Jimmy and the Dogman

Weeeeeoooooooot

The sound came again, like the trill of a beached whale drying up amongst creosote and sagebrush.

“What the hell is that?”

“No doubt some kind of flying insect or other,” Jimmy tried to reassure his wife, Deborah, who was half-covered by a quilt, hair threaded through pink plastic curlers.

“It’s driving me up the wall. Can you make it shut up?”

Jimmy pivoted off the bed. He pulled his legs through a pair of Levi's, securing the buckle of the belt he’d left inside its loops. Given the nature of mountain lions and dope fiends – he opted to bring his .38 Special.

“If you don’t come back in a half an hour,” Deborah joked, “I'm sending Search and Rescue.”

The clock read ten fifteen, and apart from the occasional hoot of an owl or chirp of a cricket, the night had fallen into a hush. Deborah was starting to feel anxious about her husband going out into the darkness, given his age and frail condition.

“I better not find you rattlesnake-bit,” Deborah scoffed, as if a simple fall wasn’t her husband's greatest threat.

"Woman, I have made it to 82 with nary a broken bone. Go back to bed."

Feeling slightly patronized, Jimmy flashed her a crooked smile, and slid his slippers on. He was suddenly a boy again, preparing to stalk cicadas parked on fence posts.

After a period of pacing, and finally parking himself on an aluminum lawn chair, boredom began to set in. In order to quell it, Jimmy started kicking over rocks in hopes of discovering scorpions or lizards. However, there were only beetles and ants to be found. He then took to spotting constellations scattered against the tableau of the desert sky. He was ready to call it a night and head back to bed when someone walked into view.

Jimmy and Deborah's long driveway spilled across their acreage like ribbon unwound from a spool. A streetlight lit up their mailbox at the intersection of the driveway and the dirt road. There, bathed in light and dust, stood a figure resembling the bastard child of coyote and man. Draped over its chest was a vest composed of beads. The kind carved out of bone. It stood upright on two legs like Anubis of old.

“What in the goddamned hell?” Jimmy whispered to himself, the hair on his arms perking up and eyes squinting to get a better look. As he advanced in the direction of the brute, making every effort to stifle the sound of crunching quartz pebbles, he looked back to make sure the doors and windows of his home were closed. That Deborah was safe.

The air was heavy with the pungent odor of Trees of Heaven that bordered their driveway, reminiscent of burnt rubber smeared with rancid peanut butter. The beast's snout quivered as if to catch a whiff. Jimmy recalled his grandmother's tales of supernatural beings such as these, though he had always assumed the stories were intended to scare children into returning home before dark.

With a twist of its form, the thing arched its head backward, jaws gaping wide to the point of dislocation. Jimmy expected it to howl like a wolf, but instead, like a banshee, it issued the call he'd been sent to silence:

Weeeeeoooooooot

If he hadn't been watching the scene, he might have assumed it was steam escaping from a teapot or the distant whistle of a freight train. As he inched closer, adrenaline surged through his veins and his bowels knotted up inside him.

"Has the Devil come for me?" He wondered, "Would it do me any good to shoot it?"

"We wrestle not with flesh and blood..." Jimmy thought as he stood motionless, his fear heightened by the drumbeat of his own heart pounding in his ears–"...but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

"What if I miss?" He pondered. With his hand poised on the trigger, Jimmy stood ready to discharge his firearm in the event the monster lunged at him.

"And what if there's more of them than I've got bullets for?"

Jimmy's eyes widened as he realized the fiend was clutching a lifeless mammal—possibly a squirrel—in not a paw but a hand bearing four primate-like fingers and an opposable thumb. The head of the small prey had been gnawed on to the point where only a skull remained atop its body.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and under his breath muttered a prayer, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High," he whispered, "shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord," he continued, "He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."

Suddenly the canid pricked its ears and cast its gaze in Jimmy's direction. The beast's expression, whether smile or snarl, was indistinguishable to Jimmy. All he could make out was the display of bared teeth, and the fact that he'd been spotted.

"Do you want to play?" It croaked.

Jimmy pulled his gun from its holster and fired two bullets in the entity's direction. Startled and unable to discern if the bullets found their mark, the shots proved effective nonetheless. The being dropped its prey, lowered down on all fours, and took off running, pitching a wake of dust into the air. No longer illuminated by the street lamp, the creature vanished into the darkness beyond Jimmy's line of sight.

Jimmy stood in shock for some time, his senses alert to every sound and movement. Eventually, he managed to rouse himself from his daze to sit down on the stoop. As the minutes stretched into an hour, there was no sign of the Dogman's return. He decided it was safe to go inside.

Jimmy clicked the bedroom light on, waking up Deborah.

"What was it, Jim? Did you get it?" She rubbed her eyes.

"I didn't see nothing, Deb. Must've been some heartbroken half-wit drunk on his daddy's aftershave, but I wasn't about to go followin' him into the—" Jimmy fell silent. Deborah had already drifted back to sleep.