No.
“Yes,” Travis said.
No.
Einstein tried to run off behind the sofa again, but Travis grabbed him by the
collar and held him. “Are you claiming to have seen such a thing?”
The dog raised his gaze from the picture, looked into Travis’s eyes, shuddered,
and whimpered.
The pitiful note of profound fear in Einstein’s soft whine and an indescribably
disturbing quality in his dark eyes combined to affect Travis to an extent that
surprised him. Holding the collar with one hand, his other hand on Einstein’s
back, Travis felt the shivers that quaked through the dog—and suddenly he was
shivering, too. The dog’s stark fear was transmitted to him, and he thought,
crazily, By God, he really has seen something like this.
Sensing the change in Travis, Nora said, “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering her, he repeated the question that Einstein had not yet
answered: “Are you claiming to have seen such a thing?”
Yes.
“Something that looks exactly like this demon?”
A bark and a wag: Yes and no.
“Something that looks at least a little bit like it?”
Yes.
Letting go of the collar, Travis stroked the dog’s back, trying to soothe him,
but Einstein continued to shiver. “Is this why you keep a watch at the Window
some nights?”
Yes.
Clearly puzzled and alarmed by the dog’s distress, Nora began to pet him, too.
“I thought you were worried that people from the lab would find
you.”
Einstein barked once.
“You’re not afraid people from the lab will find you?”
Yes and no.
Travis said, “But you’re more afraid that . . . this other thing will find you.”
Yes, yes, yes.
“Is this the same thing that was in the woods that day, the thing that chased
us, the thing I shot at?” Travis asked.
Yes, yes, yes.
Travis looked at Nora. She was frowning. “But it’s only a movie monster. Nothing
in the real world looks even a little bit like it.”
Padding across the room, sniffing at the assorted photographs, Einstein paused
again at the Blue Cross ad that featured the doctor, mother, and baby in a
hospital room. He brought the magazine to them and dropped it on the floor. He
put his nose to the doctor in the picture, then looked at Nora, at Travis, put
his nose to the doctor again, and looked up expectantly.
“Before,” Nora said, “you told us the doctor represented one of the scientists
in that lab.”
Yes.
Travis said, “So are you telling me the scientist who worked on you would know
what this thing in the woods was?”
Yes.
Einstein went looking through the photographs again, and this time he returned
with the ad that showed a car in a cage. He touched his nose to the cage; then,
hesitantly, he touched his nose to the picture of the demon.
“Are you saying the thing in the woods belongs in a cage?” Nora asked.
Yes.
“More than that,” Travis said, “I think he’s telling us that it was in a cage at
one time, that he saw it in a cage.”
Yes.
“In the same lab where you were in a cage?”
Yes, yes, yes.
“Another experimental lab animal?” Nora asked.
Yes.
Travis stared hard at the photograph of the demon, at its thick brow and deeply
set yellow eyes, at its deformed snoutlike nose and mouth bristling with teeth.
At last he said, “Was it an experiment . . . that went wrong?”
Yes and no, Einstein said.
Now at a peak of agitation, the dog crossed the living room to the front window,
jumped up and braced his forepaws on the sill, and peered out at the Santa
Barbara evening.
Nora and Travis sat on the floor among the opened magazines and books, happy
with the progress they had made, beginning to feel the exhaustion that their
excitement had masked—and frowning at each other in puzzlement.
She spoke softly. “Do you think Einstein’s capable of lying, making up wild
stories like children do?”
“I don’t know. Can dogs lie, or is that just a human skill?” He laughed at
the absurdity of his own question. “Can dogs lie? Can a moose be elected to the