HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

70 H .P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R
silvery light of early evening fell on the hand-me-down curtains
my mother had foisted on us. The only sound was Olson in the
backyard, barking at squirrels or birds, or maybe the
Thompson’s cat next door. That cat enjoyed teasing the doofus,
sitting on the fence between our yards with her back turned
to him, her tail waving and twitching. Lacking the proper digits,
I’m sure it was her way of giving Olson the finger.
Then I heard Olson scream. Not yelp, not whine, but
scream. The scream of a dog is a baby’s wail, jagged fingernails
scraping an old fashioned chalkboard, and a dentist drilling a
crater in your back molar, all wrapped together. It dropped a
ball of ice into my gut and shot adrenalin in spiky shockwaves
down my spine. I was off the couch and out the backdoor
before my conscious brain knew something was up.
In our yard with the six-foot privacy fence, someone was
bent over Olson. My dog was lying on the ground, and he was
no longer screaming; he was crying. The someone wore a
ragged trench coat in the balmy April weather and had hanks of
gray and black hair that wreathed his face. His hair and the
wraparound sunglasses he wore obscured his features.
I took off, waving my arms and shouting.”Get the hell
away from my dog!”
The figure turned to face me. His skin was pasty white, so
white in the twilight he glowed. He had a stylus or a scalpel of
some sort in his hand. The weapon almost slowed me down,
but then I saw Olson.
Blood was streaming from my dog’s ruined face; his eye
sockets were a mass of red gore. He writhed on the ground,
whimpering and moaning in pain.
I howled. At a dead run, I slugged the guy in the face as
hard as I could. He went backwards, his shades flying off.
The part of my mind that had reacted to Olson’s scream
recoiled when I saw his attacker’s face. Where human eyes
should have been was a mass of puckered scar tissue, and his
mouth was red and dripping wetness. But I ignored the part of
me that was screaming unholy terror. I bent over Olson.
He must have been in terrible pain. His beautiful, laughing,
brown eyes, those eyes that had watched me with such adoration
and trust had been completely gouged out. I knelt, afraid
to touch him, afraid of hurting him more.
He scented me. Even through his terrible agony, he knew
me. His tail thumped the earth.
A sound or movement made me look up, searching the
area where Olson’s attacker had fallen. I was murderous, mad
with fury. I would have killed him then. But he was gone.
Scarred-eye-sockets blind and over a six-foot fence, gone.
I didn’t have time to hunt for him or wonder about his
sightless agility. I cradled my dog in my arms and carried him
as gently as I could into the house. He tried to lick my face, all
the while bleeding and oozing liquids I tried not to think about
onto my shoulder. I called 911. They refused to send an ambulance
out for a dog but said they would send a squad car to look
for Olson’s assailant.
I wasn’t going to wait for the cops. I wrapped my dog in a
blanket and drove him to the emergency vet across town. I
think I broke every speed limit and ran every stop sign there.
The vet people were more sympathetic than the 911 oper-
ator. They took Olson into their trauma center immediately and
started working on him.
Seeing them put a conical gas mask over his muzzle and
pump a syringe full of pink stuff into him released me from the
tense stasis I’d been in during the drive. I staggered into their
bathroom and threw up the cold pizza and flat Pepsi I’d had for
dinner. When I was done, Olson was in surgery and I wasn’t
allowed in. The receptionist led me to the waiting room. I
didn’t realize there were tears streaming down my face until she
handed me a box of Kleenex.
4he vets were able to save Olson’s life. He would be a
long time healing—the gouging had been brutal and
clumsy—and he would have to learn how to function
without his sight. But he had a lot of scent hound in him, and
the vet said he expected Olson to be able to make the transition
reasonably well. He couldn’t go home that day. Not until
they were sure his wounds weren’t infected and he was stable.
With my roommates gone, the house had been comfortable,
liberating even, with all that space to myself. Without
Olson, it was too quiet, too big, and too empty.
The cops came and asked a bunch of questions, but with a
bored, detached air. They didn’t care about some dog, and they
didn’t believe me when I told them how Olson’s attacker had
looked. I wanted to hit them for not caring more.
They began to pay more attention when it happened again.
This time it was the Thompson’s cat. The sicko killed her. He
struck out her eyes like he’d done to Olson and ripped out her
heart.
If I hadn’t been there to rescue my poor dog, would he
have torn out Olson’s heart too?
People kept their pets indoors after that. Then a kid
rollerblading his way home from a matinee showing at the local
second run theatre vanished. In broad daylight even. They
found him in a dumpster, dead—his eyes torn from his head,
his chest opened up, and his heart missing. The media got
involved, and the police started stringing yellow tape everywhere.
The local tabloids called the psycho the Blindman,
indulging in the typical tawdry sensationalism they loved so
much.
WHEN Olson got to come home his head was a mess of bandages.
He was groggy from all the painkillers the vet had shot
into him, but I was glad for that. I didn’t want him to hurt.
The house wasn’t empty any more, but it wasn’t the same
either. Olson lifted his white-swathed head every time I entered
the living room. I’d set him up a comfy nest with his favorite
blanket and a jumbo-sized pillow next to the couch. I would’ve
had him on the couch proper, except without his sight, I was
afraid he’d fall off. He knew it was me, though, and always gave
a half-hearted wurf and twitched his tail, but then he’d put his
head back down.
After the attack, Olson was different. For the first time in
his life, he moved like an old dog, rather than a pup, and he was
so quiet. The Blindman had torn away more than my dog’s
eyes; he’d also maimed his spirit. So I grinned and felt like