Free The Man Who Rained by Ali Shaw Page B

the stars were but the foreground.
    Now, in this night on the mountain, she felt that same darkness inside her again. Without the metropolitan fluorescence of New York she could feel it going into her like a thread through the eye
of a needle. It suffused her and reassured her that, lo and behold, it had been in her all along. She was, at heart, just as empty as the night, and despite being so lost she was grateful for the
rediscovery.
    When the animal call sounded again it startled her out of herself. It howled nearer now and there could be no doubt – it was a wild dog. All at once it appeared. It prowled into the cusp
of her vision. Even a few yards away its body was hard to pick out. Its fur was as dark as the night clouds. Its teeth when it bared them were moon-pale. Its eyes were freckled with white like the
zodiac.
    It padded to a halt and stood in front of her, panting and staring up along the length of its snout.
    ‘Hello,’ she whispered pathetically.
    Its tongue flickered across its nose. It slinked past her and trotted away a few paces. There it paused and looked back, idly swishing its tail.
    She stood up, hesitated for a second, then followed. It loped along at a fast pace, and in her attempts to keep up she stubbed her toes painfully on a stone and tripped through a rut in the
earth. It kept moving, weaving down through pathless valleys and up slopes she had to ascend on all fours. When she reached the top of a peak she shrieked to find the dog lurking in wait for her,
its muzzle point-blank to her face, its breath rancid and meaty. Then she realized that beyond the dog, at the bottom of a long and easy descent, shone the lights of Thunderstown.
    She laughed to see their glowing amber spiral, so welcoming after having been so lost. Then for a second she had to shield her eyes because out of nowhere a blast of wind hit her, kicking up
dust from the soil and flapping her hair against her ears. This wind did not smell fresh like an alpine breeze, but grimy like feral fur. Then it was gone and she uncovered her eyes. She turned to
the dog to pat or scratch her thanks, but it had already left her. Surprised, she studied the night in every direction. It must have run off, into the darkness.

 
6

PART WEATHER
    The next morning, when she left for work, Elsa found Kenneth Olivier standing on a garden chair in the front yard of his house on Prospect Street, holding a battery-powered
radio up to the sky like an offering. To its aerial he had affixed an extension bent from a coat hanger, which he now reached up to tweak an inch to the left. The adjustment changed the tone of the
static crackling from the radio’s speakers, but still all it would emit was a crackle and a hiss.
    ‘Oh, hello, Elsa,’ he said upon noticing her. He kept the radio held aloft. ‘It’s the heat we’ve been having, see? It’s playing the devil with the reception
for the test match. The television’s a lost cause and the radio looks to be another.’
    She had slept badly, and once she had given in and left the pretence of her sleep, it had taken her five minutes to pluck up the courage to open the curtains, afraid to find another wild dog
crouching there in the courtyard. When she had finally opened them the courtyard had been bare, but her unease had persisted.
    ‘Elsa?’ Kenneth put down the radio. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said. Then, after a pause: ‘I wanted to ask you about something. This might sound crazy, but ... I keep seeing these dogs ...’ And she told him about the
animals, the one who had lurked in the courtyard yesterday morning and the one who had guided her last night. She didn’t tell him about the man she’d seen, although she could tell he
was concerned by her ventures in the mountains after dark.
    ‘Listen, Elsa, I tried to tell you about these dogs before. They’re not like other dogs. They’re different.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    He scratched his head and looked