Buddy, the Dog with Short Legs

I am writing this for my grandma, in the hope that someone on here might have any information that might help me. If you know anything at all, please come forward and message me directly.

 

My grandma is well into her late-seventies now and has her senile moments, but is still relatively sharp for someone her age. We’re originally from Utah and I was desperately close to her growing up, so I was understandably devastated when I found out my mom had decided to move her into a retirement home. I know it was the right choice, as my mom was struggling to cope with having her in the house and she wasn’t able to live by herself, but that doesn’t stop the guilt. My mom already has my younger brother to contend with and, after I moved out to Arizona for college, I reckon she just couldn’t do it all on her own.

When I was a kid, my grandma would tell these wonderful stories; sometimes magical, sometimes strange, and sometimes downright comical. She always had a way with words, but she never quite got along with technology. She said computers ruined the joy of writing; the thrill of putting pen to paper. So I decided to start writing letters to her at the home, since I couldn’t visit in person very often.

 

My grandma loved my grandpa desperately. They met in college, which was pretty unusual when you think most women weren’t encouraged to pursue an education back then. She was studying Literature, because it was the only degree her parents approved of, and he was a professor in the Art Department. Needless to say, their relationship was scandalous. After a year of seeing each other on the sly, my grandpa made an honest woman of her. They were married on June 30th 1962. My grandpa passed a couple of years back, but my grandma still talks about him like he was alive.

When my mom was about five years old, they got a small white dog that they called Buddy. He had a patch of brown over his right eye, floppy ears, a square-shaped head, and these stumpy little legs. My mom loved that dog something fierce and we still have old photos of them together, her clutching the poor creature to her chest tight enough to suffocate him. I guess he couldn’t run away from her fast enough on account of his stubby legs. My grandma was so taken by their relationship that she wrote a story about it, and my grandpa was so taken by the story that he decided to illustrate it. Eventually they sent it to a publisher and, on February 8th of 1969, “Buddy, the Dog with Short Legs” hit the shelves. I’d like to say it was a smash hit, but you probably ain’t heard of it, which should give you an idea of how successful it was. My grandma reckons they only sold about 100 copies, which was enough money to pay for their new shed.

 

About 4 months back, I got a letter from my grandma saying that she had a visitor at the retirement home; a man in his forties by the name of John Pattenson. He told her he had read her book when he was a kid and was a massive fan. I was initially suspicious that this might just be some conman trying to fleece her for cash, but apparently he even brought a copy of the book for her to sign. I called my mom up about a week later and sure enough my grandma had told her about the mystery visitor too.

Over time, this John started visiting her pretty regularly, maybe once a week or so. My mom went over to see him a couple of times too and said he seemed normal enough. He would sit chatting with my grandma for hours about all sorts; about the book, about her life, but mostly about his dog. You see, he had a little dog that looked just like Buddy. A spitting image, according to my mom. He would bring photos every time he visited and update my grandma on how his dog was getting on. One week, he’d have gone to the vet for an upset stomach. The next week, maybe he got a new toy or he’d chased down a rabbit. I’d hear all about it in my grandma’s letters, until eventually all she wrote about was John and his little dog Buddy. This guy even named his dog Buddy! I started to think maybe this guy had a bit of a screw loose, but he made my grandma happy and a little less lonely, so I thought I’d just put my worries to the back of my mind.

 

A month ago, my mom called me and said she’d run into our pal John again at the retirement home. He was going on and on about how bad my grandma wanted to meet Buddy, and how unfair it was that you couldn’t bring dogs into the retirement home. Eventually, he “hit upon the idea” that my grandma might come back to his place for a visit. Just a day trip, he promised, he wouldn’t have her out for long. Now the retirement home will let my grandma out anytime, but they have to get my mom’s written permission first. It’s a safety precaution, so that the old folks don’t go wandering off with just about anybody.

Now John was a lonely old sort, my mom said. Apparently he’d never married and lived alone in a small house out by Huntsville, working odd jobs, mostly in construction. After a lengthy discussion with John about when and how the visit would take place, she tentatively agreed, on the proviso that she would also be present. The plan was for John to arrive at the home around 11am last Friday, then my mom and grandma would follow him in my mom’s car back to his house. They’d spent a couple of hours with the dog, my mom would drive my grandma into town for some lunch, and then they’d head back to the home.

