“I have to go back to where the old dogs are,” the girl said in my dream. “The old dogs are waiting for me, and I have to go back.”

I just stared at her. She was a little thing, no more than five or six years old. I wasn’t exactly sure how I knew that because I really couldn’t see her that clearly. I could see the form, the basic shape, and I could hear the little-girl voice. In the darkness, it seemed like she had blonde hair and was wearing a pink shirt and some kind of denim thing. Other than that, I couldn’t make out anything clearly at all. 

“The old dogs are waiting,” she repeated. “I have to get back to them now.”

So go, I thought but didn’t say out loud. Why are you wasting time talking to me? Just go.

I didn’t actually respond to her because talking back to characters in your dreams is surely a definite sign of something. It could mean several things, probably very few of them any good.

“Can you hear them?” she asked, staring at me. “Can you hear them calling for me?”

Sorry, kid. I couldn’t hear anything. Unless, of course, you count the wind and the surf, but by this point I’d been hearing those dull sounds for far too long. Far too many days stuck away here. 

My buddy had the best of intentions, I know for a fact he did, when he offered me the use of his parents’ beach house. 

“Mom and Dad are overseeing the opening of a new factory, or hotel, or some such thing,” he’d said on that day a while back. “They’ll be gone for a couple of months, and they don’t use the place that much anyway. Really, they pretty much just bought it for me to have a place to get away to, so here are the keys. Relax, try to forget it all, and wait for things to blow over.”

Forgetting was the hard part, especially with nothing else to do. Barely twenty years old, with this awesome beach house at my disposal, and the most I could do was sit out on the deck all day, staring at the surf as it washes in and out, working on my melanoma.

A local bar and hamburger shack sits about five minutes away, and most evenings I head down there for a bite to eat and a bottle or two. And even though a lot of people my own age, in particular a lot of women, come and go in there, I spend my time alone, hulking in a booth towards the back, sending out conscious waves of thought to people to leave me alone, get the fuck away, whatever you do don’t bother me.

Forget it all, he’d said. Yeah. 

As if that were even possible. As if they’d ever let me.

And then, just when the boredom began to reach the point of being more than I could stand, the dreams began.

“I have to go,” the little brat insists. “The old dogs are waiting for me.”

So friggin’ go, I feel like screaming at her. But I don’t, you see. 

It’s after a couple of days of this that for some reason I start to see her a bit more clearly. The denim is one of those overall/short-type things, and the pink tee-shirt has some kind of design on it, but I still can’t quite make it out. 

Little thing, barely comes up to my waist, and Heaven knows I’ve never been one to shy away from knocking people around. I could swat her to the side without a second thought. Just climb out of bed, walk to the doorway, and smash her in that mouth that seems to just keep going and going.

But I don’t, you see.

For a very good reason.

I’m terrified, almost literally scared to death, of this little girl, five or six years old, looking for her old dogs.

Most people believe the sound of surf crashing against shore is relaxing, calming. Not so in my case. For me, that rolling boom you always hear when you’re close to the shore, especially at high tide, is frightening, even blood-curdling. After all, when you think about it, what does that noise symbolize?

Pure destruction. That water, those waves that so many ignorant people marvel and gawk at, isn’t rolling into the shore. It’s slamming, crashing in, and each time it does it pounds the sand a little bit flatter, a little bit smaller. I’ve spent most of my days in exile just sitting on the back deck of my borrowed house (even though I promised my buddy I’d stay inside during the daytime), swilling down cheap beer and watching that surf going in and out. And each time it does, I sit there and wonder how much longer it will take before that strip of shoreline’s gone completely. How long before it begins lapping up to the front of this house I’m squatting in?

It even goes on at night, but at least at night I can get away from that particular reminder. But I’m going off here, losing my focus. I was telling you about the little girl in my dreams.

Around five or six years old, possibly a big four.

(Trying to kid myself here. After all, I know her exact age.) 

Cute, little thing, I guess. If you like the type. Curly blonde hair, brown eyes, one eye looking a bit cockeyed, which only adds to her look of total sweet innocence.  

(With each appearance I start to make out more and more. Not that it’s really necessary.)

When she talks, even rows of perfectly white teeth. Overall, the kind of little kid that most people would just ooh and aah over, same as they do the sound of the surf.

Deceptive little bitch.

You see, this little girl wants something from me, and it’s been several nights now that this has gone on. She does the same thing every time I close my eyes, every time I manage to push the fragments of memories aside and grab even a few minutes of sleep.

It’s all a dream, I know, but this is simply the goddamndest dream you can imagine.

First off, in dreams aren’t you usually somewhere else? Either in some place you’ve been to before or some place you’ve imagined in your head. Of course you are. That’s how normal people dream.

