Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Howler by Jo Bannister

It didn’t look like a haunted house. It looked like a 1950s seaside bungalow, with bow windows and pebble-dash walls. Before the garden ran riot it would have been indistinguishable from all the other seaside bungalows in the area: prim, square, gazing out over the Channel with an air of cosy smugness.

But something happened at Mon Repose which, having no echo at Sans Souci up the lane or Dun Roamin on the corner, lifted it forever out of the seaside bungalow main sequence — for seaside bungalows, like stars, have their natural paths and life spans. The only difference is that stars grow to greatness while bungalows are at their brightest soon after construction and slip slowly down the scale of magnitude until they become weekend cottages for art teachers from Birmingham, the seaside bungalow equivalent of white dwarfdom.

What happened at Mon Repose was, in truth, a common enough little tragedy. A man discovered that his wife loved someone else. His reaction was swift and extreme. When it was learned that Arthur Smith had murdered his wife Amanda, dismembered her, buried her in a series of small holes along the garden perimeter and planted a fast-growing cypress hedge on top of her, a quiver of delicious shock ran through the bungalow community; coupled with relief that they had not after all asked him to be chairman of the Residents’ Association.

He might have got away with it, except for the dog. Everyone in Channel Vista knew about Amanda. Arthur may have been the last person on the south coast to learn about her and Reginald Spink, and when he put it about that she had left him there was much pensive nodding, exchanging of significant glances, and offers of tea.

But the dog kept digging up the cypresses. There was divided opinion afterwards as to whether it was looking for Amanda, accusing her murderer, or just digging for bones. Whatever, its persistence seemed finally to drive Arthur mad. When he pursued it at a dead run down Channel Vista one Sunday morning, swinging a shovel and shouting, “I can dig another hole for you, you bastard!” suspicions were aroused.

The police talked to Arthur, dug in the garden and took away what they found there in plastic bags. They took Arthur as well. But there was no trial. Arthur Smith hanged himself from the bars of his remand cell, using the dog’s lead which he had somehow secreted about his person.

That should have been the end of the matter. There was a brief flurry of publicity in the newspapers, then a member of the government was caught in a bed he should not have been in and Mon Repose dropped out of the news as if it had never been.

The bungalow was sold to a retired grocer and his wife. After one summer they put it on the market again, saying they missed the city. The music teacher who came next found it too remote for his pupils, and the cat fancier said her cats didn’t like it. For a few years it was rented out on weekly lets for the season, then even that small demand dried up. For a decade the bungalow stood empty and the cypresses grew tall around it, hiding it from the road.

Miss Coghlan came upon Channel Vista while on a cycling holiday, discovered Mon Repose, fell in love with it and bought it all in the course of one week in April.

Miss Frank, who taught with her companion at Four Winds Junior School near Slough, thought Miss Coghlan had taken leave of her senses. “But my dear, look at the state of it! It’ll be years before you can move in.”

“Nonsense,” Miss Coghlan said briskly. (No one had ever told her that adults don’t usually address each other quite so dismissively. Of course children don’t like it either, but they can’t do much about it. Adults avoid people who are rude to them, which is why many teachers’ only friends are other teachers.) “It’s Easter now. I’ll get men in right away to do any structural work, they should be through before we break up for the summer. Then I’ll give up my flat and move in here. I’ll put in my notice when we get back, work till July, then hang up my mortarboard. Then I’ll have all the time in the world to decorate and do the garden.”

Miss Frank was almost lost for words. “But — it’s so sudden!”

“It’s nothing of the sort. I’ve been thinking of retiring for a couple of years. If I don’t jump soon I’ll be pushed. A project to sink my teeth into is just the incentive I need.”

“But Joan,” wailed Miss Frank, almost in tears, “to give up your job, and your flat, and move away from the area you know, and your friends... it’s so—”

The word she was looking for was rash, or possibly foolhardy. But Joan Coghlan let a great beam spread across her strong face, sandwiched between the short iron-grey hair and the several chins, and nodded enthusiastically. “Isn’t it?” she agreed. “Absolutely splendid.”

In the event, there was little structural work to be done. Seaside bungalows were built well in the 1950s and Mon Repose remained basically sound despite the years of neglect. Which was just as well, because Miss Coghlan had unexpected difficulties getting men to work there.

