Okay...I said I wasn't going to do this initially. However, since I ran into a period where I got literally stuck on how to lay this story out, and because I didn't want to just write on for the sake of rushing it to completion, I put it down for a while instead and waited for inspiration to strike.
Now, while the story is STILL not done yet (and won't be for a little bit longer), I wanted to keep the interest going. Here is the rest of chapter one, which rolls up through the encounter with Charger's ghost (the "Marley's Ghost" version in my story).
It picks up from where I left off back on page one in the first post of this topic. I also edited that post to show the latest corrections, and an addition to the preface. Enjoy! And keep the faith! I haven't dropped this story! It's still coming!
The men continued talking for some time. Steele, growing weary of it, headed for the side door, which opened out onto the kennel yard. He started whining and scratching at it, which brought the men's conversation to a momentarily halt. The master, muttered through his beard, strode to the door and, with a frustrated glance down at Steele, opened it. Steele returned his master's glance with one of feigned gratitude, and strode confidently out towards the kennel yard. The door creaked on its hinges, closing with a dull thud.
Standing on the stoop outside of the door, Steele leaned back into a long stretch, and then leaned forward and stretched out his rear legs. He observed that the sun was already down very low on the horizon, and twilight was setting in...even if it was several hours until "evening". Descending the narrow steps, he sauntered into the kennel yard, and was approached by a large husky-Chow mix.
"So, did youse hear the news, boss? Word is that some sort of sickness has broke out in town, and they ain't figured out the solution there."
Steele just grunted indifferently in reply, and continued past him. The chow mix continued "I heard some little kids is sick too. That is a shame, that is. Some of those kids might, you know, die."
"If they're gonna get sick, Nikki," Steele replied without looking back, "they might as well die and not put such a drain on whatever resources are left for those who are strong enough to beat it."
As Steele walked away, sternly inspecting the dogs curled up uncomfortably in front of their little houses, Nikki's brow furrowed in silent consternation. Steele made rounds of the entire yard. By the time he returned to the house, the men had gone, and the master had let him back in for the day, as evening would soon be setting in.
Some hours later, inside the house Steele, who was snoozing by the fire place, was awakened by the sounds of the master preparing to retire for the night. Steele rose to follow him on his rounds just as the master had completed washing up some dishes from his dinner earlier that night. As the master proceeded from room to room on the main level of the house, he turned knobs on a few lit gas lights, blew out a few candles, and attended to the remains of the fire in the fire place, which was all but embers and one faintly-burning log. The master then proceeded up the stairs towards his bedroom. Steele turned aside momentarily for one last lap or two from his water bowl, and then moved towards the staircase. Then he heard it...a voice that was not the master's. It didn't come from the upper level of the house either, but seemed to be all around him.
"Steele". He froze. The voice was at first indistinct, and sounded a bit hollow, as if it were but an echo. But it repeated itself again. "Steele". Nervously, Steele shook his head and continued towards the stairs. By the lower step was a carved wooden umbrella stand, in which were a few canes and odd items. Around its exterior was carved a mountainous scene in a snowy wilderness, and a dog sled team in motion across it. Steele's eyes were almost unconsciously drawn to the team, and specifically to the face of the leader. But gazing upon it, he saw not the general face of a husky which normally was there, but that of his old co-leader, Charger.
Charger's face...lit, it seemed, by some strange, dismal and spectral light which encompassed it. It gazed at Steele much as Charger did in life...with a proud arrogance. And yet it was immediately apparent to Steele that no smirk escaped the corner of Charger's mouth, as he recalled so marked Charger's gaze in the past. Now Charger's mouth was closed and sternly set. His fur was strangely stirred and tossed, as if by some spectral breeze or wind and, though the eyes were wide open, they remained set and utterly motionless. All this, and its strange, livid color, disturbed Steele, down to the very fiber of his being, and he momentarily averted his attention, shaking his head in nervous apprehension.
