Maybe they were deciding if they wanted to let him back out again. What to do with the monster. With Smitty. With his stuff.

Smitty was quiet. Sherman hadn’t heard anything from him when he was upstairs with Glen and Renee. He hoped that Smitty was asleep. Even though he didn’t trust Glen, he hoped that he and Smitty would be able to head out in the morning. He wasn’t sure where to go, but he had seen the scrap of cloth on the way here.

Glen and Renee hadn’t reacted when he mentioned he was looking for his family. The two might have been gone when they came through here. The group could have gone around the house as well, especially if the ones leading knew it was here. That would mean they knew the area pretty well. They weren’t trying to get to the other side of the creek.

Sherman thought about the diagrams he had seen earlier. If he got his pad back and Glen didn’t get into it, he would see if the diagrams showed a place where someone might hide out if they didn’t like his family.

He wasn’t sure what it meant that Glen had the plans on paper. If he was in cahoots with the people who took his family, he might be in deeper trouble than just a couple of people upset with him for breaking into their home.

Glen came back downstairs in jeans and a T-shirt. He opened the cage and motioned Sherman to get out.

“We’re going to get that monster out of here,” he said. He nudged it with his foot.

Sherman didn’t want to look at it.

“I have a tarp around here somewhere,” Glen said. He rummaged under some shelves and pulled out a large piece of thick plastic.

He spread it out beside the monster.

“Help me roll it over onto the plastic.”

Sherman felt the lump in his throat again and the flow of spit wanting to dribble down his chin.

He knelt and grabbed the monster’s feet. They were cold and stiff. Waxy.

The two of them rolled the monster. It was light once they got it unstuck from the floor. It fell onto the plastic with a hollow thud as if it were just a skin stretched over a shell.

Glen folded the plastic over and tied the ends with some twine.

It looked like a big piece of candy to Sherman.

Glen picked up near the monster’s head and pointed to the other end.

“You pick the feet up and pull it up the stairs. I’ll carry the weight.”

Sherman wrapped his arms around the plastic and turned his head away. He didn’t want to smell the thing. The plastic was dry and dusty. A few splotches of blood were near the center where the plastic had gotten close to the body.

He pulled the monster towards the stairs.

The blood on the wall appeared tacky. It had taken on a deeper color as it concentrated.

Carrying something so bulky made him awkward. His elbows stuck out at the sides. If he were built like the monster, he’d have to put red flags on them to warn people about a wide load.

Sherman paused and looked back to make sure he was heading for the stairs.

Glen kept pushing and knocked Sherman off balance.

Before Sherman could catch himself, he was against the wall. There wasn’t much blood here, but there was enough to get some on the sweater from Grandma. He felt his sleeve stiffen where it had touched the blood.

He pulled away and stepped back to the stairs. If he looked closely, he could make out an area shaped like where he had pressed against it; there was no blood on the wall there. Probably just a coincidence. He had landed just right to avoid hitting any of the splatter.

Glen didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to notice.

They dragged the body up the stairs. Sherman had the light end and just needed to make sure they didn’t hit anything.

Renee opened the back door for them.

“I’ll take care of the blood downstairs,” she said.

“We’ll dump it into the creek,” Glen said. “That way, it can wash down to the river. No one will know where it came from. With any luck, it’ll look like its family did it, assuming what you told us is correct.” He looked at Sherman.

Smitty was not happy to see them with the monster, even if it was wrapped in plastic and tied up. He barked and growled at it and bared his teeth.

“It’s dead, Smitty,” Sherman said. “It can’t hurt anyone.”

Smitty didn’t seem to care. The sooner it was gone, the sooner he’d be his normal self again. That was assuming he didn’t mind being around Glen and Renee and that he was feeling better from the fight with the hog. The rain didn’t help any, either. Sherman wasn’t feeling too happy regardless of the monster being there, so he didn’t expect Smitty to be jumping on him and wagging his tail any time soon.

They heaved the plastic-wrapped body over the deck railing and let it drop into the creek. It was too dark to see it in the water, but Sherman heard the splash it made. The roar of the water wasn’t loud, but it was constant. He wanted to hear the splash, to know that it was on its way downstream where it could be someone else’s problem if anyone found it. Otherwise, it might find itself at the bottom of a reservoir, hidden in layers of silt.

Sherman looked at Glen. He seemed relieved as well. One less thing wrong in his home. Now, he’d turn on Sherman and Smitty. Until they were gone, his home wouldn’t be secure.

Smitty came up to Sherman and nudged him. He wanted some attention. Sherman hadn’t seen him for several hours, and there were strange people around. Sherman knelt down and took Smitty’s head in both his hands.

“You’ve been a good dog,” Sherman said, looking into his eyes. “You’ve been very brave, even when it seemed like I had forgotten you.”

“Come on,” Glen said, interrupting them. “We have to get you back to town.”

“You said I could leave in the morning,” Sherman said.

“What I might have said doesn’t matter,” Glen said. “What matters is what I am going to do.”