Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link Read Free Book Online Page A

baby and she told him she was going to name it Ellen if it was
a girl. When he took his own temperature on Wednesday, the
thermometer said he had a fever of 103, so he climbed back into
bed.
    When he woke up on Thursday morning, he found short black hairs
covering the quilt, which he knew must mean that he was
hallucinating. He fell asleep again and dreamed that Mr. Rook came
to see him. Mr. Rook was a Black Lab. He was wearing a plastic
Groucho Marx nose. He and Carroll stood beside the black lake that
was on the third floor of the library.
    The dog said, "You and I are a lot alike, Carroll."
    "I suppose," Carroll said.
    "No, really," the dog insisted. It leaned its head on Carroll's
knee, still looking up at him. "We like to look on the bright side
of things. You have to do that, you know."
    "Rachel doesn't love me anymore," Carroll said. "Nobody likes
me." He scratched behind Mr. Rook's silky ear.
    "Now, is that looking on the bright side of things?" said the
dog. "Scratch a little to the right. Rachel has a hard time, like
her mother. Be patient with her."
    "So which would you choose," Carroll said. "Love or water?"
    "Who says anyone gets to choose anything? You said you picked
water, but there's good water and there's bad water. Did you ever
think about that?" the dog said. "I have a much better question for
you. Are you a good dog or a bad dog?"
    "Good dog!" Carroll yelled, and woke himself up.
    He called the farmhouse in the morning, and when Rachel
answered, he said, "This is Carroll. I'm coming to talk to
you."
    But when he got there, no one was there. The sight of the
leftover Christmas trees, tall and gawky as green geese, made him
feel homesick. Little clumps of snow like white flowers were
melting in the gravel driveway. The dogs were not in the barn and
he hoped that Mrs. Rook had taken them down to the pond.
    He walked up to the house, and knocked on the door. If either of
Rachel's parents came to the door, he would stand his ground and
demand to see their daughter. He knocked again, but no one came.
The house, shuttered against the snow, had an expectant air, as if
it were waiting for him to say something. So he whispered, "Rachel?
Where are you?" The house was silent. "Rachel, I love you. Please
come out and talk to me. Let's get married—we'll elope. You steal
your mother's leg, and by the time your father carves her a new
one, we'll be in Canada. We could go to Niagara Falls for our
honeymoon—we could take your mother's leg with us, if you
want—Ellen, I mean—we'll take Ellen with us!"
    Carroll heard a delicate cough behind him as if someone were
clearing their throat. He turned and saw Flower and Acorn and their
six enormous children sitting on the gravel by the barn, next to
his car. Their fur was spiky and wet, and they curled their black
lips at him. Someone in the house laughed. Or perhaps it was the
echo of a splash, down at the pond.
    One of the dogs lifted its head and bayed at him. "Hey," he
said. "Good dog! Good Flower, good Acorn! Rachel, help!"
    She had been hiding behind the front door. She slammed it open
and came out onto the porch. "My mother said I should just let the
dogs eat you," she said. "If you came."
    She looked tired; she wore a shapeless woolen dress that looked
like one of her mother's. If she really was pregnant, Carroll
couldn't see any evidence yet. "Do you always listen to your
mother?" he said. "Don't you love me?"
    "When I was born," she said. "I was a twin. My sister's name was
Ellen. When we were seven years old, she drowned in the pond—I lost
her. Don't you see? People start out losing small things, like
noses. Pretty soon you start losing other things too. It's sort of
an accidental leprosy. If we got married, you'd find out."
    Carroll heard someone coming up the path from the pond, up
through the thin ranks of Christmas trees. The dogs pricked up
their ears, but their black eyes stayed fastened to Carroll. "You'd
better hurry," Rachel said. She escorted him past