This is a story that occurs in the United Kingdom. The writer is unknown.
It is centered around some British folklore of an entity called the black Shuck.
I can't remember what time of year it was, but judging by the
scenery and what I was doing, it must have been the end of summer
or the cusp of autumn. I can be confident that I was on one
of the longer school holidays. Children are given much to the dismay of parents
everywhere. Because my girlfriend of the time had been sent to stay with her
nan in a small market town almost twenty miles away from where we lived,
her mom and dad diligently limited our time together. We were young teenagers,
full of eagerness to act on our own natural drives, and they had good
reason. When I received a written message from my girlfriend cell phones were not
a thing yet, letting me know that she was not under the watchful of
her parents. A twenty mile bike ride didn't seem like much of a barrier
to some alone time children had more freedom back then, I had more than
most. Being the fifth of six children, my parents had most likely had
enough of parenting by the time it came to me and my little sister.
My independent nature and my ability to stay out of trouble meant the arrangement was
agreeable for everyone concerned. So with a backpack containing a sleeping bag and a
change of clothes, I headed off to visit my girlfriend. England is a
relatively small place, lined with narrow lanes and dotted over with farmhouses and small
villages. There's always a place to stop and have a bite to eat.
There isn't much there to depose a danger to a bicyclist or a hiker,
except perhaps stinging nettle that'll give you an itchy rash for an hour or so.
But otherwise I didn't feel as though I had anything to worry about.
As I made my way cross country to the village of Bungye. The twenty
miles seemed to pass quickly as I rode through the landscape that had changed very
little since the days when the Romans ruled to Britain, and soon I found
myself on a country road too narrow for two cars to pass, and it
was separated from a farmer's fence by an overgrown grass verge enveloped in cow parsley,
blunt leaf dock and the chalky stems of yellow fennel. Norfolk is exceptionally
flat, and so I was given an unhindered view of the sunset from the
moment it touched the horizon until it slipped quietly behind it. And to my
right the world was all shadows and silhouettes outlined against the sun, and to
my left the fields were reflecting the amber rays and casting a sinister paul over
the countryside. While I was wishing I had a camera, I slowed down
to enjoy the sight, and that's when I became aware of a metallic sound.
I think I had been hearing it for a while but had subconsciously put
it down to something caught in the spokes of my bike. Now, as
I slowed, the soft, metallic clanking had not changed. I looked back
over the flat landscape, but I couldn't find anything natural or otherwise that could
have been making that sound. Unfortunately, I had recently read Algernon in Blackwood's
The wind Togo, and though it held very little resemblance to what we are
told today that what a Windigo looks like, it is one of the few
books I've read that truly scared me. That, combined with my natural fear
of dark and time of day, and my location far from any man made
light sent fear sweeping over me in the form of panic. With a mental
image of the wind to go, rising up from behind the overgrown fence line
and sprinting at me with ungodly speed, I pushed off with steely determination to
reach the well lit safety of my girlfriend's NaN's brick home. As I raced
along in the fading light, the metallic sound stayed with me, and at
a very short period it changed from clanking to that of a dog's claws on
the pavement. I was hoping that was the case, and I looked back,
half expecting to see a dog like my German shepherd at home, ambling
down the road behind me, but again there was nothing in sight. I'm
deaf in one ear, and as such I'm used to being misled by sound,
identifying it or placing its distance and direction, or much more difficult with
only one good ear. But still this was a familiar noise. Whether I
was able to identify the source or not. The absence of sunlight was doing
nothing to counteract the chill that had swept over me, but the knowledge that
it was a sound I knew helped to provide some calm, as if to
punish me for relaxing, the sound of something big came from the long grass
and tall plants on the verge. The dry sound of moving grass and folding
stems softened the clank of a short chain being dragged over the hidden fence.
I whipped my head around, expecting to see an animal that I thought had
come out of the field and should have been standing on the verge behind me,
But nothing was there. An electric prickle slid up my back and raised
the hair off my neck. The road was empty, but I saw the
silhouette of a pair of long, narrow dogears keeping pace with me in the
field. The animal's head wasn't bobbing, so I knew it didn't have to
try to keep up with me. I could see the top of its head
and the brakes of the tall grass, and it seemed to know I was
looking at it, because it folded its ears and ducked its head lower.
That chilled prickle made a home in the center of my chest, and it
tightened my lungs and made the air hit cold in the back of my throat.
