The Dog Walker

It was a gusty October afternoon, and the smell of rain was still in the air from the heavy storm that passed by the night before. Toby Pearson walked along the winding sidewalk on Auckland Street, kicking up sticks and leaves with a sturdy but well-worn pair of black Doc Martins strapped to both feet. He air drummed along to an old Metallica song until he was satisfied with his solo performance and his knuckles were a raw pink from the cold.

Head bowed against the wind and his red wool scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, the one his grandmother knitted for him last Christmas, Toby reached the end of the sidewalk and hopped over to the gravel road.

A couple of houses down, Mrs. Nellie Granger was outside picking up pieces of tree bark, branches, and other debris that made its way onto her yard last night. She was often outside “puttering and nosing about” as Toby’s grandmother had put it. As Toby got closer, he gave Nellie a polite nod and removed the headphone from his left ear.

“Hi Mrs. Granger,” Toby called across the street. His pace slowed but he made a conscious effort to not stop walking. Nosey Nellie had sucked him into many unfortunate conversations before and politeness be damned, he had no intention of letting history repeat itself again, especially with the bone-chilling wind.

“Hi Toby,” Nellie called yet. “Heck of a storm we had last night.”

“It was a big one, for sure.”

“You headin’ over to the Miller place again?” she asked pulling her long grey cardigan closed across her chest.

“I am. I walk Loki on Wednesdays now, remember?”

“Indeed, I do.”

“Well, have a great day, Mrs. Granger,” Toby said. He forced a small smile, the straight-faced kind that kids often do when forced to smile at a camera and before she could reply, he popped the headphone back into his ear.

By the time Toby reached the very end of Auckland Street, his cheeks were bright red, and his nose burned at the tip. The last house on the street, 364 Auckland belonged to Spencer and Tara Miller whom Toby had worked for all summer cutting their lawn and watering their garden. The Miller’s paid Toby a very generous $15/hr which kept him working hard all summer despite the second-degree sunburn he got on his neck from forgetting to put sunblock on, a mistake he surely wouldn’t make again.

Sore as he had been that week, Toby was determined to buy an old green sunbird that Jake Ishimara had for sale. He was a couple hundred bucks short of his goal, so as the leaves started to change color and fall off the trees, he asked Mr. Miller if he could help with raking or walking their dog. Loki, the lazy (and quite chunky) Golden Retriever was in desperate need of exercise and Mrs. Miller hated the cold, so he happily agreed and Toby continued working twice a week, at his regular hourly rate, of course.

On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, Toby made his way over to the Miller house, rain or shine, to take Loki for a long stroll down to the other end street, sometimes going as far as the bridge on Juniper Avenue before turning back around. Loki was a slow walker and sometimes had to be pulled down the road, but Toby reminded himself that every step he took with that fat, lazy dog was a step closer to the green Sunbird.

Toby made his way down the Miller’s driveway, jumped over their front step, and knocked loudly on the large double front doors. He pulled both headphones out, which fell and hung down by his chest, still blasting Metallica’s Enter Sandman. He waited for a moment, listening for the sounds of barking or excited paws running down the hall towards the door to greet him as they usually did. This time though, he was greeted by nothing but silence.

Toby rang the doorbell this time and shoved both hands into the front pockets of his blue jeans, rocking his hips frontways and backways in the cold. After a minute or two, he cupped both hands against the window in the door, the glass cold against his palms and squinty through both hands trying to see the movement inside. The glass quickly fogged from his warm breath, and he had to wipe it several times before trying again.

When Toby tried opening the door, he was surprised to find it was already unlocked. It wasn’t that uncommon for Mrs. Miller to have not answered the front door, and he was permitted to enter their home through the garage if he needed something. There were a couple of times in the summer when Toby has been instructed by Mr. Miller to let himself into the garage for the mower using the key hidden in the fake grey spotted rock in the front garden. In late August, the couple had vacationed in Greece and Toby had to let himself in a few times then.

As the door opened, Toby was relieved to feel the blast of warm air hit his face. The balls of his cheeks burned from the wind, and he winced thinking about how the cold burn didn’t feel that different from the sunburn. Pushing against the wind, he closed the heavy door behind him, locking out the sounds outside. There was a quiet “beep” from the front door alarm and then silence.

“Mrs. Miller?” he called out loudly from a bended knee pulling off his boots. Half of the time one of them was untied of them or the laces tucked into the shoe and under his foot where it would give him a surprise poke throughout the day. “Mrs. Miller?” He called again. “I’m here to walk Loki. We switched the schedule to Wednesdays, remember? Is Loki here?”

His voice sounded shakier than he expected. It vibrated off the tall ceilings and down the long empty hallway leaving a lasting and eerie echo of “here, here, here”. Toby stood still for a moment following the echo and then decided to check the backyard. It was quite plausible that Mrs. Miller would be out in the backyard picking up pieces of fallen debris just the same as Mrs. Granger had been doing. It was a heck of a storm alright, Toby thought.

With a black sock on one foot and a grey sock on the other, he shuffled down the hall quietly, finding that the further he moved down the hallway, the spookier the silence became. He felt a small sense of relief as another guitar solo played faintly through his headphones still hanging from the top of his shirt.

His house was rarely ever quiet, even in the early hours of the morning, you could hear the faint hum of his brother’s tv in his room or one of the cats meowing from the living room. “Rich people love to live like museum curators”, his mom once said. “They pace up and down with their hands behind their back in these huge empty homes thinking about all their money.”