Steele turned back to glance at the phenomenon, but saw that it was once again just a non-descript face of a husky. It would, of course, be quite inaccurate to say that he was not conscious of a terrible sensation...one which he had not felt since he was a puppy, and was startled by far less disturbing imagery. But he shook his head and, hesitatingly at first, climbed the stairs to the second floor and immediately settled into a corner of the main hallway into his bed...a large wooden box with low sides and several hefty wool blankets stuffed inside. Nervously, he took hold of a large bone he had been working on for some time, which was splintered along its ends and well-gouged by tooth marks, and gnawed upon it.
The house was dark, but for a shaft of moonlight pouring through an upper story window at the end of the hall opposite where he lay. It was quiet. Steele lay awake for some time, deeply disturbed by the experience with the umbrella stand but, at long last, he started to nod off.
Suddenly, from the lower floor of the house, came a loud metallic rattle and clank, which startled Steele right out of his sleep. He raised his head and peered down the hall towards the stair case, but his view of the stairs and the lower level were obscured by a wall. Again came a loud metallic rattling, and a scraping sound, as if a large chain were being dragged across the wooden floor below. Steele was astonished and, at the very same, filled with an ominous dread, his gaze drawn almost irresistibly towards the top of the stairs. And then he wondered, if whatever was making such an impossible racket had not roused his master, nor even the other dogs out in the yard, why should he put any stock in what had to be nothing more than his imagination getting the better of him?
"It's nonsense!" he assured himself out loud, and laid his head back down...yet still staring nervously towards the top of the stairs off in the gloomy darkness.
But once again he raised his head in surprise, eyes wide and mouth drawn in a grimace, as the dreadful sound of heavy chain now seemed to be working its way up the stair case, and inexorably towards the upper hallway. On it came, the sound of the stairs creaking as if giving under the weight of someone advancing upward, and the disturbing and percussive tumble of metal chain links dragged upward, step by step. Steele felt a growing fear seize hold of him, but he froze, unable or perhaps instinctually unwilling to flee. And really, where could he? The only escape was his master's bedroom, and that door was shut. Beyond that was a closet door, also closed, and the staircase itself. No, all he could do was wait upon whatever it was ascending the stairs towards him.
Suddenly, down the hall, and from around the corner where the stairs met the second floor, there appeared a few silvery-gray tendrils...smokey and yet translucent. They snaked their way along the wall as, all at once, a figure appeared...that of a large dog, pulling hard at a harness he wore, which itself seemed to strain against a heavy weight. Steele recognized this all...the harness pulling against a taut gang line...but one made strangely of thick spectral chain rather than corded rope. As the ghostly figure rounded the corner of the stairway, straining (rather painfully it seemed) against the apparent weight it pulled behind it, Steele could make out a variety of things attached to the gang line: other leather and metal harnesses...devoid of team members; wooden mail crates and boxes of various sizes and design; and, here and there along the line, large canvas "U.S. Mail" bags, stuffed to capacity. The ghost continued to pull mightily as it advanced slowly, amidst the spectral noises, down the hallway towards Steele.
Steele watched with growing fear and apprehension as the ghost at last gave one long, heaving tug against the line and, with several loud clanks, rattles and thuds, a large ghostly birch wood sled, with no human owner (ghostly or otherwise) bumped around the corner of the stairway and into the hall. The ghost stood there hunched over, seemingly exhausted from the ordeal. It's fur was curiously disturbed, as if by a continual and bitterly-cold breeze. And though this was indeed a ghost, the figure seemed to be straining and panting as though attempting to catch its breath. Finally, after a long, torturous moment, it lifted its head.
Steele was taken aback to once again see the face of his old friend and co-leader, Charger, before him. This time, however, Charger's face seemed wracked with pain and despair. And even though his brow was deeply furrowed, there yet still was a strange blank gaze from the eyes themselves...a seeming incongruity, given how his body also appeared wracked with pain and exhaustion. The eyes seemed fixed on some far-off and, to Steele, invisible thing. The whole of this apparition disturbed Steele very greatly, and he shivered unconsciously at the presence of it.