My heart started thumping against my rib cage as if it wanted to break
out of its organic prison, and it pushed icy blood around my body,
and instinctively I knew the situation was unnatural. My legs were already pumping as
hard as my heart while my head swiveled between the narrow road ahead and the
animal moving along the fence. If I had seen the thing's head level with
the tops of the grass, it had to be five feet tall. Now
that I knew what I was looking at and where it was, I could
see its thick, heavy muzzle and long black body between the thinner patches of
the grass. Somehow I found more speed, but that didn't help. It
increased its gait to trot and keep pace with me. I was pelting along
faster than I'd ever bike before or since, and all this dog had to
do to keep up was trot. Fear was pushing me beyond my limits,
and the voice of reason was a distant whisper in my mind between telling me
it was just a horse or a deer. But I knew in reality it
was an unnatural creature and I had no chance of escaping. An animal that
size could leap over the fence and catch me if it wanted to, and
there was nothing I could do to stop that. I could hear the animal's
pause, padding through the dirt, and the rhythmic jangling of a chain as
it lazily started to close the gap between us. On the very few occasions
when I had been forced to seek control of my body to the fight or
flight response, I had been amazed at the number of tiny details that autopilot
is able to pick up on and factor into a snap decision. And even
now I can clearly picture the vista ahead of me as I approached the small
humpback bridge spanning a narrow stream with three foot deep banks flanking it, And
although I couldn't see the road immediately beyond the hump of the bridge, I
could see the hedge rows bordering the generous gardens of scatterings of cottages built along
the winding road. There was a slight downward gradient that probably passes as a
hill around here, and it allowed me to see the roof of a car
weaving its way toward the bridge at a speed. The holmes in site were
all on the right side, with open fields on the left, and that
meant the dog wouldn't have any overgrown grass to stay behind after it crossed the
stream, and thinking that the dog would choose to pounce on me. After
clearing the end of the bridge, I dug deep and pushed out enough effort
to increase my speed or fraction As I crested the humpbacked bridge. As my
tires left the tarmac where it was gouged by unwary drivers who had bottomed out,
I saw that the road took a sharp turn to the left a little
beyond the foot of the bridge. I cleared most of it and landed already
leaning hard to the right to make the turn and happy that it would take
me further away from the dog. But as I rounded the corner, I
saw a large, unreasonably spiky piece of farm equipment sitting by a large gate
that opened out onto the fields. Still in mid turn, I remembered there
was also a car coming fast that in all probability hadn't seen me coming over
the hump of the bridge, and if I stayed on the road, I
would be hit by the car, And if I kept pulling left to get
off the road, I'd be secured on the blue crescent shape still spikes belonging
to the tractor trailer, and to the right I saw a well kept privet
hedge belonging to the first cottage along this road. Although I hadn't glanced back
since I had noticed the deep gouges in the tarmac at the crest of the
bridge, I imagined the large dog running alongside me, just on the other
side of the manicured hedge. I had nothing to do with the choice made.
It was all instinct, and I jerked the handlebars to the left and
tensed my arms and shoulders as a wall of green hiding the field's boundary hurtled
toward me. Before I hit anything, the front wheel snapped around beyond ninety
degrees and I was catapulted off the saddle. In the air, I made
contact with something hard enough to bounce off and tumble along the verge before coming
to rest uncomfortably on my overstuffed pack. I sat up just in time to
see the car going by and breaking hard for the bridge, And given all
the details I can recall from that moment, it vexes me to and that
I cannot recall the color of that car, the big dark face opposite me
that had pushed itself through the hedge across the narrow road, however, will
stay with me forever. With my legs blade out in front of me,
I felt the stiff stems of the tall grass between my fingers as I propped
myself upright. I could have reached out and grabbed the painted blue spikes of
the trailer beside me if I wanted to use it to haul myself off the
ground, But I was locked in place by the gaze of an unnaturally large
dog. Yellow eyes glimmered at me with their own luminescence in the half light,
and a heavy muzzle that wouldn't look out of place on a mastiff barely
concealed the bulge of hidden fangs atop its large, square head. Two long,
narrow ears were trained on me along with its unblinking gaze. I could
one leg planted firmly under its massive body, and I'm glad its paws were
lost in the slightly overgrown edges of the cottage's lawn, because I think even
a hint of tooth or claws would have pushed me to the breaking point.
