Neil Gaiman - Trigger Warning - Short Fictions and Disturbances

‘I’m not a stupid man,’ said Oliver. ‘I’m not a bad man, either. I’m not a terribly well man, but that’s neither here nor there, really. I mean, I did what I did because I was jealous, not because I was ill. But I wouldn’t have come up here alone. You see, this is the temple of the Black Dog. These places were the first temples. Before the stone henges and the standing stones, they were waiting and they were worshipped, and sacrificed to, and feared, and placated. The black shucks and the barghests, the padfoots and the wish hounds. They were here and they remain on guard.’

‘Hit him with a rock,’ said Cassie’s voice. ‘Hit him now, Shadow, please .’

The passage they stood in went a little way into the hillside, a man-made cave with drystone walls. It did not look like an ancient temple. It did not look like a gateway to hell. The predawn sky framed Oliver. In his gentle, unfailingly polite voice, he said, ‘He is in me. And I am in him.’

The black dog filled the doorway, blocking the way to the world outside, and, Shadow knew, whatever it was, it was no true dog. Its eyes actually glowed, with a luminescence that reminded Shadow of rotting sea-creatures. It was to a wolf, in scale and in menace, what a tiger is to a lynx: pure carnivore, a creature made of danger and threat. It stood taller than Oliver and it stared at Shadow, and it growled, a rumbling deep in its chest. Then it sprang.

Shadow raised his arm to protect his throat, and the creature sank its teeth into his flesh, just below the elbow. The pain was excruciating. He knew he should fight back, but he was falling to his knees, and he was screaming, unable to think clearly, unable to focus on anything except his fear that the creature was going to use him for food, fear it was crushing the bone of his forearm.

On some deep level he suspected that the fear was being created by the dog: that he, Shadow, was not cripplingly afraid like that. Not really. But it did not matter. When the creature released Shadow’s arm, he was weeping and his whole body was shaking.

Oliver said, ‘Get in there, Shadow. Through the gap in the wall. Quickly, now. Or I’ll have him chew off your face.’

Shadow’s arm was bleeding, but he got up and squeezed through the gap into the darkness without arguing. If he stayed out there, with the beast, he would die soon, and die in pain. He knew that with as much certainty as he knew that the sun would rise tomorrow.

‘Well, yes,’ said Cassie’s voice in his head. ‘It’s going to rise. But unless you get your shit together you are never going to see it.’

There was barely space for him and Cassie’s body in the cavity behind the wall. He had seen the expression of pain and fury on her face, like the face of the cat in the glass box, and then he knew she, too, had been entombed here while alive.

Oliver picked up a rock from the ground, and placed it onto the wall, in the gap. ‘My own theory,’ he said, hefting a second rock and putting it into position, ‘is that it is the prehistoric dire wolf. But it is bigger than ever the dire wolf was. Perhaps it is the monster of our dreams, when we huddled in caves. Perhaps it was simply a wolf, but we were smaller, little hominids who could never run fast enough to get away.’

Shadow leaned against the rock face behind him. He squeezed his left arm with his right hand to try to stop the bleeding. ‘This is Wod’s Hill,’ said Shadow. ‘And that’s Wod’s dog. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ More stones were placed on stones.

‘Ollie,’ said Shadow. ‘The beast is going to kill you. It’s already inside you. It’s not a good thing.’

‘Old Shuck’s not going to hurt me. Old Shuck loves me. Cassie’s in the wall,’ said Oliver, and he dropped a rock on top of the others with a crash. ‘Now you are in the wall with her. Nobody’s waiting for you. Nobody’s going to come looking for you. Nobody is going to cry for you. Nobody’s going to miss you.’

There were, Shadow knew, although he could never have told a soul how he knew, three of them, not two, in that tiny space. There was Cassie Burglass, there in body (rotted and dried and still stinking of decay) and there in soul, and there was also something else, something that twined about his legs, and then butted gently at his injured hand. A voice spoke to him, from somewhere close. He knew that voice, although the accent was unfamiliar.

It was the voice that a cat would speak in, if a cat were a woman: expressive, dark, musical. The voice said, You should not be here, Shadow. You have to stop, and you must take action. You are letting the rest of the world make your decisions for you.

Shadow said aloud, ‘That’s not entirely fair, Bast.’

‘You have to be quiet,’ said Oliver, gently. ‘I mean it.’ The stones of the wall were being replaced rapidly and efficiently. Already they were up to Shadow’s chest.

Mrr. No? Sweet thing, you really have no idea. No idea who you are or what you are or what that means. If he walls you up in here to die in this hill, this temple will stand forever – and whatever hodgepodge of belief these locals have will work for them and will make magic. But the sun will still go down on them, and all the skies will be grey. All things will mourn, and they will not know what they are mourning for. The world will be worse – for people, for cats, for the remembered, for the forgotten. You have died and you have returned. You matter, Shadow, and you must not meet your death here, a sad sacrifice hidden in a hillside.

‘So what are you suggesting I do?’ he whispered.

Fight. The Beast is a thing of mind. It’s taking its power from you, Shadow. You are near, and so it’s become more real. Real enough to own Oliver. Real enough to hurt you.

‘Me?’

‘You think ghosts can talk to everyone?’ asked Cassie Burglass’s voice in the darkness, urgently. ‘We are moths. And you are the flame.’

‘What should I do?’ asked Shadow. ‘It hurt my arm. It damn near ripped out my throat.’

Oh, sweet man. It’s just a shadow-thing. It’s a night-dog. It’s just an overgrown jackal.

‘It’s real,’ Shadow said. The last of the stones was being banged into place.

‘Are you truly scared of your father’s dog?’ said a woman’s voice. Goddess or ghost, Shadow did not know.

But he knew the answer. Yes. Yes, he was scared.

His left arm was only pain, and unusable, and his right hand was slick and sticky with his blood. He was entombed in a cavity between a wall and rock. But he was, for now, alive.

‘Get your shit together,’ said Cassie. ‘I’ve done everything I can. Do it.’

He braced himself against the rocks behind the wall, and he raised his feet. Then he kicked both his booted feet out together, as hard as he could. He had walked so many miles in the last few months. He was a big man, and he was stronger than most. He put everything he had behind that kick.

The wall exploded.

The Beast was on him, the black dog of despair, but this time Shadow was prepared for it. This time he was the aggressor. He grabbed at it.

I will not be my father’s dog.

With his right hand he held the beast’s jaw closed. He stared into its green eyes. He did not believe the beast was a dog at all, not really.

It’s daylight, said Shadow to the dog, with his mind, not with his voice. Run away. Whatever you are, run away. Run back to your gibbet, run back to your grave, little wish hound. All you can do is depress us, fill the world with shadows and illusions. The age when you ran with the Wild Hunt, or hunted terrified humans, it’s over. I don’t know if you’re my father’s dog or not. But you know what? I don’t care.