BLACK DOG
by Richard Tyndall
This eBook edition published 2010 by Ghostwriter Publications, Dorchester, Dorset, England.
Smashwords Edition
www.thepennydreadfulcompany.com
© Richard Tyndall 2010
Cover by Neil Jackson
Ebook creation by Stephen James Price
Richard Tyndall brings us his take on the classic folklore story of the Shucca...the bringer of death...a tale that conjures up images of James Blackwood, James and LeFanu. Tyndall’s style is like that of a fine wine....satisfying to the very last drop.
Robert Thorneycroft is a writer who feels that life is sliding him by, and the lure of booze and depression seem welcome partners. In the small village of Aldwark, he is told the myth of the Shucca—the Black Dog, whose sighting brings about death.
He must raise himself from his own personal funk or those howls he hears at night will herald a visit from the mythical beast...and a certain death
Robert Thorneycroft was a deeply troubled man.
By his thirtieth birthday he had, to his own mind at least, achieved nothing of worth in his life. To be sure, he had a job, a good one at that, with a small accounting firm in the local town. He was well thought of and prospects were good, his colleagues would say very good. He had his own house; a cottage on the edge of the picturesque village of Scarthorpe with views from the back out across the fields and up onto the heath beyond. He had a close knit group of friends, both male and female, who provided company – good company with no pressure but which ensured he need never be lonely either by day or night. He had security, income, companionship and a future. In most people’s eyes his was a life to be envied.
But as he approached his fourth decade it dawned upon Thorneycroft that so far, by his own reckoning, he was a failure. No, worse than that, he had not even attempted anything which could be weighed against the scales of success and failure. He had done nothing that he considered of value with his life. He had made no mark, not even a smudge on the record of worldly achievement. Were he to pass from life that very evening of his birthday he would do so having left absolutely nothing worthwhile behind. At least that was his own, admittedly rather dramatic, assessment of his life to date.
He would often consider that, in contrast, by the time he reached the celebration of his thirtieth year his father had created a successful newspaper business, had built with his own two hands, his own house in a pleasant village on the outskirts of Aldwark and was well on the way to raising two children who, it had been hoped, would be a credit to their parents. All these were worthwhile and valuable achievements. They may not exactly have been the things that the younger Thorneycroft dreamed of but he recognised their value. The foundation of a family home and the perpetuation of the line into the future were, by any standards, achievements to be proud of but when it came right down to it they were not the ambitions that would ever and could ever drive the son in the way they had the father.
With all his heart and all his soul Thorneycroft was an aspiring writer. He thought a pretty good one at that. He also liked to think he was an idealist. He wrote not for money – although of course a little supplement to his income would not have been unwelcome. He wrote not for fame... well at least not for the sort of fame that most people considered worthwhile pursuing these days. What he wrote for, what he desired more than anything, was immortality. Not physical, he had no great faith in either religion or science to provide the answers to that one in his lifetime. What he craved was more philosophical. He wanted to leave behind something ‘of value’; something that would mean that, a hundred years from now, even though he would be long gone from this land, he would still be remembered. He wanted to make his mark and he wanted it to be carved in the literary equivalent of granite. This had been his overriding ambition since his school days and it was a fire that had only burned ever more fiercely as year after year he found himself trapped in the mundane existence of daily life. What had started as frustration had long ago taken a hold on his soul and metamorphosed into deep resentment and, most recently, depression.