Demonic

“I saw him… I saw—”

“It was only a nightmare, honey. Shhh.” Luca’s mother patted him on the back and gave him a hug. She didn’t understand. It wasn’t just a nightmare. He had seen Orion.

But it wasn’t Orion. He wasn’t his dog.

Orion died two weeks ago. Luca had watched him run across the road. He had been growling at something, something Luca couldn’t see. Then Orion took off, the leash wrenched from his unprepared fingers. He could still feel the texture of the nylon loop dancing off his fingertips. The flash of blue as Orion, a large black lab, ran out into the road.

He had always told Orion, since the day he first got him as a young pup, that neither of them were supposed to go out in the road. He promised Orion he wouldn’t if Orion wouldn’t. Luca supposed, now being eleven, that making promises with a puppy wasn’t a real thing. But they had promised this, and Orion had run out into the road anyway, right out in front of the blue pickup.

Luca had watched it happen, remembering every sensation and sound. He had dug the grave himself, a tiny spot just at the edge of the woods where Luca knew Orion would be happy. Where Luca could visit him every now and then. The thought of it made him sick and the tears had only just stopped when the nightmare came.

Luca had found himself in the woods, in the same spot he had buried Orion. Far off he heard a dog barking. With tears in his eyes, Luca ran into the woods, calling out for his lost dog. The scene shifted then, as it does in dreams from time to time, and he found himself in a sudden blizzard. The cold cut through the surrealness of the dream, so much so that after he awoke, he was still shivering. The tree branches swayed and lashed out at him. He ducked and dodged them through biting blasts of snow, all the while calling out for Orion, who he could barely hear over the howling wind.

The thing about this nightmare is that this had happened before. The dog had gotten lost in the nearby woods as a puppy, chasing after a squirrel. Luca had been out in the woods for over an hour and was beginning to give up when something padded his leg. He looked down to find Orion shivering. He carried him home and the two of them spent the rest of the day warming up by the fireplace.

But in the nightmare, Luca understood that his dog was gone.

Lost forever.

He turned and the scene changed again.

The road outside the front of his house was before him. The truck that hit Orion was stopped catty-cornered, as it had been when it hit him. But the nightmare scene was pitch black and gloomy, unlike in real life, where the day had been bright and sunny. Several people saw the event. The old man who had been driving the truck did everything he could to help Orion. He even began to cry when he realized the dog wasn’t going to pull through. Luca stood on the sidewalk; his hand still outstretched as it had been when the leash left his fingers. Under the flickering streetlamp on the road appeared Orion out of nowhere. As Luca approached, he noticed Orion was facing away from him.

Luca crouched down and called out to Orion, feeling a sudden elation at seeing his dog still alive, but the dog didn’t turn. He saw the three small white spots on his chest, the markings that inspired the Orion’s name. The sound of growling echoed against the silent night.

“Orion, here boy.” Luca said, putting his hands out. The dog stood there; head turned backward, defying any sense of physicality. The growling became louder, and amidst the growling, a faint voice called his name, his mother’s voice. But she was nowhere to be seen. Luca would only see Orion, Onion who was somehow still alive.

Wasn’t he?

His hands were still outstretched when the first sense of rising horror hit him, and as it did so, the growling grew even louder, and the dog charged.

At least, that’s what Luca thought the dog was going to do. Instead of lunging forward, as a dog normally would, Orion shambled towards him broken and clattering upon the asphalt. The dog moved unnervingly fast, and before Luca could react, his hand brushed against the dog’s fur. Instantly, a wave of cold darkness descended upon him, and he awoke, falling from the bed, the deafening sound of growling in his left ear shifting instantly into a clotted, guttural roar.

His ear was still ringing when his mother came into the room, her face pale as she brought him close to her chest. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of her heartbeat, though slightly elevated, the steady and powerful thrum brought him back to a state of calm.

He was safe here, locked in his mother’s embrace, her heartbeat pulsing through him like a healing wave of power.

Luca soon found himself tucked back into bed.

“Are you going to be alright?” His mother whispered.

“I think so.” He said, his voice small. She kissed him on the forehead and left the room.

~

Sarah knew that losing Orion was going to be rough for Luca. The boy had never met his father, so the weight of growing up without one fell to Orion’s sturdy shoulders. The dog could never replace a father figure in the boy’s life but having him around sure helped. Sarah remembered Orion being oddly dependable. She felt that as long as Orion was with her boy, no harm could come to him. The two had practically grown up together.

