Legend of the Ghost Dog (4 page)

I'd meant to go back out later that afternoon without Jack, but something stopped me. Maybe it was the animal — or shadow — or whatever we'd seen. The feeling that something might have been stalking me, hunting me. Or maybe the hike was just more tiring than I thought. Instead I played solitaire, cooked a decent dinner, and then the three of us watched a movie late into the night.

I awoke at my usual hour the next morning, but I had a feeling Jack was down for the count. We'd gotten a lot of exercise on our hike, and then he'd stayed up late. Even normally, he didn't like to get up before eleven.

“So Joe is coming by to pick me up, and we're heading over to the local historical society,” my father told me over bowls of cereal. “The guy there says they have boxes and boxes of letters and news clippings about mushers and their dogs, but none of it is catalogued. We're just going to have to
look through it piece by piece, see if there's anything we can use.”

He sighed, frowned, and rubbed his forehead with his hand. My father wanted his book to focus on the evolving relationship between human and dog in Alaska, how they had depended on each other, and how that way of life was disappearing because of the snowmobile. But he was stuck — he kept saying he needed something or someone to appear with a completely fresh perspective, to breathe life into his book. Problem was he had no idea who or what that was.

The cabin smelt of freshly brewed coffee, and I'd mixed up some frozen orange juice in a pitcher.

“Okay,” I said, pulling the carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator and adding enough to my coffee to turn it a light beige. I loved that my dad let me drink coffee. When he sat sipping his each morning he looked so pensive, like the writer he was. Having my own cup made me feel almost the same way. “When do you think you'll be back?”

“Hard to say,” he said, getting up and walking over to the kitchen cupboards. “Don't keep dinner waiting, though.”

I blinked once, processing what he'd just said, and put my mug on the counter quietly.

“Dinner?” I asked him. “You're going to be gone the whole day?”

He turned and looked at me, confused.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Unless … is there something else I should be doing?”

He looked like the classic absentminded professor — his mane of gray-black hair uncombed, his face stubbly and in need of a shave, his eyes magnified somewhat by the thick lenses of his glasses. He looked so lost in the real world sometimes, which made me feel protective of him.

“No, of course not,” I said quickly. “I mean, that's what you're here to do, and everything. I just wanted to make sure I had it straight. I'll come up with some kind of plan for Jack, and make sure he goes on the school website to get his classwork.”

I added a smile, so my father could see that I wasn't trying to be whiny.

In truth, I'd hoped to get back out on the trail today, maybe pack a blanket and a few books and find a nice quiet spot to read and take some photographs. When Jack was around, the concept of quiet simply didn't exist. But there was still plenty of time — it would keep for another day.

“That's great,” my father said, giving me an affectionate smile before turning to rummage through the cabinet again. “And you know, you don't have to be Jack's constant
companion the whole time we're here. Take some time for yourself, kiddo.”

I grinned.

“I will,” I said. “I'm going to hang that hammock we brought. That will be my personal reading spot, and I'm going to make a sign that —”

The end of my sentence was drowned out by the chink of ceramic striking ceramic as Dad started rooting through the cabinet again.

“What are you looking for?” I asked him, perplexed.

“The old Barnes & Noble mug I packed,” he said. “The huge one. For my coffee.”

“Dad,” I said, pointing at the kitchen table.

He turned to look at me, then his gaze shifted to where I was pointing. The mug he was looking for was sitting there in plain view, filled with steaming coffee. I was pretty sure he'd already taken a few sips out of it.

He gave me his most sheepish look.

“Oh,” he said. “And my head?”

“On your shoulders,” I assured him.

“And it's Saturday today, right?”

“Tuesday,” I corrected.

“That one I knew,” he shot back. “I was just testing you.”

I laughed.

“If you say so,” I told him.

He headed back toward the table, stopping to give me a hug first. I loved the way he smelled — of sage shampoo and Ivory soap and Halls menthol cough drops, which he consumed in enormous amounts starting with the moment he got up in the morning.

