Shadow rose from the porch and barked to be let in. He used to scratch, but it had come to be that his bad leg hurt when he tried to use it for that, and it was unable to hold his weight so that he might use the other leg. And so he had taken to barking. No one gave him a hard time about it.
Aunt Tracy opened the door for him. Shadow looked up at her, hesitating to step through. He wasn't sure what it was that was bothering him. He knew Tracy and liked her. She looked a lot like Laura, her sister. Maybe it was just because she was another unusual thing in his universe. After all, she didn't live here. But there was something... off. She hadn't sounded right when she'd apologized for stepping on him, and it hadn't felt right when she petted him afterword. And it still bothered him how she'd come to be downstairs in the first place. Shadow shook off his hesitation and walked through the door.
Tracy was barefoot now, and it looked like she had recently painted her toenails. She and Hope frequently did that when she stayed over. Mom and Dad weren't much for that sort of thing, especially as Hope was just a child. The smell of polish was very strong, just barely dry. Shadow shied away from it, hating the smell as all dogs do.
He traipsed into the kitchen and drank from the water bowl there, then paced into the living room, where he found Sassy napping on the couch. He found Chance upstairs, lying near Jamie, who was busily drawing something while Uncle Jim looked on. Peter was in his own room, reading a book. And Hope was, sure enough sitting on her bed admiring the bright polish on her toes. Tracy had gone upstairs before Shadow and was sitting with Hope and talking to her.
Shadow walked up and down the hall for a time, before something struck him. He turned towards the guest bedroom. The door was closed, and latched. Small obstacle for a dog such as Shadow. He took the knob precisely in his mouth and rotated his head to the side, stepping forward and pushing the door in as he did so. He released the knob and shoved the door the rest of the way open with his nose.
He padded into the room and took stock of the open travel bags on the floor, the slippers on either side of the guest bed. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. He'd know it when he found it, he had confidence in that fact. He snuffled through the bags, finding little out of the ordinary. Then he examined the slippers, which smelled of Jim and Tracy's house, just like the bags did. The bed smelled like the two of them, but that was to be expected, just like the rest of it.
Shadow was about to give up on the notion when he chanced to walk past Tracy's tennis shoes, which were lying in the middle of the floor. Something was... off about them. The bottom of each shoe was dirty, not a surprise. Tracy often went jogging in the morning, even when she was staying over here, using the human paths through the woods. But there was something else... something...
Shadow leaped back with a shocked growl, bumbling into the foot of the bed as a result. His claws slipped and he fell into a sit on his left hip. But in all that, he didn't take his eyes off the shoes, and the snarl didn't leave his face. He sat still for a minute, thinking, staring at the shoes, snarling at them as if they were living things. Then he got up, went over to them and proceeded to do something which he had not, in his blameless life, ever done.
He overturned one of the shoes with his snout, and then lay down. Pinning the object with a paw, he began to gnaw on the heel of the shoe. Slowly, but steadily, his age-worn teeth ground into the rubber heel of the shoe as they might into a bone.
He kept at it for a few minutes then suddenly dropped the shoe and stood up, as though abruptly realizing the crime he was committing. He nudged the shoe upright with his nose, as though attempting to conceal his sin. And then he left the room, walking as only a guilt wracked dog can, his head seemingly weighed down by his conscience.
The truest sign of an honest dog is that when he has done wrong, and knows it, he makes no attempt to hide his guilt. If his wrong is discovered, the honest dog will not hide or cower, but come unbidden and hang his head, standing before his master abashed and heartsick at the pain he has inflicted on his beloved human by his own action.
Shadow knew the penalty for breaking the rules of the house as well as any dog can, and he had broken none of them since his days as a puppy, transgressions he had long since forgotten. He knew he might find himself banished to the outdoors. That he would lose the privilege of roaming the house freely. But, most of all, he knew that Peter would be disappointed in him. And that hurt worse than anything.
Guiltily, the old dog walked into Peter's room. He paused in the doorway when Peter looked up from his book. Shadow averted his eyes and walked to the side of the bed, where he lay down with a heavy sigh and waited for Peter to ask him what he'd done, to go looking for the damage he'd inflicted.
But Peter didn't see the guilt in the dog's eyes. He mistakenly thought it was another sign of illness. Shadow wasn't eating, he wasn't playing, he wasn't sleeping at the foot of Peter's bed where he belonged, and now he seemed to be having trouble moving at all. Something was wrong with his dog, and it seemed to have happened too suddenly to be just another side effect of the dog's age. He resolved to tell his parents about it when he called them this evening, and then convince them to take the dog to the vet when they got back on Monday. It never occurred to him that Shadow might have chewed a shoe, the very idea was unthinkable. Not with his track record. Chance maybe, though he was getting better about it. Shadow, never.