What had made Orion run out into the road? That was the question that stuck in the back of Sarah’s mind. She had offered to handle Orion’s burial, but Luca had insisted on doing it himself, nearly coming to tears as she hesitantly handed Luca the shovel, certain that the burial would be too much for him. But he had handled it well, at least, until now.

Something about the sudden nightmare didn’t feel right to Sarah. She left her son’s room and walked back into her own. A faint smell still lingered from when she awoke to the sound of Luca’s screaming. She wrinkled her nose. Maybe there was a dead mouse in the wall? There was no doubt about it, something had surely died somewhere.

But that didn’t explain what she had seen in the hallway when she awoke.

Just a hallucination, she thought as she got back into bed, pulling the covers over herself. But the image of the dog’s outline standing in the doorway, much like he used to do first thing in the morning, didn’t leave her mind until she fell back to sleep.

~

When sleep fell upon Luca again, he found himself standing at the edge of the road once more, but it was empty this time. Strange whisperings flitted and sighed all around him.

“Hello?” He asked the night, but no reply. He turned to go back inside but himself back in bed. A shadow in the hallway caught Luca’s eye. Before he can say anything the shadow ran into the room and leapt onto the bed, causing Luca to jump. Luca stifled a scream but it’s only Orion.

“Orion?” He said, confused.

The dog’s head wasn’t facing him again.

Before the dawning horror could fully materialize, the dog shambled toward Luca, and he watched the black fur shift into gray, decomposing skin. The dog was straddling his chest when the head turned slowly to face him, and Luca was met with an eyeless face and blood dripping from serrated teeth. He could feel the warmth of the blood dripping onto his cheek and the stench of the cold, rotting breath of the thing.

He wasn’t dreaming anymore.

~

Sarah snapped awake. Luca was screaming. She tried to get to her feet, but her body felt paralyzed beneath the covers. The sound of mad whisperings faded in and out as she glanced around the dark room. The smell of rotting flesh flooded her nostrils, as if someone had just shoved her head into the vent shaft of a charnel house. She saw a flash of light and her body painfully spasmed and then fell limp. She heard a faint ringing in her ears and felt her body slowly, with robotic-like movements, get out of bed. She walked out into the hallway, her heart pounding harder with every step. In the faint moon light, she caught a glimpse of Luca rolling from side to side in his bed, locked in a dream.

It’ll be quick. A voice said from nowhere. Her heart pounding against the inside of her ribcage, each pulse a hammer-strike as she stepped into the kitchen, grabbing a butcher knife from the block.

No, no no! She tried to scream, trying to drop the knife, but her body wouldn’t listen. She shambled down the hallway towards the sound of her nightmare-bound son, knowing with unspeakable horror what she was about to do, and powerless to stop it.

~

Luca fell out of bed once again and this time he was sobbing harder than he ever had in his life. He scurried across the floor and stopped in the corner of the room, huddling there. Through his tear-streaked eyes he looked up at the sound of something shuffling in the hallway. He saw nothing but understood that whatever was coming, wasn’t coming to help him.

Quite the contrary.

He glanced across the room to the window and the cold, clear night beyond. He made a run for it but paused as the form of his mother appeared in the doorway. She stood there, looming in the darkness, motionless. A moment went by, but Luca supposed it could have been an hour as the two of them stood frozen in their positions. His heart threatened to burst from his chest, and he found it immensely hard to breathe. Luca felt that something wasn’t right. He watched as his mother slowly crouched down and put her head to the ground, sniffing. The sound of it much too loud for a human. She sniffed and snorted and then her head snapped up, causing him to jump. It’s then that he saw the glow of her eyes as they stared at him, the red flickering beyond them. He could see her face, distorted and disjointed as it smiled, the serrated teeth dripping blood on the floor as the thing that had once been his mother skuttled towards him, a shriek bellowed from her ruined face. He shut his eyes and braced himself.

Silence. He could almost feel the cold of that winter day once more.

Orion lost.

Orion found.

Just then, a deafening bark cut through the night as something leapt from the top of his bed. Luca’s eyes shot open and he saw a black mass between him and his mother. A tail swooshed in front of Luca’s face and with it, the smell of freshly mown grass, momentarily transporting Luca back to the day when he picked Orion out of a litter of puppies at the house of one of his mother’s friends. The memory sustained and Orion gave a loud bark once more, causing the odd creature masquerading as Sarah to stumble backwards, dropping the large knife.

