Hounded by Nicholas Wolter
There was a dog staring at him from across the street. Only its nose and one paw were in the light, but he was able to see its gleaming eyes. The streetlight flickered, and his heart skipped a beat. The dog was still there when the light was steady again. It was just a little closer now. It had dark fur on its snout, and it was still staring at him.
“What do you want?” He brandished his cane at the dog. It didn’t react. “I don’t have any food, so get out of here!”
A car drove by with blinding headlights and a strong odor of burning gasoline. He had to shield his eyes from the light with one hand, and with the other he pinched his nose. His cane clattered against the sidewalk. He slowly lowered his eyes, expecting the dog to be closer. It was gone. He quickly retrieved his cane from the ground and scanned the surroundings for the animal. When there was no sign of it, he put the dog out of his mind and went home.
The key to his house was in the cane-side pocket. He had to awkwardly reach around himself to grab it. He jammed the key into the keyhole and twisted it. With a click and a push, the door was open. He shuffled inside, quickly slammed the door shut and locked it again. The foyer of his house was utterly silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock he’d inherited years ago. It was dark, too, until he finally found the light switch after some fumbling. The incandescent bulb hummed while the grandfather clock ticked.
He stiffly removed his shoes and slipped his feet into slippers. He glanced at the grandfather clock before he went to the living room. It was 11:17 at night. He clicked his tongue and moved on to the living room. The cane thudded against the wooden floor with every step he took in the nearly silent house.
The living room was almost entirely covered in a layer of dust, but a single recliner was clean. It was the recliner that he’d always sat in. He lowered himself into it and stared out of the dark window. It seemed to instantaneously change from night to day, so he knew he’d finally gotten some sleep. He didn’t rise from the recliner until the doorbell rang half an hour later.
The doorbell had been programmed to sound like the crescendo of chords of “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” He wasn’t the one who programmed it. He walked over, and he opened the door with a creak that might have come from the door or his bones. A man and a young boy were on his porch. A father and son.
“Mr. Watts!” The boy smiled brightly. The father set a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“We were wondering if you would join us for a meal, Mr. Watts,” the boy’s father said.
“I don’t know,” Watts mumbled, “haven’t gone out to eat in forever.”
“You could help me with my math homework! The sub is useless,” the boy offered.
“Carlos!” Carlos’ father scolded.
“What? It’s true. He keeps shutting down my questions while saying I should have learned the answers last year.”
Watts grimaced. “I suppose I can help. I’ll join you two.”
“Yes! You hear that, Dad? He’s gonna help me!”
“I heard,” Carlos’ father hummed with a fond smile. The man looked back at Watts. “I’m glad you’re coming. You’ve been alone in that house for too long.”
“Just five months,” Watts dismissed with a wave of his hand. “And my physical therapist keeps coming around to bother me.”
“That’s not enough. You know that’s not healthy.”
“I’m already coming with you, aren’t I? Let me get ready.” Watts closed the door and returned fifteen minutes later with clean clothes and wet hair on his head. He limped out of the house and locked the door before he left. Watts and the father and son walked side by side down the sidewalk. Whenever Watts glanced at Carlos, he was struck by how widely the boy was smiling. Knowing that he was the cause of the boy’s happiness soothed an ache in his heart.
The town was loud during the day. Carlos chattered about his math problems, and Watts helped him with the logic as much as he could without pen and paper. Carlos’ father chimed in on occasion about the vacation his family went on during the school’s spring break. Watts felt his shoulders lose their tension, and a relieved smile tugged up the corners of his lips. But it didn’t last, as the joy he felt was instantly consumed by an empty hollow from just a simple sound. Someone’s dog was barking in the distance. Watts froze.
The barks were loud, sharp, and deep in pitch. No doubt it was a big dog. Perhaps covered in dark fur. Watts couldn’t make even the slightest twitch. The dog kept barking, and the entire world fell away. Watts’ hands were on a steering wheel. He desperately wanted to let go, but they seemed to be glued to it. The dog continued to bark. His foot was on the accelerator. A boy and a woman were speaking to one another just outside of Watts’ vision. He wanted to cry out, to tell them to get out, to cover their necks, anything! The barking got louder. Rain was pelting the windshield. The dog’s barks got louder, and louder, and louder. A hand was on his shoulder.
“Are you alright, Mr. Watts?” Carlos’ father asked.
“Yes,” Watts let out a shuddering breath. “Yes, I am.”
