Wait. Driveway’s empty.

So? Jim probably tied on a good drunk and was now sleeping it off at a girlfriend’s house.

Bullshit. Big Jim doesn’t drink, and wouldn’t leave his kid sister at home alone all night.

I got out of the car and motioned for the dog to follow. She didn’t. I called to her and patted my thigh, which I’ve seen other people do with dogs so I figured it must work. Nothing. I did this for several minutes, the dog not even looking at me now, sniffing around John again. I realized no amount of thigh slapping, not even an all-out blues hambone, would move this animal. I leaned into the car and started tugging at her collar. She backed off, growling, looking at me with a disdain I didn’t think canines were capable of.

“Come on, dammit! You made me drive here!”

Through all of this, John still didn’t stir. I think that was what freaked me out most of all. He was laying there in the uncomfortable bucket seat, twisted and slumped like a crash-test dummy. More passed out than asleep. I reached in and grabbed roughly at Molly’s collar.

I’m going to skip past the next ten minutes and just say that I wound up carrying Molly up to the house. The plan was to tie her up around back and slip away unnoticed, but as I passed by the front door, it opened.

Not all the way, just the few inches allowed by the security chain. I was hit by that jittery caught-in-the-act feeling. I turned, huge dog in my arms, to see the pale, freckled, utterly confused face of Jim’s sister. No sign she even recognized me, or maybe she just didn’t want to acknowledge where she recognized me from.

Hey! Weren’t you in my Special Ed class?

I quickly propped my chin over the dog’s back and spoke. “Um, hey there. I, uh, have your dog.”

The door closed. I stood there for an awkward moment, feeling the odd urge to drop the animal and run. I heard Cucumber’s voice from inside, shouting, “Jim! The guy that stole Molly is here!”

I sat the dog down and grabbed hold of her collar before she could bolt. The door snapped open again and I half expected Big Jim to show himself, his Irish copper-topped head appearing a foot and a half above where the girl’s had been. But it was the sister again, saying, “He’s coming. You better bring me the dog now. Or you can have it if you want it.”

“What?”

“The dog. You can have it. That one is worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars but you can have it free because it’s used.”

“Oh, no. I don’t need a . . . I mean, uh, it’s yours, right?”

“Jim’s. But he doesn’t like it, either. He’s coming.”

“What, is there something wrong with it?”

Her eyes flicked quickly from me, to the dog, and back. Is that fear? Something make her nervous about this dog?

You and me both, honey.

“No,” she said, looking at her shoes.

“Then why’d you pay a hundred twenty-five dollars for it?”

“Have you ever seen a golden retriever puppy?”

“Your brother isn’t here, is he?”

She didn’t answer.

“I mean, there’s no car here. Doesn’t he drive a Jeep or something? Big SUV?”

She looked over, then said, “We have a gun in the house. Do you want the dog or not?”

“I—what? No. Where’s Big Jim?”

“Who?”

“Jim, your brother.”

“He just went down the street. He’ll be back any second now.”

“Dammit, I’m not gonna attack you. Didn’t he go to a party last night?”

Long pause. She said, “Maybe.”

Oh, shit, look at her. She’s scared senseless.

“Just outside of town, right? At the lake?”

She snapped, “You know where he is?”

“No. He never came home?”

She didn’t answer. She wiped at one of her eyes.

“The dog,” I said. “Molly, she was at the party. Did he take her there?”

“No. She ran off before that.”

So . . . the dog followed him to the party? It was there looking for Jim? Who knows.

She said, “I think Jim’s dead.”

This stopped me.

“What? Oh, no. No, no. I don’t think—”

She broke into tears, then choked out the words, “He won’t answer his phone. I think that black guy killed him.” She looked right at me and spat out, “Were you there?”

This was an accusation. She wasn’t asking if I was at the party. She was asking if I was at the scene of Jim’s death. This conversation was spinning out of control.

“No, no. Wait, the black guy? Is his name Robert? Got dreadlocks? How do you know him?”

She wiped her face with her shirt and said, “The police called.”

“About Jim?”