This was Orion. He was protecting Luca in his time of need. There was another loud bark and Luca watched as his mother’s form fell to the ground. Orion growled as something began to peel its way out of Sarah’s lifeless form, reminiscent of the way locusts peel their way out of their old skin, leaving a husk behind. The thing, tall and spindly went to dart away, but with a great leap, Orion sailed through the air and landed upon it. Sarah gasped as if coming up for air. Orion fell upon the creature, its screams tearing at Luca’s eardrums. Sarah scurried over to Luca and they watched as Orion ripped apart the pale corpse-like entity, the bits of rotten flesh that he flung from the thing dissolved into black clouds of smoke. At last, Orion clamped his jaws around the creature’s scrawny neck and shook until the head, still screaming, was separated from the body and was soon nothing more than another black cloud, the scream vanishing along with it.

Orion huffed, and turned. The dog looked solid enough, stark black against the dimness of the room, but the eyes were glowing with a soft pale light. Before Sarah could grab her son, he leapt up and ran towards his dog and she gasped with surprise to see him wrap his arms around Orion’s neck. Orion wined and panted, bringing one of his paws up, as if attempting to hug him back. Sarah started to cry and hurried over to hug her boys.

~

Sarah awoke the next day with a splitting headache. She had had the worst dream. Groggily, she made her way out of bed and towards the kitchen to start breakfast. She saw that Luca’s bedroom door was open, and she peered inside to see the boy was still sleeping. A sense of calm washed over her as she watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Sarah stood there for a moment, taking in the calmness of the morning. But the uncomfortable feeling left by the awful dream crept up on her again. Something had taken control of her body and was going to make her kill her own son. She tried to shake the feeling and turned to leave.

That’s when she spotted the butcher knife laying on the bedroom floor. Her breath caught in her throat when she heard the faint ringing of her phone in her bedroom. She rushed from the room and saw that it was a friend of hers. The same friend that she had gotten Orion from six years ago.

“H—hello?” she said tentatively.

~

Luca was riding in the back seat of the car, looking out the window at the passing trees.

“It’s a surprise, Luca.”

Sarah didn’t tell Luca where they were going, only that he would know as soon as they got there.

“Duh.” He had said, rolling his eyes. She told him to not be such a smartass. As soon as Sarah pulled onto the street, Luca glanced up at his mother’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. She smiled as his face lit up. She barely had the car in park when he threw open the door and ran up to the house.

“They’re back here!” A voice called out from the backyard. Sarah swore she saw dust kicking up from Luca’s heels as he ran around the side of the house. One of Orion’s sisters had puppies and they were ready to find their new families. Luca walked out into the backyard and stopped, looking over them. His face dropped.

Sarah walked up behind him and noticed that the wind had left his sails.

“What’s wrong, honey?” She asked, stooping down to eye-level. He glanced over the puppies.

“It’ll be just like Orion, won’t it? I’ll get one and it’ll die, just like he did.” The boy stifled a sob and turned towards his mother, eyes straining against his threatening tears. Sarah looked into Luca’s eyes.

“I’m not going to lie to you. The puppy you will get will eventually die. But dying is a part of life. It happens and we have to accept that.” She put her hands on his shoulders.

“You can’t think of that though. If you thought of that when you got Orion, you wouldn’t have had any of the good times you had with him. Life isn’t about how we die; it’s about how we live. Orion would want you to find another friend, even if he is still with you, / and he is still with you.”

Luca felt something brush up against his leg and looked down. A small black puppy sat at his feet, looking up at him. The puppy pawed at his leg and Luca crouched down to pick him up. He licked the boy on his cheek, clearing away the tears that had begun to fall.

Sarah let out a small gasp “Look!” Sarah pointed to a marking on the puppy’s chest. Instead of three small spots as Orion had, there was a single star-shaped spot about the size of a quarter.

“I think this one was meant to be.” Sarah said to her son as he held the puppy up. “What are you going to name him?” She asked. Luca studied the puppy for a moment, and Sarah had the strange sensation that the puppy was studying him back. His small tail begun to wag.

“I think… I think I will name him, Sirius.”