The Tall Dog of Barrow Heights | Part 4

Part 4 - The Promise When I finish debriefing the order, it's late. I sign the reports and hand over Torson's red book and sit through the decontamination protocols and answer the same questions from three different handlers who all pretend they aren't recording me. And it's later. By the time I get into my car and pull on to the highway, the dashboard clock reads at 1.47am. I missed it. Abigail's birthday. "Nice work," I mutter. "Father of the fucking year you are." The rain starts somewhere around the bridge. Fat, heavy drops that hit the windshield like thrown gravel. I don't turn on the wipers. I let the world blur. Disassociate. I'm remembering Stevenson's face as the ceiling came down. Ellison's ashes in the shape of a man. The boy and his mother's arms, their skulls pressed together. I tell myself I didn't have a choice. But someday, when she's older, Abigail will understand why tonight's job mattered more than a birthday cake. I tell myself a lot of things on that drive. Sirens behind me. They scream past and a red and white blur, fire trucks running hot toward the east side. I watch them go in the rear view, probably a smoke detector. Some drunk on the fifth floor cremating a frozen pizza. I'll get home to find the building evacuated. A hundred irritated tenants standing in the rain while a bored fire crew clears the alarm. And Abigail will be among them. Tired, annoyed, wrapped in the quilt her mother made. Another thing to be angry about. Another reason to hate me over something I can't control. But the trucks keep coming. Three, five, then more. Engines, ladders, an ambulance, then cop cars. The convoy thickens as I get closer. The sirens stacking on top of each other until the sound is a single, sustained whale. I crest the hill so fast my tires leave the asphalt. My breath catches. No. The apartment is engulfed in ten floors of flame. The windows blown out. Black smoke churning upward in a column so thick it bolts out the streetlights for two blocks in every direction. The fire climbs from the middle floors in both directions. Fast, like it's feeding on gasoline. I don't remember screeching to a stop. I don't remember leaving the car. All I remember is running. Past the barricades, past the trucks, into the crowd of evacuees huddled on the far sidewalk. Faces lit orange by the blaze. Blankets, bare feet, children crying. Abigail! Abigail, are you here? I'm grabbing people, pulling them toward me, scanning every face for the one that matters. An old man in a bathrobe, a woman clutching a cat. A teenager with headphones still around his neck, staring slack jawed at the building. She's not here. Abigail! Then from above, small, raw, cracking under the weight of its own terror. 10th floor, her bedroom window. She's leaning out, coughing, the smoke pouring around her in black curtains. Her pajamas, her hair. The ladders are up. I can see the crews working them, extending the sections, but they won't reach. Rigs are rated for seven floors, and she's on ten. I'll do it myself. I'm past the first barricade before they even see me coming. A firefighter grabs my arm. I break his grip. Another steps in front of me. I feed him an elbow, hear the crunch of a nose guard folding. The chief is shouting something about a meth lab, about a drug operation on the sixth floor, about accelerants and structural compromise, and everyone needing to stay the fuck back before. I don't hear any of it. My daughter is in that building. My daughter. I hit the front doors out of sprint, both hands out, and throw them open. The flash over catches me full in the chest. It's a wall of super-heated air and gas detonating outward. It lifts me off my feet, and throws me 15 yards across the pavement. I land on my spine, skull bouncing off asphalt. For a moment, everything is white, ringing. Then I hear it, a sound like the earth clearing its throat. I lift my head in time to see the middle of the building sag. The sixth floor collapses into the fifth, which collapses into the fourth, and the cascade travels upward. Seventh, eighth, ninth. Each floor pan-kaking into the one below with a groan of steel, and a detonation of glass. The tenth floor tilts, hangs. For one impossible second, Abigail's bedroom is suspended at a 45 degree angle against the burning sky, and I can see her. Or I think I can. A small shape in the window, reaching. The building folds. It roars downward, swallowing all other sounds with a tsunami of brick and fire and shattered lives, all washing