"Well..." she mused, boots crunching on the gravel path. "Some colleagues prefer calling themselves 'dog breeders', but if you think about it, the idea of ‘breeding’ ghosts just implies all sorts of unsavoury things, doesn't it? So ‘summoner’ suits me just fine.”
She took a moment to consult her crystal pendulum and then confidently resumed her path. “But there is a certain element of preservation to my work, and I actually receive some funding under the banner of animal welfare. Grims are a critically endangered animal entity, you know. Of course we do not want anybody making more of them, but that’s all the more reason to look after the ones that are still around. And to not call yourself a dog breeder.”
“Yes, I got that,” the journalist remarked. “Not a dog breeder.”
“And of course there’s the safety aspect,” she continued, barely hearing him. “There used to be a church here, but it fell into disrepair and they're going have to tear down the ruin. Good thing someone thought to call me, or this little guy might have gone roaming. Bad thing that, in a populated area like this. They’re meant to be territorial after all.”
“So what exactly do you do about it?” he asked as soon as there was an opening.
“Hm?” she hummed, searching for something on the ground.
“How exactly do you catch a ghost dog?”
“Catch them? I don’t do any such thing. I’m a summoner.” She walked over to a level bit of bare ground with a sturdy branch in her hand.
“What are you doing now?” the journalist asked, following on her heels.
“Drawing a summoning circle.”
“With a stick?”
She looked up rather defensively. “It’s a very good stick. Look at the heft on that, that could take a bite and a half.” She bent over her work again, drawing the runes with practised ease.
The journalist watched her work, and slowly walked around the circle. “That’s a pretty big circle.”
“They’re pretty big entities,” she said cheerfully, tucking the stick under her arm and digging two small containers out of the pockets of her leather coat.
“What—”
“Shh!” she shushed him, giving one of the tins a determined shake. The rattle of kibble filled the entire night.
He took a step back, watching how the summoner fished a bone-shaped dog biscuit out of one of the other container held it over the centre of the circle and decisively snapped it in half.
The crack echoed without anything to reflect off of. It kept going and going, until the journalist realised that he was no longer hearing the crack but a far, faint barking. A barking that seemed to come from all directions at once and grew louder and louder until it was joined by a howling so terrible that he felt the cold chill of it grab the back of his neck.
He staggered back, staring at the stout little woman who stood in the centre of the magic circle, her hands planted on her upper thighs as she leaned forward, calling out to the hulking figure speeding towards her through the shivering dark with a voice like tolling bells:
“Who's a good BOY!”
