2056 words

Everybody said Black Shuck was a great big fearsome devil, but I wasn't so scared the night I met him in the woods. I'd only been dead for two hours, and I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to be afraid of some old black dog curled up crying in the bushes.

The sound of his whimpering cut right through my own tears. I wiped my drippy nose as best I could, sniffled once or twice more for good measure, and followed the noise until I saw the shape of him. His whimpering was how I knew he was a dog and not a monster. His burning red eyes when he looked up were how I knew he was Black Shuck. A demon's eyes, Bloody Roger Barnaby told me later, hot as hellfire: proof that Shuck had crawled up from below to haunt these woods. I don't know about that—sometimes I think Roger Barnaby doesn't know anything about anything—but he looked like he'd crawled out of the stories, at least.

Still, my daddy always taught me not to look a dog in his eyes too long, and I was nervous on account of being newly dead anyways, so I looked at his paws instead. They looked ordinary enough to me. One of his back legs was spit-slick, and even from across the clearing, I could tell he'd licked it almost raw. When I edged closer to get a better look, he whined, long and high. Black Shuck had one twisted leg. Just like me.

He didn't bark or show his teeth. And he didn't do anything a devil would do, either. No howling or chanting church words or nothing like that. So I got down on my knees in the leaves to show him I was friendly, and I crawled the rest of the way to his side.

I still don't know exactly what he was—a devil or a dog or something else. All I know is that his nose was wet and his breath was hot when I held out my knuckles, and he left off licking his leg to lick my palm for a time instead. My daddy said eleven was too old for crying. But my daddy wasn't there, and even if Black Shuck was the wickedest devil to ever walk this world, he didn't seem to mind when I pressed my face into his side and smeared snot across his fur.

"I want to go home," I sobbed. "I don't want to be dead. I want to go home."

He didn't say anything. I'm telling a story, but that doesn't mean I'm telling lies. Dogs don't talk—not even dead ones, and not even devils. But he looked at me in the way dogs do, that way that's better than speaking, and he licked the salt from my cheeks until I fell asleep.

#

Bloody Roger Barnaby found us there the next morning—me curled up against Black Shuck's side, my eyes all sticky from sleep and weeping, and him just letting me cling to him even though his ruined leg must have been stiff and hurting.

"You're one of us now, boy," Roger said, looking down at me, and laughed and laughed like he'd said something funny instead of something awful.

He wasn't much for comfort, Bloody Roger Barnaby, but he did his best to answer my questions. He agreed that I was dead. He was dead, too. Three hundred years, he thought, or maybe a couple hundred more. He wouldn't tell me how he died, but he had a hole in his belly big enough to see through to the other side, which probably was enough of an answer. A lot of dead folk passed through the woods, he explained, though most didn't linger long—just kept on walking. But Roger hadn't been too eager to find out what came next, so he'd stayed, and the Devil hadn't come to fetch him yet. He kept looking at my leg instead of looking me in the eyes.

After a while, talking about being dead started to make my stomach hurt, so I asked Roger about Black Shuck instead. I already knew most of what he had to say. You get to know the stories of the devil-dog, living near to Blythburgh as I did. A wailing beast who rode in on a thunderstorm, folk said. A flaming-eyed fiend who clawed through the church door and killed two men just by looking at them. A big black dog who walked the roads hunting for children to eat, belching smoke and fire all the while. An omen of death, sure as any magpie at the window.

In the morning light, I could see all the ways Shuck was and wasn't like the stories. He was a dog, no question about that—he could bark and yip with the best of them—but he stood as high as a yearling calf. I understand why folk called him Black Shuck, because he'd looked dark as pitch when I found him in the woods, but he had a white belly and a pink spot on his nose. The tip of his tail was white, too, and he wagged just that part when I looked at him that morning with my eyes still stinging and my insides all twisted up with fear.

I could say more about how he looked, if you wanted. I remember everything. The way his tongue would get stuck on his teeth and poke through his lips. The way his eyes crossed when he was listening hard. Give me a burnt stick and a flat rock and I could draw you a map of the freckles on his paws. I know that's not the point. But I don't think it's pointless either.

