Nocturnal Emissions by Jeffrey Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

out through it, into the very night itself. And then, not easing his pace, diagonally across the yard—away from the house.
    They both threw glances over their shoulders. And only seconds after they had escaped the cottage, they both saw the dog as it hurled itself off the straight path at the last moment, directly at the farm house without breaking its stride. But Venn didn’t know whether it was just him who caught a glint of metal jutting up from the center of the dog’s forehead, as if a large nail or a railroad spike had been partially imbedded there.
    Like a living battering ram, the great black dog drove its skull into the front door of the cottage, and then there was a blast of light almost like another lightning flash, an explosion almost like another thunder clap. The repercussion swept outward in all directions, making the racing pair stumble and grab onto each other to keep to their feet. Still gripping each other’s arms, they watched as a ball of fire billowed up into the night sky, the thatched roof of the house instantly and entirely ablaze, the windows all shattering as if picked out by bullets.
    Venn quickly fumbled his red spectacles onto his face.
    Along with the swirling sparks like locusts—and the black smoke that unfurled into the sky to merge there—Venn caught a glimpse of a rising dark form beating wings of shadow. Embers for eyes. Then, it too was lost in the greater darkness.
    “Dear God,” Susan sobbed, clinging to him. “It was Black Shuck!”
    “No,” Venn muttered. “It was Reverend Trendle’s dog.”
    The widow looked up at his face. “Reverend Trendle?”
    “He killed your husband, Sue. He’s more than a cleric. He’s a conjurer.”
    “But…it can’t be possible!”
    “That was his dog, was it not?”
    “Yes,” she admitted. “It was one of them, in any case.”
    Venn looked at her upturned face again. “One of them?”
    “He once had a litter of them. Four, I believe. Later, one was missing.
    Then recently, he seemed to have only two.”
    Venn gazed off in the direction of the vicar’s church. “Then one of them still remains.”
    ««—»»
     
    The conflagration attracted several of the men who labored at the sheep farm, who arrived in a cart from the town itself. Venn and Susan, who had been watching the vehicle’s approach from the threshold of the shearing barn, came forward to meet it. Venn told the men in his most authoritative clergyman’s voice to bring the woman safely back to the center of Candleton with them, straight away.
    “What of you, Father?” Susan Brook asked breathlessly, squeezing his arm before climbing up into the wagon.
    “I hope to meet you there,” he told her. And he waited for the cart to turn and dwindle back toward the town, the licking flames a wall behind him, before he walked along the road—the fairy path—himself. Walked toward the Anglican church of the vicar, John Trendle.
    ««—»»
     
    Just as had been the case earlier that day, when Father Venn neared the stone church, a dog started barking from inside it, either having seen him through one of its dark windows or having simply sensed his approach.
    He crossed the churchyard, and stopped a short distance from the front doorway of the church. Even as he did so, a huge black dog emerged—fol-lowed by the elderly Reverend Trendle, who planted himself beside it.
    “More questions about the farmer Brook?” the vicar rasped.
    The dog growled deep in its chest, a sound like another storm rolling in.
    Though it was midnight dark, Venn lifted his deeply tinted red spectacles to his face. Now, where the dog’s blunt face had only been a black mask, two red eyes with silver pupils glared in place of its own.
    “Only questions about you, John,” Venn replied.
    “Why did you come back here, Venn?”
    “I told you—I am the one with questions to be answered. Such as how you have learned these secrets you possess. These…spells…conjurations…what-ever one might