Moving forward again, Bonnie kept looking about alertly, feeling an idiot, not knowing what kind of danger she should be anticipating, and whether it might come at her from in front, or the sides, or even from above. She swung her branch grimly, as if to show that she was not afraid, though she was quaking inwardly.

Walking alone in the thickening woods, beginning to get a faint smell of the garbage stench, frightened of the mysterious hissing that stopped and started so disturbingly, Bonnie wanted desperately to turn back. She gritted her teeth harder. She’d be damned if she’d show yellow. The strange sibilant sound, she told herself firmly, was obviously just some kind of snake she was unfamiliar with, and Sharky had probably killed it by now.

It was then that Bonnie Taylor stepped sickeningly on the white body almost entirely buried in leaves that were stained crimson with blood. It was obvious that a thrashing battle had taken place. When she knelt to brush the leaves away, she found Sharky lying on his side. The dog’s coat was pocked with fresh blood. His legs were kicking in a palsy of animal pain. In Bonnie’s presence, his whimpering sounds became louder. He looked up at her with a piteous whine for help. Bonnie vomited. The dog had only empty sockets where his eyes had been.

2

TWO

“I couldn’t bring him back,” Bonnie wept in Elizabeth’s arms. “I wanted to, but I just couldn’t bear it! I’m so sorry.”

Elizabeth Carr embraced her friend. “We understand, Bonnie.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t imagine how horrible it was!”

From his couch, Captain Elias Johnson asked, “Just his eyes, you say?”

Bonnie sobbed, “I don’t know, Elias. He was bloody all over . . .”

“No more now,” Elizabeth said firmly. She looked over at her grandfather. “I’m going down to the sheriff’s. If we’ve got rabid animals in the woods, Amos Tarlell needs to know.”

A command from Johnson stopped his granddaughter at the door. “Slow down, Liz! It could have been birds, you know.”

“Birds?” Both women repeated the word incredulously.

The old man nodded. “Sharky might have found a nest. You get a herring gull mad, you’ll find how sharp and deep its bill can dig.” The captain heard the lack of conviction in his own voice, but he wanted time to think without Sheriff Amos Tarbell bolting around the island, upsetting people needlessly.

Bonnie Taylor ventured, drying her cheeks, “There didn’t seem to be a nest or anything like that . . .”

Elias Johnson held to his theory stubbornly. “We get snowy egrets that pass this way, too. They’ve got beaks can drill to China!”

Elizabeth countered, “Egrets stay on the beach, don’t they?” She knew Yarkie Island birds quite as well as her grandfather did.