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 eye 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 pose 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 Bungy. 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
leafed 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 slipt 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 pall 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 here 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 Blackwood's The Wind
to Go, and though it held very little resemblance to what we are told
today that what a windygo 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
welllit safety of my girlfriend's nan home. As I raced along in the fading
light, the metallic sound stayed with me, and in 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 are 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 the 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 dog ears 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 in the breaks
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'd 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
try it and keep pace with me. I was pelting along faster than I'd
ever bite 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 paws 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 see 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 in factor into a snap decision. And even now I can
clearly picture the vista ahead of me as I approached the small hump back 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 homes in sight 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 of fraction. As I crested the humpback 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 shaped steel 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 mant incured hedge. I had nothing to do with the
choice, mate, 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 know in 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 splayed 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 see 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 bomps 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, a lot didn't move at all. It wasn't getting
further away. It shrank, and somehow it became wrong. I know that
it is an 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 cay, I all but forgot about the dog and concentrated on enjoying
my girlfriend's company, And all too soon my girlfriend's nan 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 encounter down to my fear of the dark feet 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. 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 Sea 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
the 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 Blibra, where it killed more of the faithful. Saint Mary's
Church has a tower damaged by lightning that now sports an iron weather vane with
a black dog running on a lightning bolt. The Holy Trinity Church at Blibra
has burn 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 recount 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 watched the dog 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 humpback 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 sinister
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 to man's best friends for countless very good reasons,
and I can't help but wonder about that chain. Though. If the black
shuck is a domesticated animal, what sort of creature does a giant black dog call master