lauren said. “We made these fliers and we’ve been putting them up everywhere. If you wouldn’t mind taking a few and sharing them with people, that would be great.”
Lauren took a few fliers out of the stack in her hands and held them out to her. Petunia took them and then held one up to look at it. “Tsk tsk tsk,” she said. “I’ll pass these out to the people in my book club, and at Rotary too! It must be very hard, not knowing where your dog is.”
Priscilla started to whimper. Petunia kneeled down and put her hand on her shoulder and said, “Now, now, young miss. You don’t need to worry at all. If there’s one thing I know about dogs, it’s that they’re loyal and they always come back.”
Petunia put her other hand on Priscilla’s other shoulder and pulled her close. She stared into Priscilla’s eyes with an intense look on her face and said, “Do you hear me? I said they always come back.” She shook her as she spoke.
“Ow! You’re hurting me,” Priscilla said.
“Ok, Petunia, we get the point,” Lauren said. “Let her go.”
Petunia continued to hold Priscilla’s shoulders and stare at her as if in a trance. Then, she stood up and said in a cheery voice, “I’ll let you know if I see him!”
---
Lauren squeezed a chewed-up tennis ball in her hand as she sat on her couch. Pale moonlight spilled through the window and bathed her living room in an ethereal glow. She covered her mouth with her other hand to stifle the sound of her crying so that she didn’t wake up Priscilla.
She looked at the ball which had been Max’s favorite toy and thought, “Oh Max, where are you? it’s been a week since you disappeared. A few people called from the fliers, but none of them had any useful information. One person even tried to sell me a new dog, what a jerk!”
She glanced over at the pile of Max’s other toys and saw a frisbee, a small stuffed moose, and a fire hydrant chew toy. All were covered in bite marks. She sniffled, then furrowed her brow as she looked closer. “That’s weird,” she thought. “Where’s his dog bone?”
Between her sobs, she began to hear a peculiar noise. She stopped crying and listened. It sounded like someone was whisper-shouting outside, but she couldn’t make out the words. Lauren stood up to look out the window and saw the outline of a person standing in Petunia’s backyard. The person was wearing some kind of robe, and had their arms outstretched above their head.
Lauren snuck out her back door, careful to close the screen door so that it didn’t make a sound. Then, she walked over to the small fence between her and Petunia’s back yards and ducked down behind a bush. As she watched, the person pumped their arms up and down in a bizarre fashion and chanted in a whispering voice. She wondered if it was Petunia, but their face was covered by a hood.
The person reached into a fold of the robe and took something out, then held it above their head. Lauren recognized it as Max’s dog bone. Anger washed over her. She thought about rushing out from behind the bush to confront the person. But, right when she was about to stand up, the bone disappeared with a “pop,” and sparks flew out from where it had been.
Lauren heard a dull moan that seemed to radiate from the ground. Then, she stared in shocked disbelief as a pair of arms emerged from the ground at the person’s feet. The arms pushed down on the ground and a bald head popped up, then a head, shoulders, and torso. A person crawled out of the ground as if they were a person climbing out of a pool of water. They then stood naked in front of the robed figure. Lauren saw that there was no hole in the ground where they’d crawled out from.
Lauren was stunned with fear and started to crawl away. She put her hand down on a twig which snapped. At the sound, the figure turned its head and looked straight at her. It had smooth features with no eyebrows and an expressionless face. Lauren stifled a scream, then hurried back into her house and shut and locked the door.
---
“I have no idea what to say,” Lauren thought as she knocked on Petunia’s front door. “How do I tell someone that I saw someone use my missing chew toy to summon some kind of creature in their back yard last night?”
A few moments passed, but nobody answered the door. Lauren lifted her hand to knock again, but heard someone behind her say, “Are you looking for Petunia?”
She turned around and saw an older woman she recognized from the neighborhood, though she didn’t know her name. The woman had a small dog on a leash and was standing at the end of the driveway.
“Yes, I am,” Lauren said. “Do you know where she is?”
The woman raised her eyebrows and looked Lauren up and down as if sizing her up but didn’t respond.
“I… I’m her next-door neighbor, Lauren Mills. My daughter’s dog went missing last week, and Petunia said she’d help look for him. I was just checking in to see if she’d seen anything.”
The woman looked around and sighed, then said, “Well, I don’t suppose it would hurt to tell. Petunia died earlier this morning. My husband, Marvin found her laying in her front yard during his morning jog through the neighborhood. It looked like she’d been weeding her garden when she just collapsed. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a stroke, but then you never really can tell, can you? He called the ambulance, but she was gone by the time they got here.”
