by Darren Payne.
Tom eyed Margot over the top of his book. While in Moab that morning, Margot had picked up the Denver Post. Now she sat across the room from Tom, reading the real estate pages. He could see miniature images of houses reflected in her glasses. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before she tapped at the paper, urging him to look at some non-descript mega-mansion in the suburbs of Denver that would do very nicely for them if only they moved to the city. Tom liked it here though—in their small modular home high among the junipers and pinyons of the Colorado Plateau near Monticello. He didn’t want any part of living in Denver—or in Salt Lake, Phoenix, Las Vegas or any of those other sprawling concrete jungles. Margot would be quite content, he knew, looking at a mirror image house across the street with HOA approved landscaping, but not Tom. He loved looking out across the high desert, watching the weather roll in over the La Sal Mountains to the north.
From his comfortable spot in his favorite Lazy-boy, fire crackling in the grate and feet wedged snuggly under Harold, his old black Labrador, Tom wondered how much snow had fallen beyond the shuttered windows of the living room. He could hear the distant singing of the coyotes and thought it strange that they should be so vocal on such a cold winter’s night.
Margot tossed the paper to one side, arched her back like a stretching cat and pried herself off the couch. “Want some tea, dear?” she said.
“Sure,” said Tom, realizing that he’d been reading the same paragraph in his book over and over again. Margot tottered out into the hallway. Tom could hear her filling the kettle, then the click of the ignition on the gas stove. The warmth from the fire and the put-put noise of the kettle as it heated made him sleepy. He closed his eyes.
“Thomas?” said Margot, bringing Tom back to consciousness with a jolt. “There’s something laid against the door. Come see.”
“Uh, what’s that Margot?”
“Something’s on the deck. It looks disgusting. Harold must have dragged it there. Ugh!”
Tom heaved himself out of the Lazy-boy. In the kitchen, Margot stood bent at the waist with her hands wedged between her knees. She stared at something on the deck outside, laid against the sliding glass doors.
Tom laid his hands on her hips as he sidled past her. Just outside the window lay an animal about the same size as Harold. Two fleshy ears and a clearly visible snout protruded from one end of a pale skinned, sparsely haired body. From the top of its head to the tip of its tail, curled tight against its body, ran a line of irregular brown spikes laid flat along its knobby backbone. Its skin pressed up against the glass so that Tom could see rows of tiny black hair follicles. Its legs were drawn in close.
“What is it?” said Margot, eyes glaring at Tom in that way that meant “do something about it”. Tom reached up and pushed up the latch. “What are you doing?” she said.
“I want to see what it is.”
“Don’t open the door Thomas. It might come inside.”
“It looks dead.”
“It looks disgusting. Don’t open that door.”
Tom pulled the latch down again. He tapped at the glass with his index finger and thought he saw an ear flicker.
“I’ll call animal control,” said Margot reaching for the telephone handset on the counter.
“Nobody there this time of night.”
“Police then.”
“Don’t bother them tonight. Weather like this they’ll be busy enough. I’ll go out the side door, get a better look.”
“Don’t be stupid Tom. It might be dangerous.”
“Hardly dangerous if it’s dead dear.”
Tom went to the closet and pulled out his waxed cotton jacket. Outside, the snow had dwindled to a few errant flakes that shone like fire flies in the beam of Tom’s flashlight. The snow squeaked under his boots as he walked around the side of the house. From out here the inside looked warm and cozy. He could see Margot silhouetted in the doorway. The animal lay there still, pressed as close as it could to the door. “Trying to stay warm,” thought Tom. He reached down and jabbed its shoulder with his forefinger. A slimy lip quivered and Tom noticed that it had a set of long yellow fangs that stuck down either side of its jaw. “What the heck are you?” Tom whispered. A pungent gamey scent rose from the animal, tainting the crisp fresh smell of the new snow. He fingered one of the brown spikes on its back and discovered it not to be a spike at all, but a clump of fur matted together to form a point. Apart from a few similar clumps the beast appeared to be hairless.
