“Monica!  Richard!  Mr. Lloyd!”  The shout was bloodcurdling.  It was Margaret yelling—no, it was Margaret screaming from the living room.

Too entranced as I stood with my face near the windows, I hadn’t realized I’d ignored Helene’s call.  When first heard, I’d assumed it was meant for Old George and his wife because their daughter was frightened—and rightfully so—by the sudden approach of the darkness.  It had come upon us so suddenly, so menacingly, that anyone as young as their daughter would be frightened by it.  It scared me and I am almost three times her age.

I hadn’t considered the possibility that another reason existed.  Helene was young and inexperienced (although I realized even then, there was no experience capable of explaining what was happening).  A teenager living through such an event would undoubtedly panic, and that assumption fueled my disregard for her cry.

Margaret’s voice screeching for all of us, on the other hand, shattered that assumption and embarrassed me for thinking I knew what was happening.

I nearly shoved Mom and Dad to the ground when I turned from the window and dashed full speed down the hall.  Whatever was happening outside and whatever I thought I might be able to see out there could wait.  Her voice from the other end of the house hit like a sledgehammer to the heart and meant something more than just “Hey, come take a look-see.”

As I ran to the living room, I could hear my parents following me with near abandon.  Had I stopped they probably would have run right into me—or right over me.  We knew Margaret was not given to uncontrolled outbursts.  On the contrary, she was prim and proper and would have to be pushed to great lengths to abandon that nature.

I grabbed the doorjamb around the living room entrance in order to steady myself as I attempted an uncontrolled stop-and-turn lest I run headlong into the door to the screened-in porch.  As my feet slid along the hardwood floor, the rest of me made the turn into the living room with abruptness similar to a car accident.

I once again found myself wanting to laugh, but this time hysterically as though I were insane, and all because I probably looked like a buffoon skidding through the living room doorway hanging on to the wall for dear life.  Thankfully my grip was strong enough to keep me on my feet, although they were wont to abandon me as they slid around the corner and nearly flew out from underneath me.

George, Margaret and Helene huddled together in the corner near the love seat where the dogs had been sleeping earlier.  I could see Mosko cowering under the piece of furniture.

He was a big dog, a large brown German shepherd who was not known, as far as I knew, for bouts of fear and anxiety.  In fact, of the two dogs, Mosko had always been the one that frightened me a bit with his fierceness.  I always knew he wouldn’t hurt me, but there were times when I doubted my own conviction on that point.

I found this sudden view of him curled in a tiny ball underneath the furniture and shaking uncontrollably to be so contrary to his nature that I at first thought he had been hurt somehow.

Brogan was stretched out on the floor between the McCreary clan and Mosko’s position under the love seat.  They stood over him with their arms around each other staring down at the animal.

Unlike Mosko, Brogan was a timid animal more interested in fun, games and affection than in being a guard dog.  He was a harlequin Great Dane, a massive animal who dwarfed his housemate and stood at least as tall as my waist.  He could be extremely intimidating when provoked though, and the sights of him always proved sufficient to deter anyone from thinking nefarious thoughts.

Seeing him stretched out at their feet was an all too familiar sight.  That dog would soak up attention from anything that breathed.

My parents scurried into the room as Margaret turned around in response to my uncontrolled entry and near collision with anything that might have been in my way.

“Something’s wrong with Brogan,” she said, and I could see the horrified concern in her eyes.  They had pets.  In fact, they had dogs, and all of them would surely feel the pain of one of these animals as if it was one of their own.

Mom and Dad rushed across the room and I followed.  They knelt at Brogan’s side and began speaking to him in hushed tones.  They also reached out and touched him and petted him in hopes of comforting the canine while they determined what was wrong.

I stopped next to Margaret and looked on.  Brogan’s breathing was shallow and labored, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth and rested on the hardwood floor.

