Kids say and do the darndest things. It’s in their nature. It’s their world, and things like consequence was below them just as the ground was. But that never stopped us adults from feeling mortified at what they were up to or what they had to say.
“Dog Man!” Jordan exclaimed one day.
We were camping. It was a beautiful spot nestled in the mountains. My wife picked the place, saying her Dad once took her when she was a kid. I was a sucker for tradition, and when the opportunity revealed itself through a gap in work days, we just had to go.
The trees shivered against the gentle breeze, their leaves shimmering shades of lemon and evergreen. It was cold, but a good kind of cold—the kind that filled your lungs with crisp life. It was Jordan’s first time camping, and we never could imagine how happy a kid like him would be.
“Dog Man!”
“What’s that?” I asked. It was a few hours since we arrived. I was fixing up the tent, making sure it was secure, when he suddenly pulled at my jacket and pointed to somewhere between the trees.
“He’s there,” Jordan said, a toothy smile plastered on his round face. I turned and looked, expecting some kind of coyote or something. But there was nothing. Our research said that the only kind of wildlife we had to worry about were bears, but we were miles away from their territory, and even those were marked with large signs. Still, it kind of spooked me. So I played along.
“Oh yeah? What’s he doing?” I asked, half-mindedly. I was focused on the tent. Rain was something we expected, and we didn’t want our tent washed away if there was one.
“Just watching,” he said, matter of factly.
That was it. To be honest, I was glad. Kids have wild imaginations. For him to say that a dog-man hybrid was just watching us was, in a weird way, relieving. When I was his age, I saw faces in the sidewalk blowing raspberries at passersby.
I smiled and said, “Well, ask him if he could lend a hand. We still have a lot of work to do. Come on.”
I pulled Jordan away to set up a table where we’d have lunch. It was a plastic fold-away that Kate bought online. In the time we put it up, Jordan kept his attention fixed to the same spot. I couldn’t help but look at where he was looking. There really was nothing there. Just dead leaves on the forest floor in between some trees. He wasn’t scared nor happy to see whatever he saw, just amused. I couldn’t help but think he was keeping an eye on it.
“Is he still watching?” I asked him.
Jordan nodded his head. I was curious, so I asked him what he looked like.
“He’s a dog, but also a man.”
I chuckled. The image that materialized in my head was of a middle-aged man wearing an oversized dog suit, his face popping out through a hole. Maybe he saw it in some cartoons? But what kind of cartoons, I had no idea. But Jordan wasn’t finished.
“He’s got long black hair…he’s on his hands and he has a long neck.”
The guy in a dog-suit evaporated. He said hands, not paws. It was creepy, yet I never really thought anything of it. Again, Jordan was a kid. This was normal. Kate came back from her scouting, and in a few minutes, we dug into the lunches we packed. Jordan’s attention was immediately diverted towards some chicken wings, but I couldn’t help but glance over to the side, between the trees, every now and then.
The next morning, it rained, and when we woke up, Jordan was gone.
I woke up to the sound of the tent flaps whipping wildly against the wind. The tent was open, and I quickly reached beside me where Jordan slept. He wasn’t there.
I woke my wife up. My heart hammered between my ears.
“What, what’s happening?” Kate said, waking up with a start.
“Jordan’s gone.”
Both of us got into our jackets in less than a minute. We picked up some flashlights and practically flew out of the tent. In less than five minutes, we were out in the woods, the rain crashing down from the sky, our voices contending against it to scream our kid’s name.
“Jordan! Jordan!” I yelled. A million thoughts raced through my head, a million possibilities. Surely, he wasn’t too far. We were only a mile away from the main road. He knew where the car was. Did he have his compass with him? There weren’t any cliffs or ditches nearby, that was something Kate made sure of. Immediately, I tried to remember what he wore. It was a neon-green jacket, so we’d be able to spot him on the horizon if we had to. I blew on a whistle, hoping he would recognize the high-pitched sound.
I saw Kate’s orange parka and ran after her.
“Nothing?” I said, breathlessly.
“Oh God. Aaron, where is he?” she asked before falling on my shoulder. I held her tight, and promised we’d find him.
“He’s half-blind. He must be cold. All this rain. Oh God…”
I held her tighter and promised over and over again.
Half an hour later, Search and Rescue arrived. It was still raining hard then. They asked us a few questions before sending out teams to sweep up north in a cone, complete with dogs and loudspeakers. It didn’t help with our anxiety. One of the rangers stopped us from helping, saying we were in the rain for too long. We didn’t care. We wanted to find our son.
