A chilling tail
One man’s descent into . . . dog . . . stuff
Kevin Doole, staff
Nevada, July 2007.
Officer Benny Champion arrived at the 1400 block of M Ave where his partner Margarine Moore had called for backup a few moments earlier. He put up his hood and stepped outside into the rain and growling thunder.
“Jenny!” he yelled out. Then he waited. Faintly in the distance he heard what sounded like a yell. He moved towards it cautiously. It was completely dark now, the wet pavement reflecting lights through the rain. Thunder barked around him.
He moved under an awning on a dirty heap of building to his right and tried to see. A steel bowl startled him as it rattled off the curb where he stood. “Jesus!” he huffed. “Why couldn’t I just — ” something moved deeper down the alley. “Jenny?” he called again. No answer. “God damn,” he murmured as he drew his gun. A glint of light sparked in and out of view through the rain and he noticed something dark moving up ahead. Some new sound now. Under the thunder’s howl and the drool of rain a new thunder woofed a more focused, tangible rumble. He stalked toward the alley where he had seen movement. As he approached, the dark form melted into the background. He stopped and watched. Nothing again.
“I must be losing my mind,” he thought. His only option was to keep searching. Jenny was somewhere out there and if he wanted to go home he had to find her. “Jenny!” he shouted.
Just then, what had been a moving blackness, a figment of his nerves, sprung to life. The sparking glints became the steady glare of two eyes. It was definitely moving now. Flashing lightning revealed a greasy black pelt of clotted fur that covered a muscular frame. “Hey!” he was shaking. “Get back!” The growling peaked into barking as the beast hurled itself into a run straight at him. “Stop!” he yelled. It leapt at him, its apelike arms outstretched. He fired his weapon, but the beast kept coming. Claws pierced his flesh as it landed and uneven teeth plunged deep into his throat. A warm flow of blood soaked his chest as the dull weight crashed down on top of him. He fired several more shots and the beast rolled off of him letting out a grunt as one last steamy breath left his body.
Winnipeg, October 2007.
Yesterday I read about this event in the Mid-Iowa News. It terrified me. What really struck me was that the man who was forced to open fire on the dog had appeared on a 6 p.m. news broadcast earlier that very day. He talked about a dog that he felt should be evicted from Nevada.
It seemed like just the type of thing that would cause tension. Us people have always talked of ourselves as the civilized species on the planet. We are happy to include dogs in our life of culture and class, but obviously we hold them in contempt as a species if we’re willing to ban them without fair trial or even a chance at reform. It made me shudder. Dogs live in our households with our babies. If they catch wind of the fleeting nature of our loyalty, they may take the same attitude. The whole thing made me feel that dogkind could turn its back on mankind in a heartbeat. What’s really scary is that dogs are far less subtle in their resentment than people. Whereas I might make silly faces behind someone’s back, a dog would growl and show its teeth. Whereas I might suggest something vaguely insulting in an offhand, indirect manner, a dog would bite.
I had to be sure that dogs weren’t aware of the superiority complex that plagued my species, so I went to my parents’ house and had a sit-down with our dog Dylan. He’s pretty good at sitting, but sometimes he gets distracted and . . . well, you know. He can sit, lie down, shake a paw, come, and we’re trying to master rolling over, but other than that he’s pretty uncivilized. He’s getting better at staying on the landing instead of jumping up when I come into the house, but it’s a little embarrassing. Actually, my uncle’s dog can play dead really good. She even does a sort of death scene where she stumbles a bit before slowly falling over. It’s hilarious. And the command, instead of saying “play dead,” is to do the rifle cock-and-shoot motion.
Anyway, Dylan seemed fine. As I left though, I could sense something strange behind me. I turned and saw Dylan sitting on the landing behind me. He had a cold glare, entirely different from his usually inane demeanour. “See ya later, boy,” I said uneasily. He didn’t move; he just continued staring. I turned slightly to approach but was stopped dead by the faintest sound of a growl. Panic took over as a paranoid feeling claimed my thoughts. My own dog! I closed the door and flashed him a “doyyyy!” face once safely out of sight. The entire walk to the bus was riddled with a montage of thoughts flooding through my mind. I was certain that my fears had been confirmed but was compelled to keep researching for this great article.
My first instinct was to talk to local dog authorities and scholars. My second instinct was to do a Google.com search. But both seemed to be beating around the bush, accomplishing little in a large amount of time.
So I went with my third instinct: a method known as mirror scrying, used in traditional mystery schools and oracular temples, seemed the simplest road. Online shops offer pretty good deals on scrying mirrors (traditional mirrors of polished obsidian), but I needed the quick fix. Nostradamus used water tinted with black ink. Another method is to use a glass picture frame. Paint the backside of the glass black with a few coats of oil based enamel and put it back into the frame. Set it up on a table in a dimly lit room at a slightly inclined angle and bingo-bango! You’ve got a portal into the netherworld.
I set the mirror up and immediately in the profound blackness came the image of Dylan. The awful sensation that he could see me now and smell my terror was plain to me. Slowly he dispersed into the black, and more dog-related images slipped by before me. Chew toys, puppies, poop on the carpet, I had to chuckle as that play-dead trick that my uncle’s dog does floated eerily before me. Then a more ferocious beast appeared; its slick black fur and misarranged teeth coaxing my fear to the surface. As I watched, a field came into focus. It waxed and waned and fluttered. A yellow field, trees off in the distance. A gunshot sounded and a pheasant fluttered out of the sky. Overflowing with dread, the scene carried me towards where the shot had fired, and as I got closer my horror bleated louder. In the distance I saw a man starting to climb over a fence and dogs started barking quickly. Another shot rang out and he fell abruptly to the ground. The dogs stopped barking. Without warning I was hovering 10 feet over the man and I was observing the entire space. He was on the ground, his leg badly injured. Bits of meat and sinew dangled from his torn hunting pants as blood leaked out over the grass. As I looked out I saw a grinning cocker spaniel slowly approaching the gruesome scene, grinning dumbly, his tongue dangling from his mouth. It was this look of innocence that Dylan had when I first saw him today.
I awoke in a cold puddle of sweat on the floor of my apartment. Frightened, I turned on the television to break the silence.
“. . . gun on the ground and went to get the downed bird. While he climbed over the fence, one of his dogs stepped on it and tripped the trigger. It’s actually not uncommon for these things to happen. Couple of times a year we get calls of this nature,” said a man in a suit. And as the frame changed to the scene of a crime, I realized that it was the very field I had just witnessed.
The paranoid fear I had experienced with Dylan became an obsessive panic as an epiphany came over me and I realized the nature of these vile beasts. “They know how to get to us,” I realized. “Stupid dumbness,” I thought. “Dumb idiotness!”
