YOU ARE WALKING down the garden path. You are wearing strange and heavy clothes. Your hands explore them but do not recognise them. It’s very dark, but your feet know the way. The gate opens without you touching it. You walk through it but then you are not where you ought to be – on the street where the parked cars wait calmly for the morning. No, you are in a wild and limitless space. The wind’s moan swells, fades, swells again. You walk on, but then your clever feet refuse to move because you are at the edge of a precipice. You don’t want to look down, but you can’t help yourself. So you do look down, and at the bottom of the black and measureless drop there are bright wriggling worms, yellow and white and red. Because they make you feel dizzy and sick, you lift your eyes away from them. You turn back the way you’ve come, but the garden and the house have gone. All you can see is the ragged horizon where the pitch-dark of the land meets the dark grey of the sky.
You understand that you’re waiting for something.
And here it comes. Walking along the horizon.
At first it’s just a ripple, like something behind a curtain. Then the moon opens its eye and you can see that the thing walks on all fours with its head lowered. It’s a dog, a very large dog and, although you have never been afraid of dogs, this one fills you with terror. It’s as though you are drowning in fear, it’s as though fear has filled you up right to the top of your throat and you have only one last breath to scream with.
So you scream.
The dog hears you and turns its head, its ears twitching. Then it disappears, its black shape lost in the surrounding blackness. But you know it’s flying towards you and there’s nothing you can do except stand there with your back to the abyss and wait while your last scream echoes and echoes and echoes.
Then there is light and warm arms and a voice.
‘Hey. Hey, Katie. Katie? It’s all right. Ssh. It’s all right. It’s all right, sweetie. God, you frightened the life out of me with all that screaming.’
The biscuity smell of her mother’s bed-warmth.
But still the dog coming at her out of the night.
Then the bedside light making everything shockingly familiar.
Gone.
‘You were having a bad dream, babe. That’s all. It’s OK.’
The child’s heart beats against her ribs as if it were trying to escape its cage.
‘Can I sleep with you, Mum?’
‘Sure. Come on.’
In the big bed she snugs herself against her mother’s body.
‘Wanna tell me about the dream, Katie?’
‘It was about a big bad dog.’
‘We all have those, sweetie,’ her mother murmurs. ‘It’s normal. Don’t worry about it. It’s OK.’
But it isn’t OK, and it isn’t normal. The dog continues to haunt Katie Callan’s sleep. Often it is just a dark flicker that passes through her dreams like a shadow along a wall. A glimpse of a black muscular shape patrolling the edge of a gloomy sky or turning to look at her. Then gone. At such times Katie’s breathing will stumble, or she will groan, then sleep on, more or less peacefully. At other times, it’s the full nightmare: the terrible drop at her feet, the dog getting invisibly closer, then its eyes, blank mirrors of moonlight, emerging from the darkness, closer – much closer! – than she’d expected. Its harsh and eager breathing. Then the screaming starts and Katie wakes into a room full of screams.
Sometimes months pass before the great black dog comes in the night. But Katie always knows it will return. She grows to fear sleep. She fights sleep off. But sleep is a crafty enemy, and starts to sneak up on her during the daytime.
When Katie is ten years old, her head teacher invites her mother to come to the school to discuss ‘the problem’. A visit to a child psychiatrist is arranged.
The psychiatrist is a softly spoken woman who wears spectacular earrings, which Katie envies. Her name is Aziza.
Gently, while talking about other things, she teases the details of Katie’s nightmare out of her. After their third session she asks to speak to Katie’s mother alone.
‘The truth is,’ Aziza says, ‘that we have very little idea about what causes recurring nightmares unless they are about something that has actually happened to the person having them. Katie tells me that she has never been attacked by a dog, or anything else. Is that true?’
‘Yes. As far as I know.’
Aziza thinks about that answer.
Then she says, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Callan, but I need to ask you this: you are a single parent, is that correct? And you have a part-time job in the Post Office?’
‘Yes. So what?’