across the street in a cloud of dust and heat. The firefighters drag me backward. It takes four of them. They barely clear the debris field before the wave hits, a rolling avalanche of rubble that buries the pavement where I was standing three seconds ago. The screaming stops. All of it. The sirens, the crowd, the building. Even the fire seems quieter, settling into the wreckage with a low, satisfied crackle. It's hunger-sated. "I would get help." I whimper. She doesn't answer. She never will. Not ever again. "Mr. June?" The voice is weak. I blink. It's all gone. The fire, the rubble. I'm in the basement, kneeling beside a boy I promised to save. Tithers alive. He's awake. He looks up at the ceiling, at the pipes, at the empty space in the corner where, moments ago, something terrible had been sitting and whistling and drawing pictures of people dying. Then looks at me. "You beat it, didn't you?" he says, voice hoarse. The thing inside me shifts. A rattlesnake coiling into a new position. "Yeah." I grunt, helping him to his feet. "The tall dog won't hurt anybody else." His legs are unsteady, but he grips my arm and finds his balance. I lead him through the dark, and we crawl through the ventilation shaft that leads to the stairwell. On the other side, loose bricks are scattered across the floor, where Tyler knocked them free, coming to my rescue. The bad ending. It's gone. There's no rotting wallpaper. No stick figures drawn in haunted Crayola. It's just a stairwell again. Florescent lights flickering weakly above. We climb to the lobby. I squint at the moonlight, spilling through the slot window. "You better get back to your mom," I say, nodding upstairs. "If she wakes up and you're gone, she's going to lose her mind." He grips the handrail. "What about you? Where are you going?" My throat tightens. The tall dog is pushing against my bones, clawing at the inside of my skull. "To meet my colleagues, I keep the tremor for my voice. I've got to debrief the team. File some reports. File a lot of reports, actually. Of course a grin. It's boring stuff. You'd hate it." But he doesn't move. He's looking at me the way children look at adults when they know they're being lied to, but haven't yet decided whether to say so. His eyes travel from my face to my arm, the one that's pressed against my ribs and trembling. "You're hurt," he says. "This?" "Yeah. You're shaking." "Yeah. Just shivering. It's bloody cold in here." He frowns. "It's not cold at all. I open my mouth to deliver another lie, and that's when he steps off the stairs and walks back to me. Raps his arms around my waist and says, "Thank you." My hand finds the back of his head, gives him an awkward pat. "Don't mention it. Part of the job." "I'm not talking about stopping the tall dog." He buries his face in my jacket, and I can feel the tears through my shirt. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for keeping your promise. My hand stills on his head. For a moment I can't speak. Can't do anything except stand there in the lobby of a building that almost killed us both, holding a boy who needed me, and realizing that maybe I needed him just as much. If you're into horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, classified experiments, and things humanity was never meant to understand, check out my other podcast, The SCP Experience. Each episode pulls you into the hidden world of the SCP Foundation, where dangerous anomalies are studied, contained, and sometimes unleashed. These aren't just scary stories. They're classified nightmares. Click here to listen now, or search for the SCP Experience wherever you get your podcasts. "It's late. I manage finally, swiping the tears for my eyes. Your mom will be wondering where you've gotten to. He pulls back, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. Sniffles once, then glances down at the Superman figures still clutched in his other fist. He turns it over in his fingers, studying it. "I wish I had one of you," he says quietly. "Of me," he nods. "You could be part of the team. I'd put your action figure right next to Superman. The laugh comes raw and involuntary. It hurts, but then. So does everything right now. "Thanks, kid. But I don't think I've earned a spot next to Superman." Tyler looks at me, unimpressed. "Superman couldn't save me," he says simply. "But you did?" "My vision blurs. Something breaks inside me. I blink, and for the span of a heartbeat, the face looking up at me isn't Tyler's. It's hers. Dark hair, sharp jaw. That gap between her front teeth