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It was the screams that brought them running.

It had been a normal night. It was supposed to keep being a normal night.

"I don't get it," Ronan, the baker; a large man with dark hair and beard and skin permanently ruddy from the heat of his ovens; said as he kneeled down. His flashlight glinted oddly over the dark pool spilling out of the mangled mess that used to be Father Basil's throat, the priest's eyes dull and staring blankly at the cloudy sky. Ronan swallowed and reached out to close the dead man's eyes, unable to take that unseeing gaze. "What could have done this? Who could have? Black Shuck should have..."

A low snarl filled the night, and the assembled men; Ronan, Old Magnus, Young Magnus, Mathias, and Daniel; whirled to face it, pressing close together as icy fear washed away the alcohol muddying their systems.

For a brief moment, the light of the flashlight washed over and through a figure slinking through the trees. Large, on all fours, stringy black fur hanging in shreds off a not-quite there body, stomach tucked up near the spine and ribs on display. The only things that seemed actually corporeal were glinting, yellowed fangs, and glowing red eyes.

Another snarl, and the creature took a step towards the group, trees behind it slightly visible through its gaunt form. With reflexes honed suddenly sharp by fear, Young Magnus snatched the cross hanging from Father Basil's neck, snapping the bloodied chain, and threw it at the apparition.

It jerked back, snarled again, then backed away from where the cross had landed and faded from sight into the Maine mist. The last thing to wink out were those red, red eyes.

The five men went still, waiting to see if it would reappear. After a long moment, one of them let out a sigh of relief, and they all relaxed minutely.

"But that was... why would he..." Young Magnus from the bank shook his head in confusion. "He's supposed to..."

"We ain't going to find any answers tonight," Mathias; who owned an orchard and sold cider and pies at a markup to tourists; said. "Let's get the body and head back to the bar. We can call the sheriff from there."

The five men looked at each other uneasily. It was Daniel the barman who broke first. "Old Magnus, you should get it. Since you're used to dealing with meat and all."

The butcher shot him an offended look. "Are you calling Father Basil meat? Besides, Young Magnus can get him. My back isn't what it used to be these days."

"Dad! I don't want to carry the body!"

"Look," Ronan said. "He's probably too heavy for just one of us to carry all the way back to the bar anyways." He looked down, nudging the body with a foot. It still stank of alcohol from when Father Basil had been drinking with them earlier. "We'll all carry him."

They were halfway back to the bar when Young Magnus spoke up again. "That was Black Shuck that did this, wasn't it?"

The rest of the men stayed silent.

**********

"And these are your quarters, Father Aleister," the man who had introduced himself as Old Magnus said, producing a key and unlocking the door to the rectory attached to the small church.

"Ah, thank you, Old Magnus," Neil said, not entirely failing to hide his unease with his new title. It would take him longer than the mere few weeks he had possessed it to get used to being referred to as 'Father' by those around him.

"You don't need to worry 'bout any smell, we all got together and cleaned out Father Basil's things after his accident a few months back, sent them off to his sister over in Ohio," Old Magnus babbled, flicking the lights on as he stepped inside.

Neil hadn't been expecting much, not from a church in a small town comprised mostly of immigrant Irish Catholics, and he got even less. A single small room, with a stripped mattress on a metal frame pushed into one corner, a lone dresser that looked like it had been made before the turn of the century and had not seen gentle care since, and a tiny kitchenette in the opposite corner from the bed, consisting of a small refrigerator, a single-basin sink, and a battered teapot sitting on an unplugged hotplate. An unshaded bulb hummed near the ceiling, and the scent of dust had him stifling a sneeze.

"Bathroom through the door there," Old Magnus said, gesturing at a door to the left. "We left the window shut to keep the weather and animals out, so it could probably do with a good airing."

"Ah, yes, thank you Old Magnus. This will do nicely," Neil lied through his teeth, forcing a tight smile.

"Young Magnus will be by later to show you around, but I'd best be going and give you a chance to settle in." Neil nodded and gave another tight smile as he escorted Old Magnus out, shutting the door behind him.

