Part 7 – “Howl”
The nightmare came just after midnight.
In it, Calvin was back at the creek—alone this time. The sky bruised purple, the water rising. He called out for Tyler, again and again, but no one answered.
Except the dog.
Whistle stood on the far bank, mouth open, eyes wide—not barking, not running, just howling.
A long, lonesome sound that cracked the sky in two.
Calvin woke up soaked in sweat, the sheets tangled around his legs. The whistle around his neck was clenched in his fist.
He sat up and looked to the floor.
Whistle was gone.
Down the street, Raymond Cobb jolted upright in his recliner, TV static still hissing in the background.
Eighty-two years old, Vietnam vet, half-deaf from artillery, and still—
Still, he heard it.
A howl that didn’t come from memory. Didn’t come from a coyote, or the woods, or any dog he’d heard in years.
This one was thick with sorrow.
Heavy with something else, too.
Recognition.
Raymond grabbed his coat and flashlight and stepped out onto his porch. Cold air bit through the gaps in his slippers.
Then he saw him.
A skinny brown dog with a crooked tail, sitting in the middle of Meadow Drive.
Facing the woods.
Howling again.
Raymond squinted.
He hadn’t seen that dog in a long time.
Not since—
His jaw went slack.
Not since the summer before last. The one where that Langley boy used to sit down by the old rail tracks after school. With a sandwich. And a dog just like this one.
In the morning, Harriet found Whistle on the porch—matted, muddy, but calm.
His paw was scraped, like he’d run miles on gravel.
Calvin didn’t say anything. Just opened the door and let him back in.
At 10:00 a.m., there was a knock.
Raymond Cobb stood there, hat in hand, face solemn.
“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am,” he said to Harriet. “But I think I know your dog.”
They sat at the kitchen table.
Raymond told them everything.
“I used to see your older boy, Tyler, come down past my place. Most afternoons. Always carried a little paper bag.”
“He was feeding that dog,” Harriet said.
Raymond nodded. “At first, I thought it was a stray. But then I saw the way it sat. Didn’t beg. Didn’t bark. Just… waited. Like it knew him.”
He looked down at Whistle, who lay curled beneath the table now, one paw resting on Calvin’s socked foot.
“He came back once after Tyler died,” Raymond added quietly. “The dog. Looked thinner. Sad. Sat in the same spot for hours.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Mr. Langley asked.
“I figured… maybe grief’s a circle. Dog lost his boy. I didn’t want to interfere.”
They all sat in silence for a moment.
Then Raymond reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something wrapped in tissue.
“I kept this,” he said. “Didn’t know why until now.”
He laid it on the table.
It was a shoelace.
Red. Frayed at the ends. Stiff with time.
Just like the ones Tyler wore.
Harriet gasped.
“That’s his. He lost one that summer. I never found it.”
Raymond’s voice cracked. “Dog dropped it at my porch. Like he wanted me to keep it safe.”
That night, Calvin sat cross-legged on the porch steps.
Whistle beside him.
“I think you remembered where you left it,” he said softly. “The shoelace.”
Whistle didn’t move.
Just blinked slow.
“You were trying to bring a piece of him back.”
He placed the old shoelace beside the new one still tied around Whistle’s neck.
Red and red.
Time and memory.
“I think he wanted me to know you never stopped waiting.”
Inside, Harriet tucked the shoelace into Tyler’s sketchbook.
Two pieces of the same boy.
Bound by a dog who wouldn’t forget.
Later that week, Raymond stopped by again.
He didn’t stay long.
Just looked at Whistle and said, “You take care of him, you hear?”
Then he saluted—fingers trembling—and walked back down the road, shoulders lighter.
That night, no one had a nightmare.
The house felt full.
Like someone had finally come home.