Yet still, in spite of his clearly recognizing the face of his old friend there before him, his overt fear and nervousness compelled him to question the ghost in a rather obvious and excitable way. "Who are you?!"
The ghost answered without meeting Steele's fearful gaze. "Ask me who I was."
"Alright, who
were you then?" Steele replied, his voice still raised in apprehension.
The ghost let out a tortured sigh. "In life, I was your co-leader, Charger." Steele blurted out a nervous, stuttering guffaw at that, almost as if the revelation of it was impossible for him to accept in spite of what he was seeing.
He then nodded towards Charger and asked "Can you sit down?"
"I can", the ghost replied vacantly.
At that, Steele brusquely commanded "well do it then!" He kept his gaze fixed on the ghost. He had asked the question and, upon Charger's affirmation, rudely invited him to sit, even though he was fully unaware of whether or not it would even be possible for a ghost to take its ease in such a manner. But he was still plagued with a dreadful fear, and felt perhaps that, by engaging this apparition in some manner of conversation, he might avoid anything even more unpleasant than that which was already unfolding before him. But the ghost sat back on its haunches, the heavy chain of the gang line clattering loudly as it slipped back along its spectral form. Charger's eyes continued to stare blankly out past Steele.
"You don't believe in me", the ghost observed.
Steele sniggered at the observation. "I don't".
"Why do you doubt your senses?" Charger inquired.
"Because", Steele replied, a bit more confident of himself at this moment, "there are lots of things that can affect them. An upset stomach can make them cheat. You? You may be an undigested bit of salmon or beef; a hunk of cheese; a fragment of stale tallow. There's more of gravy than grave about you, whatever you are."
Steele was now trying to truly convince himself of this as much as hoping that this apparition would then vanish from the hall, being nothing more than what he had just claimed. He was not much for cracking jokes unless they happened to be at someone's expense. But the truth is that he was doing whatever he could to shake off his dread...the voice of Charger's ghost, and the spectral devices to which it seemed hopelessly chained, disturbed the very marrow in his bones, and greatly unsettled him. There was something quite awful, too, in the ghost's being provided with a strange, infernal atmosphere of its own. Steele could not discern it, but it was clearly real enough for Charger, whose fur continued to be curiously disturbed by it.
"You see this bit of bone?" Steele asked Charger, pawing at a small shard of the beef bone he had, at some point earlier in the day perhaps, gnawed upon determinedly.
"I do," Charger replied.
Steele moved the bony shard around on the floor with his paw, trying to draw Charger's gaze, which was obviously ineffective. "You're not looking at it!"
"But I see it," Charger replied again, "notwithstanding."
"Well," Steele acknowledged abruptly, "all I have to do is swallow this, and be plagued for the rest of my life by a swarm of devils, all of my own imagination. It's nonsense!
Utter nonsense!"
At this Charger stood up and let loose a terrifying cry, his lower jaw dropped down seemingly beyond its physical capacity to do so (in life at least); while the heavy chain around him shook and clanked with an appalling noise, such that Steele suddenly cringed and shrunk back into his bedding, shivering with abject fright.
Steele poked his muzzle out from underneath the blankets, shivering mightily. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
"Dog of the worldly mind!" Charger replied bitterly, "do you believe in me or not?!"
"I do I do," Steele groveled miserably. "I
must. But why are you here, and why have you come to me?"
"It is required of every dog," the ghost responded, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow dogs, and among men, and travel far and wide. And if that spirit does not do so in life, it is doomed to do so after death. Condemned to wander through the world--
oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot share, but
might have shared in life, and turned to happiness!"
Charger dropped down to the floor and buried his face in his spectral forelegs as the chain line rattled forward and hung over his shoulders. He let out another terrifying cry, this of anguish and agony.
Steele observed Charger's misery with consternation, and then looked back behind the ghost at the bonds which shackled him. He glanced again at Charger. "How did you end up chained to that mess? What brought this on you?"
