Something Wicked

The area I live in is peaceful and quiet. We're on a dirt road that's off of a paved road, that's off of another dirt road. We have neighbors, but we are not on top of each other.

Deer, ducks, rabbits, foxes, groundhogs all wander through our yard and the woods behind us.

It's not silent - there's a train nearby, which we hear with complete clarity several times a day. We're also on the flight path for our local Medflight, so we hear that helicopter from time to time.

But what we heard last night was chilling.

At exactly 11:45 p.m. I was awakened by the sounds of what appeared to be a police or ambulance or fire truck P.A. system. The sounds were somewhat unintelligible, though, and way too loud for the time and setting. Whatever the vehicle was, it was driving slowly, slowly up our road, across from our house and away.

Having been sick yesterday with a touch of stomach flu, this wrenched me out of sleep and jolted me into bouts of nausea and stomach pain. I felt panicked and frightened. The loud noise had given way to complete silence, and for the first time, our country road seemed sinister, rather than peaceful.

For the sounds, D and I realized, were dogs barking through the P.A.

Now, this wouldn't have been anything worth remarking on in a normal universe, but our area has been made far from normal since a series of brutal murders of local dogs.

Can you murder a dog? Yes, if you shoot him in the skull and then bind his paws with ductape and then toss him by the side of the road to be found. Or if you decapitate a puppy. Over and over again.

This is the kind of horror that our community has been plagued with during the past couple of weeks.

The whole bizarre slow car trolling down the road with the eerie P.A. system repeated itself exactly one half hour later, and D. and I, now being sure that it was dog barking we were hearing, called the local Sheriff's office.

I think I'll keep Fantasy Boy close to me today.