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

the dogs to his
car.
    "I'm going to come back."
    "That's not a good idea," she said. The dogs watched him leave,
crowding close around her, their black tails whipping excitedly. He
went home and in a very bad temper, he picked up the quilt to
inspect it. He was looking for the black hairs he had seen that
morning. But of course there weren't any.
    The next day he went back to the library. He was lifting books
out of the overnight collection box, when he felt something that
was neither rectangular nor flat. It was covered in velvety fur,
and damp. He felt warm breath steaming on his hand. It twisted away
when he tried to pick it up, and when he reached out for it again,
it snarled at him.
    He backed away from the collection box, and a long black dog
wriggled out of the box after him. Two students stopped to watch
what was happening. "Go get Mr. Cassatti, please," Carroll said to
one of them. "His office is around the corner."
    The dog approached him. Its ears were laid back flat against its
skull and its neck moved like a snake.
    "Good dog?" Carroll said, and held out his hand. "Flower?" The
dog lunged forward and, snapping its jaws shut, bit off his pinky
just below the fingernail.
    The student screamed. Carroll stood still and looked down at his
right hand, which was slowly leaking blood. The sound that the
dog's jaw had made as it severed his finger had been crisp and
businesslike. The dog stared at Carroll in a way that reminded him
of Rachel's stare. "Give me back my finger," Carroll said.
    The dog growled and backed away. "We have to catch it," the
student said. "So they can reattach your finger. Shit, what if it
has rabies?"
    Mr. Cassatti appeared, carrying a large flat atlas, extended
like a shield. "Someone said that there was a dog in the library,"
he said.
    "In the corner over there," Carroll said. "It bit off my
finger." He held up his hand for Mr. Cassatti to see, but Mr.
Cassatti was looking towards the corner and shaking his head.
    He said, "I don't see a dog."
    The two students hovered, loudly insisting that they had both
seen the dog a moment ago, while Mr. Cassatti tended to Carroll.
The floor in the corner was sticky and wet, as if someone had
spilled a Coke. There was no sign of the dog.
    Mr. Cassatti took Carroll to the hospital, where the doctor at
the hospital gave him a shot of codeine, and tried to convince him
that it would be a simple matter to reattach the fingertip. "How?"
Mr. Cassatti said. "He says the dog ran away with it."
    "What dog?" the doctor asked.
    "It was bitten off by a dog," Carroll told the doctor.
    The doctor raised his eyebrows. "A dog in a library? This looks
like he stuck his finger under a paper cutter. The cut is too
tidy—a dog bite would be a mess. Didn't anyone bring the
finger?"
    "The dog ate it," Carroll said. "Mrs. Rook said the dog would
eat me, but it stopped. I don't think it liked the way I
tasted."
    Mr. Cassatti and the doctor went out into the hall to discuss
something. Carroll stood at the door and waited until they had
turned towards the nurses' station. He opened the door and snuck
down the hallway in the opposite direction and out of the hospital.
It was a little hard, walking on the ground—the codeine seemed to
affect gravity. When he walked, he bounced. When walking got too
difficult, he climbed in a taxi and gave the driver the address of
the Rook farm.
    His hand didn't hurt at all; he tried to remember this, so he
could tell Rachel. They had bound up his hand in white gauze
bandages, and it looked like someone else's hand entirely. Under
the white bandages, his hand was pleasantly warm. His skin felt
stretched, tight and thin as a rubber glove. He felt much lighter:
it might take a while, but he thought he could get the hang of
losing things; it seemed to come as easily to him as everything
else did.
    Carroll thought maybe Rachel and he would get married down by
the pond, beneath the new leaves of the six o'clock oak tree. Mr.
Rook could wear his most