that she hated in her mother-loved. Tyler's expression falls. All at once, I see the fear creeping in, the trauma. What if another monster comes after me? It won't. He gets small." - I don't know that. - Actually, I tell him. Taking off my jacket and draping it over his shoulders. I do. He meets my eyes, not understanding. As of tonight, I tell him, I'm making you an honorary inquisitor. And that means it's the monsters that'll be afraid of you. - And inquisitor? - His face lights up. He stands a little taller. Hands running over the fabric and childlike wonder. - Like you? - Like me. Somewhere in the stairwell above, a door bangs open. A voice calls out, shrill and afraid. The voice of a woman whose checkter son's bedroom and found it empty. - Tyler? Tyler? - Where are you, baby? - I smile. Sounds like HQ is looking for you and inquisitor. Better get moving. He hesitates. His lips tremble. For a second, I think he's going to break down. But then he finds his courage. Throws up a sloppy, perfect salute and says. - Understood. See you on the next mission, sir. - I return the salute. He turns and runs. His bare feet slap against the steps. The sound rising through the stairwell like a drum roll. I listen to it the way you listen to music. You know you'll never hear again. - Mom! - He shouting, "Mom, Mr. June did it. He beat the tall dog. He made me a secret agent. He's going to be just friends." - The door swings shut. It's quiet again. The worst kind. My knees hit the floor. The smile falls off my face like a mask cut loose. The tall dog seizes the moment and pain splits my ribcage from the inside. My left hand spasms open. The fingers extending past their natural range with a series of wet pops. A double-over, forehead against the cold linoleum, breathing through my teeth as my armor reacts, wrapping around my hand to force the tall dog back. I push myself to my feet, making for the alley exit. I hit the door, cracking the glass, and the midnight air enters my lungs like swallowing a fistful of needles. My right arm is clamped against my ribs, trembling violently against my hip bone. I can feel it in there, coiled behind my sternum, pressing outward, testing the walls of its new cage. My armor is doing what it can, constricting around my torso like a tourniquet, redistributing its mass to wherever the pressure is greatest. It's been keeping me alive since the bonding ceremony. Now it's keeping something else from getting out, but it won't hold forever. And all at once I finally get it, why it chose me. It coaxes the faintest mile. You knew I had something to live for back then, didn't you? Something that I was, ugh, still too blind to see. I stagger. You knew Abby needed me alive, that someone like Tyler would need me to eventually. The armor pulses once, faintly. Thank you. A whisper. For believing in me when I didn't. Such shutters against my skin, settles. The pulse, thins to something I can barely feel, like a heartbeat heard through a wall. Tire scream against asphalt. A matte black vehicle rounds the alley corner and breaks hard. The rear panels already sliding open, before the chassis stops rocking. My armor shutters and resonance as five pales pour out in formation. Armor sealed, faces hidden behind featureless white like a firing squad of mannequins. I open my mouth to speak, the words tangle. My tongue moves in two directions at once, trying to form language for two minds simultaneously. All that comes out is a thin, reedy whistle. The pales freeze. One steps forward. His posture shifting from alert to lethal in the space of a heartbeat. He takes stock of my bloodied suit, my trembling arm, the way my jaws hanging slightly too far open. "Inquisitor," he says, the mask turning his voice to gravel. "Say again." My throat bulges, a visible physical distention as it starts to climb up. My armor squeezes, and the bulge retreats, and I taste copper and ash. I reach into my jacket with my good hand, the revolver, or what's left of it, comes out in pieces of ruined steel. My one clean exit, useless. I toss it at his boots. He looks down at them, back at me. "I can't do it myself," I rasp. "There's an entity inside me. Class six. It's trying to breach." A spasm racks my spine, dropping me to one knee. "You need to. You need to finish it." My vision whites out. The alley disappears. For a moment, I'm not kneeling on asphalt. I'm in the boiler room. I can smell the furnace, feel the heat on my face, hear the hundred-year song of whistling pipes. The tall dog is inside me, and I'm