The Black Dog - An Excerpt

She was in a small room, a red room, a black room. A room without a door, without a window, without furniture. The room was bare but it was alive. She could feel a slow, heavy double heartbeat reverberate through the walls . . . doof . . . . . . DOOOF  . . .

    The walls were pulsating in a horrifying biological way, as if chords of contracting muscles were hidden just beneath their fetid surface.

    Dark liquid like the blackest acid was rolling off it in fat droplets, joining a well-formed pool already spread out on the soft floor, the floor that was soft, the floor that was shivering, the floor that was flesh.

    The stench in the room was overwhelming. It smelled like the decaying body of a dead pet discovered much too late underneath the outback shed. It smelled like the dampness of old mold. It smelled like a maggot-infested piece of ripe meat.

    And there was no way out.

    The heartbeat was accelerating. The walls heaved backwards and forwards, moving with the same type of sharp angular motion a person bumped up on speed often exhibits. A bulge, a placental sack, a dark womb from which only the greatest evil could be born had begin to bulge obscenely out of one of the walls. As the one expanded, the others seemed to sink in, as if giving the wall with the ugly birth-sac as much room as possible.

    Lightning struck. It was impossible to tell from where. There were no windows, no door, no openings where even the tiniest sliver of light might have blinked through, much less a blasting bolt of electricity. It struck at the walls, at the floor, at the brown pulsating ceiling.

    It hit everything in the room but her.

    The sac was big now, obscene, horrifying. The lightning struck at it and, in the brief milliseconds before it actually touched it, Susan could see the outline of the dog, the black dog, the yellow-eyed dog, the dog with putrescent teeth, the evil dog.

    And then the womb tore open and the black dog, dripping with rotting pink slime leapt out. It stood proud, the ultimate vision of all that was sorrow and pain and hurt. It knew the awe it inspired. It craved it, needed it. The dog swivelled its head, almost as if to sniff out a field mouse in a dark barn. With a jerk its head centred on Susan.

    It knew its mark.

    With a roar of ten-thousand denizens of hell, the dog leapt for her throat.