Black Shuck

Every man fears the fire, and yet every man carries fire into his home. Every woman learns to keep the flames tame, so that she might cook and warm her babes, and every woman knows the scorch of a sudden flare and the burn of a thrown ember. Every child learns to draw near, but not to touch. Even dogs know how close they can go, how far to stay away. Only the cat sleeps without fear of the flames.

*

It is August, and on the marsh the cowthistle sways in yellow speckles above the grass. A warbler sings the high notes of summer over the languid bass of the cuckoo’s calling, and the water gathers in the sky. Anna does not need to lift her head to know that above the brittle brightness of the road, clouds are mounding. She feels it in the pulsing behind her eye and the crackling of her skin. A lightning storm is coming. She turns back along the path to the village, hurries a little, where the ground is even. She sees Mary and Alice first, gathering blackberries come too early in the hot, dry summer. They are laughing in that way that women laugh, when they speak about things that should not be spoken about. “Filth” she thinks. “Dirty, stinking filth.”

“Storm coming.” She says, not stopping, and the women stare until she is out of earshot, harrumph and call her rude and odd, and gather their skirts and head for home all the same. They do not see the dog that trails them as far as the road, blackness slipping between the wheat stalks, eyes glinting red in the dark of his face, but Anna knows he is there, and why, and when she feels him dissipate, and the weight of him lift away, knows without turning back that today the women are safely at the shadeless road. Alice laughs at Mary as she stops to catch her breath, wondering how anyone could get so tired blackberry picking, but Mary cannot share this joke.

*

Further into the village, Anna settles onto her chair. She has told enough people now, about the storm, and enough people know she is seldom wrong, but there is little anyone can do about it. The thatch is as dry as the dust on the road, and the fields call out for rain. In Bungay, as in Blythburgh, the animals drift into agitated congregations beneath trees and behind barns, the people wait in rooms and doorways, and Shuck takes form in the shadow of a gravestone. In the thick fug of her home, Anna feels his coalescence in the slick of dread that flows down her left arm, and stifles a whimper of fear. She knows she will need sturdier walls than hers to keep her safe this night.

Outside, the wind tugs at her skirts and throws grit into her eyes. Anna hurries across the street and down the path to the church, overbalanced, momentarily, by the sudden quiet within. For a second, she is the wind, the eye of the chaos, and she pauses to still herself in the cool air of the nave, allows the pain in her head to steady with her heart. The Lord will keep her, and the stone and tile too. She hears the first thunder roll across the roof, and fears no fire in here.

But Shuck is afraid. Under the gravestone, his great paws tremble, and the whites of his eyes catch the dying light. His ears are pinned back against his giant head, and he holds his tail tight to himself, the black sweep of it limp between his legs. The hellhound whines with the thunder and shrinks into the earth as the lightning makes its first landfall, and fire springs up at its touch.

*

“All will be well”, the people say, in their houses, “the rain will come, and all will yet be well.” But the rain does not come, and when the first roof catches, flames taking flight in the gusting wind, they run from their houses, and as they run, great pebbles of ice are hurled from the sky so that mothers and fathers curve their bodies over their children’s heads, and an old man is knocked to the floor and must be helped to his feet and half carried into the yawning mouth of the church.

“It is the Devil’s wrath!” comes the cry and now it is the cry of every person huddled into the pews, rippling through the gloom like a truth from the pulpit. Anna knows this to be a truth, and has known this to be a truth since July, when on the same day, she saw Elizabeth Sawyer beneath Thomas Fisher in the spinney, and the great black dog pass through the tall grass at the edge of the marsh. She sits alone in the second pew and whispers her prayers beneath the rising voices of frightened men and the crying of the children.

But the women are listening. They are listening to the men becoming blameful and angry in their fear. They are listening to the children, needful and unsure. They are listening to the thunder, how close above their heads it is, how the hail is easing but the wind is not, how there is a crackle of fire somewhere to the south. They are listening to Anna, whispering her prayers, and they begin to whisper too. She is mean, and mad, but she knows things, and though they look at her askance, they do look. They look, and they listen, and they laugh at her spite, but they still heed what they hear.

*

In the graveyard, Shuck is listening too. He hears all that the women hear, and more. He hears his master’s voice in the hissing evaporation of rain high above their heads, gone before it can reach the earth below, and in the turning of the wind, gusting first to take the fire towards, and then away from the village. He can hear the shift and shiver of livestock and wildlife alike, and the beat of 100 human hearts inside the church, amongst the silence of 100 more outside in the soil, souls he has walked beside as they leave their living days behind, as is his purpose. He can hear the pulse of his own being, shadow and mist mingling into solid form, the Devil’s dog, alive and spectral, here, and not here, and afraid all the same. He can hear, too, that he is not alone, that somewhere near, another beast, alive and spectral, fire and smoke, lurks amongst the graves.

Shuck listens as the prayers condense in the rafters of the church. “Holy Father, have mercy,” “Dear Lord, forgive us our sins.” And yet, still, “The Devil’s work” thrums across the tiled floor. This, he knows, is not his master’s work. The Devil has no quarrel in Bungay, nor anywhere near. Shuck shivers in the darkness, shimmering shadow in the shadow’s heart. No, his master is proud, and his master is conceited, but he bears no grudge against man, nor authority over the sky.

*

Inside, Robert Sawyer is pointing fingers. “You brought this upon us!” he cries, and moves to strike his wife. Thomas jumps forward, barrelling his shoulder into the other man’s stomach, so that the men tumble into little Eric Swift, and a shriek turns the crowd to Anna.

*

Shuck knows his time is near, that he must do the work he is made to do, but he is so very afraid. He paces outside the door of the church, sensing the lightning, and the fire so close by. Sensing how near he is to that other beast, who toys with life and death and takes delight in making gifts of the bodies. She, with her silken certainty, her self-deification, is a messenger for God. For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god. She, too, has business here, but it is none of Shuck’s to know. He remembers the slash of her claws across his nose, and the flash or her teeth near his eyes. He remembers pain and he remembers humiliation.

He waits as long as he can, feeling the earth quake as lightning finds it, smelling the smoke of the thatch burning. Then he sees her. Fire coloured pelt and the poise of a statue, her green eyes locked on his. She is sitting on the wall, and as she sees him cower she stands, tail high like a conduit for the power screaming from the sky. She steps towards him, opens her jaw, and hisses.

*

“This is your fault!” cries Elizabeth, pointing, and Anna does not flinch but raises her voice to pray aloud, “Father in Heaven wash away our sin,” and then they are all shouting, all except Eric, who is bleeding from the back of his head, and Shuck cannot remain without, with the fire and the lightning and the beast, and terror making him quick and clumsy both, he is through the door as the shouting rises to throng the nave with the voices of men and women made in the image of God, and the people turn, all except little Eric, who will never turn again, and Shuck runs through the church, mouth a slavering snarl, red eyes alight with fear, and Eric passes into death as the others watch the hound recoil at the altar, and from above, lightning smites the tower, and stones fall into the Chancel where Peter Mercer is killed before he even cries out, and then….then….then there is silence.

Shuck is gone, and two souls with him, and the tower fallen too. In the silence, Anna utters her judgement. “The Devil’s dog did these things”, and the people of Bungay listen, and repeat and another truth emerges. They listen as the thunder grows more distant, and believe they have paid their toll. Twelve miles away, Shuck coalesces once more, beneath a different gravestone, in a different churchyard, still quivering as long as the thunder keeps rolling. Still afraid. Still with work to do.

Outside the church at Bungay, a small cat hops from her perch on a wall, and vanishes into the night.