“That’s horrible. Does she have any family?”
“Well, you’re her next-door neighbor. You would know better than I would, wouldn’t you?”
Lauren looked down embarrassed, and said, “We… we didn’t talk much. I suppose I didn’t know her that well. I’m sorry, ma’am, but what’s your name?”
The woman looked her up and down once more and scoffed, then said, “Patty. Patty Clark.” Then she yanked her dog with the leash as she turned and started to walk away.
---
Lauren walked into her house at 5:30, exhausted from work. “Hey Pris, I’m home!” she said. “I hope you’re working on your science project. You know it’s due by the end of the week!”
She walked into the kitchen and took a pot out of the cupboard then filled it with water. She put it on a burner on the stove and started to boil the water.
“Priscilla, did you hear me?”
She heard little feet scampering down the hallway, and then Priscilla burst into the kitchen with a huge smile on her face. “Mom, guess what? Max came back! He’s home!”
“What?” Lauren said. “Where is he?”
“He’s in my room. Come see.”
Lauren followed her daughter down the hallway and into her room. There in the middle of the floor sat Max, their dog. He turned his head to look up at her when she entered and held eye contact as Priscilla flung her arms around him and squeezed him tight.
Lauren felt overjoyed at first and took a step towards him to pet him but stopped. Something didn’t feel right. She thought about how whenever she came home in the past, Max would always come running from wherever he was in the house, jumping and wagging his tail because he was so excited to see her. Now, he was so calm and docile that he didn’t even seem like the same dog. He continued looking at her even as Priscilla fawned over him, petting and hugging him.
“Uh, when did he get here?” Lauren said.
“I don’t know,” Priscilla said. “He was here when I got home from school a couple hours ago.”
“What do you mean? He was sitting on the porch?”
“No, he was right here in my room, waiting for me.”
A look of grave concern crossed Lauren’s face. She said, “He was in your room? You mean someone let him inside our house during the day while we were both gone?”
“I guess so,” Priscilla said with a thoughtful tone.
“Pris, did you leave the front door unlocked this morning and forget?”
“No, mom. I swear.”
“Are you sure?”
“I promise. I remember because the key almost got stuck in the door this morning after I locked it and I had to yank it out.”
Lauren sat on Priscilla’s bed and looked at Max who continued to stare back at her. She said, “I don’t know about this. How could he have gotten inside? Which one of our neighbors would just open our door and let our dog inside and then walk away without calling us to let us know? If it wasn’t one of our neighbors, then how did they know where we lived?
“I don’t know, mom, but the important thing is that Max is home again, right?”
“…right.”
---
Lauren sipped coffee as she watched the Saturday afternoon golf tournament. Priscilla lay on her belly on the floor in front of her, drawing a picture of a Disney princess. Max lay next to her, still and silent.
“Pris, did you and Max go outside and play today?
“No, mom. I tried to get him to play fetch with me, but he didn’t want to. I even held up his tennis ball, but it was like he just didn’t care. I opened the door to the back yard, and he just stared at it. Usually, he runs outside any chance he gets. It’s a sunny day, today, too. The only time he doesn’t want to go outside is when it’s raining.”
They both looked at Max with concern, but he didn’t react.
“Maybe he’s sick,” Priscilla said.
“That could be. I think I’ll take him to the vet tomorrow,” Lauren said.
Someone knocked on the door, and Max sat straight up. Then, he bolted over to the door. Lauren went over and opened it and there was a delivery woman wearing a brown uniform. She was holding an Amazon box.
The woman said, “Hi, I have a delivery for Lauren Mills?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Great, just sign here.”
Lauren took the box and put it on the floor. As she did, Max let out a low, aggressive growl.
The woman gave him a wary look and said, “Uh, he’s not dangerous, is he?”
“No, he’s just a big puppy dog.”
Max barked, and then pounced on the delivery person, knocking her over.
“Ahh! Get him off me!”
“No, Max! No!”
Lauren grabbed Max by the scruff of his neck and yanked him off the woman. He turned his head around tried to bite Lauren, snapping his jaws shut mere inches from her face. The woman got up and ran back to her delivery truck.
---
“No, I don’t think it’s rabies,” said Dr. Colson’s voice through the phone. “Otherwise there would be other symptoms present as well.”
“Well, what else could be the problem?” Lauren said into the receiver, her voice fraught with worry.
“It’s impossible for me to say without an examination. Can you bring him to my office sometime tomorrow?”