‘So, well, I’m sorry, as I say, but . . . ’
Jenny Callan says, stiffly, ‘Katie is never left alone. I don’t neglect her. And if anything bad had happened to her I’d know about it. We don’t have secrets from each other. Is that what you were getting at?’
A tense moment like an intruder in the room.
Then Aziza says, ‘OK. Thank you. So, another possible explanation for recurring nightmares – the same nightmare – is that it’s a sort of habit. That even though it’s weird and frightening, it becomes . . . familiar. That the dreamer starts to expect it. Unconsciously, might even want it. Does that make any sense to you?’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
‘So the trick is to break the habit somehow. Look, this might seem a rather odd suggestion, but have you ever thought about getting a dog? A puppy that Katie could care for? In Katie’s mind, dog is connected to fear and violence. I’m thinking that if we could break that connection, if she could see a dog in terms of friendship, protection . . . ’
Jenny frowns. ‘What, like a sort of antidote?’
Aziza the psychiatrist leans back in her chair and says, ‘Yes, exactly. An antidote. Is it worth a try, do you think? Could you fit a dog into your life?’
The puppy is a mongrel, his coat random splashes of brown and white and black. He looks as though he’d got in the way of a team of sloppy decorators. His feet belong to a much bigger dog, and he falls over them when Katie plays with him on the wee-scented rug.
‘His mum’s a spaniel,’ the woman who’d put the advert in the local paper tells them. ‘I can’t honestly say what the father is. Some sort of terrier, at a guess. There’s one up the road that might’ve done the dirty deed.’
They take him home.
Katie wants to call him Rabbit on account of his long dangling ears, but her mother thinks it would sound daft if they went on walks and shouted, ‘Here, Rabbit!’ at a dog. So they settle on Rabbie. He turns out to be intelligent. When he’s spoken to he has an attentive way of tilting his head and sharply focussing his eyes, those bright black buttons set in his patchwork head.
Rabbie sleeps in a quilted cloth basket under Katie’s bed. Soon, and somehow, he comes to understand why. When the terrible black dog descends from the skyline of Katie’s dreams, when she twists and groans, Rabbie emerges from under the bed with a warning resounding in his throat that swells into a bark. Two of those do the trick: Katie slips free of the nightmare and reaches down to Rabbie, sleepily fondles the little folds of skin between his ears.
‘Good boy. Good boy. It’s all right. It’s all right now. Go back to sleep.’
Gradually the gaps between the dream-dog’s visits grow longer. And when it does come it keeps its distance, only watching her with glittering eyes while stalking by.
Then she’ll hear Rabbie’s warning rumble.
‘Good boy.’
Her hand on his warm head, then moving down to the soft place between his narrow shoulders.
‘Good boy.’
And, eventually, the beast vanishes from her nights.
When Katie Callan is eighteen she goes away to university. She drops the ‘i’ from her name; ‘Kate’, she thinks, is more grown-up. Sophisticated. She is happy, most of the time, for the next three years. Her world gets bigger. Rabbie misses her more than she misses him. When she comes home between university terms he greets her with a delighted dance, up on his back legs with his front paws dabbing at her. She takes him for walks, but talks to her mobile more than she talks to him.
Kate leaves university and spends a year doing any old job for money. She doesn’t come home very often. Then she decides, or discovers, what it is that she really wants to do. She fills in, very thoughtfully, an application form. It takes her two days. She goes for an interview, then another one.
She rings her mother.
‘Mum? Mum, I did it! I passed the interview!’
‘That’s fantastic, sweetheart. I knew you would. Well done.’
There’s something wrong with her mother’s voice.
‘Mum? Aren’t you pleased?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I am. I’m very proud of you, love.’
It still isn’t right, though.
‘Mum? What’s the matter?’
‘It’s just . . . It’s terrible to have to tell you this, today of all days, but . . . well, Rabbie died this morning.’
‘Oh no,’ Katie says. ‘Oh my God. What happened? Was he ill? You never said anything.’
‘No. He was getting a bit blind, as you know. And he must’ve wandered into the road and got hit by a car, or something. A neighbour found him. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve been crying all day.’
