GUARD DOG, by Robert Hood

Ruba ran for her life.

The dog chasing her sounded like a monster. Its bark made her spine tingle.

It was the third time this week the dog had chased her—and today was only Wednesday. Before that she’d never even seen a dog in Wattlegrove Avenue.

Should I toss my schoolbag at it, she wondered? But the bag contained an unopened chocolate bar. Chocolate was too precious to chuck away.

Soon she was gasping for breath. Panting. Getting a stitch in her side.

Then, as she passed the end of Wattlegrove Avenue, the barking stopped. Ruba stopped, too.

The dog-monster had lost interest and was returning to its hidey-hole—the one it would lurk in until some poor innocent such as Ruba wandered by again.

‘I’ll get past you,’ she yelled. ‘Wait and see!’

The big mongrel looked over its shoulder. Its teeth were bared. Its nasty black eyes glinted red.

It really is a monster, she thought. Maybe Anubis, the jackal-god. Straight from the Egyptian myths they’d learnt about in school.

She shuddered.

* * * *

‘Anubis?’ laughed her older brother Sami. He was buttoning up a new black shirt. ‘Are you telling me the land of the dead is down the bottom of Wattlegrove Avenue?’

‘Course not, but it’s a really nasty dog. More nasty than dogs should be.’

Sami laughed. ‘Look, kiddo, I drive along Wattlegrove Avenue all the time. I’ve never seen any dog there. A dog like that would chase cars, don’t you reckon?’

‘Maybe.’

Sami preened in the mirror one last time. ‘If you’re worried about it, catch the bus.’ He checked his watch. ‘Now stop bothering me. I’m going out.’

Maybe he was right, but in Ruba’s opinion the bus was too ghastly to bother with. All those boys who thought it was cool to act tough and spit and throw oranges at each other! She’d been getting home via the short-cut along Wattlegrove Avenue all year, dogless and unbothered.

But now Anubis the monster dog lurked there. It chased her and she ended up running back the way she’d come. So far, her father hadn’t noticed how late she was. He’d make her catch the bus once he did.

There had to be a way past the dog.

* * * *

‘It’s just a dog,’ said Ruba’s friend Jenni.

‘This one’s a real monster,’ Ruba explained.

‘Fetch the Slayer, quick!’

‘If you think it’s so funny, come meet the dog yourself.’

‘Where is this monster?’

‘Down the end of Wattlegrove Avenue.’

Jenni laughed. ‘I came that way this morning. Dead quiet, it was. No dogs at all.’

Ruba sighed. Same as her brother! Was Ruba the only one it chased? ‘Well, there’s one there in the afternoon. See for yourself.’

‘Can’t. Mum’s picking me up after school. Piano lesson.’ Jenni turned away as a group of girls ran past. ‘Wanta play some handball?’

Then Ruba spied Harry.

Harry the Horror was the school nerd. He had all the answers. When you asked him even a simple question, it took him hours to get to the point. So usually no one bothered. But Ruba was desperate.

‘Dog problem, eh?’ Harry pulled at his hairless chin as though he had a long beard.

‘How can I get past it?’ Ruba asked.

Harry began listing a squillion ways to tame guard dogs. The first one involved staring it in the eye and letting it know who’s the boss. Ruba knew who the boss was and so did the dog. Harry’s other methods were even less practical, so Ruba stopped listening.

‘Talk to it,’ she heard Harry say, just before he began telling her about Method Number One Squillion and One. ‘If you reason with dogs, they always listen. Not like people.’

‘Really?’

‘Dogs are easy to handle if you speak their language,’ he said.

‘What language is that?’

Harry smirked. ‘Doglish, of course. I’ll show you how it goes.…’

* * * *

Maybe the dog came from the Middle East like Ruba’s parents, because it didn’t appear to speak English—Dog or otherwise.

It leapt at Ruba from the shadowy bushes in front of the old, crumbling house near the rise, and came at her like a rocket, mouth wide to gobble her up.

‘Rr-i’m rr-or frrreend-woof!’ she barked, as instructed by Harry.

The dog kept coming, clearly unimpressed.

‘Frreend-woof! Woof-frr-end!’ Ruba repeated. The dog’s mouth opened wide, its teeth huge and sharp. Spit dribbled over its lips.

Maybe it didn’t speak any type of English.

‘Fursa sa’eeda!’ she said in Arabic, which meant ‘Nice to meet you’. She didn’t expect it to work. How many dogs understood Arabic?

But the dog stopped. It sat down and wagged its tail. Once.

Ruba made an effort to breathe, in case she fell over from lack of oxygen. The dog’s dark eyes watched her.

‘Nice dog,’ she muttered.

It continued to stare. Now it was Ruba’s move. She wished she’d paid more attention when her grandmother tried to teach her Arabic.

‘Il-autobees yissafir imta?’ she said. Which meant something like ‘When does the bus leave?’ Not very appropriate, but Ruba couldn’t think of anything else.

