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It’s a bad dream.

Danny’s had a few before, everyone has a nightmare from time to time, but this is the worst one ever.

Nothing bad is happening at first, but that doesn’t help; the sense of impending doom is so strong it’s an actual taste in his mouth, like sucking on a clump of pennies.

He’s walking along the shoulder of a dirt road that’s been packed and oiled to keep the dust down.

It’s night.

A quarter moon has just risen.

To Danny it looks like a sideways grin.

Or a sneer.

He passes a sign reading COUNTY ROAD F, only theO and the Y have been spraypainted over, and UCK has been crammed in to the right of the F, so the sign now reads CUNT ROAD FUCK.

There are a couple of bullet holes for good measure.

There’s corn on both sides of the road, not as high as an elephant’s eye but maybe four feet, suggesting it’s early summer.

County Road F runs dead straight up a mild rise (in Kansas most rises are mild).

At the top is a black bulk of a building that fills Danny with unreasoning horror.

Some tin thing is goingtinka-tinka-tinka.

He wants to stop, wants nothing to do with that square black bulk, but his legs carry him on.

There’s no stopping them.

He’s not in control.

A breeze gives the corn a bonelike rattle.

It’s chilly on his cheeks and forehead and he realizes he’s sweating.

Sweating in a dream!

When he gets to the top of the rise (calling it “a crest” would just be stupid), there’s enough light to see the sign on the cinderblock building reads HILLTOP TEXACO.

In front are two cracked concrete islands where gasoline pumps once stood.

Thetinka-tinka-tinka sound is coming from rusty signs on a pole out front.

One reads REG $1.99, one reads MID $2.19, and the one on the bottom reads HI-TEST $2.49.

Nothing here to worry about, Danny thinks, nothing here to be afraid of.

And he’s not worried.

He’s not afraid.

Terrified is what he is.

Tinka-tinka-tinka go the signs advertising long-gone gas prices.

The big office window is broken, ditto the glass in the door, but Danny can see weeds growing up around the shards reflecting the moonlight and knows that it’s been awhile since they were broken.

The vandals—bored country kids, most likely—have had their fun and moved on.

Danny moves on, too.

Around the side of the abandoned station.

Doesn’t want to; has to.

He’s not in control.

Now he hears something else: scratching and panting.

I don’t want to see this, he thinks.

If spoken aloud, the thought would have come out as a moan.

He goes around the side, kicking a couple of empty motor oil cans (Havoline, the Texaco brand) out of his way.

There’s a rusty metal trash barrel, overturned and spilling more cans and Coors bottles and whatever paper trash hasn’t blown away.

Behind the station there’s a mangy mongrel dog digging at the oil-stained earth.

It hears Danny and looks around, its eyes silver circles in the moonlight.

It wrinkles back its snout and gives a growl that can mean only one thing:mine, mine.

“That’s not for you,” Danny says, thinkingI wish it wasn’t for me, either, but I think it is.

The dog lowers its haunches as if to spring, but Danny’s not afraid (not of the mutt, anyway).

He’s a town man these days, but he grew up in rural Colorado where there were dogs everywhere and he knows an empty threat when he faces one.

He bends and picks up an empty oil can, the dream so real, sodetailed, he can feel the scrim of leftover grease down the side.

He doesn’t even have to throw it; raising it is enough.

The dog turns tail and leaves at a limping run—either something wrong with one of its back legs or a split pad on one of its paws.

Danny’s feet carry him forward.

He sees that the dog has scratched a hand and part of a forearm out of the ground.

Two of the fingers have been stripped to the bone.

The fleshy part of the palm is also gone, now in the dog’s belly.

Around the wrist—inedible, and thus of no use to a hungry dog—is a charm bracelet.

Danny draws in a breath and opens his mouth and