THE DEVIL DOG OF MILNSBRIDGE BY OF HUDDERSFIELD AUTHORS’ CIRCLE
T was out there. That thing half glimpsed in the darkness, prowling on the edge of the light.
Kyle gripped his torch tighter, as if its beam could somehow keep the danger lurking in the shadows at bay. It would be so easy to turn back now, retreat to the safety of his home. But then he heard the psychic’s words echo through his mind as he thought back to the tarot reading the day before. unyielding, and the longer he searched through the trees with no sight or sound of the damsel in distress, the more he began to doubt himself.
Was he even heading the right way? He’d been sure her screams had come from somewhere in the darkness beyond the artificially lit streets, sure enough to brave straying from the path and into the woods. Now he wondered if he was even supposed to be out here and, if this was the test, what exactly was expected of him?
A glint of eyes to his left and Kyle swung round to face the thing stalking him, heart hammering so hard in his chest he thought it might explode. But the creature was already gone before the torch could reveal its true identity, natural or otherwise. Instead the beam fell on a patchwork of pale skin and raw flesh, the remnants of what had once been a living human, reduced to a slab of meat in death.
Kyle fell back with a cry of shock and revulsion, losing his footing and slipping down the hill.
He managed to keep a tight grip on the torch but it smashed into the side of a tree on the way down and the light winked out on impact. Terror tightened its icy grip.
Again he heard the older men’s words replaying in his head as they recounted the local legend:
“When the moon shines bright beware! They say an unnatural beast prowls these streets in the dead of night, hunting for fresh victims. They say its chilling howl turns the blood in your veins to ice. And if the power of its cries don’t get you or its jaws full of deadly fangs, they say to merely set eyes on it is to be marked for death.”
Somehow the young man escaped serious injury himself, coming to a stop at the bottom of the steep incline with no more than a few cuts and bruises. He fiddled with the torch, smacking it against his palm until eventually, to his relief, the beam of light was restored. But to his horror, it was to find he was not alone.
The beast had followed him down, taking advantage of its prey’s moment of weakness. Now it closed in, every bit as terrifying as the stories claimed.
Ancient and powerful, it remained one of the few things science still could not explain, refusing to allow the modern world to banish it solely to legend.
Muscles rippled beneath black fur with each step it took. Red eyes blazed in its skull like the very fires of its Hellish origins. Its foul breath held the stench of decay and the promise of death, rasping out from jaws filled with fangs as sharp and deadly as the Reaper’s scythe. The Devil Dog of Milnsbridge.
Kyle whimpered and scrabbled backwards, not daring to take his eyes from the monstrous canine, coming to an abrupt stop when his back pressed against a tree. The beast stalked forward with all the confidence and surety of an apex predator, in no hurry to finish the prey cowering helpless before it. The young man knew he was doomed. Even if he could somehow escape, according to legend it was already too late – he was already marked for death.
A familiar voice whispered in his ear, male and yet seductive and full of temptation, making him jump. A voice filled with promises to satisfy the heart’s greatest desires, for a price.
Kyle tore his eyes from the advancing predator, twisting to face the psychic from the day before. His panicked brain tried to make sense of this latest development, though all that really mattered was the promise of those words his mind so eagerly latched onto, unwittingly falling for the bait to lure him in. And as if he needed any further persuading, pain shot through his leg as teeth bit into flesh, the hellhound obeying a silent command from his master to attack.
But the devil had not yet won his prize, and so he whispered again in the human’s ear.
“You have failed the test. But I will call off my hound, if you will give me something in return.”
“Anything!” Kyle gasped through the pain. The hound withdrew and he blabbered on.
The hound’s form, so solid and powerful just moments before, dissolved into a cloud of black smoke before fading away into nothingness.
Kyle turned to thank the man who had seemingly saved his life, only to find he too had disappeared. A disembodied, malevolent laugh began to echo in his ears as he got to his feet, wild eyes darting around for any further dangers lurking in the shadows.
The Devil dog and its master were nowhere to be seen but still his heart pounded its unnatural rhythm to the beat of terror, and the young man turned to flee back towards civilisation and the sanctuary of his home.
But when he tried to run, his legs refused to obey him. Intense, unbearable heat slid over his skin, the flames of Hell leaping up to claim him in a supernatural blaze that quickly turned from uncomfortable, prickly warmth to searing agony as it began to lay his nerves bare. His fate already sealed, Kyle could only scream as he fell, for his soul was no longer his own.