Since the dog had dug up those human bones in the open field an hour before, he had been acting like a wolf. He again loped away from little Timmy Meyers, luring the boy deeper and deeper into the night.

"Dish! You get back here, now! Dish! Diiiiiiishhh!"

Dark as it was, Timmy Meyers moved on through the wood, panting, pleading for the animal to return when he suddenly came to a clearing. Dish crouched on the other side at the edge of the woods, glaring at him, his eyes shining silver in the moonlight, his lips pulled back in a grotesque snarl, baring teeth and gums. He didn't even look like Dish anymore. And there again was that uncharacteristic wolf's growl that seemed to bubble up and curl out from his gut.

Timmy feared the worst, that his friend of so many years was ill with something awful--rabies or something. Why else would he snap and bark and snarl at Timmy and the others? It all had to do with the bones.

Earlier, the boys had followed Dish to a hole he had begun digging feverishly and when they had seen the unearthed treasure of bones, they had gone a little crazy, all of them. They had dug out, kicked around, and toyed with what the earth had coughed up for some time before Dish began growling, snarling, and biting.

Then the others had run home, leaving him alone to find Dish. That had been back at the weed patch where he had fought with the other boys. He wondered momentarily how far from that spot he had come; he wondered how far from home he was. He wondered how late it was and what his parents would do when he finally got home, way past dinner and curfew. But he couldn't just leave Dish, not like this, could he?

It was their fault. The other boys had taunted Timmy with the skull of some dead person that they'd dredged up when Dish had sniffed out the ugly find. They'd scared Timmy, made him back off and fall and look stupid and frightened. Dish was mad at them--not at Timmy--when he began to growl and snap like a wolf, just before running off.

"Dish, Dish, boy, come here.... Come on," Timmy now said. "It's all right, boy."

But it wasn't all right, because Dish began an ear-splitting, spleen-numbing wail that shook Timmy to his core, telling him that the dog was dangerous--that it was no longer Dish but something else, some alien creature in Dish's form.

The dog got up and made a step toward Timmy whose twelfth birthday was coming day after tomorrow. Timmy saw a slick, slimy substance draining down Dish's neck and front. In the moonlight it looked purple, but Timmy knew it was blood. Dish was hurt badly.

Timmy's concern for himself instantly melted and he went to his knees, opening his arms for his longtime friend to enter there. Dish took a tentative step toward him, his growl swallowing into a whine that almost sounded like the old Dish. But at the same instant, something dark and strange-smelling came down over Dish and made the dog disappear.

Timmy's heart almost stopped when he saw the black of sky cover the dog. Dish was simply swallowed up by the night, gone. Timmy got to his feet and raced to the spot where Dish had been standing. But he was gone.

Then he felt a drop of rain patter on his shoulder, then his cheek--except that it smelled twice as strong as the normal smell of a thick copper rain--and when he went to touch the rain, he felt the warmth. It was raining blood.

Timmy looked up, and in that instant of looking he saw two things: death in the form of blackness that blotted out a good section of the trunk of the tree, and Dish's lifeless body stretched raglike across a branch.

Fear turned Timmy to stone. The black tarlike mass engulfing the tree was feeding on Dish's slashed neck; suddenly it looked down with two piercing, fantastic, and bulging eyes at Timmy, transfixing him there.

It never let Timmy free from that moment on; it held him with its powerful, hypnotic gaze--the gaze of light at the center of total darkness. The creature held onto the tree, upside down, suspended magically there, until it swooped down. With a mild, interesting flutter-sound, like an army of moths, it came to cover Timmy in its darkness and enfold him in its bony, flinty-haired wings.

The child's wail began as a terrified plea and soon turned into a wail of animal madness--the squeal of a trapped, tormented boar. Or was that the crazed killer giving voice to his own delight? It was then that Timmy, while unable to recall his name or what he was, suddenly felt an attachment--a need--for the thing at his throat. Without it--should it remove itself from his throat--Timmy knew that he'd be dead, that all his blood would drain away like Dish's was doing.

In fact, he felt closer to it than he ever had to Dish. Timmy somehow knew that it knew; he had somehow communicated this to the monster that folded him into a fetal position and rocked him and held him by his feet, swinging safely with him from the limb so strong it defied gravity.

Monster. He loved it. He had to love it. Even as it was drawing his life away. For it made promises in his mind, positing them there for future reference, telling him that it loved him, too....