‘Oh, Mum. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all right. I really didn’t want to spoil your day. It’s ridiculous to get so upset over a dog.’
Later Kate makes other calls, and goes to a pub to celebrate her new job with her friends. At one point she gets tearful about her dog dying. Her mates tease her, and eventually she laughs at herself. Then she goes back to her flat and stumbles into bed.
You are walking down the garden path. You are wearing . . .
No.
You are not where you ought to be – on the street where the parked cars wait . . .
No. Please, no.
It appears on the horizon. It’s just a shape at first, like a ripple behind a curtain . . .
Sweating. A scream climbing up through her chest.
Your heels at the edge of the drop. The bright worms way, way down there.
She reaches for Rabbie. Her hand knocks over a glass of water.
And now it’s nearer than ever before and you see the moon madness in its eyes and its lips drawn back from its teeth and the rippled roof of its mouth and its slobber and it launches itself at you, its body all muscle and hot stink . . .
Screaming.
‘Good boy! Good boy!’
She gropes, fingers finding only wet carpet. She sits up. Her hand clatters the bedside table, finds the lamp.
The terror fades into the light but it’s like it’s never been gone.
Nor does it leave her now. It haunts her days as well as her nights. Shadows of its shape slip across walls, along corridors, down alleyways. She glimpses its reflection in shop windows. It emerges from innocent hedges and sits, tensed, waiting for her to come closer before it disappears.
As when she was a child, she starts avoiding sleep. It affects her work. She is tired, she forgets things. After a few months her boss suggests the she should talk to a therapist.
This one is not at all like Aziza. He is bald but has a small beard. It’s like his hair has slid down his head and gathered at his chin ready to fall into his lap. His name is Mark.
She tells him about the dog that haunts her life.
‘What do you do for a living, Kate? Is it OK if I call you Kate?’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I’m a police officer.’
‘Really. Like a detective?’
‘No. An ordinary copper.’
‘Hmm. That can be a high-risk job, can’t it? Especially in this city. So would you describe yourself as a brave person? A confident person?’
‘I used to be,’ Kate says.
Mark nods and picks up a pen. ‘So tell me what frightens you. Apart from the nightmare dog, of course.’
‘The usual things,’ she says. ‘Spiders, nutters with axes in their hands, cancer, heights . . .’
He interrupts. ‘Not everyone is scared of heights, actually. Mountaineers, for instance. Scaffolders.’
She shrugs. ‘I guess.’
After a pause Mark says, ‘The black dog is sometimes a metaphor for depression. Do you think you’re depressed, Kate?’
‘No.’
All the same Mark describes the symptoms of depression. Kate has to agree that some of them match her own. Mark writes her a prescription for anti-depressant tablets and arranges another appointment in a month’s time.
Kate doesn’t take the anti-depressants. She doesn’t think the nightmare dog is something you can get rid of with pills. After a fortnight she flushes them down the toilet. She skips the next appointment with Mark. And the one after that.
The dog continues to haunt her.
On a November night, with the sky a dark blank above the sullen yellow street lights, Kate Callan is in a patrol car with her regular partner and driver, PC Simon ‘Wheelie’ Binns. They’re thinking about picking up a couple of coffees when Control comes on the radio.
‘Oscar Papa three-zero,’ Katie says into the mike. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Reported violent incident at Dover House on the Eden estate.’
‘Well, fancy that,’ Wheelie murmurs, swinging the car left to make a U-turn.
‘Probably a domestic,’ Control says, ‘but watch yourself. Whisky Bravo also alerted.’
‘Wilco,’ Katie says.
Wheelie turns on the flashers and the siren. Accelerates. The street lights race backwards like a madman’s blinking.
Like the other three buildings on the Eden estate, Dover House is a huge slab of a place jutting rudely up into the sky. Walkways run along each of its ten levels. It’s the kind of place, Kate thinks, you’d only live in if life had had dealt you a very bad hand. When they get out of the car, there are people waiting for them; they back off and stand watching like humans witnessing the arrival of an alien spacecraft. But there is screaming and shouting from up the face of the building. Silhouettes against the broken and flickering light along the walkways, pointing in various directions.
