Bad Glass

“Move!” I panted. “Move, move, move!” I continued to push myself backward, using my legs to propel myself away from the trees. Then my feet began to slip, and, finally, I stopped.

The trees were still. There was no sign of the dogs.

Amanda remained where she’d landed, watching me with huge perplexed eyes. “Your hand. You’re bleeding!” She crawled forward and grabbed my hand, rotating it front to back, inspecting the damage.

For a while, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the trees; then a sharp pain blossomed in my palm. I sucked a breath through my teeth and turned toward her probing fingers. “The dogs, the fucking dogs,” I said. “They’re crazed. How’d you get past them?”

She glanced up from my palm and shook her head. “I didn’t see them. I didn’t see a thing.”

With the tail of her shirt, she wiped the blood away from my palm, revealing a pair of deep holes. It was my left hand, and the holes were spaced on either side of my previous wound—the line of raw flesh that had been ripped away in the apartment building. Amanda turned my hand over, exposing a single puncture wound in the web between my thumb and forefinger. This was the nastiest of the holes. My stomach began to turn, and I looked away.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not yet,” I hissed. The fear had begun to subside, replaced by frustration and anger. “I’m sure it will. Give it a couple minutes and I’m sure it’ll be hurting like a motherfucker.”

Amanda shook her head. “You must have startled them,” she said. “You must have done something wrong.”

I gave her an incredulous look, and she stared right back, stubborn, unwilling to hear anything bad about her precious dogs.

“You see my hand?” I asked, raising it up so the blood spilled down my wrist and dripped onto my jeans. “You see what they did?”

Amanda didn’t reply. She ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and wrapped it around my palm. “Give it some pressure,” she said. “We’ll clean it up when we get home.” Then she grabbed my uninjured hand and pulled me to my feet.

“This is what I was looking at when you bowled me over,” she said.

I looked around, finally calm enough to take in my surroundings. We’d passed through the stand of trees and were now standing in front of an open cave mouth, an oval swatch of darkness punched into the face of a fairly steep hill. The opening was only about four feet high, and its edges were ragged, as if it had been chewed into the earth. The grass in front of the entrance was muddy, imprinted with the shape of a hundred large, hand-size paws.

I lifted my camera and took a couple of shots. At first, I tried to use my injured left hand, but a sharp jab of fire made me drop the camera back against my chest. Finally, I managed to prop it up on the palm of my right hand and gingerly stab at the shutter release with my left thumb.

“This is where they come from,” Amanda whispered, a hint of awe in her voice. “This is where they live!”

Before I could stop her, Amanda took a step forward, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted “Hello!” I listened as that word echoed again and again—hello, hello, hello—getting fainter as it passed deeper underground.

Judging by that sound, those reverberations, it wasn’t a cave we were facing—a shallow little grotto—but rather a tunnel, leading down into the earth.

Amanda began toward the opening, and I jolted forward, reaching out to stop her. As soon as I touched her arm, a low growl erupted from the dark tunnel—a sustained, multivoiced rumble, like rocks grinding in the heart of the earth. “We’re not going in there, Amanda. No fucking way!”

She turned toward me, a blank look on her face. I raised my hand, showing her my bloodstained bandage. After a couple of seconds, she nodded, finally relenting.

“Maybe later,” she said, a dreamy quality to her voice. “When you’re better. When we’re better prepared.”

Using my good hand, I pulled her away from the dark entrance. It was hard on her, I could tell, leaving it behind. As long as the hole was in view, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, a wistful look on her face.

I remained tense as we skirted the nearby patch of trees and set off for home.

By the time we got back to the house, the shock of my injury had faded and my hand had started to throb. The bones felt sore, bruised and out of place inside my flesh.

We found Mac, Floyd, and Sabine in the kitchen.

“Amanda!” As soon as we entered, Mac swept across the room and lifted her into his arms. “I woke up and you were gone. I thought … I thought …” He paused, taking a moment to compose himself. “Tell me, what happened?”

“Nothing,” she said, pushing out of his embrace. “We both woke up early, so I thought I’d show Dean around the neighborhood.”

All eyes turned toward me, and Amanda shot me a meaningful look. I got the message loud and clear: nothing about the dogs, nothing about the tunnel.