The local contractor said he had work coming out of his ears and couldn’t touch Mon Repose before September. She informed him that there’s no such word as “can’t.” Mr. Stone explained that his workmen were already promised to other clients and Miss Coghlan suggested that where there’s a will there’s a way. He lost patience then, told her she could complain to his mother if she wanted but he still couldn’t do anything for her until September. Cycling back to the guesthouse where she and Miss Frank were staying, she pondered — not for the first time — on how unhelpful grownups were.

Just before she had to return to Slough for the new term, Miss Coghlan found a contractor five miles down the coast who could start the repairs immediately. When the solicitor gave her the key to Mon Repose she passed it on to Mr. Wiggins. It did not at that time occur to her to wonder why Mr. Wiggins had so much less work on his books than Mr. Stone.

But later she concluded it was because Mr. Wiggins was an incompetent and his staff were work-shy layabouts. Every time she phoned to check on progress there was none. She accepted the first excuse he gave — that flu had been playing havoc with his schedule. She did not query the second, that the men had downed tools to search for a child lost on the Downs. But when he tried to tell her that he had three men off work attending the funerals of elderly female relatives, she told him tersely that he would attend her at “Mon Repose” at noon on Saturday to show her what had been done and explain the continuing delays.

Mr. Wiggins was waiting when she arrived, an uneasy figure in dungarees and a flat hat framed by the towering cypresses.

The tour of inspection did not take long. Very little work had been done in the weeks since Miss Coghlan gave him the keys. A path had been cleared through the jungle to the front door. A broken window had been removed and a plywood square tacked in its place. Two men could have done it in one not-very-energetic afternoon. The rotten window frame, the rewiring, and the plastering were untouched, and the lease on Miss Coghlan’s flat ran out in three weeks’ time.

“Mr. Wiggins, I don’t know what to say.” She had been a teacher for forty years, had never been lost for words before. “My bags are packed. We agreed I could move in at the end of the month.”

Mr. Wiggins squirmed. “We’ve had — problems.”

“You told me. Flu. Missing children. A surfeit of funerals.”

He had the grace to blush. “Not that. The men—”

“Yes?”

“Don’t like—”

“Don’t like what?”

He finally got it out. “They don’t like being here, Miss Coghlan. They say it’s — weird. Spooky. Because of what happened here.”

Miss Coghlan’s eyebrows climbed like a couple of grey squirrels. “What did happen here?”

So he told her.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or smack his wrist. “Mr. Wiggins! You mean to tell me that a gang of brawny builders are scared to work in a seaside bungalow, in broad daylight, because of something that happened twenty years ago?”

“They say there’s — something here,” he muttered.

“Something?”

“A presence.”

“A presence!” she scoffed. “What, Amanda Smith hopping through the living room with her left leg tucked under her right armpit?”

Mr. Wiggins was embarrassed but dogged. “They say they’ve heard things. Heavy breathing. Groans.”

“They’ve probably been listening to one another!”

“You ask in the village,” he retorted, stung by her attitude. “They know. They know how many people have come here and couldn’t get away quick enough. Ask them about the Howler. They know.”

“Howler?”

He wished he hadn’t said it. His eyes dropped from hers and settled on his reinforced toe-caps. “Well, none of my lads has heard it. You wouldn’t catch them here after dark, which is when it howls. But them as have heard it say it sounds like a soul in torment. They say it’s enough to turn your hair white.”

He looked at her again, apologetic but determined. “Miss Coghlan, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else to do your work. We can’t finish. I know we’re letting you down. I won’t charge for what we’ve done already. But I’d be lying to you if I said my lads would set foot here again.” He would not be argued with but left her standing alone outside her bungalow, astonished and alarmed. Not by the Howler but by the difficulties of renovating Mon Repose when builders’ labourers were afraid to work there.

In despair she returned to Mr. Stone. She rather wished that she had not told him, when they parted, that the devil finds work for idle hands. But if he remembered he did not refer to it. He was a younger man than Mr. Wiggins; she hoped that might incline him to be less impressionable.

He received her courteously enough but held out no false hopes. “I can’t improve on September. In fact, it’ll likely be October now.”

She had already considered her options. She could camp in the bungalow as it stood, waiting meekly for him to come and hoping that word of her dealings with Mr. Wiggins would not reach him. Or she could put her cards on the table.