Toby shuffled over to the large sliding glass doors that overlooked the back deck and yard where he had spent many summer days pushing the mower in perfectly spaced, even diagonal strips. “The crispier the strip, the crispier the tip”, Mr. Miller chuckled one Friday as he counted out three crispy $20 bills into Toby’s open hands.

In the backyard, there were a few branches scattered about that had been ripped from trees lining the back of the property. In the center of the 9-foot wood fence that surrounded the backyard, a tall pine tree had fallen taking part of the fence down with it. That’s gonna be a hell of a job to clean up job, Toby thought.

His eyes scanned the rest of the yard and pool but didn’t see Mrs. Miller picking up sticks and grumbling about the cold as he had expected. Toby entered the great room and peered upwards at the 12-foot ceiling that opened to the backyard. He had seen the window from outside many times before but paused for a moment to take in the view of the downhill sloping forest on the other side of the wood fence. There was an old antique-looking table against the wall by the window and Toby spotted a pen and small notepad he could use to leave a note.

As he walked closer to the table, something odd caught his eye from the left and he turned his head towards the large black cough. At first, what Toby saw looked like someone knocked over a pot of dirt onto the floor but as he moved closer to it, his brain had difficulty registering what his eyes were seeing. Then, Toby’s mouth gaped open in horror.

The deep dark soil that littered the floor was in fact liquid and oozed out from underneath and behind the couch. Every hair on the back of Toby’s neck stood up and a wave of goosebumps sprung up from his toes through his back and down his arms. His eyes widened as he inched closer, his fears becoming more real as each step closer exposed more of the deep-colored puddle and eventually hair. A head of dark brown hair, unmistakably belonging to Mrs. Miller lay in the middle of the pool of liquid, of what Toby now knew was blood, her blood.

Another step closer, more blood. So much more blood.

He wanted to call out to her again, hoping that this was just a silly prank but knew she wouldn’t answer. He didn’t even know if the sound would come out of his tightened throat if he tried to call out, or scream. Every inch of his skin prickled with pins that burned and a voice in Toby’s head screamed for him to run.

Run away and pretend like this had never happened, like he had never been here in the first place.

RUN.

He didn’t want Jake Ishimara’s green sunbird anymore.

RUN.

But he couldn’t run and leave her like this. Mr. Miller was too good to Toby to leave Mrs. Miller lying here like this. He thought maybe there was still time to help. Toby could see her shoulders now and the top of her back. Mrs. Miller lay motionless on her stomach, facing the wall away from him with one arm bent back and under her body while the other lay outstretched ahead of her. The robin’s egg blue sweater she was wearing was almost completely soaked through with blood, only a few soft blue spots were left on her back.

Toby stepped forward again, his socks silent and soft on the wood floor. He moved around the couch with careful precision, staying clear of the blood on the floor. Faintly, Toby could make out the drum solo to Motley Crue from the headphones that hung down over his shirt. He pulled both hands up, the way he had done on the way here but instead of drumming along with Metallica, his hands reached up to his face, covering his gaping mouth as single tears escaped from each eye sending them softly cascading over his fingertips.

He could see Mrs. Miller’s face now; her eyes were open slightly showing thin white slits that stared dead ahead. Her once chesnut-coloured skin was now ivory white, and blood stained her lips and the bottom half of her face. Two strips of her brown hair clumped together over parts of her face, draping over her skin, and landing in the pool of blood on the wood floor.

“M… M….” Toby tried to speak but his throat was still tight and drier than it had ever been in his life. He wanted to try again but felt like if his mouth opened too much, he would surely vomit. His stomach jumped up and down, but he tried as best he could to swallow and suppress the gagging sensation that was creeping up on him.

Toby’s right hand dropped from his mouth and reached down slowly into his jacket pocket. He pulled out his phone but forgot that the headphone cord was still attached to it and looped up under his jacket. The tension on the cord jerked the phone back down and he fumbled with it for a moment, trying to catch it. but it slipped from his hand and fell. The phone paused in the air for a split second until the weight of the phone was too much for the headphone jack and it dropped heavily onto the hardwood floor with a loud THUNK. The distant sounds of music from his headphone stopped and the heavy THUNK echoed eerily throughout the house.

Now, Toby was surrounded by complete silence. He looked down at the phone on the ground. It landed only a few inches from Mrs. Miller’s hand, which was positioned out in front of her, almost like she had been reaching for it.

Toby let out an audible whimper as another tear dropped from his eye and ran down his face. He felt helpless and desperate, whimpering like when he was a small boy that had fallen off his bicycle and landed hard on the pavement. Whimpering over a scraped-up knee, bloody and covered with sand and pebbles. Reaching down slowly, his eyes locked on Mrs. Miller’s face, he half expected her to reach out and grab at his wrist as he had seen in the zombie movies he watched with his brother at home. As he leaned closer to pick up the phone, a quiet and only faintly audible gurgle escaped Mrs. Miller’s blood-soaked lips.

Toby squeezed out a high-pitched shriek and bolted back towards the hallway. His heart pounded hard against his chest, feeling like it would beat right through it. His breath was quick and panicked when he frantically turned the doorknob and flung the front door wide open. Toby leaped off the front step and his socked feet hit the ground hard. He pumped his arms and legs as fast as he could down the driveway, back onto the gravel road, and towards Nosey Nellie’s house. His sturdy black boots still lay at the Miller’s front door.