Watts looked at his trembling hand. He clenched it into a fist, and the trembling stopped. He shook his head to banish the memory. He began to walk again, and the others matched his pace. His cane sounded so much louder than it had before. He was far too aware of it, and far too aware of why he needed it. But he would rather walk thousands of miles with the cane than ever get in an automobile again.
It didn’t take long for the three of them to reach the restaurant they were going to have breakfast in. It was a bright, welcoming place, almost entirely the opposite of the muted colors of his home. The delicious smell of hot maple syrup wafted from restaurant’s doors whenever customers opened them. Carlos pulled Watts into the restaurant after a few moments. As soon as he was inside the restaurant, an elderly woman came up to greet him. She was one of the people who went to the church Watts used to go to.
“It’s good to see you out and about in the mornings. I see you out at night so much, and I keep thinking how you shouldn’t be out at night with your injury.”
“It’s just a bit of restlessness that I have to work off. If I’m not exhausted, I just can’t sleep.”
“Oh, but wouldn’t it be better to just curl up under the covers?” she insisted.
Watts felt heat rise in his chest. He knew it was unreasonable to get so angry, but it was frustrating. Part of the reason he never went out in the day was because of people like her: busybodies who were all too nosy for Watts’ peace of mind. “Didn’t I just tell you—”
“Mr. Watts, my dad picked out a table for us,” Carlos spoke up. He hadn’t even left Watts’ side. “Don’t you want to sit down?”
Watts forced the anger back down into his stomach and walked over to where Carlos’ father was sitting. The man tried to ask Watts something, but he just shook his head to shut it down. Carlos slipped into the booth next to his father, and Watts dropped into one of the chairs on the opposite side. He laid his cane across his lap and massaged his stiff fingers. Watts grabbed the menu that was on the table once his fingers weren’t aching so much.
Their breakfast was typical of those you get in local restaurants: coffee, eggs, sausage. The youngest of them got waffles and hot chocolate. Their drinks arrived first and were mismatched. Carlos’ nose caught the mistake when he took a whiff of the mug in front of him and pushed it in front of his father. Watts’ mug was full of coffee, and he relished the sharp, bitter flavor. This breakfast with his student and his student’s father was making Watts feel physically present for the first time since he’d been forced into using a cane.
“Maybe I shouldn’t ask you this so bluntly, Mr. Watts,” Carlos’ father began. Watts’ breakfast felt like lead in his stomach. “Are you afraid of dogs?”
“Afraid of dogs? No,” Watts said sharply. He almost felt relieved; it didn’t feel like he was lying.
“Really? But on the way here, a dog was barking, and you completely shut down. It’s alright if you are, you know.”
“I’m really not afraid of dogs, Mr. Fernandez. It’s just that a dog is the reason I’m like this.” Watts gestured at his entire self, but his hand hovered over his cane for a moment longer than the rest of his body. “Hearing that dog put me right back in the driver’s seat. It feels like there’s more dogs around lately.”
“Maybe that’s good. I like dogs,” Carlos jumped in earnestly.
“Not for me, Carlos,” Watts sighed into his mug. “Can we go back to solving math problems?”
Watts and Carlos went back to math, and for ten minutes the boy’s father sat in silence. But before long he joined in, and Carlos’ entire sheet of math homework, due on Monday, was completed in no time at all. The waiter came with the bill, and Carlos’ father paid it before Watts could finish reaching for his own wallet.
Watts was about to stand up to leave when a horrible scent tickled his nose. It was sour and oily, and Watts recognized the smell instantly. It was the smell of a wet dog. He frowned and looked for the source. There wasn’t a single dog inside the restaurant, not even a dry one. The door hadn’t opened, so it didn’t make sense for the smell to come from outside. Yet, Watts glanced outside despite his logic, and his muscles stiffened.
There was a dog standing across the street in broad daylight. The eyes were just like the ones he’d seen the night before. It also had dark fur, so was he really seeing too many dogs around, or was he seeing too much of just one dog around? It was standing in an alleyway, just outside the shadows. It was dripping wet and staring at him with an unfathomable look in its eyes. The waiter passed by the table, and suddenly the smell of wet dog was all he could smell. Watts pinched his nose and clenched his eyes shut, certain the dog wasn’t real. When he opened his eyes, it was gone.
“It looks like it’s time for Carlos and I to head home, Mr. Watts. Thanks for helping Carlos out with his homework,” Carlos’ father said.
“There’s no need for thanks. I enjoyed it. I think I needed this,” Watts said.