Tom tapped on the sliding glass door, but Margot folded her arms and shook her head, then nodded towards the side-door. He trudged around the side of the house and went back inside. In the basement he dug out a bed that Harold once used, and a blanket. Margot hollered after him when she saw him disappear through the side door holding the bed, “Thomas, What are you doing? I’m not having that thing inside, you hear?”
“Margot, I’m not leaving it out there to freeze to death. I’ll put it in the garage.”
Outside, the snowfall had increased again. Tom carefully laid the blanket over the animal and scooped it up in his arms, holding the head with its fearsome fangs, as far away from himself as possible. The strong odor rising from the animal made him turn his head to one side, making him walk sideways, peering through the corner of his eyes to see his way. In the garage, he laid the beast down on the dog-bed.
When Tom entered the kitchen, Margot handed him a bowl with pieces of bread bobbing about in milk. “In case it gets hungry,” she said. “Don’t say I don’t have a heart. Christ you stink. Is it from that thing? Ugh!”
In the garage, Tom laid the bowl in front of the animal. Harold peered around Margot’s legs as she leaned out into the garage. Margot said “Back”. He flattened his ears, retreated. Tom fished out a cube of soggy bread and let the milk drip into the animal’s mouth. A pale pink tongue poked out at the taste of the milk and an eye-lid lifted to reveal a cold, glassy eye.
Deciding there was little more they could do for the beast tonight, Tom and Margot left the animal and went back inside. Tom flicked through his collection of Audubon field guides, but nothing even closely resembled the animal. He checked on it one more time before going to bed. Peering around the doorframe into the garage, he could see the blanket rising and falling gently as it breathed. “It may live yet,” thought Tom, pushing the door closed. In bed he moved close to Margot, wallowing in her warmth, and went to sleep.
“Thomas!” yelled Margot in Tom’s ear, jabbing him in his ribs. Tom slowly pulled himself from a deep slumber.
“What is it?” he groaned.
“Did you hear that?” Margot had sat up in bed. Tom could hear the wind roaring around the house. He heard a crash from the garage. “I told you not to bring that thing inside,” said Margot.
“I’ll go see,” said Tom, sliding his legs over the edge of the bed and dropping them into his slippers. He turned on the bed-side light, but the wind must have knocked the power out. He fumbled his way into the kitchen and pulled a flashlight out of a drawer. Another clatter sounded from the garage. Margot had got up too and stood in the doorway to their bedroom. Tom stood for a while by the door to the garage. Harold had roused himself from his bed in their room and uttered a long guttural growl, head held low beside Tom’s feet, snuffling at the crack under the door. A dark patch across the dog’s shoulders revealed his raised heckles. Tom inched the door open. He heard claws scrabbling at the concrete floor. A rake and a shovel fell to the ground with a clang. The beam from his flashlight reached into the garage. In the far corner, two greenish yellow eyes blinked back at him. Fangs and a row of sharp teeth below the eyes indicated a snarl. The animal uttered a long growl and Tom pulled the door closed again. Harold barked. Tom turned to Margot.
“I think we should call the police,” he said, lowering the beam of the flashlight so as not to dazzle her.
“I knew it wasn’t a good idea to let that thing in here, Tom. It’ll scratch the car. Can’t you just open the garage door?”
“That would mean going in there, Margot, which I don’t care to do. You should’ve seen its fangs.”
“Oh right, the power’s out, so the garage door opener won’t work. Guess we can’t call the police either.”
Tom ushered Margot back into their bedroom. They sat in bed for a while listening to the wind, not speaking. Margot eventually slid down under the covers and turned towards the wall.
When Tom awoke, Margot had already gotten up. Tom found her sitting in his Lazy boy. He opened the blinds. The sky had cleared. An orange sun sat low over the eastern horizon. “Still no power?”, he said.
“Nope,” said Margot.
