The Darkest Evening of the Year. Dean Koontz

permission, which was given with the phrase Let’s bundle.

      Nickie did not know those words, but Fred and Ethel rose from their sheepskin berths in expectation of a formal invitation, ears raised, alert.

      Wrung limp by recent events, Amy needed rest; and this would not be the first time that elusive sleep had come to her more easily when she nestled down in the security of the pack.

      “Okay, kids,” she said. “Let’s bundle.”

      Ethel sprinted three steps, sprang, and Fred followed. On the bed, assessing the comfort of the mattress, the dogs turned, turned, turned, like cogs in a clockworks, then curled, dropped, and settled with sighs of satisfaction.

      Remaining bedside with a mouthful of slippers, Nickie stared expectantly at her new master.

      “Give,” said Amy, and the golden obeyed, relinquishing her prize.

      Amy put the slippers on the floor beside the bed.

      Nickie picked them up and offered them again.

      “You want me to go somewhere?” Amy asked.

      The dog’s large dark-brown eyes were as expressive as those of any human being. Amy liked many things about the appearance of this breed, but nothing more than their beautiful eyes.

      “You don’t need to go out. You pottied when we came home.”

      The beauty of a retriever’s eyes is matched by the intelligence so evident in them. Sometimes, as now, dogs seemed intent upon conveying complex thoughts by an exertion of sheer will, striving to compensate for their lack of language with a directness of gaze and concentration.

      “Give,” she said, and again Nickie obeyed.

      Confident that repetition would impress upon the pooch that the slippers belonged where she put them, Amy leaned over the edge of the bed and returned them to the floor.

      At once, Nickie snatched them up and offered them again.

      “If this is a fashion judgment,” Amy said, “you’re wrong. These are lovely slippers, and I’m not getting rid of them.”

      Chin on her paws, Ethel watched with interest. Chin on Ethel’s head, Fred watched from a higher elevation.

      Like children, dogs want discipline and are most secure when they have rules to live by. The happiest dogs are those with gentle masters who quietly but firmly demand respect.

      Nevertheless, in dog training as in war, the better part of valor can be discretion.

      This time, when Amy took possession of the slippers, she tucked them under her pillows.

      Nickie regarded this development with surprise and then grinned, perhaps in triumph.

      “Don’t think for a second this means I’m going to be on the dog end of the leash.” She patted the mattress beside her. “Nickie, up.”

      Either the retriever understood the command itself or the implication of the gesture. She sprang over Amy and onto the bed.

      Fred took his chin off Ethel’s head, and Ethel closed her eyes, and as the other kids had done, Nickie wound herself down into a cozy sleeping posture.

      All the mounded fur and the sweet faces inspired a smile, and Amy sighed as the dogs had done when they had settled for the night.

      To ensure that the bungalow remained a hair-free zone, she combed and brushed each dog for thirty minutes every morning, for another ten minutes every evening, and she vacuumed all the floors once a day. Nickie would add to the work load—and be worth every minute of it.

      When Amy switched off the lamp, she felt weightless, afloat on a rising sea of sleep, into which she began dreamily to sink.

      She was hooked and reeled back by a line cast from the shores of memory: I have to wear slippers to bed so I won’t be walking barefoot through the woods in my dream.

      Amy’s eyes opened from darkness to darkness, and for a moment she could not breathe, as if the past were a drowning flood that filled her throat and lungs.

      No. The game with the slippers could not have been for the purpose of reminding her of that long-ago conversation about dream-walking in the woods.

      This new dog was just a dog, nothing more. In the storms of this world, a way forward can always be found, but there is no way back either to a time of peace or to a time of tempest.

      To the observant, all dogs have an air of mystery, an inner life deeper than science will concede, but whatever the true nature of their minds or the condition of their souls, they are limited to the wisdom of their kind, and each is shaped by the experiences of its one life.

      Nevertheless, the slippers now under her pillow reminded her of another pair of slippers, and the recollected words replayed in her mind: I have to wear slippers to bed so I won’t be walking barefoot through the woods in my dream.

      Ethel had begun to snore softly. Fred was a quiet sleeper except when he dreamed of chasing or of being chased.

      The longer Amy lay listening for Nickie’s rhythmic breathing, the more she began to suspect that the dog was awake, and not just awake but also watching her in the dark.

      Although Amy’s weariness did not abate, the possibility of sleep receded from her.

      At last, unable to stifle her curiosity any longer, she reached out to where the dog was curled, expecting that her suspicion would not be confirmed, that Nickie would be fully settled.

      Instead, in the gloom, her hand found the burly head, which was in fact raised and turned toward her, as if the dog were a sentinel on duty.

      Holding its left ear, she gently massaged the tragus with her thumb, while her fingertips rubbed the back of the ear where it met the skull. If anything would cause a dog to purr like a cat, this was it, and Nickie submitted to the attention with palpable pleasure.

      After a while, the golden lowered her head, resting her chin on Amy’s abdomen.

      I have to wear slippers to bed so I won’t be walking barefoot through the woods in my dream.

      In self-defense, Amy had long ago raised the drawbridge between these memories and her heart, but now they swam across the moat.

       If it’s just a dream woods, why wouldn’t the ground be soft?

      It’s soft but it’s cold.

       It’s a winter woods, is it?

      Uh-huh. Lots of snow.

      So dream yourself a summer woods.

      I like the snow.

      Then maybe you should wear boots to bed.

      Maybe I should.

      And thick woolen socks and long johns.

      As Amy’s heart began to race, she tried to shut out the voices in her mind. But her heart pounded like a fist on a door: memory demanding an audience.

      She petted the furry head resting on her abdomen and, as defense against memories too terrible to revisit, she instead summoned into mind the many dogs that she had rescued, the abused and abandoned dogs, hundreds over the years. Victims of human indifference, of human cruelty, they had been physically and emotionally broken when they came to her, but so often they had been restored in body and mind, made jubilant again, brought back to golden glory.

      She lived for the dogs.

      In the dark she murmured lines from a poem by Robert Frost, which in grim times had sustained her: “‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.’”

      Head resting on Amy’s abdomen, Nickie dozed.

      Now