#

It scared me, being dead. I got used to it eventually, but those first weeks—well, I was scared, and I'm not ashamed to say it. After a day or two, Roger Barnaby went his own way. Wandered off to haunt and creep and bother folk, I guess. All the things he likes best. Black Shuck stayed behind, but he couldn't speak to me, and we were still new to one another. I'd never been alone like that before, and the woods got awful lonely once the sun went down.

I wanted to go home. I don't know why, exactly. Before I died, I'd only ever dreamed of leaving. But I didn't know what else to do. I missed my sisters and I even missed the baby, who'd never done anything wrong except for all the crying. And as afraid as I was of being dead, I was twice as afraid of walking all the way through the woods and finding out what came next.

Every time I tried to go back the way I'd come, though, Shuck showed up to herd me like some naughty sheep. He stepped in front of me to keep me from passing through the tree line, or pressed against my side to push me back. Once or twice he nipped my ankles. He kept at me until I finally stopped trying.

"All right," I said at last. I was crying a little, but I wasn't mad. I couldn't be mad when he was putting on such a show—snorting into my hair and licking my cheeks and wriggling around like a fool and a half. I wiped my nose on my sleeve. "All right, you win. I'll stay."

Black Shuck sat back on his haunches, red eyes sending up sparks and his tongue lolling sideways, and I swear he smiled like he'd understood every word.

After that, I stuck to Shuck like mud on a boot. I followed that dog everywhere. Did whatever he did. Most days, we worked. Well—he worked, and I helped him best I could. He loved to work, Shuck did, and he was never happier than when somebody showed up in the woods. He could smell sadness from a long ways off. A lot of people flinched when they saw him coming, but he didn't mind. I think he understood. He slunk down to make himself look smaller, and he herded the dead through the trees. Guided them all the way to the other side.

When someone was really scared, I'd talk to them—just talking for a while, like me and you are now, until they weren't thinking so much about being dead. I did best with the children, especially the littlest ones. This is Black Shuck, I'd say, giving him a scritch to show he didn't mean any harm. He likes helping people. He's going to help you. Sometimes talking to the dead made me sad, but mostly it made me feel tall and proud, like I was someone's big brother again.

Other times, on the days when nobody died, Black Shuck followed smells and I followed him. He would snuffle through wet leaves until he stopped with his nose pressed into the soil like he was listening to something. I couldn't smell anything, but I copied him anyways—more dog than boy, just like he was more dog than devil. I picked berries and he gnawed sticks. We wrestled in the dirt, both of us barking, then jumped into the deepest hollow of the stream, so cold and bright it knocked my breath away and I had to grab onto his scruff to keep upright.

And we ran. We ran so fast. You should have seen me and Shuck tearing through the woods and leaping over logs like we had six good legs between us instead of four. Sometimes he got so far ahead I could barely see him. Other times he followed at my heels—nipping at me, bumping up against me, herding me where he wanted me to go. We chased patches of sunlight from one end of the forest to the other and collapsed on beds of moss in a tangled, panting heap.

He cried at night, especially on cold nights when his bad leg got to hurting. I cried too. We took care of one another, though. I'd stroke his back to take his mind off the pain, and when I was sad or scared or lonely, he pressed his lump of a head into my chest and let me cling to him. When I was being sullen, he fell forward on his front paws and teased me back to smiling.

Shuck, I started to call him after a time, which turned into Shug, which turned into Sugar, which turned into a thousand other names, too: Sweetmeat and Sloeberry and Marmalade and Handsomest Gentlest and a whole crop of others I can't explain. You wouldn't understand if I tried. Even now, some things are just between me and my boy.

#

A hundred years old. Two hundred, to hear Bloody Roger Barnaby tell it, though even back then I knew better than to believe everything out of Roger Barnaby's mouth. Either way, that's old, for a dog. That's as good as forever. And we were already dead, is the thing. Once you're dead, you get to thinking nothing will ever change again.

I should have known better. After all, when dead folk appeared in the woods, me and Shuck helped them go somewhere else, didn't we? The forest was only temporary. A waiting-place between here and there, wherever there might be. But I loved him so much. He was my best friend. I would have walked the woods with him for a thousand years and a thousand more.

