and was startled to see an adult sitting in the rocking chair next to the crib, swaying back and forth. A woman, holding a little bundle in her arms.
The stranger was cradling baby Jacqueline. But in the quiet warmth of the room, under the softness of the recessed lighting, and feeling the high pile of the rug underfoot, everything still seemed okay.
“Who …?” As Patricia ventured in farther, something in the rocking woman’s posture clicked. “Joan? Joan—is that you?” Patricia stepped closer. “What are you …? Did you come in through the garage?”
Joan—it was her—stopped her slow rocking and stood up from the chair. With the pink-shaded lamp behind her, Patricia barely made out the odd expression on Joan’s face—in particular, the strange twist of her mouth. She smelled dirty, and Patricia’s mind went immediately to her own sister, and that horrible, horrible Thanksgiving last year. Was Joan having a similar breakdown?
And why was she here now, holding baby Jacqueline?
Joan extended her arms to hand the infant back to Patricia. Patricia cradled her baby, and in a moment knew that something wasn’t right. Her daughter’s stillness went beyond the limpness of infant sleep.
With two anxious fingers, Patricia pinched back the blanket covering Jackie’s face.
The baby’s rosebud lips were parted. Her little eyes were dark and fixed and staring. The blanket was wet around her little neck. Patricia’s two fingers came away sticky with blood.
The scream that rose in Patricia’s throat never reached its destination.
Ann-Marie Barbour was literally at her wits’ end. Standing in her kitchen, whispering prayers and gripping the edge of the sink as though the house she had lived in all her married life were a small boat caught in a swirling black sea. Praying endlessly for guidance, for relief. For a glimmer of hope. She knew that her Ansel was not evil. He was not what he seemed. He was just very, very sick. (But he killed the dogs.) Whatever illness he had would pass like a bad fever and everything would return to normal.
She looked out at the locked shed in the dark backyard. It was quiet now.
The doubts returned, as they had when she saw the news report about the dead people from Flight 753 who had disappeared from the morgues. Something was happening, something awful (He Killed the Dogs)—and her overwhelming sensation of dread was alleviated only by repeated trips to the mirrors and her sink. Washing and touching, worrying and praying.
Why did Ansel bury himself under the dirt during the day? (He killed the dogs.) Why did he look at her with such craving? (He killed them.) Why wouldn’t he say anything, but only grunt and yowl (like the dogs he killed)?
Night had again taken the sky—the thing she had dreaded all day.
Why was he so quiet out there now?
Before she could think about what she was doing, before she could lose her reserve, she went out the door and down the porch stairs. Not looking at the dogs’ graves in the corner of the yard—not giving in to that madness. She had to be the strong one now. For just a little while longer …
The shed doors. The lock and the chain. She stood there, listening, her fist pressed hard against her mouth until her front teeth started to hurt.
What would Ansel do? Would he open the door if it were she inside? Would he force himself to face her?
Yes. He would.
Ann-Marie undid the lock with the key from around her neck. She threaded out the thick chain, and this time stepped back to where she knew he could not reach her—past the length of the runner leash fixed to the dog pole—as the doors fell open.
An awful stink. A godless fetor. The stench alone brought tears to her eyes. That was her Ansel in there.
She saw nothing. She listened. She would not be drawn inside.
“Ansel?”
Barely a whisper on her part. Nothing came in return.
“Ansel.”
A rustling. Movement in the dirt. Oh, why hadn’t she brought a flashlight?
She reached forward just enough to nudge one door open more widely. Enough to let in a little more of the moonlight.
There he was. Lying half in a bed of soil, his face raised to the doors, eyes sunken and fraught with pain. She saw at once that he was dying. Her Ansel was dying. She thought again of the dogs who used to sleep here, Pap and Gertie, the dear Saint Bernards she had loved more than mere pets, whom he had killed and whose place he had willingly taken … yes … in order to save Ann-Marie and the children.
And then she knew. He needed to hurt someone else in order to revive himself. In order to live.
She shivered in the moonlight, facing the suffering creature her husband had become.
He wanted her to give herself over to him. She knew that. She could feel it.
Ansel let out a guttural groan, voiceless, as though from deep in the pit of his empty stomach.
She couldn’t do it. Ann-Marie wept as she closed the shed doors on him. She pressed her shoulder to them, shutting him up like a corpse neither quite alive nor yet quite dead. He was too weak to charge the doors now. She heard only another moan of protest.
She was running the first length of chain back through the door handles when she heard a step on the gravel behind her. Ann-Marie froze, picturing that police officer returning. She heard another step, then spun around.
He was an older man, balding, wearing a stiff-collared shirt, open cardigan, and loose corduroys. Their neighbor from across the street, the one who had called the police: the widower, Mr. Otish. The kind of neighbor who rakes his leaves into the street so that they blow into your yard. A man they never saw or heard from unless there was a problem that he suspected them or their children of having caused.
Mr. Otish said, “Your dogs have found increasingly creative ways to keep me awake at night.”
His presence, like a ghostly intrusion upon a nightmare, mystified Ann-Marie. The dogs?
He was talking about Ansel, the noises he made in the night.
“If you have a sick animal, you need to take it to a veterinarian and have it treated or put down.”
She was too stunned even to reply. He walked closer, coming off the driveway and onto the edge of the backyard grass, eyeing the shed with contempt.
A hoarse moan rose from inside.
Mr. Otish’s face shriveled in disgust. “You are going to do something about those curs or else I am going to call the police again, right now.”
“No!” Fear escaped before she could hold it in.
He smiled, surprised by her trepidation, enjoying the sense of control over her that it gave him. “Then what is it you plan to do?”
Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. “I … I’ll take care of it … I don’t know how.”
He looked at the back porch, curious about the light on in the kitchen. “Is the man of the house available? I would prefer to speak with him.”
She shook her head.
Another pained groan from the shed.
“Well, you had damn well better do something about those sloppy creatures—or else I will. Anybody who grew up on a farm will tell you, Mrs. Barbour, dogs are service animals and don’t need coddling. Far better for them to know the sting of the switch than the pat of a hand. Especially a clumsy breed such as the Saint Bernard.”
Something he’d said got through to her. Something about her dogs …
Sting of the switch.
The whole reason they’d built the chain-and-post contraption in the shed in the first place was because Pap and Gertie