in what looked like a smile, his lolling tongue bouncing behind the tufts of steam that bellowed from his throat.
Slowly, he raised his head into the air, sniffing loudly. He closed his mouth, swallowing his bright pink tongue. Cocking his head into the wind, he stood perfectly still as Jeremy finally crossed the parking lot, swaying, and clambered up over the curb. Chopper shot a quick glance back at him and then immediately broke into a fit of riotous barking.
“Chopper!” Jeremy growled, looking up at the line of darkened windows and hoping that the damn dog wouldn’t wake anyone.
He was allowed to have a dog, but the complex rules state that the dog cannot exceed forty pounds, and when he moved in it hadn’t. But Chopper had to be nearly sixty pounds by now and the last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention to that fact. The brazen, mostly disobedient dog was all that he had now, his only family, and he sure as hell didn’t want to lose his family all over again.
The dog stopped barking, pausing once again to sniff the air. Slowly, he turned, looking straight through the line of hedges. He lowered his head, the short hairs on his shoulders and neck bristling up, as a long, guttural growl ripped from between his bared teeth. His feet pressed forward only inches at a time as he crept towards the line of brush.
“What is it, boy? Do you smell a rabbit?”
The dog just stood there, every muscle in his body tensing visibly as he growled, unflinching, into the undergrowth. A thick line of drool hung from his lower jaw, growing longer and longer, before finally falling into the snow. His bobbed tail, which usually wagged incessantly, stood straight up.
“Chopper?”
Without a final glance back, Chopper let out one final bark and then shot through the barren hedges, leaving nothing but the bobbing branches in his wake. There was the sound of crackling and crunching as branches were torn from their moorings, the dog rocketing into the wilderness.
“Shit,” Jeremy muttered through his own bared teeth, his taut lips twisting and contorting. He fought down the sense of rage that swelled from deep in his chest.
Shaking his head, he kicked at a clump of snow that had fallen from the shrubbery where Chopper had entered. With one final glance back across the parking lot at the darkened building, he slipped into the foliage, the long, thin branches snagging at his clothing.
Breaking through the line of landscaped hedge, he ducked beneath the lower canopy of the mess of pine branches. The brown, needle-covered ground was nearly dry, as only the slightest dusting of snow had been able to make the descent through the branches that were so tightly woven together that barely a single ray of light could filter through. His back ached miserably as he hunched over, his hands still thrust deeply into his pockets. Bending his knees, he crept beneath the sharply-needled branches, the only sound he could hear being the needles on the ground as they crunched beneath his uneven footsteps.
“Chopper!” he called, ducking out from beneath the painfully low branches and into a slight clearing.
He craned his head and listened, but all he could hear was the wind ripping through the branches of the trees, filling the small path he had stumbled onto with a fine mist of powder. Off in the distance, he heard a muffled bark, but surely there was no way that Chopper could have gotten that far away in such a short amount of time.
Following the path, he made every effort to tread lightly, his clumsily-falling feet muffled by the deepening snow. He listened intently, turning his head from one side to the other as he scanned the lines of matted, white branches and intertwining trunks to either side. But there was nothing, not even the slightest—
“Chopper?” he said, quickly turning to his right as he caught just the briefest of glimpses of the round, rust-colored circle of fur on the dog’s rear end between a gap in the trees.
Stepping from the path, the snow got deeper as it piled upon itself at the base of the row of trees. Ducking beneath the low-lying branches, heavily bowed beneath the weight of the snow, he crept toward the dog, standing completely still, staring at something outside of his view in the middle of the forest. Unraveling the leash from his right hand, he gripped the clip tightly, pulling back the trigger to open it wide enough to just quickly latch it onto the metal ring on the collar. It wasn’t often that Chopper took off on his own, but on that rare occasion when he did, Jeremy knew that he was in for a seriously long night.
Slipping past the hindquarters of the dog, the hairs along its back still standing erect, Jeremy clipped the leash onto the collar. Smiling, and more than just a little pleased with himself, he positively beamed, his face awash with a gigantic smile. Had he been outside of the cluster of trees, he surely would have raised both arms above his head, Rocky-style, and bounced up and down.
His sudden burst of happiness waning, the thought of kicking that dog’s undisciplined butt slowly entered his mind, writhing around like a serpent in his brain until there was nothing that he wanted more. He yanked on the leash; visibly jerking the dog’s body backward, but Chopper didn’t budge, still intently focused on whatever was locked in his line of view.
“Come on, Chopper!” Jeremy shouted, tugging on the leash with everything that he could muster from that somewhat crouched position atop the piled needles.
But the dog didn’t give an inch. The muscles in his back legs tensed like steel cables from beneath the black fur as he fought against the leash.
“Damn it, Chopper! I said—”
The dog interrupted him with a fierce, terrifying growl that sent the hackles straight up Jeremy’s back and neck. Allowing the leash to loosen in his grasp, the leather cord went slack and he placed his left hand atop the dog’s arched back. He could feel the growl as it rumbled through the animal’s body, the shoulders shuddering as it burst from the throat and through the snarling, bared teeth.
Running his hand up the back and through the stiffly-standing hairs on the shoulders, he patted Chopper’s neck lightly, staring down his poised head towards whatever he was looking at. His right knee touched the frozen ground, the thin layer of snow soaking damply through his pants.
His eyes followed the blotched ground toward where Chopper’s stare was fixed, the shadows thickening beneath the heavily intertwined branches of a dense cluster of pines. A cold breeze ripped through the forest, chilling him straight through his jacket and into the flesh beneath. The rustling trees showered him with tiny flecks of ice crystals, which settled in his hair and across his bare flesh as he stared into the shadows.
He couldn’t see it right off, but he knew that there was something in there, hidden in the shadows. The hackles slowly rose across the backs of his arms.
“Come on, boy,” he said, gently tugging at the collar while he patted the dog on the neck. “Let’s go.”
The sound of rustling needles and crackling branches filled the still air about them.
He didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all. There was something about the situation that really didn’t sit well with him, writhing serpentine-like in his belly as he was overwhelmed with the urge to take flight. His breathing grew short and quick, sounding almost identical to the panting canine.
“Now!” he shouted, clambering to his feet, his head raking across the bottom of the branches above, which showered him with snow.
Tugging on the collar, he barely moved the dog in the slightest, but he kept on tugging, trying frantically to drag the dog from the confines of the forest and back onto the thin path that would surely lead them home. Chopper’s sides still quivered from the growls that issued from his tight jaw, but slowly, the sound dissipated, and the dog’s sides shook for a different reason.
A high-pitched whine echoed through the night from Chopper’s trembling form, and Jeremy could feel his heart sink in his chest. Slowly, he turned, the leash falling from his formerly clenched hand to the hard, frozen earth. His shaking hands flopped to his sides as he fell to his knees on the ground.
He could feel it, aching in the marrow of his bones. It was right there with him.
His eyes rose from the ground, following the shadow-infested ground to where the dog stared, straight ahead. He was helpless to do anything but observe as a form eased out of the shadows that concealed it. His gaze rising from the ground, Jeremy could see two bare feet, the flesh buried beneath a layer of crusted mud and earth, dangling inches above the frosted earth. Tattered edges of a long, dark cloak flagged about those feet.
With one final whimper, Chopper turned suddenly and raced back out of the woods and into the clearing.
His gaze shifting upward, Jeremy flopped onto his back, his feet kicking at the ground in an attempt to propel him to his feet. All he could see was the darkness of the shroud, the loosely-fitting garment rippling about