A heavy coal black chain hung beside the one leg that I could see,
but I couldn't honestly say I saw much more of the animal. Hot tears
welled up in my eyes as the bumps and bruises I got from the tumble
began to ache, and I thought it was the end of me. At
that moment, the giant dog, not ten meters away from me started to
shrink. As if my encounter didn't sound unbelievable already, I promise you,
the dog stood statue still and began to shrink. I know it doesn't make
much sense to say this, but the shrinking didn't look real. It looked
like a bad special effect from a cheap TV show. As it got smaller,
well, I didn't move at all. It wasn't getting further away.
It shrank, and somehow it became wrong. I know that it isn't incredibly
poor descriptive, but the comparison to low budget TV show effects is the best
I can muster for what I saw that evening. In a scant few seconds,
I couldn't see the dog anymore. An instinct relinquished control of my body,
and I sat there for a while trying to normalize my breathing and stopped
trembling, And all too soon the growing darkness encouraged me to make haste to
where my girlfriend was staying, I chose not to tell her what had happened.
I told her that I had fallen off my bike and there was no
need to worry. She was used to seeing me looking weather worn and road
weary. After a mug of tea and a generous slice of k I all
but forgot about the dog and concentrated on enjoying my girlfriend's company, and all
too soon my girl our friend's nand politely reminded me that it was getting too
late for a young lady to have a male visitor. Unfortunately, my return
trip was mundane. Not much time passed before I put my encountered down to
my fear of the dark. Feeding my imagination, I decided it was a
deer that had startled me. Maybe something did stick its head through the hedge
and stare at me. But a lot of people keep goats. They're great
at slipping out of their pens or off their chains. But it wasn't until
the Internet took off many years later that I came across the story of the
Black Shuck, and I began to entertain the idea that I could have seen
a supernatural hound. The United Kingdom has plenty of mythological creatures to call upon
a wealth of homegrown legends mixed with those brought to our tiny island by raiders
and conquerors over the millennia. We are small, but we're not densely populated,
and even so what we refer to as a vast open space might only
constitute a large backyard in other countries. That's why I raise an eyebrow whenever
someone insists the UK has its own large, cryptid running about. What I
can start to believe is the many black dog stories that have been around since
time immemorial and the big cat sightings that have been common since the nineteen seventies.
Black dog stories have been a mainstay of legends and myths from Scotland to
Wales and across the Irish Seat to Ireland. The town of Burnby has its
own tale of a black dog called the Black Shuck, and it stretches back
to the fourth of August fifteen seventy seven, when darkness, rain, hail
and lightning as was never seen. The light sent the townspeople to the church
to pray for a reprieve from the tempest. Lightning struck church and a black
dog broke down the door with a bestial hatred and a disregard for God.
All down the church in the midst of fire, the hellish monster flew,
and passing onward to the choir he many people slew. After killing two people,
the dog of death, burning with the wrathful head of hell fire,
vanished. It then apparently traveled twelve miles to the Holy Trinity Church in Blibrah,
where it killed more of the faithful. Saint Mary's Church has a tower
damaged by lightning that now sports and iron weather vane with a black dog running
on a lightning boat. The Holy Trinity Church at Blibrah has burned marks on
its ancient doors that were apparently left behind by the baleful heat of the black
Shuck's claws. Thanks to a little research, I have discovered many people all
over Suffolk and Norfolk and the black Shucks stories to tell. A good handful
of them account hearing a dog padding along the road close by and dragging a
chain, but there is no dog to be seen. Those that do see
something report sizes from a normal dog to something like a small pony, and
a couple of people even say they watch the dogs shrink and then vanish.
The legend of the Black Shuck claims that if you see the dog, you
will die within a year. Well, I'm fine, and so is everyone
else that reported seeing the black Shuck. But just like me, many of
those people had a brush with death. If I hadn't been peddling hard to
get away from the dog following me, I would have come over the humpbacked
bridge without seeing that car coming, and I would have been hit by it
or veered off the road straight into the spiky tractor trailer. Perhaps then the
black Shuck is there to protect the lonely wanderer on East Anglias back roads and
in its woods. If not, then it is a sister harbinger of pending
disaster, waiting for our soul's release from its mortal vessel. Still an escort,
but a shepherd of a very different kind. It has a chain around
its neck, so that makes me think this dog is domesticated. The dogs
are called a man's best friends for countless very good reasons, and I can't
help but wonder about that chain. Though. If the black shut is a
domesticated animal, what sort of creature does a giant black dog call master