inside its memory, and the two are becoming difficult to distinguish. The pavement slams back into focus. I'm gasping. The pale is closer now. Three feet away. His rifle trained on my chest, but his posture changed from aggressive to careful. A man approaching a bomb he can hear ticking. "Hurry." I breathe. "I can't hold it much longer." He looks over his shoulder, calls out to the hers. "Bishop, we've got a situation." A tired voice rises from the hers. "Christ, Dune, you want that promotion? You've got to run your own bloody mission. That's the deal. I'm not supposed to be here. So this better be a fucking emergency." The sixth and final pale emerges from the back of a hers with a yawn. His armor is battered in a way the others aren't. It's almost as bad as Stevenson's was before the house claimed her. It's covered in deep gouges, lanced by bolts of blood and unwoshable grime. He looks out the back of the hers and freezes. "Bishop, sir." Before he can answer, my left shoulder wrenches back. Jacket sleeves splitting along the seam as the arm drops another eight inches. My knuckles drag against the pavement, the fingers lengthening into something inhuman. "Sir, what? I fucking heard you, you." The bishop leaps from the hers. He launches into full command, knife-handing his subordinates with orders. "Gilfer, contact HQ. Tell them we need a warlock here with a curse, kid, ten minutes ago. Millbrook, grab the first aid kit from the hers. Actually, you do it, Orion. I've seen Millbrook's work with a suture. Blaze, get me." My jaw unhinges. "Wrong me out." The voice he rubs in a series of barks layered over the wet whistle of the tall dog's native tongue. My jaw cracks again, a stuttering arm that's cray on gray and too dimensional, scribbled with patches of dark fur, reaches past my lips. "No!" I bite down. The arm withdraws, and I swallow hard, forcing the tall dog back into my chest, back behind the armors failing perimeter. The bishop drops beside me. His hands grip my shoulders, my arms, grabbing at my jerking limbs. With the desperation of a man who is trained to fight monsters, it has no training for this. "Hold on." He says, the words rough behind the expressionless mask. "Don't you dare give up on me, Juno. You hear me? Don't you dare." If you're into horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, classified experiments, and things humanity was never meant to understand, check out my other podcast, The SCP Experience. "Juno." Only one person has ever called me that. "My vision is strobing. Alley, boiler room, alley, boiler room." The tall dog's dimension in mind, trading places like shuffled cards. But between the flickers, I see the white armor pealed back from the bishop's face, retreating down his jaw, his neck, past his collar, tanned skin, pushy mustache, crows feet, framing dark, jovial eyes. "Helveress?" I breathe. He doesn't smile. That's how I know it's real. How I know this isn't the tall dog copying him because Alvarez always smiles. In combat, in the hers, in the med bay, even on the day we held the funeral for sixth div. But he isn't smiling now. "Pull yourself together," he hisses. "If I have to watch my partner bite the dust next to a dumpster, I'm gonna hate you for the rest of my life. Got that, Hermano?" He turns, shouting with the fury Stevenson could scarcely manage. "Gilver, where the fuck is that warlock?" I grip his forearm. "There's no time." Each word is a slow labor. "I need you to help me." He stares back at me, his jaw tents like he's bracing for impact. "Help you, how?" I cough and blood hits the pavement. "I need you to execute. Protocol 13." The words hang in the night air. Alvarez doesn't move, doesn't blink. His face goes through something new, a rapid, tectonic shift from confusion to comprehension to refusal. Each stage lasting only a fraction of a second before being crushed by the next. "Protocol." He can't finish. The last word stalls in his throat like a jammed round. "You're not. Come on, Juno. Don't." "Gilford. Gilford. Where the fuck is? Somebody find Gilford and get me an ETA in the goddamn Curskid." My head snaps back. The tall dog's skull crests my lips, the top of its oblong head, the first scribbled lines of its ears, pushing through my open jaw like a creature being born in reverse. Alvarez recoils. The squad behind him raises their rifles on instinct, a half dozen barrels tracking the thing emerging from my mouth. I grab it, both hands around the crown of its skull and I shove. The tall dog screams in my voice, in Tyler's, in