Kate and Wheelie stand, staring up, uncertain. Then a man in dreadlocks, an older man, says from behind them, ‘It’s kickin’ off on level six, man. But I wouldn’ go up there if I was you.’
Wheelie says, ‘What d’you think?’
‘Call backup,’ Kate says.
Wheelie reaches into the car and talks into the radio.
Then there’s two pops like cheap fireworks and a chorus of screams.
‘C’mon!’ Kate shouts, already running towards the entry.
‘No!’ Wheelie yells, but she’s gone.
At ground level there’s nobody, just a long line of bin bags sitting like black toads, some of them spilling their guts. At the end of the corridor there are two lift doors covered in graffiti. Kate whacks her palms against both sets of buttons but, as she expected, nothing happens. She starts to climb the stairs. By the time she gets to level six, her lungs feel like they’re full of broken glass. She leans against the wall of the stairwell, dragging in air, then risks a peek round the corner of the walkway.
There’s a young guy, a boy, sitting on the concrete ten metres away with his back against the wall. His mouth is open but he’s making no sound. A girl is kneeling in front of him, rocking her body back and forth, holding her hands out as if she’s begging, or praying.
‘Ash. Ash, man,’ she’s saying, over and over.
There’s no-one else. All the doors along the walkway are shut.
When Kate approaches, the girl looks at her and lifts her hands. They are bloody.
Wheelie is yelling in Kate’s earpiece. She ignores him and switches her collar-mike to ‘send’ and jabbers the codes for Ambulance and Armed Response Units.
She gets to the girl and puts her hands on the girl’s shoulders and says, ‘It’s OK. It’s all right.’
Which it isn’t, obviously. The girl is shaking like there’s electricity running through her. The boy’s hands are clutched at his stomach, but they’re not stopping the blood leaking onto his lap. Shock has locked his face into a vacant smile.
Kate kneels.
‘Ash? Is that your name? Ash, can you look at me, please?’
The kid’s eyes roll slowly towards her.
‘Ash, I need to see what’s happened to you. You’ve got to take your hands away so I can see. Can you do that?’
The boy shakes his head.
The girl says, ‘Denny shot him. It was Denny. I told Ash . . . ’
There’s a sound from the stairs end of the walkway and Kate stands up. Her hand reaches for her taser, but it’s Wheelie. She’s surprised he got up here so fast; he’s not the slimmest or fittest man at the station. He’s bent over, his hands on his knees.
‘Callan,’ he gasps. ‘Callan, you—’
Then he takes in the scene.
‘Dear God.’
Kate pushes past him.
‘Do what you can for them,’ she says. ‘The shooter went up, or we’d have met him on the stairs.’
‘Kate, no.’
But she’s gone.
Climbing the last four flights, fear and exhaustion thud her heart. At the tenth floor, as before, she peers round the corner. No one. Behind and to the right of her there’s an unmarked door. She risks pushing it. It opens. Nothing terrible happens. Behind the door there’s a space not much bigger than a cupboard. Two of the walls have thick power cables running down them. On the third there’s a metal ladder. She climbs it and feels the cold breath of night on her face. Then, as she’d feared, she finds herself on the roof.
It’s a flat area more or less the size of a football pitch. Towards one end there’s a metal thicket of telecom aerials. Running down its centre there are four low structures a bit like sheds with slatted walls. The surface is puddled and gritty underfoot. Kate walks cautiously to the far side of the roof to the fire escapes and looks down. As far as she can see, there’s nobody on them. Far below, the lights of traffic are twisting worms of red and white and yellow. And blue, flickering. The moan of approaching patrol cars swells, fades, swells again.
The roof of the next block, Folkestone House, is level with her, and close. You could almost jump the gap. But not quite. The thought sickens her.
