Chester
strained his eyes, willing the fog to part and reveal their tormentor,
but the curtain settled and drifted lazily again. The silence broke,
as a sudden fluttering and flapping of wings erupted about eight feet in front
of them and a murder of crows cawed
frantically as they ascended into the sky. Bosco ignored them even as Chester
let out a startled cry. The dog stood statue still. Only the
twitching of a muscle here or there gave away that he was real. Even
his growl went silent. A minute passed, as quiet again held reign.
Another minute ticked by. Then, silently, the big dog began to move.
Instead of heading toward the disturbance, he padded off quietly into
the corn field, disappearing into an envelope of ground mist.
"Bosco!” Chester whispered urgently. “Dammit boy, come back here.” It
was too late. The dog had vanished like a ghost. Not even his silhouette
could be seen through the fog. But the sucking sounds had returned.
Now, as if a blanket over the sound had lifted, Chester knew exactly
where it came from. It was directly in front of him, headed
straight towards him. Again he snugged the shotgun to his shoulder and
waited. The fog dispersed a little and a dark figure emerged from its swirling curtains of mist. Chester felt his body cease to function. His finger,
curled about the twin triggers, were frozen into a death grip.
“Sweet, hopping Jesus.” he at last breathed, as the thing stood
there. It was far worse than anything he could have imagined in
a nightmare.
Bill had been standing at the edge of the corn field when the crows burst upwards
and climbed clear of the fog bank to sail away towards Manhattan. Stepping into the corn, he shouted. "Mr. Connelly?" His voice bounced around in the fog and died into a whisper, the mists deadening all sounds. He tried once again. "Mr. Connelly! Hello!" Again, the sound was sucked up by the fog. Sighing to himself, Bill pushed on into the field. Occasionally slapping away the husks as he bumped into them in the low visibility.
Monster! It’s a monster. His mind screamed, as it stepped into the rows of corn. Move
Chester, you old coot! Don’t just stand here, the voice in his head
yelled at him. He couldn’t. He was petrified by this unholy
abomination before him, his legs refusing to respond. It’s eyes locked upon his
own, studying him intently. It was massive: huge muscular arms sprouted from a torso, thicker than any tree trunk he had ever seen. The
muscles flexed in the arms as it curled its four fingers into balled
fists and relaxed into open hands over and over.
The large nostrils expanded with each locomotive like inhale. The
face was a horrifying piggish snout above a mouth that looked like that
of a shark, with row after row of serrated teeth. The thing that
transfixed Chester in his place its eyes. They appeared
human, a bright blue. That was where any similarity to a human being began and ended. The head was topped with sharply pointed spikes that hung down over its back and massive shoulders. The entire
creature was covered with large, purple pulsing veins that
ran in cracks between its massive yellowish-green scales.
The lower body from the waist down was short and stumpy, yet powerful looking.
The hips were too big standing out from its sides like the photos he
had once seen of dinosaurs. Although the creature's feet were large, their skeletal frame didn’t
look like they could support its weight well at all. The three toes on each foot, however splayed out at angles, were wide and fat, and protruding from each were six
inch long scimitar claws. The legs were double jointed. Chester’s eyes
lingered a moment on those knees. Thinking they looked dog like. The bottom joint faced backwards
toward the swishing, ball-tipped and spike-studded tail. As Chester let his eyes travel back up to the creature's eyes, he felt a hot
liquid coursing down one pant leg. There was a crashing noise behind him as Bill came into the clearing.
“What in the name of God?” Willard Harrington exclaimed. Chester couldn’t take his eyes away to even
look at the newcomer. He was entranced by a long snake of a tongue,
covered in oozing slime sliding in and out of the creature's mouth. It
suddenly took a step closer. Its eyes shifting from Chester to Bill
and back again, assessing who was more of a threat.
It raised its arms in what looked for all the world to Bill, like a pleading gesture. Ridiculous! he thought. There was no way to know this things intentions. More likely, it was trying to decide which of them to have for lunch. Then, something burst out
of the corn field from the right, flying directly at the creature’s head. All snapping
teeth and barking fury, Bosco collided with the creature hard
enough to make it stumble sideways. It reached up with one hand and
grabbed the attacking animal, but not before the dog got to one of the
veins in its thick neck. Bosco buried his snout into the
separation between scales and clamped onto a vein. A huge spurting fountain of something green and slimy shot into
the air.
The beast shrieked in either outrage or pain, the men couldn’t
tell which. It got a grip on the dog, sinking one of its claws into
Bosco’s flank, eliciting a howl of agony from the Golden
Retriever.