Mavis O'Roak is excommunicated from Boston because this beautiful lady had made the mistake that her anthropologist husband, Charles was to busy to notice that she was having a torrid affair with her trainer Iron Man Jackson. Charles murdered Jackson and then brought beautiful Mavis to the isolated hills of Point Dume , California high above the rocky edge of Claymore Canyon. where their new dwelling was a mansion with few windows and something that devoured people in the scum covered swimming pool.
Tom, the retriever, lay on his back, one eye squinted. He watched the box roll in his direction. It just kept on rolling. Just before it reached Tom, he sprang up, stretched, and rambled toward the patio doors. He snouted his way through one patio door, sliding it slowly, and then wedging his body side to side. Tom turned and watched the small moving carton batter itself against the exterior wall of the house. He scratched at the parquet, walked in a circle, then plopped down. Tom was restless. The house smelled funny. There was a strange feeling that he was being watched. He looked toward his master and Mavis standing on the landing at the front of the house. He rolled his red-brown body against the glass and steel shelves. On the top shelf, the egg rocked back and forth on its nodules. It teetered for one miraculous second then rolled over the edge of the shelf. The heavy egg crashed to the floor inches from Tom. Stiff-legged, Tom jumped up, sniffed at the egg, and then hit it with his snout. Like a drunken tennis ball, the egg wobbled toward the open patio door. Tom flipped it again with his snout and launched it over the door’s runners and out onto the patio.
Tom followed then snouted the egg again. He jumped back. A single, twisted claw darted from an opening in the egg. The claw dug into Tom’s tender nose. He turned his head from side to side, and then danced around the egg, barking hysterically. Angrily, he batted the egg into the scummy pool.