So, what the hell’s wrong with me?

See, each night I dream that I’m lying in bed in the beach house. Which, of course, I am. I lie there, sound asleep, until I hear the door slam downstairs. Then I jerk up in bed, wide awake (in the dream, you see) and there’s this little thing, looking all lost and godforsaken, standing in the doorway, staring at me.

“I have to go back to where the old dogs are,” she says, night after freaking night. “The old dogs are waiting for me.”

The whole time, she stands there staring blankly at me, no expression on her face at all. But there’s something in those big eyes of hers, something that seems to accuse me of being the one who’s keeping her from going after the dogs, whatever the hell that means. 

Except that I don’t know where her dogs are, I don’t know what kind of dogs they are, and I for sure as hell don’t even know who she is.

I don’t know nothing, see?

(A lie, that last one. A lie I’ve been trying to convince myself of for all these days down here on the shore. I’ve been trying to assure myself that I don’t know anything, that I didn’t have anything to do with it, and most importantly, that they’ll never find me here.  And I’ve done a pretty good job so far.) 

She stands in the doorway, hitting me with that whacked-out stare of hers. Shadows fill the doorway, clouding all around her, and I can barely see what she looks like. But that gaze of hers pounds into me, as harshly and continually as those waves pound into the shore outside the window.

I can see the design on the shirt better now. It’s a logo for Wonderland, a kind of wannabe Disney World about two hundred miles south of here. I can almost kick myself for not making it out earlier. Shouldn’t it have been obvious? Am I losing my grip that much?

She wants something from me. But she doesn’t do anything, and this entire picture is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

She talks about her stupid dogs, but she does it with no emotion, no soul in her voice. It’s like she’s on automatic rewind, over and over. She looks in my direction, but she doesn’t look at me. Know what I mean? Just stands there, half in the room and half in the hallway, going on and on about her dogs.

This is something like the tenth night now, and suddenly a kind of stupid thought comes to me. Why only old dogs? Don’t most kids her age want young dogs? Puppies? 

I want to ask her something silly like that. I want to tell her to get out and leave me alone. I want to do or say anything, except I can’t. All I can do is sit there, waiting for her to leave and hoping she won’t come back.

My buddy, the one who lent me this house, warned me about the tides. “It’s not as safe as it may look,” he’d said on the day when he’d handed over the keys. “Especially this time of year. Don’t be fooled by those idiots you see out on their boards and  boats. Safest way to go is to stay out of the water. And, hell, the place is stocked with enough beer and food to see you through.”

Sly, guy. Not sly enough to really fool me, but what the hell. It felt kind of nice to have someone on the same wavelength, a real friend who either didn’t believe what everyone was saying or didn’t care.

What he was really saying, what he really meant, was simple. I’m letting you stay here, good buddy, and it’s my ass if anyone finds out. So do me a favor and stay low, keep yourself hidden. Make sure nobody spots you, at least until things die down a bit.

But you see, there was this burger place right down the road, and there were all these luscious young ladies who paraded up and down the beach, and there was this awesome weather and...

Well, you get the idea. I wonder now and then what my buddy would say if he knew about those nightly visits to the beer joint. After all, I am supposed to be undercover.

When it really comes down to it, I know I should stay away from people, stay out of sight and mind. I actually shouldn’t even be out on the deck during the day. But it’s so hard, so difficult not to have someone to talk to, to hang out with.

It would, in one way, be kind of cool to know that I was going slightly nuts. That would at least be some kind of break in the boredom. Lately, I’ve begun to get that skin-crawling feeling that I know from the past, and I worry about what I’ll do if things don’t change soon.

She never comes further than the doorway, never steps into the room, barely moves at all. Just that continual, mournful calling for her dogs. In my dream, I can’t reply to her, can’t do anything. It just keeps unwinding like it always has. She appears, says her bit, and I lay there, propped half up in bed like a dead fish washed up from the surf. I want to shout at her, but I can’t mouth a single sound. 

Someone came sniffing around yesterday. It was only one guy, so he probably wasn’t a cop. They usually work in pairs, don’t they?

I noticed him crossing past the deck as I came out of the shower. I caught his shadow first, casting into the kitchen area, so I ducked back around the corner. Slowly, I tilted my head to one side so I could just barely see outside. He walked across the deck, which looks out onto the beach, came off the northern side and halted, looking around the corner of the house.

Old guy. Plenty of hair on his head, but white as anything. Dumpy, kind of fat, but seemed to carry himself pretty light on his feet. Wearing a pair of slacks, sneakers and a gaudy, Hawaiian-type shirt. Dressed bad enough and looking stupid enough that for a moment I thought he might be some kind of private eye.