“Then you’re welcome. Carlos?”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Watts! Get well soon!” Carlos yelled. Watts felt himself smile at how the whole restaurant jumped at the boy’s shrill voice. And just a few minutes later, Watts was walking outside the restaurant by himself. It was suddenly very hot, and he was starting to sweat through his shirt. His cane’s clicks seemed different in the heat. He might have been imagining it. Like he’d imagined that dog outside the window.
“It couldn’t have been real. Just something that looked like a dog but wasn’t. Probably a fallen trash can,” Watts mumbled to himself. He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked to the right. There was a dog there. The same dog, not even ten yards away.
“You again.” Watts stamped his cane on the pavement. It was so close, but just outside of the reach of his cane. “Go away.”
The dog didn’t reply, not even with a bark. Watts heard the sound of squealing tires not far away from him. The noise got louder the longer it went on, like a car was careening towards him. But Watts wasn’t fooled. He didn’t smell even a whiff of gasoline. Watts refused to look away from the dog for a mere hallucination. He refused to even blink. He had to keep it here, to teach it a lesson. He needed to make sure it would leave him for good.
“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” Watts hissed. The dog met his gaze unflinchingly. “Come to taunt me? To remind me of my mistake?”
The dog began to pant. It was mocking him! Watts saw red. He took a step forward and lifted his cane as a club. The dog galloped away, too fast for Watts to chase. He wanted to believe it was gone for good. He wasn’t able to convince himself that it was. Watts lowered his cane and looked around. There were no tire marks on the road, as he’d thought.
Watts wandered through the town for a few hours, thankfully unvisited by dogs of any kind. It seemed like he was finally being left alone. When Watts eventually got to his home, the grandfather clock read 11:40. The living room was just as empty and dead as it had been last night. He tried his best to sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes, he saw a steering wheel.
The man stood up and began to limp through his home. He went past picture frames caked with so much dust that the pictures inside them were invisible. They were on the walls and on the shelves. But there was one picture that was clean. Watts stood before a photograph that was hung proudly by the stairs. In the photo was Watts, his wife, and his son. Watts stared at the photograph for a long moment.
“I wish you were here,” he whispered. Watts turned from the photograph, and though he didn’t look out a window to see it at first, he could tell his dogged stalker was there. It barked, like it was trying to get his attention. He turned his head to glare at the dog. As always, it was staring at him.
“It’s you again!” Watts roared as he rushed through the house. He appeared out into the yard with his cane held high and the fervor to use it. The dog didn’t move an inch. “You keep coming back, even though I told you to go away!”
Watts whipped his cane through the air in the dog’s direction. It didn’t care one bit. “How do you like this?”
The dog barked. It was dark outside. Watts was driving, and it was the middle of December. His movements were not his own. He steered, shifted the gears of the car every so often, and his toe was pressed slightly on the accelerator. But all of it was as if he was a third party watching his body get moved by someone else. A woman said something to his right. Watts replied with something. A boy laughed in the back seat. A dog barked. The headlights illuminated the dog. It was a black dog stuck like a deer in headlights. The dog’s dark fur was almost pale in the light, and its eyes glowed like miniature stars. The car was careening towards the dog. Watts swerved and slammed his foot down on the brake as hard as he could. The tires slipped on the icy road, and it spun until the car hit a bump and was in the air. People were screaming. Watts was screaming. The car struck a tree on its right side. It folded around the tree like a catcher’s mitt around a baseball.
Watts was suddenly leaping between his memories and the present. He was still in the car, and paramedics pulled him out. His leg was crushed. He was in the present, and the dog was there. Watts forced his body to move, and he took a step towards the dog. His wheelchair was brought to a morgue, and he had to identify the bodies. He had to go back to his empty house. Back to where his poisoned memories were hoarded.
“Why did I trade my family’s lives for yours?!” Watts bellowed. The dog dodged his swinging cane each time it came by. Tears pricked at Watts’ eyes, but he refused to blink. Watts lunged at the dog, and it leapt away. Watts fell pathetically onto his stomach. “Why do you keep coming back? What do you want from me?!”
He’d chased the dog all the way to the street. It was staring at him from the center of the lane it was in. Watts was about to run into the street after it when a car honked. Watts whipped his head around to look at the car. He watched as the car blasted through the street at a speed that was at least twice the limit. He looked back at where the dog was. It had been run over. It was staring at him, but this time, he felt sick instead of anxious. It was dead, but it was still staring at him.