My dog Amadeus had been a loving Lab that never hurt anyone or anything. On a half moon night, that all changed.
I’d let him out and he started barking at something in the spooky woods behind my house. I write spooky because as far back as I can remember people in my small town in upstate New York called the woods behind my house spooky woods. They circulated all sorts of rumors about those spooky woods; an Indian burial ground was in them; a vortex was there and interdimensional beings traveled in and out of it; Bigfoot, Dogman, Mothman, and other cryptids frolicked in those woods according to many supposed sightings; hikers often disappeared there; Satanists sacrificed kids in those unhallowed woods, and some called it the Devil’s playground.
I never saw any of that. It was poppycock. The nonsense of people with too much time on their hands and probably some with mental health problems. But when Amadeus ran into those woods and didn’t return until the next night, I had to rethink my beliefs about the spooky woods being benign. He snarled when he saw me, as if I was an enemy or an intruder in my own yard. His eyes had changed. The word eerie comes to mind. No. I have a better word, demonic. His eyes remind me of the name of a poem, The Hounds of Hell. Had I been a believer in hell, and if I didn’t know Amadeus was really a loving Lab, I would have thought Amadeus had been sent from Satan to do the Devil’s work. Amadeus looked that evil that night.
At that moment while I was dwelling on Amadeus’s growling and evil eyes, a toddler named Brently stumbled and yelled Mama in my neighbor’s yard across the street. Amadeus’s eyes glowed. He growled like a demon from hell and dashed toward the child. I spied his mother, Audrey, and yelled, “Get Brently in the house! Quick! Get him in the house! My dog’s gone crazy and he’s after him!”
Audrey scooped up Brently just in time and ran to her house. She opened the door but Amadeus sank his teeth into her leg and trapped her in his jaws before she could get in. She shoved Brently into the house and slammed the door knowing she couldn’t get herself in. Amadeus had too good a hold on her leg, which began bleeding profusely. Audrey hit Amadeus on his head and body many times, but her strikes had no effect. They seemed to energize Amadeus to bite harder and growl more like a devil dog.
I started running to rescue Audrey. Just as I reached Amadeus, he seized and shook Audrey’s body like a rag doll. I tried to grab him but with supernatural strength and speed, he sped away from me with Audrey’s leg still in his jaws and her body dragging on the ground, as if she weighed no more than a feather. I sprinted after him but I wasn’t fast enough to catch him. His speed increased like the speed of a jaguar, and he vanished into the woods with Audrey.
When I reached the woods, I saw no sight of Amadeus or Audrey. I feared Audrey was dead. Curiously, I saw no signs of the blood that had been pouring out of her leg. None on the ground, or the bushes. To this day that still puzzles me.
That was the last time I saw Audrey or Amadeus. The police searched the woods as did the National Guard and various volunteer groups. The searches went on for three months, but no one ever found any traces of Audrey or Amadeus. It was as if the horrifying Incident had been paranormally erased from the spooky woods.
The townspeople said Amadeus dragged Audrey to hell. I began thinking they may have been right, and that they may have been right about all the things they said about the spooky woods that I thought were foolish superstitions. Eventually, I became such a believer in their dark tales and so afraid of something else terrible happening around me or to me, that I sold my house, packed up my stuff, and left that town and the spooky woods forever.
Bob Boyd