“Listen,” said Tom. “I’ll walk on down to see old Red. Maybe they have power down there. We’ll call the police.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Margot.
The snow had drifted in places and their walk along the jeep track that led to Joseph Red-mountain’s trailer proved long and arduous. Weary and cold, they eventually rounded a large red butte that shielded the old Mestizo’s dilapidated trailer from the prevailing north winds. Red’s wife Cindy, alerted by the barking dogs, opened the door as they approached. She showed them into the kitchen. Tom’s nostrils welcomed the smell of coffee rising from a pot simmering on the wood stove in the corner. Red sat in an easy chair by the fire, his large weathered hand resting on the silver handle of a black cane. Cindy poured two cups of steaming coffee and handed them to Tom and Margot.
“Hello neighbor,” said Red, his voice deep, smooth like the worn down buttes around them. A mane of graying hair framed his reddish brown face, as creased and wrinkled as the country he lived in.
“I’m sorry to drop in on you so early like this, Red,” said Tom. “But we could use your help with something.”
“It’s ok Tom. Cindy and I, we’re up with the sun anyway. Your power out too?” Tom nodded.
Red’s dark brown eyes looked on calmly as Tom told him of the visitor they had taken in the night before. When Tom had finished, Red pursed his lips. “It’s a Chupacabre, man” he said.
“What?” said Margot and Tom simultaneously.
“Chupacabre.”
Margot and Tom looked at each other. Red sat dead-panned, his eyes darting from Tom to Margot and back again. “Yes,” he said, shifting his gaze to a patch of worn linoleum floor. “My brother shot one once. It killed half his goats back in seventy-six. Sucked the blood right out of them too. Not a mark on them, save a set of holes punched through their necks. He and I sat up all the next night and in it came around twilight, slinking along on its belly like the devil. Charlie shot it through the chest. I’d never seen anything like it before. Nasty, wet looking fur covered most of its body and it stank awful. We called the Bureau but they weren’t interested. Said it was just a coyote with mange, but that wasn’t no coyote Charlie shot out there. It had teeth that long.” Red raised a hand with his thumb and forefinger indicating the length. “Kept the carcass for the elders to see. They said right away it was the Chupacabre.”
“You think that’s what we have in our garage then Red?” asked Tom.
“Oh, they’re around here Tom,” said Red. “I swear I saw one last year driving in from the main road. Probably the same one you have in your garage.”
“What do you think we should do?”
Red brought the top of his cane up under his chin, squinting at a point far off. After a while he said, “I sure wouldn’t go in there, Tom. Not with that beast in there.”
Around mid-morning, Tom and Margot left the trailer and retraced their steps home. A low thick cloud had rolled across the plains, dimming the light. Off to the north, the base of the La Sals rose to meet the clouds, peaks lost in the gray. As they followed the road down into a shallow canyon where an old wooden bridge crossed a dry wash, a howl echoed up from someplace downstream. Tom felt his neck tingle. Margot grabbed his arm. “What’s that?” she said.
“Coyote probably,” said Tom, but he hurried his steps, pulling Margot along with him.
By the time they reached the house, Tom and Margot had decided what to do. Without power to open the garage, the Chupacabre couldn’t escape. Surely it remained there still.
Harold greeted them as they entered the house, tail wagging. At the doorway to the garage, Tom took a deep breath and opened the door. Again, the scrabbling of claws on concrete. Boxes and some yard-waste bags fell off a shelf in the back of the garage. Tom darted across to their Subaru and climbed inside. He started the engine, climbed out and ran back into the house, heart pounding.
In the living room, Margot looked white as the snow. “Do you think it will work?” she said.
“Works on people, doesn’t it?” said Tom. He collapsed into his Lazy boy, reached over and pushed the stack of papers on the coffee table to spread them out. Leafing through the sections of the Post, his fingers found the real-estate pages and pulled them out. He leaned back in his chair and began scanning the pictures of tract homes, for sale in the suburbs of Denver.