Lauren said, “Well, I tried to take him for a walk earlier today, but when I went to put his leash on he barked and snipped at me. He used to love going for walks before, but now he doesn’t even want to leave the house. Ever since he returned from being missing, it’s like he’s a different dog entirely. Now I don’t how he’ll react to me trying to put him in the car to take him to the vet. He never liked going before, and now I’m afraid he’ll just flip out and attack me or my daughter. I’m… scared of him.”
Dr. Colson paused, then said, “In extreme cases like this, we can have a local dogcatcher come by and pick him up. I hate to have to do that, but it sounds like we have no other choice. If he becomes too unruly, the dogcatcher will use a small dart gun to tranquilize him.”
Lauren cringed at the thought, then said, “Well, whatever you think is best, doctor.”
“Don’t worry, Ms. Mills. We’ll find out what’s going on with your dog and do whatever we can to help him.”
“Thank you.”
Lauren said goodbye and hung up the kitchen phone. She turned around and was startled to see Max sitting a few feet away, staring at her.
“Max! I didn’t know you were there,” she said. Then she thought, “I must be going crazy, talking to the dog like I expect him to say something back.”
Max continued to stare at her, then let out a low growl before turning around and walking away.
---
Lauren awoke with a start, her brow covered in sweat. She looked up at the digital clock on her bed’s headboard and saw that it was 3:03 a.m. A sound came from outside her room in the hallway, and she strained to hear. It sounded like the same whisper-shouting she’d heard from Petunia’s back yard, as well as the sound of someone whimpering.
She got up and grabbed the metal baseball bat she kept next to her bed and tiptoed out into the hallway. Both the whispering and the whimpering sounds grew louder, and she realized they were coming from Priscilla’s room. She shuffled down the hallway and opened the door. In the moonlight that came through the window, she saw Max standing next to Priscilla’s bed, staring at her with his back to the doorway. Priscilla had her back pressed up against the wall, looking back at Max with an expression of terror.
The door creaked as Lauren opened it, and the whispering stopped. Max looked back at her, but his face wasn’t that of a dog. Instead, it was the same smooth-featured, eyebrowless, expressionless face of the person she’d seen in Petunia’s back yard. Its eyes were bright yellow.
Lauren cried out and turned on the lights. In that instant, Max’s face returned to normal though he continued to stare at her. Then, he turned around and walked towards her. Lauren gripped the baseball bat tight as she looked down at him with anxiety. She stepped out of his way and he walked out through the door and into the living room.
The next morning, she called the vet and canceled her appointment.
---
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Lauren said to the librarian. “But do you have a copy of a book called Encounters with Witchcraft?”
“Oh, that’s one of our oldest titles,” the librarian said. “It’s an extremely rare antiquarian book from the 16th century. Might I ask how you heard about it?”
“Google,” Lauren said.
“Ah, I see. Well yes, we can let you see it, but we can’t let you take it with you. However, you’re free to study it in one of our private reading rooms.”
“That works for me.”
The librarian led her into a small room lined with bookshelves filled with books. There was a table in the center with a bookstand sitting on top of it. A few minutes later, the librarian returned with the book.
“Please do be careful with it,” she said as she placed it on the bookstand.
The librarian left the room, and Lauren sat down at the table with the closed tome in front of her. The cover was bound in old, rotten leather. A dank, musty smell emanated from within as she opened it. The vellum pages were moldy and worm-eaten. The ink was so old that the lead in it had rusted and turned brown.
She leafed through the pages until she arrived at a portion of the book on the subject of familiars.
“Familiars are supernatural entities that assist witches in the practice of magic,” she read aloud. “They appear in numerous guises, often as an animal or humanoid creature, or some combination thereof. If the familiar is somehow banished or destroyed, then the witch who summoned it will be harmed or even killed outright.”
The lights in the room went out, and Lauren heard the sound of a dog panting in the darkness behind her. There was a low growl, and then the sound of claws clicking on the tile floor towards her. Lauren knew that it was Max, or whatever Max had become.
A chill wind blew through the room and the air became cold. Lauren felt fear trickle down her spine. She thought about slamming the book shut and running out the room. But then she remembered the site of that human-like face on Max’s body as it whispered to her daughter in the darkness. Anger welled up inside her. She thought, “No, I won’t be afraid. This thing is just trying to scare me to keep me from learning about how to get rid of it. It knows I’m on to something and it wants me to give up, but I won’t.”
She said, “No, Max. Bad dog.”
A loud growl erupted from the darkness, and then the sound of angry barking.
