Lair of the Dog Man

Yesterday, I decided to commit suicide, so I went out into the woods at dawn, planning to take my own life in the splendor of the sunrise; a final moment of light in what had been a persistently dark life. Looking back now, it seems lame, almost comically dramatic. But I?m not posting this to talk about myself, and my reasons for having wanted to die are not important. I now want to live, need to live, if only to relate a story that isn?t my own, but one that is, unfortunately, ultimately details the end of another?s life.
I found a leather-bound journal, evidently a fairly expensive one?judging by the page quality and general construction?lying in a shallow ditch, near the spot where I?d planned on taking my own life. The ground around it was disturbed, as if, sometime during the previous night, its owner had struggled to superficially bury it before being dragged away. There was a great swath etched away in the dirt to suggest and support this conclusion.
Aside from the dirt, there were a few stains on the surface of the journal, and more than one page was covered with?or stuck to another by?dark splotches ? presumably blood. Darkly intrigued, I decided to forestall my self-destruction, and left the woods with it in my possession. I?ve always enjoyed reading, especially the journals and stories of people who?ve endured terrible or chaotic events, and my curiosity was no less potent at that moment, despite my resolution to die. Thankfully, I hadn?t announced my suicide?directly or subtlety?to anyone, and was able to return to my home without having to explain myself or dismiss worries.
I read the journal once, and then when my nerves returned to me and I?d finished pacing around my bedroom, I read it again, this time with a morbid fascination. I?ve now decided to copy the entries, word for word, onto my computer in a document, and will be uploading them online, so that this person?s tragic, grisly, and terrifying story can be shared with the world. They cannot do it themselves, and having found the journal, it?s now my duty to give voice to their tragedy. It is a long story, so I will relate it in parts. I can only copy so much at a time before becoming filled with anxiety and a sympathetic terror.
There seem to be a few entries missing, most notably in the beginning, where the person?s story seems to pick up in the middle of the horrific experience. Later on, they make vague suggestions of the nightmare?s origin, but the ?first? entry is merely a recounting of the terror after it had already emerged.
So, without further delay, here is the first entry:
1.
It must?ve stalked me for hours before I even noticed it. Once I realized I was being hunted, the signs were hard to miss. The scattering of animals ahead of me, despite my light-footed navigation; the eerie silence they left in their wake, broken only by a faint, never-too-far-away howl; the feeling, that evolutionarily ingrained animal sense of imminent danger?of something tracking me. When I reached the river, my instincts told me to cross it, but there was nothing but darkness on the other side. The woods there were utterly untraversed; it was obvious that no one had ever gone that far into this particular area of the wilderness. There were no guide signs, no paths, no warnings. It was immediately foreboding, and suggested perils far worse than just getting lost in the woods. Common sense told me to follow the river, to hope that I?d come across other people, some structure or fixture of civilization.
For the first time in a while, I ignored common sense, and followed my vaguer instincts. Leaping into the river, I dashed across and quickly mounted the opposite bank. I wanted to immediately push forward into the tree-line, but that primal sense of self-preservation told me to look back, impelled me to see my pursuer, so that I?d later be able to identify and avoid him. I was then somehow certain that a conflict was imminent, that I?d have to face off against him, against it.
Dripping wet, with the moon hovering dismally amidst dark clouds just above me, I turned back toward the part of the woods from which I?d come. And standing there, in clear view, highlighted in an errant ray of moonlight, was the thing that had been chasing me for hours?The Dog Man.
He was nude from the waist down, and his body?intimidatingly muscular?shone in the moonlight; the sweat falling thickly from his corded muscles. But the most awful thing about him, the thing that sent me spinning and running headfirst into that dense, nigh lightless part of the woods, was his head. It wasn?t a human head, but a dog?s; the skull-shape, face, and ears all unmistakably canine. The nostrils flared in his pronounced snout; the jaws hung open, exhaling a thick vapor and slavering disgustingly. Only the eyes, uncannily blue, showed any semblance of humanity in that unreal, monstrously incongruous visage.
As I sped past?and through?the underbrush, I heard a howl, long and malignant, echo skyward. And, almost automatically, my pace quickened when I realized that the howl was not dying out, but growing closer.
I?ve never been a particularly unlucky person, but I can say that the incident that occurred shortly after my flight into the denser part of the wood was one of the unluckiest moments any human being has ever experienced. Through some sort of sixth sense or re-emergent animal intuition, I?d effortlessly and thoughtlessly leapt over loose vines, rocks, and other ground-level obstacles during the first few minutes of my run. But abruptly veering to my right to avoid a tree, I came face to face with an owl?of all things?mid-flight. It flew right into my face, shrieked madly, and sent me careening to the ground with the force of the collision and the mad flutter of its wings. Dizzied, I watched it arc toward a tree and perch itself upon a branch; where it then began to hoot loudly and obnoxiously, as if meaning to spitefully alert the Dog Man of its interaction with me.
Before I had completely risen to my feet and brushed myself off, I heard the approaching?the heavily pounding?footsteps of the Dog Man. I also heard his breathing, hard and bestial, and this sent me running off again, still a bit disorientated from my jarring collision with that stupid bird.
