The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

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Blue Boy turned back toward the screen door. How would he get back outside? He made his way up to the door and looking at the bottom half of the thing he could see where some of the wire was torn and ragged. The animal snorted and then inspected his long smooth, curved nails. He raised his big left paw and stabbed it at the lower portion of the wire. Two of his nails were caught in the torn metal. His nails looked like fishhooks tangled up with another's net.

He pulled his muscular leg toward himself and the door came with it squeaking like an annoyed beast as it did. He then took his right paw and slid it with deliberateness behind the open door thus preventing it from returning to the door jam.

Now he struggled hard to free his left paw from entanglement with the wire. It was quite difficult but he at last accomplished the task. He then lifted his left leg above his large head and caught the door and pulled it open as if his paw was in reality a hand.

He trundled down the steps and on into the yard. The odors were strong now and drew him toward the rear of the yard and the forest. It inevitably led him to behind the garage where he saw that the ground had been disturbed and there was blood on the ground although it was obvious someone had thrown some dirt over it as well as having strewn dry leaves there.

Instinctively he went to the well. He reared up and caught the top of the well with his huge paws. He pushed his muzzle up to the edge of the well. He could smell death down there in the dark cavity, and it was growing darker as the odor of it slithered out of the hole almost taking form. It was awful standing there subjected to this as the fearsome night drew nigh.

He barked twice as if the dead down there could hear him, could hear him, and would know that he intended to avenge their deaths. If he'd known the duplicitous June Bug was down there would he still feel the same? Probably not, but Blue Boy was a grand animal and his intent equally grand.

The dog's thirst increased and before leaving he searched about for a place where there might be some accumulated water to drink. But Jasper had not had the opportunity to bring out Duke's water bowl, as he would have done had he been allowed to complete the chore before his horrendous murder. 

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Blue Boy's search proved futile and so when he returned to the front of the house and the rural road that went by it he regrettably eased himself down into the ditch of the road and began drinking the sorry water there in its murky depths.

Suddenly he heard something coming, it was coming down the road at him sounding like a missile. Fearful that it may be the fat man looking for him he kept low in the ditch. He poked his head up just enough, just enough that he could look through the high dry grass growing at the edge of the ditch. Two bright lights were coming straight at him seemingly brighter in the fading twilight. The tires rushed past tossing up gravel from the shoulder of the road. The rush of wind was chilling and Blue Boy ducked back into the ditch somewhat frightened by the noise.

Satisfied that it had passed safely down the road the quenched bloodhound rose up the slope of the ditch and looked at the fleeing red taillights. It was a police car, a light brown sedan. A Byrd County Sheriff's deputy was behind the wheel of the vehicle.

The deputy was just beginning his tour of duty. As all his colleagues he was aware of the alert the Sheriff had put out. If he had noticed the hound he would have indeed stopped because Sheriff Trumbo had made them aware of the missing dog.

His orders were to proceed down this rural road until he came to its intersection with Alliance Road, as was the designation of the road that ran past the school itself. There just in the driveway of the closed school he would rendezvous with a Highway Patrol trooper and together they would maintain a surveillance of all passing motorists and would stop any they deemed suspicious.