Shuck stayed as long as he could. The patches under his eyes went white first. A pale hair here, one there—his cheeks, his chin, his lashes. The rest of his muzzle followed before too long. One day I woke up and his whole face looked like he'd stuck it in the snow. "Good morning, you old codger," I whispered, wobbly even to my own ears, and kissed his head with my eyes closed.

We still ran through the trees sometimes, even after Black Shuck turned white, but he stopped taking the lead. The last time we ever ran together, his legs collapsed out from under him. That old injury troubled him more every day, and sometimes I couldn't get him to quit biting at it. Once he snarled at me when I touched his leg. Afterwards, he wouldn't stop licking my hands, like he wanted to apologize. He looked scared. I'd never seen him scared of anything.

Shuck wasn't dying. He was as dead as me. As dead as Bloody Roger Barnaby, who was probably the deadest, rottenest man in the whole world. But Shuck was tired. He wanted to rest. For a while I felt hurt. I didn't understand how he could think about leaving me when I still needed him. I thought—at first I thought maybe I'd done something wrong, like I always used to do when I was living, when everybody would get so angry with me. I thought it was my fault.

I know better now. Shuck had to go. It was time. That was all.

#

On the day Black Shuck went on to the other side, I laid there with my mouth an inch from his muzzle and we breathed one another in deep. I loved the smell of him—that raw green summer-smell of sunlight and crushed leaves—more than anything in the world. His breath smelled foul. Mine probably did too. I didn't mind his stink. I don't think he minded mine.

Up close like that, I could look him right in his eyes. They'd gone cloudy by then, more coals than flames. I touched three fingertips to his pale muzzle and felt him shiver.

And I knew. All at once I knew. He was ready.

"Don't leave me," I croaked. I didn't mean to say it—I know I shouldn't've said it—but I couldn't help myself. "Oh, please don't go. I don't want to be a dead boy without you."

He didn't speak. Like I said, I wouldn't lie for the sake of a story, even if I wish I could tell a lie pretty enough to be worth believing. I wish I could say that once, just once, I whispered I love you, Shuck and he pressed a little closer and whispered I love you too, Jackie.

I wanted him to know. More than anything, I wanted him to know. I think he did.

But he didn't speak. Just opened his mouth a little and, with the sweetest sigh I'd ever heard, spilled a lungful of stinky panting breath right into mine.

That was when I started crying. Shuck licked the salt from my cheeks as best he could. I hated for him to work so hard, so I buried my face in his side—my ear against his thumping heart, my tears soaked up by his softness—exactly like the night we'd met.

Don't leave me, I wanted to say again.

"I love you, Shuck, my boy, my handsomest gentlest boy," I said instead. "I'll take it from here. You did a good job. You did such a good job. You can be done."

Shuck pressed his wet nose into my skin, and we held one another for a long, long time.

Eventually, he stood to go and I stood with him. We walked to the edge of the forest slowly. At his pace. I cried the whole time. When he licked my hand one last time and disappeared through the trees, I thought for a minute about following him. I'd always been so afraid of what came next. I was more afraid of losing Shuck.

I'd made a promise to him, though, and I meant to keep it. So I wiped my eyes and I set off through the woods looking for dead folk. There was work to be done.

That must have been forty years ago now. Maybe more. I never thought I'd lose count, but it's hard, keeping track of time out here. I'm getting taller. Like Shuck, I'm getting older. Last time I saw Roger Barnaby, he said I looked almost grown. Roger looked the same as always. I don't think he's in any hurry to give up his haunting and creeping. But I'm starting to think about what comes next. I like the work well enough, but I don't plan to be here forever.

Black Shuck was a good boy. I don't mean for a devil. I mean he was good. All the way. He made a good boy out of me, too. He helped me. He loved me like no one had ever done.

I'm not half as good as Shuck, but I try to help people pass through the woods when I can, just like he would've done. I try to love them like he loved me. And when I've done all I can do out here—when it's time for me to leave—well, I'm going to go find my boy, my handsomest gentlest boy, wherever he is.

© 2025 M. R. Robinson