The Golden Leg by Dale Jarvis Read Free Book Online

The mother gave a great gasp and felt the blood
     drain from her face.
    There, uncovered from where it had lain hidden for countless years, lay the
     skeleton of what could only be a large dog.
    In shock, the woman stared down at the skeleton of the hound, speechless.
    “Get rid of it,” she said, finally. “I don’t care what you do with it, just
     get it out of my house.”
    The man nodded as the woman fled the basement. He removed the old bones along
     with the rest of the broken-up concrete. Work progressed without further
     incident. A new floor was laid, the walls plastered and painted, and before too
     long the basement was finished. The workman was paid and went on to his next job
     in another part of the city. The wife never mentioned the bones to her husband,
     or to her young son.
    From that point on, on those days when the weather forced him to play inside,
     the small boy was more than content to wile away the hours playing down in the
     new basement of the old house. But he played alone, quietly, and his imaginary
     dog was never mentioned again.

Y
ears ago, there were few paved roads
     joining small towns. People would go from town to town by boat, or would walk
     along the paths that had grown up, linking communities. One day, a man was
     walking along one of these paths, heading toward home. It was a fine day, but
     the man walked alone, with no one to keep him company.
    At one point along the path, he stopped and looked back. There, off in the
     distance behind him, he could see another figure, that of a man, following the
     same path, and heading toward him. The stranger was a fair distance away, so the
     first man turned his face back toward the trail, and started walking
     again.
    Eventually, he came to a spot along the path where a stream cut across it and
     trickled down into a small pool in the rocks. He looked back in the direction
     from which he had just come, and there, off in the far distance, he could see
     the stranger still walking along.
    At this point, the traveller thought that he would stop there for a rest, have
     a drink of water, and wait for thestranger to catch up. He
     figured that having a companion to talk to along the path would shorten the
     journey. He went to the small pool of water, and knelt down to get a
     drink.
    The man reached out, planning to cup his hands in the water and scoop up enough
     for a sip. Looking down into the still pool he saw the reflection of his own
     face. He also saw the reflection of something that gave him quite a start, for
     reflected in the water, just above his own face, was the face of another
     man.
    Shocked, the kneeling man looked up to see a figure standing immediately behind
     him. Twisting his head up and looking at the stranger, the man realized that it
     was the same person who, only moments before, had been far off in the distance
     along the path.
    The mysteriously-arrived stranger stood above him, smiling down at the
     traveller. Then as the man watched, the stranger’s smile grew wider and wider,
     spreading an unearthly distance, all the way from ear to ear. Then, much to the
     man’s horror, the lower half of the stranger’s jaw dropped down, to reveal row
     upon row of tiny, sharp, pointed teeth.
    The man was so shocked by this that he fell over backward, floundering in the
     water and struggling to get away from the creature. By the time he got himself
     straightened up and poised to run, he realized that the stranger had vanished
     completely.

T
here was nothing warming or welcoming
     about the light. Even from a distance, it seemed devoid of heat, like a full
     moon on a cold winter’s night. But it was not a dull light, or a dim one, and it
     was possessed of an unwavering brightness. It was not the homey light of flames
     licking through the coals in a grate, nor the romantic glow of flickering
     candles. It was a light like those seen of marshes late at night, or of phantom
     ships in stories told to frighten