“Don't know what I'd do without you, daughter of mine,” he said. “Hey, do we have half-and-half?”

“Already in your coffee,” I said.

I heard what sounded like gravel crunching under tires, and moments later Henry began to bark.

“Oh boy, that's probably Joe,” my dad said. “I really like him, but I think he's obsessed with schedules. Making them … and keeping them. He's got this thing about being on time. It may be his fatal flaw.”

“I'll put the coffee in a thermos if you want to go get your stuff,” I offered.

“Yep, perfect,” he said. “Then we'll get out of here. Oh,” he called over his shoulder from the hallway, “Joe said to tell you not to worry about lunch. Quin's bringing her own since she's a vegetarian.”

Quin would be here? For the whole day? More details that had slipped through the cracks. I sighed as I got my father's thermos out of the cabinet to give it a quick rinse.
Whatever. If the girl wanted to sit in the corner with her face in a book for the next eight hours, it was no skin off my nose.

I heard a knock, and the sound of the front door squeaking open, followed by the clatter of a dog scrambling into the hallway.

“Henry!” I heard Joe exclaim. “How you doing, you handsome hound?”

I walked into the hallway to greet them. Joe was crouched down, rubbing Henry's back and cheerfully submitting to having his face licked. I had warmed to Joe on sight, and this only reinforced my feeling that he was a good guy.

Quin, on the other hand, gave me no such warm and fuzzy feeling. She stood behind her father, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and looking uncomfortable. When our eyes met, she didn't smile or indicate that she knew me in any way. I might as well have been a mailbox.

“Are you sure you guys are going to be okay here on your own?” Joe asked, looking from me to Quin as he rubbed Henry's head. Henry made a little oink of pleasure.

“We're fine,” Quin said. “I brought two books.”

She walked past me toward the living room, leaving me standing there, somewhat awkwardly, with her father.

“Sorry,” Joe said. “She doesn't mean to be rude. She's just kind of … out of practice with people. She's been
homeschooled for the past couple of years, so she's not usually around kids her own age.”

“That's okay,” I said. I wasn't wild about Quin, but I definitely liked her father, and I wanted him to like me. “I'm kind of a loner myself. One of my favorite quotes is ‘I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.'”

Joe looked delighted.

“Jane Austen!” he said. “Quin is nuts over her. You know, you two might actually get along!”

Don't hold your breath
, I thought. But I smiled at Joe.

“I'm sure we will,” I said.

My father came out of his study stuffing papers into an old leather satchel, his battered laptop tucked under one arm.

“Okay, I think I'm ready,” he said.

“Let me grab your thermos,” I said, dashing back toward the kitchen. As I grabbed it, I noticed Quin had curled up on the couch and already seemed lost in a book. I headed back to the hallway.

“Here you go,” I said, holding it out.

My dad almost dropped the laptop reaching for the coffee.

“I'll take it,” Joe said. “I'm beginning to think it's a good thing I'm driving.”

“Me too,” I said with a grin. “Dad is an unbelievably bad driver. Not just cars, either. Bikes, mopeds — even those bumper cars they have at carnivals. If it's got a steering wheel, he'll crash it into something.”

“I'd take that very personally if it didn't happen to be true,” my father said. “Okay, I think we're good to go. I've got the satellite phone, Tee — emergencies only, though. I don't want to broker any disputes today.”

“Gotchya,” I said, holding the door open and watching as the two of them headed down the path to the driveway, already lost in conversation.

Birds of a feather
, I thought.
Dad's going to have a blast.

I shut the door. Jack was still in his room, and I decided to let sleeping little brothers lie for the time being. But it seemed weird to just pretend Quin wasn't in the house, so I went back to the living room. This time she looked up from her book when I walked in.

“You don't need to try to bond with me or anything,” she said. “I've got plenty of reading material. I'm not very entertaining, but I'm low maintenance.”

I laughed a little, but it came out sounding weird.

