The Hound In the Dark

A Story by Jason Damstra

A most curious dream I had of a familiar place in an unfamiliar light.

It stood abysmal and magnificent in the sickly moonlight. Its skin,
pale as the pall of recently dead flesh, unkissed by the sanguine
caress of blood, shimmered softly. The dancing light playing off a
thousand fine scales. It bared its teeth, owing to a horrible rictus,
a terrible mockery of a sardonic grin, its smooth lips where forever
drawn back over those blood-stained pillars of ivory. Sniffing the air
all the while the thing moved, hunched and with a lupine swagger it
approached the tree line. The encroaching fog obscuring it for but a
second, until, like a nightmarish phantom it would appear for moment.
That hell best, so freshly liberated from the abyss of night was
coming for me. Slowly, silently. Not a sound could be heard save the
rapidly quickening beat of my heart and the gentle rush and sigh of
the wind in the trees. Great boughs whispered to me in that cold
moonlight... They told me to run. But how could I? Frozen in my own
personal phantasm of dread. How could I run from this? This tartarean
hound of nethermost darkness. No, I would stand and face this thing...
Even if it meant feeling the terrible ebb and flow of my own warm
blood soaking my skin.