A SAMPLE FROM THE SOON TO BE RELEASED BOOK, 'THE DOGMAN CONSPIRACY,' BY MARK ANTHONY PRITCHARD. THE FULL BOOK WILL BE AVAILABLE NEXT WEEK ON AMAZON KINDLE.
There was no pre-emptory warning, and if there was one, I missed it. The first thing that I was aware of was an almighty crash against the window. I was immediately woken from my trance, and looked over to see a pair of saucer wide yellow/red eyes staring back at me. What was going on? Was this some kind of joke, a prank being played on a lonely librarian by mischievous local children?
Those were the first thoughts that raced through my mind, and as I walked slowly towards the window, I expected to see a group of giggling kids, and a bad Halloween costume, looking back at me, but that is not what I saw.
What I did see was something wolfish, feral, not quite man, and not quite animal either. A dog-like snout snorted mist against the glass of the window, and a row of razor sharp teeth ripped savagely away at a piece of meat held tight between a set of dagger like jaws. This was no prank, and it was no teenager in a Halloween mask. This was a very real, very aggressive animal, and it was looking directly at me.
I scrambled backwards, falling onto the library floor, in an uncoordinated attempt to escape from the frightful scene at the window. I feared that the panel would break, and that the beast, for beast is what it was, would crash through the window and do to my throat what I could now see it was doing to the poor lifeless rodent it held between it’s jaws. All I could do was sit, and watch, in horrified, silent, frozen, terror.
One thought, and one thought only went through my mind. How could such an abomination of horror possibly exist? Yet there it was, before my very eyes, terrifyingly real and horrifyingly defiant. It appeared to be announcing the very reality of it’s existence, and as I lay there, pathetically, impotently frozen upon the library floor, it stepped back from the window pane, looked me straight in the eyes, and proudly displayed the entirety of its body.
The beast was huge, and was covered from head to foot in dark black matted hair. Excepting the face, it was almost like an unearthly giant man wearing a cloak of fur. It had the pointed ears, facial features, snout, claws and legs of wolf, yet there was something terrifying human not just about the facial features, but the body as well. It was standing, unaided, on two legs with elongated arms that reached almost to it’s buckled knees, and it’s build, strange though it is to say, was like a body builder on steroids.
It was big, but it also looked like it was built for speed. The muscles were large, but they were not inflated to impress, like a cartoon character or something out of a Marvel comic book. The musculature looked lean, taut and designed for explosive activity rather than rigid posing. It’s almost impossible for me to accurately convey what I was seeing, but the image of a science experiment on sprinting going horribly wrong, flashes through my mind, now that I think of the enormous practicality of the beast.
Having exposed its full body to me, it paused, and projected its feral, yet intelligent thoughts into me. Those thoughts appeared to be saying, ‘ I am here. I am real. You will write me into reality.’
I can still see it’s broad chest and massively muscled shoulders, it’s dark black coat and the ease in which it stood on two muscular hind legs. I can still see its pointed, Doberman ears, its saucer-sized red and yellow, blood-shot eyes. I can still see the flaring of it’s nostrils and the blood, saliva and gut encrusted filth it splattered onto the library window as it gave a final wolfish howl and returned to the silence from whence it had came.