She retreats from the edge of the precipice. She should not be up here. The voices in her earpiece are telling her that. She is, suddenly, both sensible and afraid.
She heads back towards the roof access, but before she can reach it a hooded human shape steps out from behind one of the shed-like things. He’s holding a gun in both hands. Light from somewhere makes a blue line down its barrel.
He giggles.
It’s the giggle that chills Kate to the core. She knows that a man who giggles when he’s aiming a gun at you is not the kind of man you can reason with.
All the same, she tries. She spreads her arms away from her body.
‘I’m unarmed. Put the gun down. Please don’t be stupid. You’ve got nowhere to go.’
Wrong thing to say.
He takes a step towards her. All she can see of his face is the tip of his nose and then a flicker of tongue as he licks his lips.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I got nowhere to go.’
He laughs like he’s choking.
‘I’m goin’ nowhere. Tell you what, though. I don’ fancy goin’ alone. I fink I might take you wiv me.’
Kate turns her head and measures the distance to the fire escapes.
It’s worth a try, she thinks, then her heart seems to stop its mad beating. She stops breathing because the black dog is stalking along the parapet of Folkestone House like a ripple in the dull sky. Its ears are alert triangles. Its eyes are two orange flames, watching her. She can see the flesh bunching in its shoulders and haunches. It lifts its upper lip in something like a smile. Kate hears the long low growl deep in its throat; a sound like bubbling blood.
She understands.
She understands why this dark and terrible animal has been with her for most of her life.
The dog is death. Her death.
Kate hears the metallic click of the gun behind her.
She’s going to die. The only words in her head are, for some reason, I’m so sorry, Mum.
Then the beast leaps. Flies towards her across the dizzying space between the buildings. Its shape seems to fill the sky, blacking it out.
Kate falls on to her knees. She raises her arms, perhaps in a hopeless attempt to protect herself from the animal. Or perhaps to welcome it. She closes her eyes.
A long inhuman scream splits the night.
But it’s not Kate’s scream. It’s not her agony.
She turns, dazed because she is still alive.
The dog has the gunman down on his back, tearing at him, its thick whip of a tail thrashing. Dog and man are a single writhing shape, howling and snarling. Then the man’s right arm emerges. The hand still has the gun in it. He shoots the dog, twice, up through its body. Kate clearly sees the pouts in the dog’s back where the bullets exit. But no sprays of blood. And the creature is unaffected; if anything, the shots only increase its savagery. It twists its massive shoulders and seizes the man’s wrist with its jaws, jerking it as if it were breaking the neck of a rat. Kate hears, or imagines, the fracturing of bones, the parting of sinews. The gun skitters across the roof and comes to rest in a puddle. The dog releases the man’s arm and stands over him, panting, as though making a decision. Then it attacks again, going for face and throat. The man’s feet pedal the air helplessly.
Kate walks unsteadily towards the death-struggle and stands above it, uncertain. Then she puts her hand on the back of the dog’s neck, feeling the soft roll of fat and the hard muscle beneath its fur. She digs her fingers in, squeezes gently.
‘Good boy,’ she says. ‘Good boy.’
Its head comes up, the hot eyes rolling, the murderous mouth gaping.
Although she is very afraid, she runs her hand down to its shoulders, stroking.
‘Good boy.’
The dog’s body relaxes. It steps away from the man, who is now twisting and rolling from side to side; his cries have dwindled into chokes and gargles. Kate looks down at him, expecting to see rips, wounds. There are none. None at all.
The dog sits beside her, panting, its red tongue steaming.
The night fills with a heavy throbbing. For a moment Kate thinks it is the hammering of her heart. Then a helicopter slides sideways into the sky and drenches the roof in harsh light. A hugely amplified voice speaks to her from above; she cannot make out the words. At the same instant, four armed officers burst on to the roof.
One of them thinks he sees a dark shape poised on the parapet as if about to leap. He aims his weapon, but there’s nothing. The only persons on the roof are PC Kate Callan and, just a few paces from her, a man lying with his face in his hands, shaking and sobbing like someone waking from a nightmare.