Okay. Okay, okay. He could work with this. He wouldn't be stuck at this tiny church in a tiny rural town in the ass-crack of Maine forever. He'd do a good job here, get moved to a better church with a larger congregation. This was a stepping stone, nothing more.

Neil took a deep breath, then broke into harsh coughs as dust took the chance to invade his lungs. He stumbled over to the small window between the bed and the dresser and forced it open with a screech that made his ears ring.

The sharp smell of autumn filled the room, the smell of cold and falling leaves and a tinge of wood smoke.

Neil took a deep breath to clear the dust from his lungs, then groaned.

There was a graveyard right outside his window.

Fantastic.

Granted, he didn't consider himself superstitious, but that didn't mean he wanted to sleep with headstones a few feet away from his own bed.

Neil took another deep breath, held it, then let it out. "Okay. This is workable-" Another sneeze cut him off.

It took him several minutes to hunt down the cleaning closet. Some of the cleaning products looked old and were probably out of date, but he shrugged and used them anyways, figuring that they were probably better than nothing.

Young Magnus knocked on the open door and wrinkled his nose at the heavy smell in the air when Neil was halfway through mopping the floor. While the room was nowhere close to shining, it was at least mostly dust and grime free by this point. "Ready for the grand tour, Father Aleister?"

"Almost, let me just finish this up." The room was so small that it took him less than a minute to finish the thorough mopping. Neil huffed out a breath and wiped at his forehead with a sleeve, staring unseeing out the open window, over the graveyard to the forest beyond it. "There, that should do it for now."

"Sorry Father. We probably should have cleaned up a bit when we heard you were coming, but..."

"It's fine, I don't mind." Neil did, but he knew it wasn't the polite thing to say. He frowned, eyes focusing at sudden movement in the trees. "Do you get wolves in this area?"

"No, no wolves. The occasional coyote, but no wolves. Why?"

"Must have been a dog, then. Or a bear, maybe. Saw something big and black through the trees."

When he heard no response, Neil turned back to Young Magnus, to find that the other man had gone pale. "What's wrong?"

"I... look, my Dad didn't want to scare you off by telling you, but you should probably know. I'll tell you on the walk into town, it isn't far."

Now confused and a little annoyed, though doing his best to hide it, Neil took the time to put away the cleaning things he had used in the closet he found them and straighten his still awkward feeling robes. He considered changing to his heavier set, the sky was beginning to get that washed-out tinge of oncoming sunset and the temperature would be dropping, but decided against it. He liked the cold well enough, and the walk would warm him up.

He didn't bother locking the church as they stepped out into the late afternoon air. After all, what was there to steal? The rest of the place was just as old and run-down as his quarters, it didn't look like it had been updated or renovated since electric wiring and indoor plumbing were installed.

Okay, maybe Neil was exaggerating to himself, but he felt it was only slightly.

"So, what has you so spooked?" he asked as he fell into step beside Young Magnus.

"Surprisingly good choice of words." The other man gave a brief, wry grin before looking down the asphalt road leading to town, perhaps a mile walk, although Neil knew from his taxi ride in that the lane twisted and turned through the fire-crowned trees.

Young Magnus took a deep breath, then spoke. "Look, I was born here, but my Dad? He came here to Canada Falls over from Ireland with a bunch of other families. Settled here with a lot of them. And back there, in Ireland and England and Scotland, apparently there's a lot of, well... stories."

"Stories," Neil said, raising a brow while wondering whose bright idea it was to name a town in Maine after the bordering country.

"Yeah. Old ones, going back a long, long time. They... hey, you paying attention?"

"Hmm?" Neil blinked and looked back at Young Magnus as they rounded the first bend in the road. "Yeah, sorry. Just thought I saw something again. In the trees."

Young Magnus swallowed hard and went pale again, then took a deep breath and made the sign of the cross. "Look, Father Aleister... do you believe in ghosts?"

What? No, of course Neil didn't believe in ghosts. Still, something had Young Magnus spooked, and now probably wasn't the time to make fun of the man, not if he still wanted his guide. "Do you?"

"Yes," Young Magnus said seriously. "I've met one, a few times."