Both pets were elderly, Brogan more so than Mosko.  I often joked with my parents that the whole house was fool of geriatric animals.  It occurred to me that perhaps the dog was succumbing to age or a related ailment.  I was no veterinarian by any stretch of the imagination, and I really knew very little about animals (I’d had pets for much of my life, but they weren’t really my specialty and I could take them or leave them).

My parents, on the other hand, were farmers who had always lived with animals.  I couldn’t think of two better people to tend to the dog.  I also couldn’t think of two better people to figure out what was wrong.

“What happened?”  Dad didn’t look away from Brogan when he spoke.  He seemed to direct the question to Helene despite offering it up in general.

I looked at the girl standing between her parents and realized she was locked in a struggle between two opposing horrors.  Her eyes darted uneasily between the dog lying at her feet and the darkness pressed against the window to her right.  She’s going to crack, I thought.

As I watched, Old George gave her a gentle squeeze with the arm he had draped over her shoulders.  “Honey, can you tell Richard what happened?”

She shuttered briefly before speaking.  “I don’t know exactly what happened.  I was dryin’ the dogs off like Mr. Lloyd asked.  We was sittin’ on the floor right here.  They was actin’ funny, scared like, but I thought they was enjoyin’ the attention…”  Her voice trailed off for a moment.

I looked back at my parents and the dog who seemed to be struggling for life on my living room floor.  They were still stroking him and whispering soothing words to him.

“Go ahead, honey.  What else?” Margaret gently prodded her daughter.

“Well, I was dryin’ them off like I said.  Brogan was layin’ on one of the towels waitin’ his turn and I was workin’ on Mosko.  I thought Brogan was goin’ to sleep.  He stretched out on the floor here next to us—”  She gestured to the area where she was standing.  “—and I scratched him a few times before goin’ to work on Mosko.  It was a minute or two, I guess, and I had Mosko rollin’ over so I could dry his tummy.  I figured Brogan was asleep because he was dreamin’.  You know, because he was chasin’ a rabbit.  His legs were goin’ and he was kinda talkin’ a bit like they do when they’re dreamin’.  Then all’a sudden, Mosko squirmed away from me and went right under the couch.  He curled up and started shakin’ and whinin’ and stuff.  He looked awful scared.  He kept turnin’ his head up like he was lookin’ out the window.  That’s when I looked up…”  Again her voice trailed off.  Her gaze had returned to the window on our right.  “That’s… um… that’s when I saw outside.  That’s when I called to Mom and Dad.”

She started to cry.  Looking at her closely made me realize she was either crying again or still, that she’d probably been crying when her parents came into the room.  I wondered if it was because of Brogan or the darkness or both.  The situation was enough to make anyone her age break into tears.  Hell, I felt like joining her.  George again hugged her close as she sniffled.

“We came into the room and Brogan was there on the floor while Mosko was under the love seat,” Margaret added.  “We checked on Helene first.  She explained she was frightened by what she saw outside.”

George chimed in.  “That’s when we looked closer at the dogs.  Mosko was under the couch shakin’ like a possum ’bout to pass out.  Looked downright scared to death, that dog did, and still does.  But Brogan never moved except to twitch here’n’there.  He stayed right there on the floor where’n he’s at now.  I kneeled down to check ‘im cause’n he wasn’t movin’ much.  That’s when I noticed he wasn’t breathin’ right.  Margaret crouched down with me to take a gander ’cause’n I give her a strange look and all tellin’ her I was worried ’bout the dog.”

“I knelt next to his head while George petted him.  I stroked his head a few times and talked to him to see if he’d respond.  That’s when his mouth fell open and his tongue fell out like he was unconscious or something.  I know dogs well enough to recognize when something’s not right.  Brogan didn’t seem well.  And that’s when his eyes kinda flickered open a few times before shuttin’ again.  It was the eyes that made me scream for you.  I could tell he was awful sick, but those eyes…”

I had been staring intently at the dog and my parents during the conversation.  I worried for both.  My parents had lost plenty of animals throughout their many years together, but it was never an easy thing.  I had already thought it would be even more difficult under the circumstances.  But Margaret’s last sentence caught my attention and I turned to look at her.