When Peter didn't accuse him of anything, Shadow felt even worse. He felt as though he were deliberately deceiving his boy, pretending he was a good dog when he really wasn't. He lay there feeling miserably unhappy for a long time. Eventually, however, he fell asleep.
But his dreams were not the peaceful dreams he normally had. They were dark and frightening, though he wasn't sure why. They were dreams of darkness, of blood, of death. Sometimes he was running through the forest, hunger growling in his belly as he sought prey. Other times, he was fleeing as fast as his legs could carry him, leaping fallen logs and boulders, jumping fences towards the sky, never gaining any distance between himself and what chased him. He didn't know what it was, but he could feel its rancid breath hot on his hindquarters, hear its deathless scream as it bayed at the moon. In still other dreams, he was hiding, lying in wait for he knew not what. Death clung to every dream, nameless terror whose shape and form were indistinct, yet no less hideous and harrowing for it.
Shadow awoke with a low growl, feeling more distressed than before. At first, he wasn't sure what had woken him. But then he realized it was someone yelling. At first he was confused, then he realized it was Tracy, shouting from her bedroom.
"Chance! What have you done!?"
Shadow got up and peered through the doorway. Chance, bewildered by the angry tone of Tracy's voice, was slinking up the stairs. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, and made as if to go back down.
"CHANCE!" the sharp voice halted him and Chance crept down the hall.
It was one thing to be caught doing something wrong, but Chance had no idea why he was being yelled at, for he had not done anything. Tail tucked submissively, he went into the guest bedroom, deeply frightened of what sounded to him like a random outburst of anger directed at him for no reason. Shadow followed and watched the scene play out. Chance crouched before Tracy, looking up to her and wagging his tucked tail appeasingly.
"Did you chew these shoes?" Tracy waved the incriminating tennis shoe in the dog's face.
Chance's eyes widened. Maybe a human didn't know one bite from another, but Chance couldn't have mistaken the tell-tale scent of Shadow and shape of his tooth marks if he'd tried. He looked over his shoulder at Shadow, who was gazing at him with his head down, his nose almost touching the floor. Shadow wouldn't meet his shocked gaze.
"DID you chew these shoes!?" Tracy repeated fiercely.
Chance looked back at her, then at the shoes, then at Shadow. Tracy mistook this action for guilt. Like Peter, it never entered her thoughts that Shadow would even think of doing such a thing. And the culprit was obviously a dog. Therefore, Chance took the blame. Because he'd made such a habit of destruction in the past, he took more than his share.
"BAD DOG!"
Chance cringed at the hated words, and slowly lowered himself to the floor. He rolled over onto his back and waved his forepaws, attempting to distract Tracy from the matter. He knew what he was supposed to have done, but he hadn't done it, and wasn't about to accept punishment if he could get out of it. So he tried the "cute" look. He'd played that card too many times, and Tracy was having none of it.
"OUT!" Tracy ordered, pointing her finger.
Chance slunk from the room, pausing at the door to look over his shoulder balefully. Tracy shoved him on with her foot and repeated the word "out". Chance did as she ordered, slithering down the stairs as if his body were made of jelly, creeping to the door and waiting for Tracy to get there and open it. Resentfully, he looked up the stairs where Shadow was watching. Then he oozed out the door, which slammed behind him. He was hurt that he'd been punished for something he hadn't done, and angry that Shadow had allowed it to happen. Shadow was the guilty one, not him. He should have admitted to it.
Tracy, meanwhile, was showing the damaged shoe to Jim.
"He didn't do much damage this time, I can still use them," she was saying, "But I think we'll have to keep that room locked from now on when we visit. That dog has destroyed more clothes..." she trailed off, shaking her head.
She didn't notice the guilty look in Shadow's eyes when she passed him on the stairs. The old dog lay miserably at the head of the stairs, shudders running up and down his spine. He was the bad dog, not Chance. But he had no choice. It had to be Chance, not him. He couldn't run like Chance could.
But he had to let Chance know what was going on. To that end, he sought out Sassy, who could get in and out by using Hope's window, which was always left open enough that the cat could slip out onto the roof, hop to a nearby tree branch and then climb down. More often, she used this to get into the house if she stayed out late at night.
Shadow would now employ her to let Chance know what was expected of him. He only hoped that it would work out like he'd planned. Otherwise, they were all in trouble. This plan of his could all too easily be the end of Chance.