Unleashed

  Jeb woke to the sound of barking. Outside his bedroom window, a partial moon hung in the black winter sky. Jeb looked at the clock: 12:23 am, 8℉, by far the coldest night of the year.

His wife Kate had taken Buster, their aging yellow lab, out before coming to bed. Since Jeb had to wake early for work, he hadn’t waited up for them to get back. But if Kate had already taken the dog out, why was Buster now barking at the back door? 

Jeb reached across the side of the bed where Kate’s warm body should have been laying and felt nothing. Flinging off the covers, Jeb got up and practically jumped into his slippers. He stumbled into the kitchen, wrenching the back door open with a jerk. Buster stood outside panting—leash hanging limp from his collar—his doggie breath coming out like puffs of smoke from a steam engine. 

“Kate?,” Jeb yelled into the darkness. “Katie?!”’

No answer.

Jeb squinted into the thick forest bordering their backyard. “Katie?” he called once more as he grabbed his coat and struggled into the sleeves. His eyes looked into Buster’s worried face. Jeb bent down, cupping Buster’s chin in his hands, and asked, “Where’s Mommy?”

 Buster licked his chops and looked outside. 

“C’mon, boy,” Jeb called, grabbing the leash and tugging Buster into the narrow yard.

 The old dog stopped and sniffed the air. Jeb looked around anxiously. “What is it, boy?” 

A stick cracked in the woods. 

“Kate, are you there?” Jeb called into the darkness.

Another stick snapped deeper in the forest. 

Jeb gave the leash two quick tugs, and Buster heeled. They both held their breaths and listened. Watching. Waiting. 

When nothing more was heard, Jeb tried Kate’s cell phone. As it rang he walked the length of the backyard, searching for signs of his wife. “Hello, you’ve reached Kate,” the voice on the phone said. “Please leave a message…” Jeb hung up and pushed redial. Where on earth could she be?

Jeb rounded the side of the house where the cars were parked. Kate’s Toyota sat undisturbed next to Jeb’s Dodge. Eight years together, five of them married and never a thing out of place.

Buster panted anxiously, his eyes fixed on the tree line beyond the house. Jeb followed the old dog’s gaze. “Did Mommy go in there?” he asked, pointing to the tall pine trees where the dog seldom ventured. With his eyesight failing, Buster preferred to stay close to the house after dark. 

After getting Kate’s answering machine for the third time, Jeb sent a quick text—call back if you get this—and ran inside to fetch a flashlight from the kitchen. 

“Buster, you stay here and wait for me,” Jeb said, unfastening his leash and hanging it on the wall by the back door. Buster’s muscles twitched, struggling to obey as the door closed on him. Jeb knew Buster wanted to help, but the old dog would only slow him down, and in this bitter cold he had to move fast.

The long beam of Jeb’s flashlight cut through the night air, carving a path through the trees. Despite the outside chill, Jeb’s face and neck felt hot. As he plunged into the forest, the porch light behind him grew dim, a single star leading the way back home through a universe of pines and hemlocks. Jeb panned the woods, calling over and over until Kate’s name echoed back to him like the voice of another far-off searcher. 

Jeb’s frantic breaths swirled in the flashlight beam ahead. Had Kate been dragged off by a wild animal? No, there’d be blood on the ground. Had she passed out? Maybe, but she’d be in the back yard if that were the case. Nothing would have compelled her this far into the forest in sub-freezing temperatures in the middle of the night. 

Adrenaline hijacked Jeb’s senses. He stumbled on a tree root and fell to his hands and knees, flashlight batteries spilling onto the forest floor. Jeb felt around for them. They couldn’t have rolled far. They must be just under him, or behind him, or perhaps a pace ahead. 

Darkness engulfed him. 

Jeb flicked on his cellphone light and checked his surroundings. Home was behind him. Or was it to his left? He couldn’t be sure. With just a few steps illuminated at a time, Jeb trudged in the direction he thought he should go, eyes lowered to the pine-needle-covered ground. With each step, the darkness crept closer. With each yard the forest closed abruptly behind him like a heavy curtain. His footsteps were muted out by the soft piney earth. Jeb had the eerie sensation of being slowly swallowed by something dark and deadly, but he had to keep going. Step. Step. Step. Stop. 

Jeb heard something move behind him and spun around. There, amid the trees, stood his faithful dog. 

“Buster?” he said in amazement. “How did you get out here?” 

Jeb was thinking of possible ways Buster could have opened the back door and followed his trail into the woods when he noticed something hanging from the dog’s neck. 

Buster’s leash. 

