The Ozark Howler In The Purple Fog
Martin moved with a desperate rhythm as he dug the narrow trench before his front door. The Ozark earth was thin over the ancient bedrock, a limestone shell hiding sinkholes that acted as windows to an underworld. He had heard the first howl at twilight, a resonant awakening that sounded like a woman’s shriek mixed with the mournful cry of a wolf. By the time the second howl echoed through the hollow, a low note of loss that vibrated in his teeth, he knew the time for skepticism had passed. He had to finish the Howler Path before the third cry sounded, for that was the definitive mark of doom that signaled death within the year.
One by one Martin placed the flat stones at the bottom of the trench. This ritual was meant to lead the spirit of death past the home rather than through the threshold. The air grew heavy with a thick musky odor, an earthy smell that signaled a physical presence lurking in the negative spaces of the woods. He looked toward the treeline and saw two bioluminescent red eyes glowing like blood oranges. These eyes did not reflect the light of his lantern; they burned with an internal flame that seemed to pierce his very soul.
The creature emerged from the shadows as a stocky, shaggy beast the size of a bear. It possessed prominent horns that twisted like those of a giant goat, and a long tangled beard wagged from its chin. It was a dissident against the order of man, a foul creature of the earth’s fertility with blood between its paws and a throat sore from its own primal music. Martin felt a buzzing sensation course through his body, a disorientation that made him feel as if he were filled with bumblebees. This was the quantum ripple of a traveler between worlds, a being whose very hair curled into dimensions unseen by human eyes.
He remembered the stories of his ancestors who spoke of the Nightshade Bear as a beautiful but deadly predator that haunted the edges of reality. Some in the hills believed the beast was a human transformed by black magic, perhaps someone he knew. He stared at the creature and wondered if the wide eyes of his own father looked back at him from that mat of dark fur.
The beast arched its muscular neck back to release the final howl. The sound was a grinding, grating scream like a metal blade being scraped over unmoving stone. Martin dropped his shovel as the sound of tearing cloth filled the air, though no fabric was actually being torn. He had failed to bury the stones in time. The Nightshade Doll he had hung in the cedar tree was gone, accepted as an offering that did nothing to satisfy the monster’s true hunger. As the Howler leaped vertically twenty feet up the ridgeline in a single bound, vanishing into the darkness, Martin knew that the woods would never release their hold on his mind. He was now one who had the Howler on him, a cursed soul waiting for the shadows to reclaim what they had already marked as their own.