 

I didn’t think much of it and got so caught up in college assignments that honestly I guess I forgot about it, until I got a call from my younger brother Bill on Friday night. He was fixing to have a fit, telling me that mom hadn’t come home and that he hadn’t heard from her all day. Straight away, I called the retirement home and they said my mom had never come back. They were as worried as we were, since she’d said nothing about taking my grandma away overnight. I got back on the phone with Bill and told him to call the police straight away. Luckily my mom had had the wherewithal to write down old John’s address, so Bill gave it to the police and I booked the next flight back to Salt Lake. It felt like an eternity waiting to hear back from him.

Finally, my brother calls and tells me the police are going to investigate the place. We make arrangements for him to pick me up at the airport on Saturday afternoon. I stayed up all night, reading through my grandma’s letters, hoping to find some kind of clue as to what might have happened. As I watched the soft dawn light peak through my blinds, I remember holding my head in my hands and just heaving and shaking uncontrollably, like I wanted to cry but nothing was coming out. It was hard to shake the feeling that something awful had happened.

I packed up the letters to show the police and then called Bill first thing in the morning. He told me the police was gonna come by our house once I arrived to give us an update, but that mom still hadn’t come home and he’d heard nothing from them since. The retirement home had called up asking about my grandma not long before I had called, but they were as clueless and anxious as we were.

About an hour after my brother and I got back to the house, the police finally showed up. I had chewed my nails right down to the cuticle by then, but I guess I was so preoccupied that I couldn’t feel the pain of it. I showed them the letters straight away and explained the situation, since Bill had been pretty useless and had no real idea who this John guy was, other than the address my mom had pinned to the fridge. That’s when they told me what they’d found at the house.

 

It was a run-down old log cabin out in the woods, about a half hour outside Huntsville. You couldn’t make this stuff up, I thought. My grandma and mom walked right onto the set of a horror movie. I wanted to joke about it; to make it seem less real; to skip forward to the part where the police officer stands to one side and there’s my mom, standing in the doorway, smiling as always. My grandma would hobble in, give me a tight squeeze, and tell me how I’ve put on too much weight since moving away. Everything was moving so slow, and my heart ached for that moment when it would all be okay again.

They found my mom’s car first, abandoned about a mile away from the cabin. There was no sign of blood in it as yet, but they’d taken it in for closer inspection. Then he told me about the cabin.

 

There were dogs, piles of dogs, out the back. Carcasses everywhere, some of them burnt, some of them bloated and rotting, their faces distorted by the decay. The smell was putrid. Apparently a couple of the officers had thrown up there and then. This guy had been collecting dogs from god knows where, just collecting them and then experimenting on them. He’d been bleaching their fur, performing crude surgeries on them, sewing parts onto them; anything to make them look more like the dog in the book. There were books with pages and pages of photos; of dead dogs, diagrams of dog anatomy, different breeds of dogs. A veritable catalogue of victims.

The dog he claimed was called Buddy, the dog in his photos, belonged to a family in Evanston and had been reported stolen not long before he started visiting my grandma. It was nowhere to be found on the property.

 

I remember just waiting for him to say something about my mom and grandma, how maybe they’d found them unconscious out in the woods or tied up somewhere in the cabin, but that moment never came. We stood there in silence for a long while before I finally asked where my grandma and mom were. They didn’t know. John was gone, his car was gone, they were long gone. I asked them why this sick freak would take them; what he wanted to do with them. They think maybe he wanted to recreate the story, of a happy couple, their daughter, and their little dog Buddy; maybe it was a fantasy he’d been harbouring since he was young. Ultimately, however, they just don’t know.

 

It’s been nearly five days now since they went missing and the police still don’t have any leads. If anyone out near Salt Lake knows anything about a man named John Pattenson, please can you come forward with any information. According to the folks who’d met him in Huntsville, he’s about 6 foot 5, he has mid-length chestnut brown hair and brown eyes, has a slight under-bite, and his arms are noticeably freckled and tanned from all the outdoor work. He drives a beat-up old green jeep that has a dent on the back left corner, although he may have changed cars since the incident. If you see him, the police say do not approach him, because he’s believed to be extremely dangerous.

 

Please, please help me. I just want my family back.

Submitted May 28, 2019 at 09:15PM by helpcreepylandlady http://bit.ly/2JLsvRt