Florence's, and I force it back down. My throat tears. Blood fills my mouth, but it goes down. It goes down because I am not done yet, and the creature inside me is going to wait until I say what I need to say. "Listen to me." I'm on my hands and knees, blood dripping from my lips, eyes locked on Alvarez. "It can't be killed from the outside. Bullets pass through it. The arcane rounds, the salt iron. All of it goes through. the only thing holding this asshole. and three dimensions right now is me, my bones, my armor. If it breaks free, your entire squad is dead, and so is everyone in that building, and a hell of a lot more besides, I can't. - I grit my teeth through a spasm. - I can't do it myself, Elvy. My revolver's Fumar! - Elver is staring at me, processing. He's running the numbers, arriving at the same answer. I arrived at 10 minutes ago, and hating himself for it. - Please, I rasp. - Please, don't let me be the reason another kid dies. - The pales are formed up behind their bishop, six rifles, six scarred suits, six people who swore the same oath I did, to stand between the dark and the people who sleep through it. - You know, you can't ask me to do this. - I hold his gaze, tossing my red book at his feet. - I'm not asking you. - My voice breaks. I'm issuing you an order, Bishop. Now executed. - Elver is his mouth works, searching for an argument, but the clocks run out. He can see that the doll dog will win, and soon. He stands, lifts his rifle. The stock settles against his shoulder with a mechanical precision of an action, performed 10,000 times, his eye finds the sight, his finger finds the guard, he's shaking. In all the years, I've known it, through the house without sleep, through sixth dives funeral. Through every nightmare the order has thrown at us. Never once have I seen his hands shake. His face crinkles with grief, something wet slides down his cheek. Then his mask crawls up over his face, the mustache and crow's feet, and the eyes that looked at me like I mattered, vanishing beneath a featureless void. When he speaks again, it's that familiar gravel, the voice of a pale. - You heard the inquisitor. - He says, the squad comes up on aim, racks their actions, a moment passes than another. A couple of the pales look to Alvarez, wondering, waiting, when. - Execute protocol 13. - The bullets hit me in the chest, the stomach, the shoulder. They pass through my body and into the tall dogs simultaneously, and for one blinding instant I feel it. The creature igniting inside me, erupting in flames, the crown outline of its body curling and blackening like paper in a furnace. I hit the asphalt. The cold comes fast, it chases the fire out of my blood, out of my bones, extinguishing the tall dogs' presence, cell by cell. The pressure behind my ribs releases. My arms go slack, the tendons relaxing. The bones settling back into an approximation of their original shape. The whistling stops. For the first time in a hundred years, the whistling stops. I'm on my back. A pool of crimson spreads beneath me, tracing the cracks in the asphalt and thin red tributaries. The sky is visible above the rooftops and smog breaks apart over the city. Behind it, a full moon pours bands of pale white so vivid like a painting. The light reaches the alley floor, reaches me, and I can feel its kiss on my face. The pocket watch shudders. The vibration carries through my fingertips, up my wrist, into the bones of my ear. Entity terminated. It's done then. The tall dog is dead. The watch pulses again, this time more urgent. Alert, condition critical. Vital signature deteriorating, 18%. 12%. I let my hand drop. The asphalt is cool against my knuckles and the moon is so bright. I didn't know nights could be this bright. 8%. My thoughts drift to Tyler. I'm picturing him safe in his mother's arms, talking fast, telling her all about the tall dog, about the basement that doesn't exist, about the way he fought a monster back alongside Superman. 6%. The armor moves. It settles over my chest, pulsing with what's left of my heartbeat, matching the rhythm. 