Start with Part 1 of The End of The Road here, or catch up on Part 7 here.
He tore the axe from the mud, his eyes crazed. The screams came again and again, but he could not move. Was it the girl? Was it just the dogs? The eerie whimpers crept on as the moon rose high, and soon the snarling, panting, shifting, screaming sounds of the wild, hungry hounds pacing closer in the mucky grass came to his ears. Shaking, he began to whimper like a dog himself, stuck between wanting to run and wanting to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Only woods and road for miles around; the marsh in front of him, the house and that room behind.
Who knows how long he stood like that while the dogs circled him. He stood there until he heard only their cutting yips in the air as he frantically looked this way and that, his arms numb from the weight of the axe, slowly drooping lower and lower in his grip. He was sure they were surrounding him. That they would come in from all sides and that would be the end. His heart beat so loudly in his ears he was sure they could hear that, too.
Filthy prey animal, he thought. He could smell himself. The piss in his jeans. The fear on his skin. And all these thoughts crept up on him, distracting him. Shut up. They’re out there, he told himself, catching his breath, sure one was just behind him—but when he turned to look it was just the open, black back door of the house. His eyes strained to see past the darkness spilling out from the inside, but the nothingness there made him sick. Made him thirsty. Made him itch.
He turned back to the marsh, following another sound, and another, giving himself whiplash from the fear, imagining eyes, hundreds of eyes, watching him from beyond the mud.
Then at some point, the moon went behind a cloud and Charlie could no longer hear motion in the grass. No yips. No panting. No screams. Not even a cool night’s breeze. The sweat on him grew cool in the moonlight, but he would not let the axe fall just yet. Not just yet. Not until he figured out what the hell he was going to do.
But his body gave out before his resolve did, and the axe fell, thudding away onto the ground, his knees following quickly after. They both hit the ground hard, but he could barely feel them bruise, spent as he was. All he could do was scramble to bring the axe closer, since truly, he could no longer stand. The shakes were getting to him. All the after effects of the adrenaline, he thought, rubbing his eyes and looking hard around him. Nothing moved. All he could hear was the sharp heaving of his own breaths.
Along the horizon, a green glow signaled the coming end of night. Soon, he found himself dozing now and again, leaning his head on the handle of the axe from where he sat on the ground unable to stand or crawl. But each time he would startle out of it, the BANG finding him in his dream, the door opening to reveal…
…nothing. Before he could see inside he would always wake up. Wake up and remember it was all real. The dogs. The screams. The door. The girl. It gave him a bad headache. He could taste the stink of his own breath in his mouth. I need to know if she was there or not, he began to think. He needed to know if he’d heard the girl, or if it was just the dogs screaming.
Plus he needed time before going back into that house. Needed the sun to be up full before he stepped in there again.
So with a herculean effort, he stood under a lightening sky. Stood and decided he wouldn’t be able to use the axe if anyone came after him anyway. Decided to leave it behind and traipse into the marsh with his boots tied up to their last hole. Pulled his shirt above his nose to block the smell and started walking, passed the dying wood shed, toward where he’d heard the dogs running.
But when he looked, he didn’t see any paw prints. No broken grass. No cut up mud or dog-shit or anything that might say a coyote’d been there the night before. He swallowed hard. I heard them. He pushed the grass this way and that, looking and looking. There was nothing. He stepped further from the house, realizing his shirt wasn’t going to do anything from the stink and let it drop from his nose. He breathed through his mouth, wondering what the fuck was going on, desperately searching the growing puddles for any sign of track, until he did find something, but not exactly what he’d been looking for.
He started finding little piles of rock. Little piles of black rock stacked on top of each other, five big ones on the bottom, three on top of those, and then one on top of that. Lots of little piles, one leading to the next, to the next, until the water rose to his ankles and he came to the center of the marsh, where there was a dank, algae-covered pond that smelled of sewage and stink. Across the small water-hole, cat-tails went on for miles until, in the far-off distance, he did see a house. A tiny, grey house with smoke coming out of the chimney. He stood, watching it while nothing else moved, not even out there, across the way. And for some reason this comforted him. The girl hadn’t lied. She lived over that way. No one yelled and screamed her name, out looking for their missing daughter. It had just been the coyotes, he decided.
His shoulders dropped from his ears. Just the fucking dogs. He relaxed for a moment. But then anger boiled in him. Anger at himself. At the house. At the woman at the store in town. He wanted to walk right back in there and shake the bitch, ask her what was wrong with the house. I just might! he thought, turning and in all the rush tripping on one of the strange little rock piles.
And as he fell, he saw her: her dirty little dead face staring up at him through the bloody water, her arms chewed, her dress ragged, her eyes wide open as he fell into the marsh water on top of the little girl’s body, choking on her death water, panicking and gasping and thrashing to get away, her blood on him, her skin on him, her eyes on him. He retched, tasted beer, closed his eyes and turned away, but the image stayed. Soaked to the skin the image stayed. But he could not stay. His body, animated by disgust, got up and ran, and tripped, and ran again. The fucking dogs. He stopped to be sick. Bile and beer. Bile and beer. Then nothing else. There was nothing else left. Saliva dripped from his mouth as he panted, looking ahead. He could see the house. Maybe I just imagined it, he thought. Maybe this is just another fucked up dream.
He slowed down. A fucked-up dream. That’s all this is. He even smiled a little, began to laugh with exhaustion. The kind of laugh you can’t stop, even when you want it to.
But then the laughing did stop. For Charlie had broken through the grass and come out of the marsh.
And there, on the doorstep, stood the little girl, whole, and alive, and smiling with all her teeth.
This story is currently a work in progress. Catch up and read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, or Part 7 of The End of the Road.
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Jessica Barratt 
And now I wonder if the little girl will share some insight into what’s going on with the house!