***
Paul's crappy Nissan made not a small amount of creaking, scraping, and screeching noises as it sputtered its way into the old bus depot parking area. A number of stereotypical young hoodlums standing near a dimly lit double door looked up to see the jalopy crawl desperately into a parking space. Paul got out of the car and nonchalantly nodded to one of the kids at the door.
“That you, Paul?” the young thug yelled.
“Yup.” answered Paul as he closed the distance between them. He looked back at his car and scoffed, “You know how I like to make an entrance.” Paul took his hand out of his pocket just long enough to bump fists with a few of the guys. He made sure that the wad of cash in his pocket was visible to Grant, his friend at the door.
“Thought you said you weren't into dog fights, buddy.” Grant said to Paul.
“I'm not. But I'm getting evicted and I need a break, like, yesterday.” Paul answered, producing an eviction notice out of another pocket.
“Don't know how much this is gonna help. Wash's got his dog here tonight. If you bet on him, you ain't gonna win much, and if you bet on the other dog you're gonna lose it all.”
“Yeah, but I'm feeling lucky today 'cause I got your sister's phone number when she gave me a free lap dance over at Lexi's just now.”
Grant chuckled. “You bastard.” he joked at Paul.
Paul laughed in return, and the few other shady characters standing around joined in the fun for a moment, one of them even playfully punched Grant in the arm for having been the butt of the joke. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Paul smiled wide at Grant. “So, can I go in or do you want photographic proof?” Paul asked as he started to take his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Alright, alright.” Grant protested as he opened the door behind him.
“Say hi to 'T' whenever he takes a break between rehabs.” Paul said, obviously referencing a mutual acquaintance of Grant's and his as he walked into the building.
“Yeah, no problem.” answered Grant, matching the cynicism in Paul's tone.
Paul walked up a hallway lit by an occasional naked light bulb every ten feet or so. Ahead of him he saw some light coming through an open doorway. As he passed through, he came out into a wide open warehouse. There were a few dozen people inside chatting casually with one another, and the sounds of dogs barking and yelping came from somewhere deep inside the building somewhere. Makeshift plywood walls formed an amateurish arena in the center of the warehouse, and boardwalks had been sloppily nailed together around its exterior perimeter in order to provide a comfortable viewing angle for gamblers and onlookers. Paul stepped up onto one of the walkways and looked over the edge of the wall. Inside the arena Paul could see a man standing with a very large dog that appeared to have at least a little Great Dane in its mongrel genetic makeup. It was pacing and growling on a chain leash as its owner attempted to motivate the dog for the upcoming fight. It stopped for a moment to sniff a small blood stain on the ground. The owner yanked his head away as punishment.
Paul sneered a bit in anger as he saw this and decided to walk around the arena a bit more, mostly to avoid the horrific animal abuse taking place. He wasn't looking forward to this assignment at all, but he told himself that, at the very least, he could save one dog from this terrible life of demeaning torture. On the other side of the walled enclosure, Paul saw the infamous Wash-N-Burn standing with a few of his friends. Wash looked up for a second and saw Paul staring at him. He looked confused for a second, then he smiled as an expression of recognition fell across his face. Paul approached.
“You're the guy over at Amand's, right? The one who...” Wash began.
“Yeah, the one with all the crazy flair bartending techniques. That's me,” Paul returned.
“You should be over at Universal City Walk or something, making serious cash. Get out of that place. Up and out, right?”
“Actually, I worked there for a while. They fired me. Kept tagging all the chicks that the boss was trying to bag. So he got rid of me.”
Wash let out a hearty laugh. “Good man, good man. Hey, enjoy the fight tonight, buddy.” He patted Paul on the shoulder and moved past him, away from the arena. As he did, Paul reached back and scratched his neck where Toma's uncomfortable scapular was pressed against his skin. As he did, a blood-curdling howl echoed from down a dark hallway and seemed to fill the air from every direction. All talking ceased for a brief moment and the warehouse was silent. Many of those present looked to Wash for some sort of reassurance of their safety. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and headed back into the area where Paul could only assume all of the dog pens were housed. He shuddered at the thought of how inhospitable the conditions of those pens were to the poor dogs imprisoned therein. But he quickly remembered his job and leaned up against the outside of the plywood wall to hoist himself back up onto the viewing walkway. As he did so, he wrapped an almost invisible filament around the arena door latch with a fluid motion of a single finger. He reached up for more support in climbing and wrapped the filament around and over the top of a railing for leverage.
From the position where he staged himself for the watching of the approaching bloodbath, Paul could tug gently from inside his pocket and unlatch the door so it would fall open. His plan from there was to follow the dogs, as they would inevitably escape through the open door. Then he would need to find some way of leading the dog in question out into the parking lot, into his car, and back to the hotel. A sloppy plan to be sure, but Paul knew he could easily handle anyone who got in the way and he looked forward to dishing out a little violent justice to this particular group of scumbags. He would have to leave town for a while afterwards, but the $2,000 would help with that. There wasn't anything tying him down to this particular city except his own poverty.