15 years, it's kept me alive, and now it's realizing its work is done, that our journey is over. 3%. The pressure shifts, tightening into a full body compression that starts at my core and radiates outward, wrapping around my ribs, my shoulders, the back of my neck. This is the only language it has. It's one only we share. I press my hand over my heart, and I feel it there. Thank you, my whisper, for everything, old friend. There's one last pulse, like a hand squeezing mine in the dark, and it lets me go. The watch flat lines with a single, sustained tone that grows more and more distant, like a bell ringing at the bottom of the sea. And for the last time, I close my eyes. Click here to listen now, or search for the SCP Experience, wherever you get your podcasts. The tone keeps going. My first thought, somewhere in the dark, is that it's the tall dog, that it's still in me, still whistling. But the tall dog never sounded like this. The darkness shifts. There's a pressure change, a warmth. And underneath the tone, so faint I think I'm imagining it, comes the smell of burnt toast and cheap coffee, and the specific brand of dish soap she always insisted on buying, even though the store brand was identical and half the price. The tone sharpens, becomes insistent, becomes an alarm. I blink, there's carpet beneath my hands, thin and cheap, the kind that never gets replaced, even after decades of spills and stains. And I know all those stains. I sit up with a groan, and it's the apartment, our old one, before the fire claimed it. The kitchen is to my left, narrow, and cluttered. The counter still covered in crumbs from Abigail's breakfast. The living room stretches ahead of me, small enough that you could touch both walls if you stood in the middle and spread your arms. Her school photo was on the fridge, held up by a magnet shaped like a ladybug. She's grinning in it, and I remember how angry she was when she saw it, how she pressed her lips together and said she looked stupid that the gap in her teeth made her look like a jack-a-lantern. I thought she looked perfect. The alarm keeps screaming, louder and louder. I wander into her old bedroom, and it's empty of her. Just a mattress covered in sailor moon bed sheets. The walls lined with anime posters and shelves full of history books. I smack the clock on her bedside table. The screaming stops. The apartment goes quiet. A glass of water sits on her dresser, half full. Nearby lay a pair of sneakers, laces untied. And as usual, her backpack is on the floor, unzipped. A history textbook poking out of the top, alongside half a dozen worksheets. Signs of her everywhere, but no Abigail. I check the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway. Each room is exactly as I remember it. And she isn't in any of them. I press my palms against my eyes, sit down on the edge of her bed. And the tears come. For the first time, there's no one to hide them from. No Tyler to be strong for. No squad to command. No monster to face. Just me. A failed father realizing that no amount of crossing dimensions or defeating cosmic horrors could ever fill the void of losing his daughter. I wipe a sleeve across my face, and it comes away wet. My chest heaves. I'm collapsing into myself, hunched over on her bed, shaking with grief when I hear it. A key turning in a lock. My heart pounds. I'm on my feet, the grief vanishing in a well-trained surge of adrenaline. The deadbolt slides back. I'm reaching on instinct for a revolver that isn't there when the door shutters in its frame. It's a tall dog. It's here. It's found me and the door swings open. A shadow steps in from the corridor. Oh, it says blinking. You're here. Her hair. Her hair is down and dark and messy. It's falling across her shoulders the way it always did. And she's wearing the oversized hoodie she stole from my closet, the winter the heating broke, the one that hangs down past her knees. Up. The name dies in my throat. I'm crossing the room before my brain can process the movement. My hands finding her face. Her cheeks feel warm, soft, real. But how? How can I know this isn't just another echo from the tall dog? That isn't the last gasp of my dying neurons conjuring a ghost to ease my passing as I-- Can I have my face back now, please? She's smiling. I never thought I'd see her smile again. Abigail, I spot her. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I should have been there. I should have-- Dad, come home when I said I would. I should have put you first. I should have-- Dad. Her hands close around my wrists, gently. You don't have to do that. She tilts her head, studying me with those dark eyes that remind me so much of her mothers. You did it. She says, that's all that matters. She pulls me into a hug I don't understand. My voice creaks. I did. What? Her head rests against my chest. Her words are muffled by my shirt, but with each new syllable, another tear slides down my cheek. "You came home?" She whimpers, "Just like you promised."