“That damned dog never does come when I call him,” he muttered beginning to feel ashamed that he'd let his fear get the best of him and had taken it out on the dog.
You know the kind of fear that is so intense that you suddenly feel mad at everything and everybody? That was the way the old man felt. As if something bad was coming, something over which he had no control.
Then a strange, light headed kind of wooziness came over him. For a split second he thought he might be having another heart attack.
He glanced at the woman thinking, “She looks a little odd”. A little dribble of blood trickle from one corner of her mouth.
Just then she turned to face him. Her soft gray eyes had turned to metallic booger-green.
If he'd been himself the old man would have noticed that both her pupils had changed from round to sharply vertical ovals resembling cat's eyes. He would also have seen the little maggoty-looking thing that squiggled across one pupil.
“We have to go. They say we must come to the well.,” her emotionless voice barely more than a whisper.
He wanted to ask who was saying they must come and to what well but his mouth couldn't form the words and his mind kept forgetting the question.
They shuffled out the back door into the cool dark night looking like a couple of senior-citizen-zombies just out for a stroll with their little white zombie-dog walking along with them as if obeying their unspoken command.
They didn't notice as they lumbered toward the well, that they were being followed. Behind them were a couple of deer, several rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, a skunk and an owl that followed from above, swooping silently from tree to tree.
The animals were in the same sort of trance as the zombie-threesome. The further into the forest they went the more animals joined the silent stumbling zombie-parade.
Although it had been as dark as the inside of a black box when they left the cabin and although it was still the middle of the night, the forest seemed to be getting lighter as the group lurched onward.
Their numbers grew as similarly affected animals and now people joined them. They soon approached the head of a trail that led deeper into the forest.