It was hooked to his collar. 

The problem was, when Jeb had left the dog in the house, he’d unclipped the leash and hung it on the wall. Imagining his senile dog somehow breaking out of the house was one thing, but Buster taking the leash off the wall and attaching it to his own collar was completely impossible. There was only one explanation: someone had to have hooked up the leash and let the dog out. 

“Kate?” Jeb offered quietly. Perhaps his wife had made it back to the house, found the dog, and leashed him up to come searching for him. How the dog had gotten loose from her and why she wasn’t nearby was puzzling, but that wasn’t what worried him most. Buster was panting as usual, yet his hot breath didn’t turn to vapor in the frosty air as it had done before. 

Jeb studied his dog’s face. Buster’s shiny black eyes stared back at him. For a moment the dog’s body flickered as if it was being projected by an old fashioned camera that had reached the end of its reel. The shape that Jeb saw in that instant turned his blood to ice. In place of Buster’s shaggy form was the silhouette of a gaunt human crouching on all fours, its sunken eyes fixed directly on Jeb.

Jeb jumped backward, tripping over a fallen branch and scrambling to get away. Though the silhouette had only been visible for a second, Jeb knew what he’d seen. This was not his dog.

The next morning, Kate awoke on the living room couch with a kink in her neck. The embers of a fire smoldered in the fireplace. Sunlight was just beginning to creep through their front window. 

Kate sat up, suddenly remembering why she wasn’t in her bed. She’d taken Buster out for his usual walk around the yard last night and he’d bolted off into the woods—tearing the leash out from her frozen grip. Kate figured he’d come back once he’d chased off whatever critter he’d run after. But when her toes were already numb after five minutes of standing there, she’d decided to go back inside to wait by the fire for the silly old dog to return. 

Now, realizing she’d fallen asleep, Kate shot up and ran to the back door, flinging it open and yelling for Buster. Breathing in the icy air felt like inhaling broken glass. A layer of frost covered the pines beyond the yard. She pictured Buster’s frozen body laying in the woods and was almost in tears when she heard the sound of doggie footsteps coming from behind her. Kate turned to see Buster staring up at her with his big black eyes.

“Buster!” Kate said, bending down to hug the old dog. “Oh, thank heavens.” She kissed his furry neck.

Buster moved towards the open door. 

“Oh, right,” Kate said. “Potty time.” She grabbed the dog’s leash off the wall and clipped it to his collar. “No running off this time, deal?”

Kate pulled on her coat and followed the dog out into the yard. As they rounded the side of the house to Buster’s favorite tree, Kate heard the snap of a twig in the woods. She looked towards the sound but didn’t see anything. Then another snap from behind made her jump. Jeb walked towards her from a few feet away. 

“Jeez, you scared me,” Kate said with a hand on her chest. “I thought you’d left for work already.”

Jeb didn’t answer. He stopped walking, a look of concern in his eyes. 

“Is something wrong?” She asked. 

Jeb looked at Buster. 

“Oh, yeah,” Kate said. “I’m really sorry about last night. Buster ran off and I was cold. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I should have woken you.”

The intense look in Jeb’s eyes was starting to worry her. That and his silent treatment. She’d messed up, he had the right to be angry, but at least he could show some sympathy. She’d been freaked out of her mind thinking she’d accidentally killed their dog. 

Kate cupped her hands around her mouth and blew warm air onto her numb fingers. Her breath rose in a stream of white. “It’s freezing out here,” she said. “Let’s get back in the house.”

Jeb didn’t move. He didn’t seem cold at all. In fact, he looked like he planned to stand there staring at Buster until Kate felt sufficiently sorry for leaving him out last night.

Buster started to bark. 

She was just about to tell Jeb to knock it off when something strange happened. For a brief moment her husband’s body blinked like an old lightbulb. And in that split second the black outline of a hunched figure appeared in his place, its cold eyes boring straight into Kate’s soul. Terror gripped every molecule in Kate’s body. She didn’t even have time to scream.

About an hour later, the neighbors who lived a quarter mile down the road found Buster at their doorstep panting with exhaustion. The temperatures outside had hit a record low. Buster’s leash hung from his collar, stiff with cold. Ice had formed on the fur around his nostrils. The poor dog looked nearly frozen. They knew something must be very wrong for Buster to be at their doorstep like this. They were about to call Jeb and Kate, when something else caught their attention. “Isn’t that odd,” the neighbor’s wife asked her husband. “I can’t see his breath.” And when she put her hand up to the dog’s mouth she discovered the reason—he had none.