Black Shuck, the Ghost Dog of East Anglia, padded down the moonlit lane. His single eye burned like a lantern. Harbinger Howl. He was hunting for a traveler to curse with death within the year.
The lane ended abruptly in a landscape he didn't recognize. Red earth, gum trees, and a strange, reed-choked creek. In the water, something shimmered—a giant serpent with scales like opals. The Djaran-ngirriny.
Black Shuck snarled. A monster was just prey that fought back. He charged. Phantasmal Pursuit.
The Road to Nowhere
The Djaran-ngirriny didn't strike. It simply rippled its coils. Songline Coil.
It sang the land into a new shape. The path beneath Black Shuck’s paws stretched. The gum trees bent inward.
Black Shuck ran at supernatural speed, his Scorching Paw tearing up the dirt. But the creek remained exactly ten yards away. He ran faster. The road elongated.
Dream-Map Unravel.
The serpent wove a song of forgetting. Black Shuck forgot the churchyard. He forgot the lane. He forgot why he was running. The demon dog, stripped of his purpose and his direction, became just another lost shadow in the Dreamtime, running eternally on a treadmill of red dust, while the Djaran-ngirriny sank back into the cool water.