"Have you?" Great, his guide was delusional. It took more effort than Neil thought it would to school his expression to something neutral, and he apparently hadn't succeeded, to judge by the way Young Magnus frowned at him.

"You don't believe me."

"It is a little far-fetched," Neil admitted.

"Yeah, well, nearly everyone in town can say the same." Young Magnus held up a hand to forestall Neil's protest. "Let me finish. When those families came over, I guess they... brought something with them. Like I said, there's stories back where they came from, old ones. About... dog ghosts."

Neil wasn't able to hold in his bark of laughter. "_Dog_ghosts?"

"You laugh now, but you won't for long." Young Magnus shook his head as they rounded another bend in the road. "Anyways, the stories... all of them have big, black ghost dogs. Bigger than a calf, with glowing eyes. They go by a lot of names." He swallowed. "We call ours Black Shuck."

"What, you're saying that there's a ghost dog around here?" Neil couldn't repress a disbelieving sniff. "This is just a story, to freak out the new priest, isn't it?"

"I'm not messing with you, I promise. Look, the old stories, they talk about nice ones, who walk you home at night and then disappear, and... not so nice ones. Black Shuck, he was one of the nice ones. When I was little, was out late with my friends, and it was dark and I had to walk home alone? I've had him walk beside me and see me home safe. I've seen him, Father Aleister," Young Magnus said, plucking a large red leaf out of the air and beginning to nervously shred it. "He's big, back higher than my waist, ragged fur, gaunt. Big glowing eyes. Terrifying to look at, but he's safe. _Was_safe, anyways."

"Was?" Neil was still fairly sure that Young Magnus was messing with him, but at this point he might as well hear the man out. They were getting closer to the town anyways, if he remembered right they just had two more turns in the winding road to go.

"A few months ago... Black Shuck turned. We don't know how or why, but it's not safe to be out at night alone anymore. You heard Father Basil died in an accident, right? Well, if by 'accident' you mean 'ghost dog', then yeah, you heard right."

"I'm sure there's a reasonable-"

"Father Aleister, I was there that night! His throat was torn out, I saw Black Shuck going back into the trees! You don't mistake him once you've seen him." Young Magnus was shaking now, whether from fear or anger or a combination of both, Neil wasn't sure.

Neil shook his head. "Are you sure some farmer's dog wasn't-"

"Six people have died since then."

Neil shut up, throat suddenly tight and dry.

"All of them were out alone at night, all of them had their throats torn out. There are seven fresh graves in the graveyard, Father Aleister, all of them put there by what we thought was our protector." Young Magnus shook his head. "None of us want to be number eight, and we don't want _you_to be number eight, either. Just... don't go out alone at night, okay? And if you do, keep your cross on you."

"Why's that?"

"That night, when we found Father Basil's body? I threw his cross at Black Shuck, and he backed off. I think he can't touch holy things. In all the time I've lived here, I've never heard of him going into the church, though I have heard he sometimes haunts the cemetery."

"I'll keep that in mind," Neil said dryly.

"Look, at least now you can say you were fairly warned," Young Magnus said, looking up as they rounded the final bend in the road. "Look, we're almost there."

The tour took the rest of the afternoon, which considering the late hour said something about how tiny the town was, especially as they were doing the tour on foot. Young Magnus took him by the bank where he worked, then over to see Old Magnus again as he closed up the butcher shop, and past the bar that was just opening up where the man Young Magnus called Daniel gave them a wave. The post office was already closed, but the grocer and the baker were still open, the latter of which they were waited on by Brynn, a girl barely tall enough to look over the counter and who Young Magnus said was the daughter of the town's baker, Ronan. Neil did his best to look on the bright side, as it allowed him to pick up a few things to stock his empty refrigerator.

The sun was dipping below the tree-shrouded horizon, and the sky was taking on the purple-indigo shades of twilight, when they finally ended the tour outside the small apartment building where Young Magnus lived.

"You can stay the night, keep you from walking home in the dark," Young Magnus offered, but Neil shook his head.

"I'll be fine. It's not a far walk, and it's a nice night." He could see the protest coming, and he held up a hand to forestall it. "I'll be careful, alright? I'm a grown man, I'm not going to be spooked by some old ghost story."

