The sun was sinking behind the hills, and the man worked the soil with slow, heavy strokes. His wife, before leaving for the stream, had given him one last smile. She never returned.
The scream that tore through the afternoon still haunted him. He ran to the bank and found clothes, soaked and clinging to the stones, but no body. Only emptiness.
When he returned home, that emptiness had become a nightmare. The cradle no longer held his child—only small bones, pale and cold. The metallic stench of them choked his breath.
They say he fell to his knees and wept. They also say no one else ever saw those bones. Only him.
In town, his tale was met with laughter and scorn. A drunken man, blinded by grief, inventing horrors to excuse what he dared not confess—that was the whisper among them. He swore it was true, but with every word he spoke, his sanity seemed to fray a little more under the sheriff's cold stare.
That was when he saw it. In the window of a modest shop, a black pup, its eyes glowing red like embers. The dog stared at him with a gaze far too human.He swore it called to him. Others swore he was only muttering to himself, speaking to the glass.
He left the shop with the pup in his arms.
Five years passed. The dog had grown, but it did not age. Its coat stayed as dark as coal, its eyes forever smoldering with that ember glow.
Among the neighbors, whispers spread. Children had vanished from nearby farms, and some swore they'd seen the dog wandering on those nights. Others, instead, claimed they'd seen the man himself returning late, his clothes wet, his hands trembling.
When the sheriff came to his land, he found nothing but a gentle dog wagging its tail, and a silent widower sitting on the porch. The house was neat. The fields well-kept. No evidence. No trace.
And yet, unease clung to them long after they left. Something in that farm seemed to breathe too much silence. And when their eyes met those of the animal—or the man—they always left sooner than they'd planned, carrying with them a weight they could not name.