THE BLACK SHUCK—the archetypical ghostly black devil dog appearing the world over—is in its most famous rendition the ghost of all animals crushed under carriage wheels, and perhaps now those of cars and trucks. It is the ghost of all roadkill animals.
Not one.
I light my cigarette and inhale. It’s approaching three AM and I didn’t mean to be out this late. Behind me the 24-hour fast food joint buzzes with florescence. I catch my reflection in the dirty window and I look so tired.
Another ghost you see everywhere is the woman in white. There’s different versions of her all over the world and in pop culture, dragging her heavy body out from ancient myth.
Female, dark hair, pale skin, white dress. She’s always mourning something, and it’s always the fault of a man.
The retinue of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft are the spirits of young female suicides. Her sister goddess Artemis is said to stalk the mountains of Greece to this day with her horde of Neraida, eight foot tall faerie women in white dresses and veils. They search for young men to deform and dement.
The Ring, the Grudge, La Llorona, La Patasoula, I’m naming them off in my head as if that will help me make sense of what’s limping backwards up Woodman to the crosswalk. I’m not afraid yet, but I think I’m gonna be.
Dude I knew briefly was telling me this story about how he was downtown in Dayton walking alone one night. Said he looked up to see a ghost in the road, that it made the motions of screaming but no sound came out. Guy booked it outta there, you know, as you do. Said some years later he was walkin’ down the same stretch and then heard her scream.
Dayton is famous for two things: opiates and human sex trafficking, on account of highways that lead all over the country. Everywhere else sex trafficking is a problem they’ll mostly warn about charming thirty something dudes grooming teenagers on the Internet. Not so in Dayton.
We will snatch you off the streets.
Knew another dude who was into some shady business who’s a vegetable now, on account of getting his brains bashed out on the sidewalk at the beginning of summer. Cops wrote it off as turf wars I think. Witness said he full-force slammed his own face into the curb upwards of fifteen times, but nobody believes crackheads.
Once a chick gets snatched that’ll be the end of her, at least as she knows herself. They drug fresh meat up with something hard, get them addicted so they can’t leave the pimps. Feed them acid and make them watch horror movies and torture porn. Most of them die young, whether murder, overdose or suicide. Many start as kids.
The streetlights now have all gone out.
She stops across the parking lot and I snuff my cigarette and frown.
Can’t have shit in Dayton.
Wonder how we can propagate so much evil, if shit like her can just manifest like that. Maybe they’re not powerful enough to stop everyone all the time, and it’s enough to do it here and there. Make everyone think twice before they lose the lottery. Or maybe she’s where it all goes.
Predators who feed on other predators.
She does a hand-stand and steps out of her dress on her palms, dragging her head and hair in the dirt and broken glass.
Her legs fold back like graceful angel wings, and emergent from her blood-drooling cunt is the end of a spinal column, on which a human skull is fixed. Around the skull is a halo of light.
Its terrible image breaks my mind. I hear the angel’s voice and it is like the roar of bulls; like men trying to beat language into many animals.
wHaT nOw, pUnk?
The florescence flickers out. A disembodied cacophony of trumpets rises, and so too does the curb to meet my forehead.
Over and over and over and over and over and over again.