Summer's End

Thanks to a bright sun and a wide cloudless sky, the afternoon was warm with nothing but the echo of a breeze to prevent it from getting too hot. That just goes to show that monsters weren't caged by night. They can show up at any time, even a day as nice as that one. Anyway, the noise that started it all was a barking dog. Not just any dog, a big black dog named Ranger.

Jimmy Mills and I were straddling our bikes, not going anywhere, when Ranger started going nuts inside his yard. He paced the edge of the fence, fur puffed out, growling this deep scary noise like he'd swallowed a wasps nest. Neither Jimmy or I liked Ranger very much. He was a big dog that barked all the time and if we got close enough he slammed against the fence hard enough to bow the chain links outward, like he wanted to hurt us real bad. So we usually stayed away.

This time I felt kind of sorry for Ranger. He sounded so scared.

When Sheriff Taggert showed up the next day to ask what Jimmy and me had seen, I knew something was wrong.