Miss Coghlan had many faults but cowardice was not one of them. She told him that Mr. Wiggins had been to “Mon Repose,” and why he had left. Her steely gaze challenged him to make the same excuse.

Instead a slow smile broke across his rather craggy face, weathered like the materials he worked with. “You’re kidding!”

Miss Coghlan did not approve of slang. She said sternly, “No, Mr. Stone, I am not joking. That was the reason Mr. Wiggins gave for withdrawing his services. It’s only fair to give you the opportunity to do the same. I should not wish to be responsible for an outbreak of the screaming hab-dabs among your employees.”

Matthew Stone had left school at sixteen, mainly because of teachers like Miss Coghlan, and learnt the building trade at the elbows of successive bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, and electricians. He was competent in every branch of house repair. At the age of twenty-seven he took a night-school course in bookkeeping, then he rented a yard and hung up a sign with his name on it. Five years on he employed bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, and electricians, so his own input was mainly managerial. It was probably inevitable but it didn’t altogether please him. He liked to feel mortar under his fingernails.

He regarded the teacher levelly. “Listen, Miss Coghlan. What I told you was the honest truth. I can’t give you men without taking them away from people who’ve been waiting longer than you have and more patiently. But nobody’s waiting for me. If it’s any use, I’ll come up to the Channel Vista with you and see if we can work something out.”

Relief swept over her. “Good boy,” she beamed, making him wince. He would never know how close he came to having his head patted as well.

He put Miss Coghlan’s bicycle in the back of his pickup. When he parked in Channel Vista they sat a moment, looking at Mon Repose through the new gap in the vegetation. “It doesn’t look like a haunted house,” said Matt Stone.

“Did you know about the Smiths?”

“Oh yes — they were celebrities round here. Small communities like nothing better than a good grisly murder. And when the grocer left there was talk of unquiet spirits and stuff. I was at school then. A few of us sneaked up here to keep watch, but either we were too rowdy for even an unquiet spirit or there was nothing to see. I haven’t heard mention of it for years. I didn’t know anyone still took it seriously.”

“Perhaps only Mr. Wiggins’s workmen do. Perhaps it really was only an excuse to get out of doing the work.”

“Let’s go inside.”

Mon Repose was a box divided down the middle by the hall. On the right were the living room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. On the left were the main bedroom, the second bedroom, and a box room. Above the front door there was a stained-glass fanlight. The fireplace in the living room was framed in imitation Dutch tiles. It wasn’t a grand house. Some of Miss Coghlan’s university-educated colleagues would have said it was a rather common, vulgar little house.

But she liked it, despite all the trouble. Perhaps because it was rather like her: full-bosomed, down-to-earth, practical rather than aesthetic, enduring. It didn’t feel like a house that would allow an unquiet spirit to take advantage of it.

“Which of them is it supposed to be?” She found herself whispering and deliberately spoke up. “Amanda or Arthur?”

Stone shrugged. “Amanda, I suppose. She’s the one who died here.”

“But Arthur killed himself. It could be him.”

Stone grinned at her. “Miss Coghlan, surely you don’t believe there’s a ghost at Mon Repose?”

She frowned. “Of course not, Mr. Stone, I was merely asking, since as a local man I presumed you would know which of the unfortunate Smiths was held responsible for the phenomenon known as the Howler.”

The way she spoke threatened to reduce him to hysterics. He cleared his throat. “I’ll take a look around. See what needs doing first.” After he closed the door Miss Coghlan thought she heard laughter.

She stayed in the living room. It was a tip now, but in a few weeks or months she’d turn it into the kind of home she’d always wanted. The china cabinet would go there, the floral-chintz settee there, and she would look out from her bow window across a dozen Downland acres to the pewter glitter of the Channel. And she thought she would have a pet. The lease of her flat had made it impossible, and anyway she didn’t approve of leaving animals alone all day. But now she could have a cat — better still a dog, that she could walk along the edge of the cliffs when the wind beat in from France.

At first when she heard the noise she assumed Matt Stone was playing silly devils. The little boys in her class were inveterate trick-players, and nothing she had seen of men persuaded her that they matured much as they grew older. She presumed he was breathing heavily at her through the crack of the door, and that his reason for doing so was that he thought it witty. She breathed rather heavily herself and said, “Mr. Stone, have you nothing better to do?”