I moved backwards, into the bathroom. Shut the door and climbed back into the shower stall. Waited. Gave it half an hour or so then came back out, walked slowly and cautiously all around the house. Looked slyly through the curtains but didn’t see anything. 

He must have gone.

Still, left me wondering who he was. Didn’t really seem like a cop.

Maybe her family sent him after me. 

I stayed in last night, decided not to tempt fate by going out for a beer or two. But the groceries that my buddy had so thoughtfully stocked the house with before handing over the keys are running a bit low. Either that, or I’m just burned out on frozen pizzas and Hot Pockets. Even so, I fought temptation and stayed in all night and watched TV. Saw a little bit of everything. Comedy, some music, a really sucky ball game. 

Watched everything but the news.  

Could have, didn’t want to. You’ve got all those cable news channels now, plus the ones that focus just on crime stories. You can get all the news you want these days.

I don’t want any.

The theory of safety in ignorance, not knowing how close they are.

Actually managed to get a word or two out last night. Dream started same as always, except for possibly being a bit more slurry than it usually does. Probably my fault. After turning off the game, I downed an awful lot of my buddy’s folks’ liquor, hoping to sleep through the night.

Didn’t work. Should have known it wouldn’t.

The little slut isn’t about to let me off the hook.

Like I said, it started about the same as always. I’d actually been sleeping pretty good, all things considered, when I heard the front door bang downstairs. I hoisted myself up to a half-sitting position, and there she was, standing in the doorway.

Like before, she started in again, babbling on about her dogs that she had to find. Right about then, an entirely new, completely wild idea rocketed its way into my head.

Was it possible this wasn’t a dream?

After all, every night it seemed more real than any dream or nightmare I’ve had in the past. What if it wasn’t either of those? What if this really was happening, night after night, and this little twit is actually coming in the house, coming into my room, confronting me?

Could be the most frightening possibility of all.

Two men came snooping around today. Neither one the same as the one on the other day. One came to the front of the house, the part that faces away from the shore, while the other came around back, by the deck. I stayed inside, of course, peeking through the closed blinds of the sliding doors that let onto the deck, and watched them go around and around.
 
They knocked, they tried to peer in the windows, one of them even walked under the deck for a while. 

Younger guys than the other one. Better dressed, too. Both wearing slacks, buttoned shirts and light silk tweed jackets, about as dressed up as any reasonable person would want to get at this time of the year, in this climate. One had a thick mop of red hair, curiously with no freckles, while the other was blond and beginning to go bald.

It seemed like they went around and around, over and under for nearly an hour, but probably didn’t actually take that long. Eventually, they met out on the beach, close by the deck and talked for a while.

Finally, the balding one took one last look at the house before they turned around and went back up to the slight incline, up to where they must have parked their car.

Makes me wonder, though. How many other places are they searching for me? How many other friends’ houses, hangouts and family areas are they watching?

A minute later, all of that seemed to not matter a whole lot.

This was daytime, remember. And as I watched them walking away, I thought the danger had passed, at least for a while.

But I was way, way wrong.

I let go of the curtain, which I had kept parted only slightly. It was bright daytime outside, even if I had the house all shut up and gloomy.

There’s no way I was asleep, no possibility that I was dreaming.

As I turned away from the curtained window, I knew for damned sure I was awake and aware.

The little girl stood in the hall, staring at me.

I could see her even more clearly this time. I could make out the bruises and scratches on her arms and face. The rips in her clothing. The wild, tangled hair, laced through with grass and stickers from the field. 

I could see it all now; the entire thing came rocketing back. 

“I have to go back to where the old dogs are,” she said. “The old dogs are waiting for me, and I have to go back.”

I stood there, not moving, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Which it did in the next instant.

“I have to go back,” she said again, and even from across the room I could see the tears making tracks through the grime on her face.

“If I don’t go back to them, they’ll come looking for me.” Everything about her, not just her eyes but her voice, her very posture, focused on me. Burned through me, accusing me.

Judging me.

Condemning me.

But what could a little girl, especially a little girl dead and buried for weeks, do to me? 

“And you don’t want that.”

At first, I’d lost track, things were getting a little blurry around the edges, and I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“You don’t want them looking for me,” she whispered.

We stood there for a few minutes, my victim and I, and believe me when I say that I wished at that moment I’d never crossed paths with her, back on that really bad day.

A few moments later, I wished it even more.

Outside, I could hear the surf crashing against the beach, same as it had for the entire time I’d hidden away here, waiting and hoping for the manhunt to die down. 

But closer, much closer, just on the other side of the window, I heard something else. 

I could tell that she heard it too.

She smiled.

Outside, the dogs had started growling.