I didn?t have to run for long, because after a few more dips and dodges I came upon the mouth of a cave. Knowing that I?d soon have to stop to rest, and not wanting to do so out in the open (in his territory) I sprinted into the cave. The moon?s light only reached a few feet into the interior, and then there was just total blackness beyond that. I slowed and extended my hands out sideways, so that I could feel along the walls, which were fairly narrow. The walls?and the floor?were dry, and more than once I felt my hands slip across the silken threads of some spider?s (hopefully) abandoned trap.
Eventually, after what seemed like an hour of slow and downwardly angled trudging, I sensed the space ahead of me open up. There was a perceptible vastness about the darkness before me, and as I continued on my hands abruptly lost contact with the walls. Dropping them, I strode a little more surely ahead, confident that I had entered some sort of subterranean chamber. There were a few faint sounds high above me, though nothing sounded or echoed with any degree of clarity. I heard nothing behind me, and felt somewhat relaxed; the Dog Man seemed to have lost my trail.
Now that things had calmed down, common sense then returned to me, demanding an audience, and I remembered that I had a phone. Before, my mind had been entirely focused on escape; no other thoughts but that singular impetus towards immediate survival had been formed. But now, standing in that lightless, curiously open space beneath the woods, I was able to think a little clearer. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, checked the reception (no signal) and turned on the flashlight feature. Sweeping the beam across the cave chamber?s floor, I mostly saw a strangely smooth though definitely earthen surface, occasionally blemished by dark, unidentifiable stains. There were no objects that I could immediately see, though there were small, amorphous piles; it was hard to tell if they were collections of dust, ash, or clumps of fur. Not wanting to disturb them?and leave evidence of my presence?I gave each little pile a wide berth where I could, and continued on further into the chamber, my light held out before me.
Shining it up to the ceiling showed nothing?only a skyward gulf of blackness that my phone?s light couldn?t hope to overcome. Keeping it level with my vision brought the same results, though I was happy that I could at least navigate without fear of suddenly walking into a wall, or off a precipice.
Eventually, my foot struck against something, and I froze ? the sound of the object skittering across the surface echoed audibly throughout the cavernous expanse. Not a moment later, I heard a distant, inhumanly sustained howl, and realized with a sudden spike of terror that it had come from the mouth of the cave. Panicking, I swept my flashlight across the cave floor, and eventually found the object ? a leather-bound journal. Scooping it up so that I wouldn?t again kick it, I then hurried further on, desperate to find some place to hide. My light bobbed back and forth, falling only on the perpetually flat, unexplainably smooth floor; all the while from behind?and growing closer?I heard that monster?s ungodly shriek.
Just when the howls seemed to enter and deepen in the chamber, becoming even more terrible in their suggestions of bestial insanity, my light fell upon a small mound of fractured rocks; a boulder that perhaps had fallen from some higher position years or even decades before. I turned off my light and crouched behind it. Not a second later, I heard the patter of bare feet on rock, and the semi-human breathing of the Dog Man. I listened motionlessly, whilst praying that my quickening heartbeat would not be heard by the beast. It seemed to sniff around for a moment, and I prayed that the sheer spaciousness of the room would serve to make the detection of my scent a little harder for it.
After a few more moments of searching, it apparently gave up; the sounds of its scent-seeking nostrils were replaced by a strange, hoarsely guttural cachinnation?as if it had heard a sick joke or witnessed something morbidly funny. It went on for a few moments, then stopped as abruptly as it had started. After this, there was only a heavy, tension-filled silence, during which I imagined the creature stealthily stalking around the chamber in a renewed search of its prey.
But after the passage of what couldn?t have been less than ten minutes, there was still only silence; and I ventured to peek around the rock?s corner. Though the room was dark, I could still see the vague figure of the Dog Man, and almost screamed aloud at the sight of him ? only a few feet away. He was crouched, with his arms across his chest so that the hands rested on the opposite shoulder, with his abominable head held down; it a posture that suggested sleep or a gesture of reverent contemplation. Against both instinct and common sense, I held out my hand and twiddled my fingers, desiring to know if it were truly asleep. When it didn?t react to my baiting activity, a great weight seemed to lift from me. I didn?t move from my hiding place, but allowed my body to relax a little.
Using the light of my phone screen?not the flashlight function itself?I then examined the journal, and found its pages entirely empty. There were no hints as to how it had come to lie on the floor of the cave, but it was obviously old, there was a smell of earth and agedness about it. And, someone had apparently desired to use it at some point; an ink pen was taped to the back of it.
Despite the Dog Man?s strange and sudden dormancy, I knew that it would be suicide to try and sneak past it. Neither did I want to venture deeper into the cave, where who knows what other horrors might lie. So, for now, I?ve decided to record what?s happened to me in the journal, writing by the light of my phone. Its battery is at forty percent, so I should have enough to last the night; and hopefully, by morning, the Dog Man will have gone back out, or go deeper into the cave?which I suspect is his lair.
I don?t dare to sleep. I?m sure a wave of tiredness will soon come to me, but I?ll just have to fight it. I do not want to die, certainly not at the hands of that unholy cross-species creature.


Source.