We stood close together and I could see her face clearly in the artificial light that filled the living room.  Something in her expression said a lot more than what she spoke in words.  She saw something, or at least thought she saw something, and it had scared her.  She was not green when it came to animals or even sick animals, but she’d seen something when Brogan opened his eyes and it steamed right into her and dropped a boatload of scare in the middle of her soul.

“What about his eyes, Margaret?”  Mom was already stroking Brogan’s head and was now rubbing gently over his eyes.  She was entertaining the question of whether or not she should pry one open.  She wants to hear what scared Margaret so much before she takes a look, I thought to myself, and I can’t blame her for the curiosity or the unease.

If I had been standing closer to Margaret at the time, she would have pushed me aside with her sudden chills.

Did she see something so frightening she can’t even talk about it?  Or is it as simple as seeing some unexpected medical condition taking shape that added unnecessary insult to an already injured day?  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know if it was the former.  Nevertheless, I looked at her closely as I waited for her answer to my mother’s question.

She shook her head for a moment as if to say she had no intention of remembering or answering.  But it passed and she replied, “It was dark.  His eyes were dark.  They seemed empty.  They were as black as what’s outside.  You think maybe a blood vessel burst in his head or something and he’s bleeding into his eyes?  I bet that’s what it is.”

I recognized her shift from reciting facts to reciting hopes.  Maybe she did see darkness when she looked in his eyes.  Maybe she didn’t.  In her mind, the answer was obviously the affirmative.  It was only when asked that she began trying to explain it away with some medical reason.  She was being hopeful both for herself and for her daughter.  Perhaps she was being hopeful for all of us.

My father had leaned his head down and rested it on Brogan’s ribs.  I wasn’t sure if he was listening to his breathing, heartbeat, or both, but I knew the basics of what he was doing.

Mom continued stroking the dog’s head.  Trembling hands meant she struggled internally with the idea of Brogan’s eyes.  She probably wanted to look as much as she didn’t want to look.

The former eventually won the debate.  She shifted Brogan’s head a bit before clasping it securely with one hand.  She then used the other to pry open his right eye.

I had feared some wretched horror would be staring back at us, some empty darkness that had somehow invaded the dog, some unseen appendage from the storm that somehow had made it inside and filled the dog’s head.  But there was no such thing.  Beneath the pried-apart lids rested a completely normal eye for a dog, at least as far as I knew: a blue iris with a bit of white showing around the edges.

Mom leaned back and forth to look closely, pulled the eye open as far as she could, and eventually let it close again.  “It’s not dark now,” she said to no one in particular.

Dad raised his head and added, “His breathing is slow but seems regular.  His heartbeat sounds very weak.”  He then turned his attention to the McCreary family and added, “Helene, sweetie, I think it’s just age.  He’s very old for a dog this big.  He went swimmin’ earlier and romped around a lot.  He’s old and tired.  Maybe that was too much activity.  Maybe it pushed him over the edge, put too much strain on his weak heart or old muscles.”  He reached up and took Helene’s hand before continuing, “Honey, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about other than Brogan being old.  He’s probably reaching the end of his journey, that’s all.”  He gave her hand a slight squeeze as he finished talking.

A quick glance at the teenaged girl revealed a fleeting smile that stood in contrast to her tears.  I suspected she felt a little better knowing—again, was it hoping?—that the dog was just suffering from old age.  It needn’t be something extraordinary despite our circumstances.

Old dogs die.  Sometimes they die unexpectedly.  While Brogan wasn’t dead, he was obviously not well.  We knew it happened all the time.  Why should this experience change the basics of getting older?

That was the first time I was glad I hadn’t been able to swap positions with one of the dogs earlier in the day when the thought had first crossed my mind.  The second confirmation would come later, and it would be far more evident.

