The Haunted Traveler December 2017 Edition

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Rainy days are the worst.
As she pulls the curtain over the window, movement catches her eye. It takes a
moment to figure out what she has seen. Down by the drainage tunnel, where she
always tries not to look, something is moving against the current. She automatically
takes a step back and looks away; habit. Don’t be stupid, she thinks to herself, and forces
herself to look back down into the stream. A clump of mud is moving, the wrong way,
uphill and up stream. Something looks off about it, aside from the physics. She presses
her nose against the glass. The mud is sticking out in all directions, as if it’s absorbed
a ball of grass. She wipes away the steam from her breath that frosts the glass. The
mud turns, it looks at her, and suddenly half of a black ear pokes out from the mass. A
cold feeling goes through her and settles around her heart, as if she is back outside in
the rain. She feels soaked through with fear. The clump stops moving and waits, still
and unmoving, water streaming all around it. Anne does not want to go look, even
as she moves towards the door. She feels her lunch moving inside her, and she walks
as slowly down the hill as she can, the dread growing with each and every step. The
lump is getting larger now; Ri sized. But Anne is bigger now. She bends and picks up a
branch from under the tree, just in case. And then the mass begins moving, towards her,
exiting the water just below where she stands. Bones protrude from the stumps of the
legs, chunks are missing, where the hollows show rib lines and the fur sticks in tangled
patches. There is mud everywhere, and the eye sockets are empty, and even as Anne
starts to scream she hears her own voice as a little child asking her puppy to come play.
One ear is missing. The tail drags on the ground in a straight line, whisping from side
to side rhythmically.
“Good girl,” Anne whispers, taking a step back. “Good puppy.” Riri looks at her,
head cocked to the side but too far; impossibly cocked to the side and neck tendons
showing. Anne realizes with sickening certainty if the creature doesn’t restraighten
itself the head is about to roll off, permanently. “Go play, Riri,” She whispers, pleading,
praying the thing will return into the water. The thing does a little hop, ankles cracking
and twisting to the side as it comes back down, and the back legs land back in the water.
There is a rumble of thunder and a sudden cracking sound. Something hits Anne in
the back, hard, and she falls to her knees, hands splayed and landing in the water. The
current is up to above her elbows. There is pain in the back of her head, and as she puts
a hand up to exam it her fingers catch on something rough. A tree branch has fallen,
into her. She feels wet stickiness where the twigs reach down into her skull, and pulls
away blood. The thing swims before her. Her elbows give out. She can’t turn her head
to either side. Water streaks past her nostrils, and she can barely breathe.
“Riri, get the stick,” She whispers. Her nostrils catch water this time. It fills her nose
and she coughs it out, fingers slipping deeper into the mud. The creature touches her
cheek gently with the tip of its nose; a chunk missing. Annie remembers her mother
on her hands and knees in the stream, trying to catch the puppy. Failing. Dying.