It was the longest afternoon of my life. We joined the search team after a few hours, now with raincoats to ease the ranger’s worry. My voice grew hoarse from shouting his name, over and over again. His name echoed through the woods from a dozen voices, and for a while, I feared the worst.
Then the radio piped up. Each of us had one. It was one of the rescue teams.
“We found him.”
We tore through the woods and found Jordan at the campsite, surrounded by a crowd of rescuers. They were smiling and relieved, but it was nothing compared to what my wife and I felt at that moment. When we reached him, we scooped him up and held him in our arms, crying our eyes out.
I held him at arm’s length. He looked like he came from an afternoon of playing in our backyard, and not as if he was alone in the woods for several hours under heavy rain. His clothes were intact, nothing more than scuff marks and some splattered mud on his pants. His hair was all over the place, as if he tumbled through a wind tunnel. In fact, he looked amused.
“Are you okay, baby?” Kate asked him for the sixth time.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Where did you go?” I asked him.
“I went to pee.”
Kate and I looked at each other and laughed. We laughed at the absurdity of it all. At that moment, we didn’t care why he went away, as long as he was with us now, safe and sound. We thanked the Search and Rescue and some local police that had volunteered. They had a doctor look at Jordan, just to make sure he didn’t break a bone or anything.
Needless to say, our camping trip was cut short.
We walked back to our car. It was already dark, the sun had set an hour ago, so the police offered to escort us on the way back with flashlights. We took them up on it, and marched through the woods back to civilization. I carried Jordan in my arms, his chin nestled on my shoulder and I refused to let him go.
“Thanks,” he said.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, buddy” I replied.
“Not you. Dog Man.”
There he was again. I turned my head and saw Jordan looking behind me.
“What about Dog Man?” I asked, studying his face. It was round, something we’ve always loved about him. There was also the scar that ran across his face from an accident years ago, leaving one eye of his blind. It was raw and pink from getting soaked in the rain. He kept his attention behind me, towards something at a distance.
“He showed me where to find you.”
“Really? Well, tell him I said thanks.”
“No need. He’s right behind you.”
I stopped, only for a second. I couldn’t help but turn. There were a couple of police officers to our sides, but right behind me, there was nothing. I flashed my light through the trees, the beam stopping a few feet before the darkness.
It was ridiculous, but I felt something—a warm breath on the back of my neck.
I shrugged it off and quickened my pace to the front. I passed Jordan to Kate, who was getting antsy and demanded it was her turn. I laughed, nervously, and followed her all the way to the car.
Jordan was bummed out that our trip ran short, and we explained how there was too much rain and it would be too dangerous, and not as if he went missing for a whole day or anything. We bought some ice cream on the way home and watched a movie together, both Kate and I’s nerves still fried from the experience. Scooby-Doo was on, but I could barely keep my eyes on it.
“So what happened out there, bud?” I asked when I was putting on the next one.
“Aaron,” Kate said, and she gave me that look, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, baby. But we’re here for you, okay?”
Jordan nodded, strawberry ice cream dribbling down his chin.
Eventually, Scooby and the Gang weren’t enough to keep us awake. I turned off the TV and carried Jordan to our room. That night, we all slept in one bed. Kate took a shower while I tried to tuck him in.
“Dream good dreams, okay?” I said.
“Are we sleeping together?” he asked.
“Yep. Don’t want to keep you out of sight, you slippery goblin,” I said before tickling him. He laughed and I smiled, happy to see him there. But he raised his hand and pointed to the corner of the room. I looked.
“Can Dog Man stay?”
He pointed to an empty space by our cabinet. The curtains were flat against the wall, and there was nothing else but a chair and my desk. Instinctively, I felt the need to walk to that space, to occupy it. There was nothing there, but I wasn’t so sure. But I didn’t want to ruin whatever imaginary entities my son had concocted.
Just imaginary.
“Well, bud,” I said, “He’d have to stay on the floor. I don’t think we can all fit in one bed, you know?”
“That’s fine. He likes it cold,” he said, before turning on his side to sleep.
I blinked, unsure of what to say or do. He said it like he was so sure, like he was just pointing out the weather. I wasn’t sure if child fantasies were that detailed, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I was just being paranoid. After a while, Kate walked in with a towel wrapped around her hair.
“Everything okay, hon?”
“Yeah. Everything’s fine,” I said, before hearing a soft snore at our bed. We looked at each other and giggled. He must have been exhausted.