“Than what?” He was in the front garden and turned at her voice, leaning his elbows on the window sill.

The front door was only a few steps away, the garden a few steps beyond that, but still... Nonplussed, Miss Coghlan shook her head. “Oh — nothing.”

He came back inside, joined her in the living room. He poked at the window frame with a blunt spike. “That’ll have to go. What do you want instead, wood or aluminum?”

While he was looking at her, and her lips were pursed to say “wood,” they both felt it: a quiver in the air, a shock of cold travelling between them, as if Mon Repose had had a close encounter with an iceberg. That was all. Only from the surprise in Miss Coghlan’s face did Stone know that he hadn’t imagined it. “What the hell—?”

She didn’t approve of swearing either. “How odd,” she murmured pointedly.

Stone shrugged off the chill that had stroked him under his shirt. “Er... OK, so that’s the first thing to do. Get a decent window in to keep out the draughts.”

Miss Coghlan said faintly, “Mr. Stone—”

He followed her eyes to the corner of the room. Ten years of dirt and flaking wallpaper had gathered there, and on top — as if set there by a Japanese flower-arranger — was a bone.

“Mr. Stone — you don’t think—?”

He barked a hoarse laugh. “No way. The police took her away, didn’t they, in plastic bags. This house has been empty for years. I expect a fox found its way in.”

The idea appealed to her. Foxes made some very odd sounds, mostly after dark. Perhaps the Howler was only a vixen which had set up home in Mon Repose. “Yes... yes, of course,” she murmured, feeling foolish. “A fox.”

But he could see it was disturbing her, so Stone bent to move the bone. “Christ!” He straightened up abruptly, snatching his hand back, alarm in his eyes and a cold sweat breaking on his skin. Forming on top of his hand was a pattern of four red dots that grew quickly to black bruises. Stone and Miss Coghlan stared at it together.

Then the sensations began in earnest. A cold touch behind the knee of Miss Coghlan’s stocking. A dampness trailed across the back of Stone’s hand. The air in the room moved lightly as if something was passing unseen between them.

And a feeling of deep, unsupportable sorrow clutched each of them by the heart. Sorrow, and grief, and incomprehension. And guilt. The guilt welled like a fountain through all the other sensations, vast and bottomless, mind-sapping, soul-crushing, intolerable. A little moan that was more pity than fear crept from Stone’s lips.

And then it was gone. Miss Coghlan staggered as if a great weight she was holding was suddenly removed. White-faced, their eyes stretched with shock, they stared round the room. But nothing had changed. They were alone, in every sense of the word. The bone atop its mound of rubbish had not moved.

By wordless agreement they moved outside. Dry twigs snapped under their feet as they passed through the hall.

The breeze on the cliffs restored a little of Miss Coghlan’s colour. “Well, Mr. Stone,” she managed at length, “you wanted to see my haunted house. Is there anything you want to go back and see again?”

He gave a gruff chuckle. She might be rude, overbearing, and self-important, but her nerve was steadier than his. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?” she echoed. “I thought we’d agreed. First the window frame, then—”

“You still mean to live here?” His voice cracked.

“I have nowhere else to go. All my savings are in this house. I thought it was a bargain: now I doubt if I could sell it at any price. Either I move in here in three weeks or I try the YWCA.”

If it had been Stone’s choice he’d have thought about it longer. But it wasn’t. The only choice he had was staying or leaving. “We could try the vicar.”

“We?”

He shrugged. “We have an arrangement about making your house habitable. It sure as hell isn’t habitable like this.”

She appreciated his support if not his language. Her eyes thanked him. “I didn’t feel it was — inimical. Did you?”

He combed his memory for what inimical meant, then shook his head. It had felt neither hostile nor evil, just very very unhappy — a soul that quite literally didn’t know where to put itself. Even though it had hurt and frightened him, he had not felt it meant to threaten them. “All the same, you can’t live with that much — misery. We have to try and—”

“Lay it?” she suggested, a faint returning humour lifting one corner of her wide mouth. “Exorcise it?”

“Set it at peace,” he countered, refusing to be baited.

She smiled. “You’re right. Let’s see the vicar.”