He began to weigh the pros and cons of crossing the country to the West Coast when his thoughts were stopped dead by a deep, rumbling growl that seemed to emanate from both the walls of the warehouse and the interior of his own body. Apparently, a few others in the room were similarly affected by this sourceless noise. Paul looked back towards the dark hallway of canine hell and saw Wash emerge holding a chain, at the end of which was a black dog about the size of a Saint Bernard, but with body features more akin to those of an average cur. As the dog approached the arena, bystanders cleared a wide berth for the passage of Wash's beastly terror. Paul could see the dog snarling in the dimly lit warehouse. Even its teeth were a shiny, onyx black color. A large hulk of a man opened the door to the fighting area. As he looked inside, Paul saw the other dog's owner assisted up and over the arena wall by a few of his friends. Leaning in, he unleashed his dog and smacked the dog hard one last time.
Once Wash's dog was inside the arena, the door was slammed shut, and the latch snapped closed. Paul wound up the filament wire inside his pocket until he could feel that it was held taut against the latch. He watched the two dogs face each other. The competitor snarled and barked, but backed off a bit from the black hell-hound. With no warning at all, the two dogs attacked each other. It only took a matter of seconds for the onlookers to realize, if they didn't already know ahead of time, that the other dog never stood a chance. The shiny black teeth sunk deep into the hide of the doomed, canine participant. Paul was frozen in awe at the sheer, bloody efficiency embodied in this jet-black menace. He momentarily forgot his plan and his job, and leaned forward to see the fight better, unable to look away. As he moved, he accidentally unlatched the door, which fell open suddenly with a sound that stole all of the air out of the room. Wash looked at the door and let out a drawn-out, terrified “No!”
The black dog ripped the throat out of its prey and bolted out of the door like a flash of black lightning, blowing the weak, plywood door apart like a cannonball as a few formidable men attempted, in vain, to close it before the animal had a chance to escape. The power of the blast threw the large men across the warehouse like th
ey were plastic action figures. Most of the people inside the building were running desperately for the door... to no avail. An ethereal, canine primal scream filled the air and caused everyone, Paul included, to cower to the floor with their hands over their ears. The line of terrorized people running desperately for the door were torn to shreds like so many Kleenexes sucked into a jet engine by the supersonic blur of something much darker than pitch black. The few remaining people in the building disappeared in a brilliant, split-second flash, leaving only bloody bits of flesh in the spots where they had been standing. Paul and Wash had both jumped into the arena to hide, and both stood completely still, petrified with fear and looking to each other with vain desperation. Wash suddenly screamed in terror as he folded in half and vanished. The inside walls of the makeshift arena were sprayed with blood as if an invisible centrifuge were at work.
Paul turned to run and found himself face to face with an enormous black dog. The animal had quadrupled in size since it escaped. Its fierce eyes held Paul in a trance for a moment that stretched on for an eternity in Paul's panicked state. The huge black nose took in a few quick sniffs, just inches from Paul's chest. Then, leaving Paul untouched, the dog turned and ran out of the building faster than any normal animal could possibly move, not at all bound by conventional laws of physics. Paul's hand shot to his chest where one end of the Saint Frances scapular was held firmly against his skin by a film of fear-induced sweat. He quickly composed himself and ran after the dog, knowing that his chances of actually catching up to the beast would be slim at best if he were piloting an F-22 fighter jet, let alone shuffling along on foot. However, in the absence of any backup plans, he didn't know what else to do. Paul tried not to think about how many red smudges of human remains would cover the surface of the planet if this animal wasn't somehow subdued and captured.
Outside, in the now deathly quiet, night air around the bus depot, Paul arrived to see a fresh set of large canine prints in the dirt parking lot which he followed for about twenty feet until they suddenly disappeared in such a way as to suggest a sudden, alien UFO abduction. Paul's mind quickly devised a series of explanations that could explain the lack of prints beyond that point. He was standing dead center in the middle of an empty expanse of flatness. There were no vehicles, no solid pavement, no structures of any kind, anywhere near that point and no tire tracks to suggest the possibility of someone capturing the dog and taking it away... if that were even possible. Against all of his reasoning powers, and in the face of a lack of any empirical evidence, he briefly made a concession to allow for the existence of supernatural creatures. He considered, based mostly on what he personally observed of the dog's physical, or rather supernatural abilities, that the beast might have jumped from this point and landed two to three hundred yards away or further, but he saw no deep impressions of rear paws which would be the most rational, tell-tale sign of such a high-powered leap. Next, he considered that the dog might have materialized into a gaseous state, but there was obviously no way of testing that theory based on available data. Maybe the hand of God had reached down and plucked the animal out of thin air for immediate transportation to the heavens. Or maybe a wormhole in the space/time continuum had been opened to allow for some sort of teleportation to another dimension. Or, what if the dog was still standing there, invisible to Paul's human eyes? His brain started to rebel against his sudden reliance on childish notions of fantasy and science fiction for explanations that were beyond his understanding. He pulled out his wallet, removing Toma's 'Paranormal Researcher' business card. Paul dialed the number on his cell phone without any further hesitation.