That was one of the last times he ever mentioned Dog Man. I’d bring it up as a joke, and he would ignore me like I didn’t say anything. Life went on as usual.
One day, I received a call from the orphanage. Kate was at work, so I had to go alone. After dropping Jordan at his school, I drove into the city for our scheduled meeting.
I met with Sister Irene. She was old, well into her sixties, and one of the kindest souls I know. She ran the orphanage in our city. It’s where we adopted Jordan.
It was nothing unusual. They mentioned that they had to do some monthly check-ins after adoption. It’s been a few months now since Jordan came into our lives. We talked about how he was doing, and if he was doing well in school. We talked about how he was thinking about going into sports and playing some baseball for his school’s team. The animosity of those first few months of “interrogation” as Kate called it were gone, and we spoke to each other like old friends.
Eventually, I had to let her know about what happened at the mountains. She was horrified, to say the least. I explained how, beforehand, we’d already told him to not go anywhere without us, as well as a few precautions.
“Yes, that’s Jordan, alright. Like a lightning bolt,” she said.
“It was the scariest thing…not knowing what could happen, you know?”
She agreed. I had to ask that question.
“I was wondering, by the way. Did Jordan ever mention something or someone called the ‘Dog Man’ by any chance when he was with you? He brought it up a lot that day. Kids and their imaginations, right?”
Sister Irene looked puzzled. She paused for a moment.
“Did he say what he looked like?” she asked.
Strange question, I thought. I told her what Jordan told me.
“Hm. Give a moment.”
Then, she brought out a suitcase and opened it. It was filled with folders, profiles of kids that were adopted from her institution. Jordan’s was one of them, which she brought out and flipped through for a few seconds.
“You are aware of the accident, yes?”
Of course. It was one of the reasons we took him, after all. Though they warned us that he was aware of what happened to him, and that he may have trauma from it. We didn’t care, and so far, he was nothing but a bundle of weird joy.
“Yeah…a fire, right? His first home burned down. Some freak accident.”
“Yes, well, he had a brother,” Irene said before handing me a photo.
I looked at it. Smiling at the camera was a guy in his early twenties. He had shoulder length hair, and he wore a checkered shirt and a tank top underneath. A pair of rugged jeans wrapped around his frame, and he wore it well. He looked cool, hell, even cooler than me. But next to him was a large dog, as big as a kid. Its hair fell to the ground like velvet curtains, and two solid eyes stuck out of them. It looked like a mix between a Saint Bernard and a Husky.
“This is Jason, his brother. He died in the fire trying to save Jordan.”
I looked at the picture again. Somewhere in that house, Jordan was probably sleeping or drawing. His smile became kinder, and I thanked him under my breath.
“How come we didn’t know this?”
“They lived in the woods in a house their father left them. The fire was bad, Aaron. Nothing was left. The only thing we knew about Jordan was his name. I’m guessing it took a while for the police to dig through everything.”
“That fire…what happened?” I asked. When we took in Jordan, we never asked about it. It was something we thought was best to leave behind.
“Well, nobody knows how it started. It was an old house, so it must have been that. The call was made when some folks spotted the flames from a few miles away. From what the police could gather, Jason there pulled Jordan out in the middle of it all. But he went back.”
“Back?”
“To get the dog. They found Jordan crying outside the house, saying how his brother went back inside to fetch the dog. Something must have happened. They…they found him in one of the rooms. They couldn’t tell which part was his, which part was human.”
Black hair. Long neck. Hands.
After that, I thanked Irene and drove the way home, thinking. I looked back to that day in the woods, when Jordan said thanks, not to me. How much of it was real? How much of it was his imagination?
I shrugged off the thought. I spent the afternoon trying to work, but I couldn’t get it off my mind. Eventually, it came time to pick Jordan up from school.
I asked him again, about Dog Man. It would be the last time I asked him.
“Hey, buddy, so is Dog Man still around?”
Again, no response. He looked out the window as we passed some houses on the street. The windows were down, so the wind blew across our faces and rushed through our ears. His silence was something I expected so I went ahead.
“Well, can you tell him thanks? Like, I mean it, okay?”
A pause. After a moment, Jordan spoke.
“Okay.”
I suggested that we stop by somewhere to get some ice cream. We got strawberry, his favorite.
After all of that, I was relieved. Jordan’s a strong kid, braver than I could ever imagine. Everything he said, no matter how wild or out of place, I would always take it at face value. He knew some things that I didn’t. Kids always do. Since then, he’s never mentioned Dog Man again, and hopefully, he would never have to.