As soon as they explained the problem, the vicar warned them that he wouldn’t be able to help. Attempts had been made to exorcise Mon Repose ten years before, as a last resort before it was abandoned. An expert had been summoned, a cleric who evicted unquiet spirits with the practised ease of a bouncer removing rowdy guests from a nightclub. But the presence at Mon Repose defeated his best efforts, slinking back as soon as he had gone on three separate occasions.

“Was he able to explain his failure?” asked Miss Coghlan.

The vicar’s brow creased with remembering. “Not really. The thing didn’t fight him, it just got out of the way while he was there and came back when he left. Like you, he thought it wasn’t an evil thing. No nasty smells at the mention of the Lord’s name or anything like that. It just—” He shrugged. “It didn’t seem interested in what he had to say.”

As they went to leave, Miss Coghlan paused in the doorway. “Which of them is it? Arthur or Amanda?”

The vicar shook his head sadly. “We failed to establish even that. My colleague called it in the names both of the victim and the perpetrator but it wouldn’t answer.” He recalled another detail. “It tried to bar his way with sticks. Wherever he went in the house he found sticks lying in his way. He threw them away but somehow they always found their way back.”

Glancing at her, Matt Stone thought he saw a glimmer of understanding in Miss Coghlan’s eye.

Outside he challenged her. “You’ve got a line on this, haven’t you?”

“Well — perhaps,” she allowed. “I’m not sure. There’s something I can try. If I’m right, we can solve this problem.”

“Where now?”

“I’ve some shopping to do. Then back to the bungalow.”

“It’ll be going dark in an hour.”

“I know. That’s when we can talk to him.”

“Who?” Stone was afraid he already knew.

Miss Coghlan nodded. “The Howler.”

The last of the day was dying out of the sky when Stone parked his pickup in front of Mon Repose. Oyster-coloured streaks on the high clouds pointed westward. But no light fell on the still house, for the moon was not yet risen. A few stars, frosty with distance, watched through breaks in the clouds. When Stone turned off the engine they could hear the wind. They could not be sure if that was all they could hear.

Miss Coghlan led the way, a broad-beamed Amazon in lisle stockings. Stone followed with her shopping bag.

He flashed a torch round the dark rooms. The scene was as they had left it: the dirt, the dry twigs, the bone. The only footprints in the dust were theirs.

From the bag Miss Coghlan drew out two cushions, one of which she passed to Stone. “We may as well be comfortable.”

She sat down like a collapsing marquee. “Oh, Mr. Stone — if it’s all right with you, I think we should have the light out.”

What could he say? — “Certainly not, I’m a bundle of nerves already, if you put the light out I may well cry?” If he had any function here at all it was to protect her: he couldn’t say he was afraid of the dark. Nor was he, normally; but this wasn’t a normal sort of darkness. He turned off the torch.

Softly, in the blackness, Miss Coghlan said, “We may have quite a wait.”

“I’m in no hurry,” muttered Stone.

Half an hour passed, then an hour. Still there was no moon, no light of any kind. Miss Coghlan got cramp. Shifting her position on the cushion on the bare boards, she made enough noise to frighten away any number of Howlers. Stone wondered how long she would wait if it declined to make an appearance.

Then, between one moment and the next, it was with them. There was nothing to see. They didn’t even hear it at first. But the temperature dropped abruptly as it had that afternoon, the air moved fractionally against their cheeks as if something had passed close by them, and Stone felt something like breath and something like a kiss on his sore hand. “Miss Coghlan...”

“Yes, Mr. Stone,” she said quietly. “I know.” He marvelled at the massive calm in her voice. He was rigid with tension, the hairs standing up on his neck and his arms, his skin suddenly cool with sweat. “It’s all right.” Something in her tone made him think she wasn’t talking only to him.

Then in the darkness the sounds began. Heavy breathing that rose quickly to a rapid pant. A clicking on the floorboards. A soft plaintive whine like a child crying. And through it all came pouring the grief and the terrible guilt, the timeless damnation of blame, the overarching wretchedness. Miss Coghlan had not known that such profound, excoriating misery could exist even for a moment. The idea of it persisting eternally in a single lost soul appalled her. She whispered, “Please — it’s all right—”

But the soft whine grew first to a plangent keening, so close beside them that it set their skin crawling and their teeth on edge, and then to the howling which had given the thing its name. The disembodied voice in the darkness soared in a crescendo of almost tangible despair, inconsolable arpeggios of remorse and regret playing over the dominant theme of grief. The sound filled the room, filled the house, battered down on the crouched listeners in a Niagara of torment.