“Okay,” I said. I started to wipe down the kitchen counters and rinse out the coffee press. The cabin seemed uncomfortably silent, and the sound of Quin turning a page was bizarrely amplified. It felt harder to not talk.

“So I hear you like Jane Austen,” I said, tossing the sponge into the sink.

“Yep,” Quin said.

“Me too,” I told her. “I love everything she's done.”

Quin peered at me over the top of her book.

“What, like the movies?” she asked.

“No!” I exclaimed, genuinely offended. “The books.”

Quin gave a small nod.

“Which is your favorite?” she asked.

“
Persuasion
, definitely,” I told her.

“Hard to argue with that,” Quin said. “Do you like Wilkie Collins?”

“Are you serious? I love him. I've read
The Moonstone
like three times.”

“Huh,” Quin said. “That's pretty cool.”

I got the feeling I'd passed some kind of preliminary test. I had no idea why I suddenly cared what Quin thought of me. But I did. Maybe it was simply because I'd found a fellow bookworm.

I knew girls my age who were really into reading. But not the kind of stuff I was into — Empire dramas and Victorian gothic mysteries. I loved books as much as I loved dogs. I was starting to think Quin might feel the same way. This was a first for me. I sat down on the other end of the couch.

“Do you live in Nome?” I asked.

“For now,” she said. “My dad teaches some classes at Northwest community college. This is his third semester, but you never know when they're going to decide they don't want the classes anymore. Then we go where the work is. But we've been here since I was ten.”

I nodded.

“How is it living here?”

Quin shrugged.

“Okay, I guess. Not too many people, which is good. I like being alone. Most of the time, anyway. Every once in a while I get a case of the creeps.”

I remembered what Quin had said the other day. About “things.”

“What do you mean?”

Quin hesitated a moment, then shrugged. She turned her eyes back to the book on her lap.

“I'm not crazy,” she said.

“I didn't say you were,” I told her. How did we get to crazy?

Quin turned a page and I felt a flash of irritation. She was the one who'd brought the subject up, not me.

“I've just been wondering, you know,” I said. “About what happened with my dog the other day? Something just felt really off about the whole thing. Like something's not right in that part of the woods.”

“He probably just saw a snake or something,” Quin said, flipping another page.

“No, I don't think so,” I countered. “I went out again with him yesterday. My little brother came too, so it wasn't much of a hike. But something happened again. Henry wasn't exactly spooked that time. But the thing is, I kind of was.”

Quin's eyes stayed on her book, but I could tell she was listening to me.

“Henry alerted, you know, the way a dog would if he suddenly smelled a rabbit or a deer or something?”

Quin's eyes were on mine now, her gaze direct and interested. She nodded.

“And I'm not sure, but I don't think we were very far from the place he got scared the first time. But like I said, Jack was along, and I didn't want to scare him. So we headed
home, and I didn't say anything. But I'm pretty sure I saw something out there.”

“Something?” Quin asked. “What was it?”

“I don't know. It looked like a shadow. But it moved like an animal. And it was almost like it knew Henry was there. As if they were … checking each other out, almost. And then it disappeared, just kind of melted into the brush. But even after that, I felt like it was still there. Like it was watching me.”

Quin put her book down and gave me a long look. I had probably said too much. I probably sounded crazy.

“And I'm not crazy, either,” I said defensively.

“That's obvious,” Quin replied.

That disarmed me. I sat down next to her on the couch.

“What did you mean the other day when you said there were things out there that would scare any dog?” I asked.

Quin hesitated just a moment, like she needed to be sure about me. Then she pushed the book away and rearranged herself, sitting crossed-legged like a Buddha.

“Alaska is full of stories, history, weird stuff. Like any other place, I guess. A lot of people came out to this area during the gold rush, and nobody really knows for sure what happened to all of them. There are plenty of ghost stories, and people say there's a witch living way out in the woods,
the usual stuff. But I was thinking of something specifically, actually, a legend I've heard a friend of my dad's tell about Dorothy Creek.”