#77 Great, Hellhounds Are Real
Not in-house medicine but a former paramedic who plays EMT on weekends now. I have a decent one and this is a throw away so people don’t think I’m insane. I always thought if I were to experience something weird at work it’d be in any one of the ambulances I’ve used on account of all of the souls that passed through. My partner and I that night weren’t that lucky.
I used to work in the city and our company covered surrounding towns. Only a few hundred thousand people with suburbs and beyond that woods and a river valley. Nothing special. We had to respond to the fringe of our coverage area in another town one night and after almost getting there we wound up being canceled by first responders en-route. It was 4:30 AM on a Wednesday in autumn.
The ride back to civilization is only a 20-minute trip but it’s a long, straight road with dim street lights and thick forest on both sides. I was riding in the passenger seat with my face in the laptop writing our canceled tag mentally preparing to go home after a long night and my partner asked “Do you see that?” and began to slow down.
The cab was illuminated by the lappie so I shut it and looked up, squinted a little, and there I saw it only one hundred feet or so in front of us. A dog. A large dog. A large dog that’s silver/gray with straight ass ears with little tufts atop of them walking away from us ever so slowly. Darn thing had to be four feet at the shoulders.
My partner slows to a crawl thinking it’s hurt and maybe it has a tag or collar. Surely such a magnificent beast has an owner. As we slowed to a crawl some stuff happened that I will never unsee or ever forget and it’s the day I started believing that not all things are what they seem.
The idle of the ambulance isn’t its usual roar, we’re creeping at about 8 km/h (5 mp/h) and gaining, I was on the passenger side and it was on my side of the road, the plan was for him to put flashers on and me to whistle or hoot to see if our new friend was acclimated to humans and needed help or if he was street tough and to let him on his way. We closed the 100-foot gap to around 25-30 feet.
As we closed our distance and right at that 10-yard mark or so my partner and I simultaneously got a sense of dread. I was suddenly very aware of how much trouble I was in and my blood turned cold. The dog stood up. My view of this was from behind and the bastard’s shoulders would put Vince Wilfork’s to shame.
It was a massive animal. My partner stopped the truck, the beast cocked its head to the side ever so slightly to the left revealing a single yellow eye shine, then turned to my side (right side) of the woods and bolted. It was over as soon as it started. The thing that has always bothered me though is that little head tilt.
I got the sense of dread before he stood up, it was almost telekinetic if that makes any sense. I just got this feeling like “I know you mean well, move on, and I was never here.” Then it vanished. I’ve seen may canines stand on their hind legs. I’ve never seen a Hellhound sprint with precision over a guardrail and brush that dicked with my head other than that night.
After a lot of research I came upon the Legend of the Michigan Dogman and the Beast of Bray Road. The only problem is I live in southern New England and we’re not known for our Bigfoot sightings or wacky crypto-zoological stories. I don’t know what I believe in and it’s certainly not werewolves. But I totally saw something that really, really, really looked like a werewolf just that one time.
Credit: BattleshipOpera