Young Magnus frowned, then sighed. "Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you."

Neil gave a small wave, shifted his sack of groceries to the other arm, then set off down the street. Fifteen minutes later saw the first stars coming out just as he turned onto the lane that led to the church.

Between the trees grew darker than on the road, and Neil shivered slightly as the temperature dropped. Perhaps he should have gone with his heavier robes, but he hadn't known that it would get this cold this quickly, or that he would be out this late. A chill ran through him as a gust of wind stole some of his precious body heat, and he tugged his robes a little closer.

Huh. Okay, Neil had grown up in the city, so admittedly he wasn't familiar with rural areas, but did things always go this quiet in late evening?

He had rounded another two bends in the winding lane, and his breath was visibly misting the air even in the rapidly fading light, when a twig snapped, sounding like a gunshot in the quiet.

Neil's spine stiffened, and his throat went tight as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and stood up. "Just a story making me jumpy," he muttered, trying to ignore the sudden sensation of being watched. Still, he picked up his pace, heart beginning to pound in his chest.

Something dark slipped through the trees to his right.

Neil whirled to face the wall of forest and underbrush, breath coming hard and fast, only to find nothing there that he could see. Slowly, he reached up and fingered the cross resting against his chest. "Just a wild animal." Right?

More movement, again to his right, and he slowly turned to face down the path he had already walked.

A large figure, near the size of a small pony, came to a halt near the bend in the lane a hundred feet or so back. In the dim light, faintly illuminated by the crescent moon overhead, he could make out pointed ears, ragged dark fur, and a gaunt frame, stomach tucked up near the spine.

Red, glowing eyes stared into his, and there was a flash of fang in the moonlight as the creature snarled.

Two things happened near-simultaneously. The first was that every instinct in Neil's body screamed 'Wrong, wrong, this thing is wrong'.

The second was that the creature took a step closer, and Neil broke into a terrified run.

His robes near-immediately tried to tangle around his legs, so Neil dropped his groceries and hurriedly yanked them up so he could move faster. He couldn't hear anything chasing him, but when he glanced back over his shoulder for a brief instant, the red-eyed dark creature was bounding silently after, mouth gaping to show pale, wickedly sharp teeth in the dark.

The only things he could easily see were the creature's eyes and fangs, the rest of it blended all too easily into the darkness.

Neil faced back forward and tried to run faster, because even from his quick glance, it was clear that the creature was gaining.

Two more bends, if he remembered right. Two more bends in the road and he could reach the church.

Neil rounded the first, breath coming harsh and fast, cold stinging his lungs, legs already beginning to burn, stitch pulling at his side. Another panicked glance back. The creature was perhaps fifty feet back now, and still gaining.

Last bend, and the dark church came into view. Neil gasped for air, trying to push himself faster-

And tripped.

He rolled as he did, ending up on his back, just as the creature gathered itself and leapt, maw parting and aiming for his throat-

A smaller black creature slammed into it, knocking it off course.

Air rushed into lungs that had been paralyzed by fear, but the rest of Neil stayed frozen, staring in shock as two figures twisted and shoved, vicious snarls filling the air and glowing green and red eyes flashing in the night, glinting off of snapping fangs.

He suddenly regained control of his limbs and scrambled to his feet, rushing for the church's doors. When he was more than halfway there, he glanced back in time to see the larger, red-eyed creature bite down on the neck of the smaller, green-eyed one and throw it to the side. As the smaller creature slid to a halt on the ground, it became apparent that it was a smaller version of the one that had been chasing him. It lay still, then faded from view, leaving bare asphalt where it had been.

The red-eyed creature turned back to Neil just as he raced up the church steps and shoved the doors open, falling to the floor inside as relief at reaching safety made his legs suddenly go weak. He rolled and sat up just as the red-eyed creature approached the church, placing a massive paw on the steps, then snarling and yanking it back. It glared at Neil, snarled in hate, then also faded away.

Neil sat there, gasping and trying to catch his breath, then buried his face in his hands as terror left him shaking like the leaves on the trees outside.

_Why_were there two Black Shucks?