The dog barked and stood expectantly. It took a step toward the old, crumbling house. Then it glanced back at her. When she didn’t follow, it growled.

‘It wants me to follow it,’ Ruba said out loud. ‘No way.’

She moved one step in the opposite direction.

The growl got nastier.

‘Bisalama!’ Ruba said (‘Goodbye’).

Suddenly the dog leapt around behind her so she couldn’t go in that direction. It growled, floppy lips pulling back over enormous teeth. The growl sounded like something lurching up from the bottom of a very deep hole. The dog’s eyes glinted red. The fur on its back bristled.

‘Kwayes!’ Ruba whispered, scared stiff. ‘Okay! Okay!’

She shuffled toward the house. As she did, the dog began to trot along behind her, quite content now.

Ruba felt trapped. She’d have to enter the house, and frankly, it looked like the sort of place no one would want to enter. It was dark and the yard was overgrown and if she found out no one but ghosts had lived there for several hundred years she wouldn’t be surprised.

‘I don’t want to go in there!’ she said. To which the dog growled some more.

So she opened the front gate and went in.

* * * *

When she knocked on the door, there was no answer. She shrugged at the dog, as if to say ‘Can I go now?’. It stared at her blackly.

Ruba knocked again. Then the dog came up beside her, lifted its front paw and pushed. The door creaked open, revealing a lightless hallway.

The dog barked and stared at Ruba, ordering her in.

The whole place was bleak and dusty. Floorboards groaned under her feet as Ruba made her way down the passage. She came to a staircase. Staring up its twisting height, all she could see were shadows and none of them seemed friendly.

‘Not up there, I hope?’ she asked the dog. It barked, but stared ahead.

Not up. Ruba kept moving along the ground-floor passage.

Finally she came to an opening that led downstairs into a dark basement area. Spooky. As she skirted around it, Ruba felt the dog nudge her. She looked at the animal and it made a ‘grawffff’ sound, its eyes sparking red again.

Okay. Down.

‘Hello!’ she yelled into the darkness.

‘Assalamu alaikim!’ came a weak voice from below. Ruba stepped back in surprise. Tingles crept up her spine.

‘Hello!’ came the voice again, in English this time. ‘Is someone there?’

‘Yes!’ said Ruba. ‘Is someone down there or are you a ghost?’

‘Hamdulillah!’ That was Arabic for ‘Thank God!’. The voice didn’t sound spooky now. It sounded relieved. ‘Help me, please!’

Should she go down? Well, someone might be hurt—and besides, the dog wasn’t giving her much choice. It glared at her over its long snout.

She reached into the dark, looking for a light switch.

‘Globe blew,’ said the voice.

Ruba sighed. ‘Where are you?’

‘Bottom of the stairs. I fell when the light went out. Broke something. I can’t move. Help me. Min fadlek.’

‘Aiwa,’ Ruba answered. ‘Yes. I’m coming.’

She was very careful, searching each step with her foot before putting her weight on it. Halfway down she glanced back. The dog was there, like a hovering shadow.

By the time she reached the bottom, her eyes had adjusted and she could see better. A man lay spread-eagled on the rough floor, one leg bent at a strange angle. He was very skinny, his eyes bulging desperately.

‘Hamdulillah!’ he muttered. ‘I thought I’d die here.’

Ruba knelt beside him. ‘You look terrible,’ she said.

‘Three days.’ One hand rubbed over his forehead. ‘I’ve been here since Al-ahad.’

‘Sunday?’

He nodded. ‘I’m new. An immigrant. From Cairo. My first day in this house I have bought and I trip. Couldn’t get up the stairs and no one could hear.’

Ruba thought about what he’d been through. In a new country. Lying there in the dark, unable to get help. No one knowing he’s there. Alone. ‘You’ll be okay now,’ she said. ‘I’ll get an ambulance.’

‘You save me.’ His hand reached out. ‘How did you know to look here?’

‘Your dog chased me in. It was real smart, though at first I didn’t know what it was up to.’

‘My dog?’ The man looked puzzled.

‘Up there.’ Ruba pointed, but the dog was no longer lurking at the top of the stairs, even as a shadow.

The man frowned at her. ‘This is strange. I have no dog. Not here in this new country.’

‘No dog? You must have. It wanted me to help you.’ She described the dog in detail and the man listened, his brow creasing. When she was finished, he shook his head.

‘It sounds like—no, but that is impossible.’

‘What’s impossible?’

‘I had a dog as you describe. When I was young. But it died.’

Ruba glanced to where she’d last seen the dog, feeling little tingles run up her spine.

‘My father,’ the man went on, ‘he used to say that dog was part jackal. That it honored me by being my friend. That it would stay with me forever.’ He grinned at her, even though he was in pain. ‘Perhaps it did.’

Ruba said nothing. She swallowed.

‘It was called Anubis,’ the man added.