In the meantime, I turned my attention to Mosko who was still cowering under the love seat.  He was years younger than Brogan.  I made a mental note to keep that in mind on the outside chance that what we were watching was not as simple as an old dog finally winding down.  I felt certain knowing that that would be important, but I also felt certain we might never have the chance to know the truth.

“What about Mosko?”

My dad glanced at me before turning to look at the other dog.  Mom likewise turned her attention to the German shepherd trying his hardest to be as small and out of the way as possible.  She continued stroking Brogan’s head.

As I too studied Mosko, I thought of his fear at the storm outside before we came back in, and I thought of his fear now.  It was evident.  It was so powerful it was like a pungent odor in the room.

Like all animals, dogs have two kinds of fear.  Both are polar opposites of each other and form the foundation of the fight-or-flight response.  One kind of fear can be called the friend of rage and anger.  It’s a useful fear that gives us strength to face odds we might otherwise not engage.  That fear is the basis of our fight response and, for dogs, is the reason they should never be cornered.  While humans could scare a dog, canines generally had no overriding fear of people and would come out attacking if they had to.  The other kind of fear is nothing more than terror.  Unlike raging fear, terror is so overwhelming it drives us to run away, to focus more on escape and fleeing than on self-defense.  The terror fear, much like the angry fear, can blind us under the right circumstances.

Looking at Mosko, I realized he was dealing with that second kind of fear, the terror that made him want to escape by any means possible.  It was the same fear I saw in both of them when they stood on the shore watching the storm approach, and the same fear I saw in them when they stood at the door whining and whimpering begging to be let inside.

I hadn’t realized until that moment how disconcerting it was to see that kind of fear in a dog, especially a large dog.  A wolf thousands of years removed from its origins backed into a corner and fearful of something it knew it could not fight.  The sight of it disturbed me.  It terrorized me, in fact, and I was quite certain it did the same to everyone in the room.

Dad shifted his position so that he was straddling Brogan.  That placed him against the love seat and much closer to Mosko.  He began talking in soothing tones as he very slowly reached out toward the dog.

“Be careful,” I said before I could stop myself.

He would know better than I both how to deal with animals and how to deal specifically with his dogs.  Who was I to offer guidance?  Nevertheless, I knew even if overwhelmed by terror, unable or unwilling to defend itself, a dog could still lash out in a final attempt to protect its physical body from anything that approached.  My father paused long enough to throw me a disapproving look, one I felt I deserved, and then he turned his attention back to the dog.

Mosko shook uncontrollably in shivers and chills.  His whimpering and whining continued unabated.  I hated seeing him that way.

Dad’s hand slowly moved toward him as he spoke soothingly to the animal.  We all could see Mosko’s eyes watching the hand slowly approaching him.  After what seemed like hours, my father reached the dog and carefully stroked his head.  Mosko whimpered a bit more loudly when first touched, but then the whining returned to its previous state as my father continued to pet him and speak to him.

I was relieved to see him lean into my father’s strokes.  It was a sign he still felt safe with us; it was a sign he found some level of comfort in a soothing caress from the alpha male of his pack.

While I couldn’t claim the level of knowledge about animals that my parents could, something about the dog’s reaction to my father’s hand bothered me.  I had expected him to lash out from fear even at the person who loved him and cared for him.  I had no explanation for why that seemed odd.  It just did.

As my mother continued petting Brogan and my father comforted Mosko, I turned to the McCreary family.  “Why don’t we let them deal with the dogs?  I think Helene could use a break.  Why don’t you take her over to the couch?  I’ll go to the kitchen and get us some drinks.  Of course, the bar is right over there,” I said gesturing to the combination dining room-bar adjoining the kitchen, “if you need something stronger.  I’m afraid it’s not fully stocked, but I’m sure you could find something to drink if you want.  In the meantime, I’ll grab some tea and water from the kitchen.”

I didn’t wait for a response.  Instead, I turned and headed immediately to the kitchen.  I wasn’t going just to get drinks.

[Introduction | Part 7 | Part 9]