Post by anirbas on Oct 11, 2018 23:05:47 GMT -6
It was a dark, moonless night. The kind one needs a flashlight to see to get around in. In the back corner of a yard a family and friend had assembled. Father, son and a neighbor putting the finishing touches on an outbuilding they were working on. The creek bed behind them was filled with shadows, despite the lack of the moon, due to the construction lights set about the small building for the three men to see by. Allowing them to continue working even though the sun had long set and gone.
The cool, autumn wind blew briskly causing the crowns of elm and willow along the creek to toss belligerently. Tossing and throwing shadows to and fro; to and fro; to and fro. The family dog ran back and forth, back and forth, along the back fence barking ceaselessly, at his own shadow
and that of the trees. "Shut-up, Bonkers. It's just your own shadow you're barking at!" the son shouted at the dog, from time to time. The Bonkers in question would look at him then back into the creek. A low growl issuing from his lips the hackles raised upon his white and freckled back.
He would run to the woman and girl, busy picking up scrap wood and piling it up from the outbuilding project.
Bonkers would look at the woman, then towards the creek and seeing his own shadow and that of the wind whipped trees, off into another barking tangent he would go. "Maybe, he's barking at a cat, only he can see," the woman told her daughter. The son laughed raucously at this and stated with a laugh, "No, Mom. You're dog is just stupid. Shut up, Bonkers!"
His mother looked into the dark creekbed and for a split second, could have sworn she saw something...Not really anything but a darker, deeper blackness than the rest of the shadows moving there. She shook her head and when she looked back the darker, deeper blackness, appeared to be gone.
Bonkers, continued to run up and down the fence line, bark, bark, barking at the top of his sothic lungs. Running nervously to and fro, from the fence to the woman and looking into the creek. As though trying to tell her something...As though his barking was the equal of a human, saying " 'Ware, 'Ware, something wicked this way coming is down in there in the darkness."
She patted his head affectionately and told him to settle down before she had to put him to bed. He was getting on the working men's nerves, making all that racket. To no avail, as Bonkers simply ran back to the fence, running to and fro, to and fro, sounding off, like a hound that had caught the scent of a bobcat. The father, never a man to be known for his patience, shouted at her, "God damnit, woman! Put that f*cking dog of yours, up!" Right in front of his ten year old daughter. Who looked at her father now with anxious, round eyes.
The woman called her dog to her. Then led him into the house, and shut the door. This action didn't shut the dog up. He simply jumped onto the back of the couch and continued to stare through the window into the shadow tossed creek bed, barking incessantly. At least inside, his loud barks and growls, were muffled.
The woman returned to her daughter's side, to continue picking up wood scraps, and throwing them into a pile. And with their backs turned the woman, the girl, and the three men nailing siding to the outbuilding, they never saw what ate them. But Bonkers did...
A humongous, amoebic dark shadow, deeper in blackness than the shadows surrounding it, rose up from the creek bed, with a great WHOOSH of sound!
Swallowing all five of the people, whole, into its inky depths. With a loud burp, it receded back into the creek bed, from whence it had come.
Bonkers lost control of his bladder at the sight and urinated on the back of the couch, as his mistress and her family, disappeared.
No one ever knew what had happened to the family of four and their helpful neighbor. Whose wife became alarmed when he wasn't home by midnight. She rang the family's telephone off the wall. To no avail. No one heard it, except Bonkers, whimpering in his dog crate, piteously; where he'd been
since witnessing the demise of his mistress and all those about her...
The neighbor wandered over, thinking possibly, no one heard the phone, if all were outside. Finding nothing but a scattering of air guns, rubber hoses and other tools, about the outbuilding. And then, when she turned her back on the shadow tossed creekbed, she disappeared, too. Into the darkness, that was something more...
~Sabrina.
