Short Stories
By Scott Niven
Every So Often in Ducere, Nevada
Dora pitched the last dog onto the roof. The terrier landed with a thud, yelped, then scurried to join her sisters.
“Hmmph,” Dora said, one eye focused on the horizon. The haze had mustered into a faint ball of dust, but still showed no sign of moving toward the house. She stepped off the stool, then kicked it sideways to the ground. She turned to face Terry. “They’ll be safe up there.”
“Is safety really a problem?” Terry asked. “I mean, I’ve heard things in Vegas, mom. Not bad things. Curious things. Things that spark a woman’s interest. Can’t we stay in the house?”
“No, we can’t. And quit asking, girl. I’ve been through this before, and the house ain’t no place you wanna be. Now, get.”
“Where we going? The car?”
Dora looked up and saw the windmill twisting in a slow, westerly direction.
“No, child. East. Top of the shed. Now, stop yapping. We need to be up there before things go bad.”
The sun heated their backs as they raced across the yard, their shoes scuffling over stray crabgrass, scattered pebbles, and parched earth faded dull brown. Dora glanced at the haze. Closer, now. A mile away. A mile and a half tops.
“Hurry, child,” she said. But Terry’s long, young legs were already hurrying much faster than Dora’s; she had sprinted ahead, and would reach the shed a good five seconds before her. Apparently, chasing men in college had converted her daughter’s awkwardness into speed.
A ladder balanced against a worn gutter gave them access to the shed’s roof. Terry’s hands and legs danced up its rungs. Dora followed at a slower pace, her mouth grabbing air, her hands sweaty but vice-like around the ladder’s cooked metal. When they sat beside one another, perched at the apex of the slanting shingles, Dora pointed across the yard and grimaced.
“Pay attention, girl. You never seen nothing like this. Danger, ugliness, and beauty – all in one package. Watch.”
The billowing haze rapidly closed the distance to the house. From her position atop the roof, Dora could now discern the shape of the beast swirling inside it.
Or rather, the shape swirling inside the beast.
“The stories,” Terry said, her voice little more than a sigh. “They’re true. It’s really there.”
Dora nodded but said nothing, fighting the tears of anger that threatened to cloud her vision.
After twenty long years, the dust-dog had returned.
It bounded, hopped, and churned across the yard, kicking sand, dirt, and grit in two-feet spurts behind it. Something lived in its cloud of dust, but it was a transparent something, an unnatural something that seemed to claim its shape on whim. As Dora watched, the outline of a German shepherd flashed into being, then shrank into a poodle, then mutated into a husky. Despite the different shapes the canine chose, however, its cloak of cloudy haze remained constant, huddling and breathing around the animal as it surged toward the house.
The dogs on the rooftop howled. Dora watched them dart across the flat, slate surface, craning their necks at the shape below, barking and yapping, wanting to pounce but afraid of the fall.
The dust-dog paused. It raised its head – or seemed to raise its head, Dora couldn’t be sure – and uttered a loud, three-syllable bark.
“What’s its doing?” Terry asked.
“It’s calling ’em. Trying to lure ’em down.”
“Will they jump?”
“Not likely. Too far.” But she heard the doubt in her own voice and winced.
“Why they so fired up to get down there, anyway?”
“They–” Dora interrupted herself. “Oh, dear Lord. Look at him now, child. Watch what he does now.”
The dust-dog sniffed at a crack in the front door, then slipped through the crack and vanished inside the house, leaving a plume of smoke in its wake.
“Jesus, mom. It can’t climb, can it?”
“No. It can sift, but not climb.”
Dora watched one window of the house cloud with dust, then another, and then a third, tiny grains of sand pelting each pane, covering all of them in a brown, gauzy layer of dirt. Seconds later, the dust-dog seeped through a hole in the plaster and was outside the house again, inciting the dogs into renewed fits of yammering.
“How does it do that?” Terry asked. “And how does it move? Where does it–” Her hand locked onto Dora’s arm. “Look!”
One of the smaller terriers, apparently judging the distance to the ground unimportant, chanced the leap. She landed a foot away from the dust-dog, sprawled in a sideways position that hinted of broken bones. The dust-dog roared, then pounced.
“What’s it doing?” Terry asked. Her shrieking voice overrode the frenzied cries of the dogs.
“Doing?” Dora frowned. “It’s mating, that’s what it’s doing. Dust-dog’ll mate with anything. Cat, chicken, horse. Anything.”
At that moment, the distant silhouette of the windmill stopped turning. It inched to a halt, shuddered, then began to slowly twist in the opposite direction. A subtle shifting of the wind.
Dora gasped. She breathed, exhaled, breathed in again, and there it was, just like twenty years before, the scent, the urging, the longing to rush down the ladder and run to the dust-dog.
“That smell,” Terry said. “Do you feel it inside you?”
Dora’s hands clenched a pair of shingles. She bit down hard on her tongue. Below, the dust-dog climbed away from the terrier and turned toward the shed.
He’s coming for us,” Terry said.
Dora jerked her eyes away from the dust-dog to study her daughter. Terry’s appearance – mouth open, back arched, hands fisted, chest rising, falling, rising, falling – proved a new emotion had taken priority over her fear, her anger, and her awe.
A wrong emotion. Excitement.
Terry climbed to her feet.
“Stay where you are,” Dora said. “Sit your butt back down and stay where you are.”
“No,” Terry said. “I’m going down. I need to understand this.”
She stood and began inching across the roof toward the ladder. But Dora snagged her leg, and with a loud smack, Terry landed on her stomach on the shingles. She rolled and scraped toward the side of the roof, but Dora’s arm could more than handle her daughter’s weight, and caught her easily. She jerked her upward and stretched the young woman across her lap.
Terry growled. “Let me go. I want down.”
The dust-dog barked three times at the base of the shed and Terry’s struggles increased. Dora grappled with her daughter while fighting her own private war, chewing her tongue till it bled, trying to ignore the dust-dog’s scent, doing everything she could to keep the rising desire out of her mind and body. No, this wouldn’t be like last time. It couldn’t be. Not again.
The dust-dog barked a single, solemn bark. Terry writhed and flipped, went limp, then squirmed, heaved, and spasmed. But Dora didn’t release her.
After a long moment punctuated by the grunts and groans of the two women wrestling, the dust-dog lost interest. He seemed to glance at Dora, his transparent dusty eyes glinting, acknowledging her victory. Then his swirl of dust receded across the yard, circled the house of baying dogs, and proceeded across the arid earth toward the neighbor’s.
As he disappeared from sight, Terry howled – a long, throaty howl that lasted several agonizing seconds.
Then the scent faded.
Terry relaxed. Dora released her and watched the young woman pant and sob and settle into a sitting position beside her.
“Mom, what happened?” Terry asked. “I wanted to be down there. With it! With him!”
“Calm yourself, child. It’s over. The scent of the dust-dog grabbed you, that’s all. Something they might not have taught you in that fancy college of yours.”
“You’re right about that,” Terry said. “We hear rumors, of course. Glittery, romantic rumors. But nothing like what just happened. That wasn’t romance. That was lust.”
Dora wiped the moisture from Terry’s cheeks and nose.
“How many times he been here, mom?”
“Lord, I don’t know. Comes around every so often, I guess. Second time since I been here.”
“What happened the first time?”
Dora frowned. “Does it matter? Look, child, we survived. That’s the important thing. Whatever happened in the past...” she shook her head. “Well, it means nothing now. Forget about it." Terry’s eyes glinted, and a growl caught in her throat, but she seemed to accept the answer.
Dora sighed.
Some branches of the family tree, she felt, were better left unclimbed.
End
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