The Little Death

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Something wasn’t right. He could tell from the baying of the dog.

It wasn’t the normal barking that came when the dogs had come across a cow mired in a mud hole. It wasn’t the frenzied yelps that signaled the dogs had cornered a boar in the brush.

This was like screaming.

Burke Aubry shifted in his saddle and peered into the darkness. A heavy fog had rolled in before dawn, and it distorted everything-shapes, smells, but especially sound. The barking seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, rising and falling with every shift of the cold morning wind.

A rustling to his left. He turned, ears pricked.

Just a cabbage palm. Its thick trunk, hidden by the fog, seemed to float above the ground. The wind sent the heavy fronds scraping against each other. It sounded like the rasp of a dying man.

Movement in the corner of his eye. The dark mass took shape as it came toward him, the blur hardening slowly into horse and rider.

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