Gradually then the sounds of despair began to abate, the terrible wailing to break as if for breath. Miss Coghlan began to punctuate the gaps with her own voice, her firm-but-kind schoolmarm’s voice, reassuring, confident, promising order.

“It’s all right,” she said again, somehow keeping her tone low, even, and rhythmical. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re not to blame for what happened. None of it was your fault.

“Mummy and Daddy fell out. Mummy was a bad girl and Daddy got cross. Sometimes cross people do things they don’t mean to. I know you loved them both, and they both loved you. Even when Daddy was cross with you, it was more because of what he’d done than what you’d done. He was very unhappy.

“He blamed you for giving him away, didn’t he? But you didn’t mean to. It was your nature to dig in the garden. If he’d thought, he’d have known that. Anyway, he couldn’t have lived with what he’d done even if no one ever found out. He chose to die for what he did to Mummy. He’d have done the same thing at home if he hadn’t been taken to prison. You couldn’t have stopped him. If he hadn’t used the lead he’d have used something else.”

Stone, listening to the rhythmical sing-song of the teacher’s voice, his flesh alive with the soft keen that the unearthly howling had sunk to, finally understood. The Howler was — of course. That was why Miss Coghlan had bought what she had, which at the time had made him doubt her sanity.

As if she read his mind, her broad hands moved to the shopping bag. “I’ve brought some things for you.” Unseen in the dark, she laid them out on the floor. “There’s a nice bit of steak. There’s a tennis ball, and an old slipper of mine — it’s not the same as one of Mummy’s, I know, but you’re very welcome to it. And there’s this.” Chain jangled in the dark. “Daddy took yours, didn’t he? Never mind, you’ll like this one. I thought we could bury them in the garden, so you’ll know where they are and you can come for them any time you’re lonely.

“It’s bedtime now. You haven’t had much rest these last twenty years, have you? Never mind, it’s all over. You’re a good boy, you mustn’t blame yourself for what happened anymore. Go to sleep; and if you’re still feeling bad tomorrow come back and we’ll talk some more. I’m going to be here from now on and you’re always welcome. I’d like to have a dog about the place.”

Stone dug a hole in the garden and Miss Coghlan carefully put the contents of the bag in the bottom. She said softly, “If I knew where your body was I could bring it here too. But I don’t know where you died. I hope these will serve.”

“It’s — quieter, isn’t it?” murmured Stone, feeling the difference like a fading electricity.

The moon had risen while he was digging. He saw Miss Coghlan smile. “Yes. I think he’s at peace now.”

They walked back to the pickup. The Channel moved below them like a sleeper under silk.

“How did you know it was the dog?”

“I didn’t know,” she said, “but I began to suspect. It didn’t answer to either Arthur or Amanda, and it wasn’t interested in the exorcist’s homilies. The Church can’t have it both ways: if animals have no souls they can’t be expected to acknowledge the Lord’s name.

“That poor dog had the whole burden of what happened here dumped on him. The master he loved murdered the mistress he loved in the house he loved. When instinct drove him to dig her up, his master tried to kill him. Then he used the dog’s lead to end his own life. The poor creature has spent the last twenty years not understanding why his world fell apart but firmly believing it was his fault. Of course he howled.”

“If you’d been wrong — if you’d found yourself trying to appease something evil with half a pound of steak and an old slipper—!”

“Oh, I was pretty sure by then,” said Miss Coghlan, growing smug now the drama was over and everything was going to be all right. “These things we felt and heard — the heavy breathing was a dog panting, the cold touch was his nose — and he bit you when you went to take his bone. Then he licked you to say sorry.”

“And dogs howl when they’re unhappy.” Stone frowned. “What was that clicking sound?”

“Toenails on the floorboards. But it was the sticks that clinched it.”

He stared at her. “Sticks?”

“You remember what the vicar said: that the exorcist couldn’t move for the sticks the Howler put in front of him. Then he threw them away but they kept reappearing.” She laughed, a deep ringing tone like a bell. “The poor dog wanted someone to play with him. The exorcist threw the sticks away and the dog brought them back.”