Artie's Bark by Jason Savio

Author:Jason Savio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

Twenty-Six

The neighborhood hailed Crocker as a hero for saving Jerry. The savior of Sunfish Lane had been at the right place at the right time, taking care of his duty and obligation as the neighborhood watch. Of course, Tommy and his friends were still skeptical.

They were also grounded.

Jerry’s mother nearly had a heart attack the night Crocker showed up at her front doorstep with her son drugged up on anxiety medication. After she calmed down, she agreed he did what he had to do. Jerry was immediately taken to the emergency room at Brighton Falls Hospital and checked out okay, with a new inhaler in tow just in case he ever had another panic attack causing his asthma to kick in. His mother, however, decided he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house and go on any more adventures with his friends.

Crocker made it clear to all the boys’ parents that it was far too dangerous for them to be out and about with the guilty party of the neighborhood’s recent violent incidents still at large. The parents agreed and implemented their own strict rules regarding if and when the boys could leave their houses.

Tommy’s mother’s reaction was less harsh. She told Tommy that he should know better and to stay out of the woods because “there’s nothing good waiting for you out there.”

Tommy, despite his initial instinct to not say anything to his mother following his time out in the woods with Sam, felt like he had to try telling her what he saw now that he truly believed it had something to do with the pets in their neighborhood disappearing.

“But you need to listen to me, Mom,” he told her. “We saw someone out there carrying around a dead animal! Don’t you think that might have something to do with all the missing pets and Ms. Crofton’s dead cat?”

“You also claim to have seen something the size of Bigfoot,” she said back to him. “I think your eyes are playing tricks on you, honey.”

Tommy, to his credit, tried talking his friends into doing something about what they saw in the woods. None of them wanted any more to do with it. Justin echoed Beth’s sentiment and said they just scared themselves into seeing something that wasn’t actually there, while Eric admitted what he saw but was too afraid to go back. Jerry wanted to simply pretend nothing ever happened.

“I love your imagination, Tommy. Talk about some straight-to-video garbage,” Jerry had said when Tommy came over to see how he was doing and to persuade Jerry to go back out to the woods with him. “Why are you so obsessed with what’s out there?”

Tommy couldn’t explain to Jerry why he felt the urgent need to go back there again, other than the vague possibility that it was linked to Sunfish Lane and Brighton Falls’ dwindling pet population. He knew he was asking a lot, especially of Jerry, to go back. He knew that whatever was going on out there was dangerous and not going to go away on its own.

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