“No, Max! Bad dog!”
The growling and barking intensified, and the creature snarled with rage.
“NO, MAX! BAD DOG!”
The lights came back on, and the temperature returned to normal. Lauren continued reading unbothered for the rest of the afternoon, taking notes as she went along.
---
Lauren snuck out her back door and into the pale moonlight outside. Then, she scurried over to the backyard of the house next door where Petunia had lived before she died. She went to the spot where she believed she’d seen the familiar appear. There, she took a chunk of Max’s fur that she’d found in her vacuum cleaner and placed it on the ground.
She lit a match and burned the fur. A disgusting smell filled the air and she gagged. Then she reached into her pocket and took out the folded piece of paper that contained her notes from her research at the library. She unfolded it and began to read aloud.
“Flamma defaeco malum. Perdere magicae spiritus. Patiens a nobis liberate.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” said a voice. “You’re not even pronouncing the words the right way.”
Lauren looked up and saw a robed figure standing a few yards in front of her near the house. She ignored it and started to repeat the chant, “Flamma defaeco malum. Perdere magicae—
“Quiet,” said the robed figure, who then snapped their fingers in the air. The piece of paper burned to ash in Lauren’s hand in an instant. She lost all feeling in her mouth and could no longer speak. The person then pulled their hood down to reveal their face. Lauren saw that it was Petunia, and her eyes went wide with shock.
“Oh dearie, are you surprised to see me? Why, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
She cackled in a triumphant tone.
“Yes, you thought I was dead, didn’t you? And why wouldn’t you? After all, a stranger told you it was so, didn’t they? But what if I told you there was no stranger, that there was no older lady and her little dog you saw that day? What if I told you that you saw exactly what I wanted you to see, and that you chose to believe it anyway?
Petunia gave her a mocking smirk. Then she said, “Petunia died earlier this morning. My husband, Marvin found her laying in her front yard during his morning jog through the neighborhood.” Her voice sounded exactly like that of Patty Clark. Lauren was dumbfounded. Petunia cackled once more.
“And now you’re here to try and unsummon my familiar, are you? You know I can’t let you do that.”
With this, Petunia snapped once more, and the dog that had been Max materialized at her side. Once more, it had the humanoid face. It stared at Lauren with a blank expression.
Petunia said, “I do appreciate you looking after my pet for me while I was away, but now it’s time for this good boy to come home.”
Petunia snapped again, then pointed at Lauren and said, “Tear her throat out!”
The familiar didn’t move, but instead continued to stare at Lauren.
Petunia snapped a few more times and said in a frustrated voice, “What are you waiting for? I said tear her throat out!”
The familiar turned its head to look at her. She said, “I said tear her throat out, you stupid beast!”
Fangs sprouted from the familiar’s mouth, and its eyes glowed green. It then opened its mouth and pounced on Petunia. She cried out but the familiar bit into her throat and tore it open in one smooth motion, silencing her. Lauren felt sensation return to her mouth. She sputtered for a moment, then said, “What the hell is going on?”
The familiar looked at her and said, “I sense great strength in you.” Far greater than with this one.” Its voice wavered from seeming far away and then up close. The tone was flat and emotionless. The familiar looked at Petunia’s corpse, then back at Lauren and said, “I can grant you extreme power. Power which you can use to achieve anything you wish. Immortality, riches, pleasures you can’t even imagine. All I ask is for a sacrifice.”
“A sacrifice?” Lauren said, and paused for a moment. “You mean my daughter, don’t you?”
It stared at her and didn’t respond.
“Never.”
The familiar took a step toward her and said, “That is an unfortunate choice. For I shall have her soul either way.”
Before Lauren could react, the familiar took a running leap and pounced on her. Lauren screamed as the creature’s opened its mouth to reveal rows of sharp, rancid-looking teeth lining its mouth and throat. She closed her eyes, but then heard Priscilla’s voice.
“Flamma defaeco malum. Perdere magicae spiritus. Patiens a nobis liberate. Unde factum est daemon redire!”
Both Lauren and the familiar looked and saw Priscilla standing nearby with her arms outstretched above her head. She was dressed in her pajamas. The creature’s face contorted into a look of pain, rage, and surprise. It said, “Nooo!” and disappeared with a popping sound and a shower of sparks. Then silence filled the air.
Lauren rushed over to her daughter and hugged her tight, and Priscilla hugged her back. Lauren knelt down in front of her and said, “Baby, how did you do that? How did you know what to say?”
Prisicilla said, “Max told me before he disappeared.”
END
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