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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Cosmic-Chart on 2024-11-04 06:53:33+00:00.

Life was tough as a kid. I grew up in a small town down south. I’ll leave out the details so none of y’all can recreate my mistakes, but it was a one stop light, one store kind of deal. My daddy hated it, always said he wanted to leave. Came home drinking more often than not, kicked me and my mamma around a bit. Finally she’d had enough, and got the cops to come chase him out of town. The officers drove in from the next district over, that’s how small the town was.

Mama said things would be different after she kicked daddy out, calling him a no good drinkin’ and swearin’ sonovabitch. She swore on the stupid gold tooth he had that she’d never let him back in the house. She promised me that she’d pick up a few extra shifts at the diner and that there would be no more lousy man threatening to ‘tan my hide’ every time I wandered too far into the woods alone. 

I didn’t believe a word she said until she brought home the dog, a scruffy looking brown and yellow thing that scratched itself more often than it breathed. He was big and energetic, with paws that splayed out like maple leaves. She said it could keep me company while she was working, rather than me just watching TV all day. I said sure thing and called him Rowdy.

Rowdy might’ve been a mut but he was a quick learner. It only took two Sundays alone together for him to learn sit, and after two more I had him fetching. It was fun, finding sticks and tossing them into the woods. He’d always come back, panting and wagging. I loved him for it. Still, the house was awfully quiet without daddy around. There’s only so much the whining of a dog can do to replace the ‘slugger’ and ‘champ’, let alone a good ‘tan your hide’. A dog can’t even pass you a pigskin on its good days.

It didn’t take long before I started to push him, trying to see how far I could throw and still have Rowdy trot to me. It was a natural progression, he’d always come back and so a part of me figured he always would. I stopped looking after a while, just wandering through the woods and throwing sticks. I’d lose track of time, and more than once was only brought back by the yelling of my mama at night.

And then everything really did change. We’d wandered a little too deep. I was throwing a little too far. I was sitting on a stump, real mad at the kids from school who’d called me no-daddy and was imagining punching their stupid fat faces when I realized that Rowdy hadn’t come back. He always came back.

I found him on the side of the service road, the red puddle at the corner of his mouth still sticky but his eyes long gone. His legs were still splayed out like he was running, trying to get back to me. The stick was still in his mouth.

I buried Rowdy under a pile of rocks by the creek and cried until Mama got home. I think she must’ve known, because the first thing she did after hugging me was start calling up the local shelters, looking for another mutt we could pick up to be just like Rowdy. Knowing wasn’t the same as understanding, though, because I didn’t want another mutt to take his place. I wanted him back.

Around the same time the TV stopped working, and no grown ups around the house left it silent as a cell. Maddening, too, cuz we hadn’t had money to buy me anything new for christmas and I didn’t feel like playing with my child’s set of army men. I started picking the house apart from sheer boredom, opening every nook and cranny for no other reason than to fill the silence with the creaking of rusty hinges.

I found it in a trunk with some other stuff from a second-uncle, the one that didn’t come to the family gatherings anymore. It was bound in squishy leather and felt heavier than anything made of paper should. I flipped through the first few pages and immediately knew I’d hit the jackpot.

The book told me the exact steps to take, what I’d need to go through with the spell. I snagged a couple of the extra candles from the church building and got as close as I could to lavender while picking plants out in the woods. I practiced drawing the signs over and over in the dirt so I wouldn’t mess it up when the time came. I knew I didn’t have much time. Buried dogs don’t keep long.

‘When all has been arranged, merely prick your finger. A drop of vital ichor is enough to complete the spell, and the spirit of the one you desire most shall be returned to the cadaver.”

I took my swiss army knife and speared a drop of blood across his forehead, tracing around the places where the skin was starting to split and ooze. I said a quick prayer that Rowdy wouldn’t mind the worms in him, then I waited, sitting with my dead dog across my knees in a circle in the dirt. 

I waited for minutes, then hours, until the sun went down and my Mama started to call my name again from the back porch. Rowdy never moved, but I figured his spirit must’ve been real far away. That, or the book was bunk in the end.

I got my answer at midnight. I don’t know what woke me, the wheezing too strained to be the wind or the dripping too slow and sticky to be the rain. Perhaps it was the stench of dead animal and maggot, perhaps it was the feeling of eyes on your back.

The red glow of the electric clock painted a messy painting, six foot tall in my doorway. The spine bent unnaturally, pulling chunks of dirty bone and ligament from skin that didn’t fit quite right, like a second hand coat. Its paws dangled at its rotting flanks, spindly white finger flesh pushing through the matted fur and claws. In one hand it held a waitress’ apron, covered in liquid too dark to make out.

It reeked like spoiled meat in the fridge, rocking gently with each tortured inhale. The cracks in its body tricked out dark liquid that pooled on the carpet. It had a long, canine skull balanced atop its crooked neck. Two eyes leaked from their pits within the bone, sunken and reflective. I’d seen coyote eyes before at the edges of the porch light, but this was different. Coyotes didn’t stare back in quite the same way. They didn’t hate you like those two eyes did. 

It let out a noise, maybe a growl or maybe a whine or maybe a scream. It jerked to life, trashing towards me and dropping gristly bits of Rowdy to the floor in a storm of wet smacks. It reached out a hand,  dripping muscle tearing dog skin out of the way to wrap its long fingers around my neck. It wheezed again, popped balloon chest forcing air through its throat it a cry of rage. Its breath was like the smell of infected cuts, clogging my nostrils as I gasped for air. It began to squeeze.

I stared down its maw, a bulging tube of pus and bulging teeth. They weren’t all sharp canines. A lot of them looked human.

I put all my strength into the kick, maybe for myself, maybe for Rowdy and what this thing had done to him. My foot crunched through ribs into a warm sludge, mashing the soft bits inside.

It screamed, falling backwards and retching. Its mouth opened, spewing out liquid and little bits of itself, then larger pieces. Lungs, guts, bones. It wheezed, screamed, wailed, whatever you want to call it, but this time it was different. It wasn’t all angry, more afraid. More like a dog taking its last breaths on the side of the road. I took my chance and ran.

I did look back, once, just as I sprinted through the door and out into the woods. 

It stood in the pile of flesh that was within it, hunched so low I could almost believe it was an animal. Its shoulder blades pushed through the skin of its back like wings as it rooted through the puddle beneath it. It was too dark to see, but I swear to you I saw, as I ran from that house for the last time ever, the glimmer of a golden tooth in its hand.

They ruled what happened to my mamma a suicide, and I got tossed into foster care. I got lucky a few times, met some good folk. I live far, far away now, with a new family and good job. We even have a new dog. 

But every night, I make sure each and every one of the doors in my house is locked. I clean the piston in my dresser weekly, and sleep with it loaded. I never let the kids play at night without me there. To this day, I’ve never heard anything from my dad. But sometimes, when the night is dark and the lights of the house are bright enough, I swear I can see those eyes reflecting back at me.