Charger straightened up and again looked out past Steele, resuming his blank-eyed but still pained expression. "I drag the chain I forged in life", he replied forlornly. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I strapped myself to it of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."
For a brief moment, Steele actually felt a tinge of pity for his old friend. "I'm sorry".
Charger turned then and actually met Steele's apprehensive gaze, and, in warning, replied "
ah, you don't realize the weight and length of strong chain you bear yourself! It was full as this, and long as this, seven years ago. And you have labored on it since." Charger bowed his head, and shaking it, lamented sadly "oh, it is a
ponderous chain!"
Steele absent-mindedly glanced down around behind him expecting, perhaps, to find himself harnessed to some great expanse of heavy iron links of chain. But there was none such to be seen. He shook his head and looked up at the ghost.
"Charger, my old buddy," he implored the ghost, "give me some hope. Give me hope, Charger!"
"I have none to give," the ghost replied. "Listen to me, Steele! In life my spirit never walked beyond the limits of our kennel yard, or from our various runs across the countless trail miles in the wilderness. And now I am doomed to wander without rest or peace," he said sadly. "Incessant torment of remorse."
Quite to his own surprise, Steele began to sob. Stumbling over his words in a desire to speak comfort to the ghost, he offered "but it was only that you were a good, strong leader on the trail, Charger. After all, that was our business!"
Charger's gaze became hard, and struck Steele solidly and unexpectedly as he cried "
Business?!? Mankind
was my business! Our fellow dogs
were my business! The
common welfare was my business! Mercy, charity, patience, and benevolence were all my business! Being a leader of our team was merely as the settling of a single snowflake on the vast glacier of my business!"
Steele had shrunk again within the folds of the blankets in his bedding, shivering at Charger's harsh words to him. When he finally peeked out again, he found the ghost staring again blankly out beyond him.
"Hear me", the ghost implored, "my time is nearly gone. I have come to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Steele."
Steele breathed a sigh of relief at his words. "Thank you, Charger. You were always a good friend of mine."
"You will be visited by three spirits", Charger replied blankly. And at those words, Steele's expression dampened.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Charger?"
The ghost simply stared, offering "it is."
"I think I'll pass on that," Steele replied, shaking his head timidly.
"Without their visits," Charger replied, "you cannot hope to avoid the trail I now tread!" The ghost paused for a moment, and then continued. "Expect the first, when the clock tolls one."
Charger straightened up again and began to tug on the great mass of chain and objects behind him, struggling towards the window at the end of the hall. Without turning back to his old partner, he said "don't expect to see me again, Steele." As he reached the window, the lower pane suddenly shot upwards, and a cold breeze blew in, tossing the curtains. "But look here," he beckoned, "so that, for your own sake, you may remember what has passed between us!"
Steele rose sheepishly and, stumbling momentarily over his bedding, joined Charger at the window. The ghost nodded down towards the kennel yard, at the dogs shivering in their little wooden houses, trying to get through the night on some degree of sleep. All around them were phantoms of dogs trying desperately to comfort the living animals. Most of them were bound in some manner similar to Charger. Some of them attempted to lay close to them in hopes of sharing the warmth they could have offered in life. Others dragged spectral blankets and tried to lay them over the shivering dogs. All to no avail. Steele became aware of a mournful lamentation...a deeply sorrowful and pitiful, howling wail from the many spirits down below and, it seemed, all over all at once. Charger, after listening at Steele's side for a moment, faded and vanished, and then reappeared below in the yard with the other spirits. He looked up beckoningly up at the window.
This was all Steele could stand. Jumping up and pulling the pane shut with his paws (whereupon the wailing of the spirits was shut out, and it became quiet in the hall again), he then turned and rushed to his bedding and buried himself in it, utterly awash in terror. He remained curled up and shivering in that manner for some time before exhaustion finally washed over him, and he fell into an uneasy sleep.
Unless there is another long pause until the story's completion, this is the last sneak preview!
I was there pronouncing out "whip" and shaking my head...wondering what the heck they were talking about).