She nodded. “They asked if he was here but they wouldn’t say anything else. There was this dreadlocks guy, he came to the house a few times. He was on drugs. Jim works at the shelter for church and they do counseling and stuff for people like that. Sometimes people come here asking for Jim, asking for, like, rides or loans. The black guy would come here but Jim wouldn’t let him inside. Molly bit him. She ran out and bit his hand while he was talking to Jim.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday. He was right where you are. He was yelling.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“He said a dog bit his hand. I think the guy was some kind of Devil worshipper.”

“Uh, that’s possible. Do you—”

“I’m closing the door now.”

“No! Wait! What about the—”

The door closed.

Defeated, I led Molly around to the back of the house where I found about ten feet of chain, ending in a broken link, where Molly had presumably snapped it the day before. So the dog had broken her chain, then walked seven miles to an empty field in a neighboring town where she somehow knew her master was attending a party? Come on.

I tied the chain around her collar and tried to make a knot with it. I climbed back into the car, saw that John hadn’t moved even one millimeter other than for the steady rise and fall of his ribs. Still alive. That was good because we had to be at Wally’s in a few minutes and I hadn’t been looking forward to opening the store all by myself.

IF I HAD known what was about to happen at work I wouldn’t have gone, of course. I would also have taken off my pants. But I didn’t have the power of future sight—not at that point, anyway—and so I just sat sulking behind the wheel as we ramped into the parking lot to start the 7:00 A.M. shift at Wally’s Videe-Oh!, where I had worked for two years, John about two months.

John was always bitching about “Wally” and how greedy “Wally” was and how he should have given me a raise by now. He didn’t realize that there was no person named “Wally” in the Wally’s organization. That was the name of the DVD-shaped mascot on the store’s sign. I never had the heart to tell him.

I parked and engaged in a discussion with John, transcribed as follows:

“John? We’re at Wally’s. You need to get up. John? John? John? You need to get up, John. John? I can see you breathing, so I know you ain’t dead. You know what that means? It means you gotta get up. John? Come on, we gotta go to work. John? Are you awake? John? John? Wake up, John. John?”

I finally climbed out of the car and walked around to his door. I reached for the handle, and froze.

His eyes were wide open, staring blankly through the glass. He was still breathing and blinking, but not really there.

Great. Now what?

If you’re thinking, “Call an ambulance,” I admit that’s what a smart person would have done. What I did was experiment for a few minutes, poking him and slapping him on the cheek and getting no response. Finally I found I could lure him through the door by taking his cigarettes and holding them out as bait. He walked like a sleepwalker, slow and shuffling, otherwise unresponsive.

Once inside I planted him in front of the computer behind the counter, reached around and brought up a spreadsheet to play on the screen in front of him. If anyone came in, he would appear to be sucked into his work on the PC. I looked at the scene, considered, then grabbed his right arm and propped up his chin with it. There, he looked deep in thought now.

I put away returns and boxed up Tuesday’s new releases so Tina wouldn’t have to. I pretty much managed to look normal for the few customers who accidentally missed the Blockbuster two blocks down the street. When I got some time to myself after lunch, I flipped through the yellow pages, picked up the phone stuck to the back wall and scooted up a chair.

Two rings, then, “St. Francis.”

“Yeah, uh,” I said awkwardly. “I need a priest.”

“Well, this is Father Shelnut. What can I do for you?”

“Um, hi. Do you have any experience with, like, demon . . . ism? Demonology, I guess. Like possession and hauntings and all that?”

“Wellllll . . . I can’t say that I’ve personally dealt with anything like that. People that come to me and say they’ve seen things or, say, they feel a kind of unexplained dread in their homes or hear voices, we usually refer them to a counselor or, you understand, a lot of times medication can—”

“No, no, no. I’m not crazy.” I glanced over at John, still catatonic. “Other people have—”

“No, no, I didn’t mean to imply that. Look, why don’t you come talk to me. And even if you need to talk to a professional I got a brother-in-law who’s real good. Why don’t we do that? Why don’t you come in and have a talk with me?”

I thought for a moment, rubbed my temple with my free hand.

“What do you think it’s like, Father?”

“What what’s like?”

“Being crazy. Mentally ill.”

“Well, they never know they’re ill, do they? You can’t diagnose yourself with the same organ that has the disease, just like you can’t see your own eyeball. So, I suppose you just feel normal and the rest of the world seems to go crazy around you.”