The Kennels, Chapter 5

5.

After a quarter of a mile plodding across the muddy field, Tom’s excitement started to dwindle. He left the herd of cows to his left, looking like tears of blackness in the dark. He didn’t dare to switch on his light, fearing being spotted, and looked at the stadium-like lights for guidance as he would a lighthouse. He stepped more than once in a hole and more than once he was sucked in by a pool of wet mud that refused to let him out without a struggle. When he got to the kennels’ compound Tom had become a part of the landscape, caked with dirt and turf. His feet were as heavy as lead and in his mouth the metal taste of excitement mixed with that of clay. He could only hope his camcorder had escaped the mud bath.

Some twenty steps away from the metal fence surrounding the kennels, Tom stopped, got rid of his muddy gloves and took out his camcorder. He swept across the kennels with the night vision function activated. He saw no movement and heard no sound. Not even from the dogs. A thick green plastic covered the metal fences from the outside. Tom approached the dogs' cells and cut a hole in the plastic with his Swiss knife. He examined a few cells. They all seemed empty. It could be that the dogs were in their boxes and were not interested in Tom. In any case, what would Tom gain if he found out whether the cells were occupied or not? After surveying most cells on that side of the kennels, he felt exasperated. What was he doing? What did he expect to find? What was he doing there?

He sat down on a bail of straw, feeling stupid. He sat there for a long while, refusing to leave and without reasons to stay, wondering what to do next. And then that shriek. One lone dog started howling and gasping. It didn’t stir a reaction in the other dogs, if there were any. It came from the cell closest to the woods at the east end of the compound. Tom rushed there, cut a whole in the plastic. There was an Alsatian in the middle of the enclosure, lying on his side, moaning and gasping for air. And then Tom felt the smell. A repulsive, overpowering smell of damp and decay, like a moist basement that’s been shut for years, a smell that didn’t linger in the air but seemed to be suddenly casting on him like a flush of water from a hose. He couldn’t breath. He dropped on his knees, fondled with his pack bag clumsily, felt for his first aid kit. He struggled with the toggle, then with the plastic box. He took some strips of bandage and sprayed them with water and spirit and pressed them to his nose and mouth. Slowly he rose and stepped away from the forest and the moaning dog. As suddenly as it started, the smell stopped between three and four steps away from the cell. Tom sat on the grass, recovering. He realised now his little expedition had not been in vain. There was something very wrong with this place.

He rubbed the wet bandages over his face and hands, feeling better. And then he heard the sound of disturbed vegetation coming from the forest. He sprayed on the floor, belly down, blessing the darkness. A person emerged from the woods, wearing a surgical mask and gloves and covered with a plastic cape with a hood, and holding a long cane. He approached the metal shed that stood on that side of the compound, similar to the one in the other end. A couple of nails were stuck under the overhanging roof of the shed, on which the hooded person hung his cape and mask. It was the bloke with the black paste glasses. He unlocked the shed’s door, which was a passageway into the compound, and walked away. Tom waited in exhilaration before he dared to put his head up. Only then he realised the dog had stopped its howling. Tom stuck his eye in the tear he had cut before in the plastic, and saw the dog in what appeared to be a deep sleep.

The woods, Tom said to himself. The key to all this is in the woods. He took the mask and cape and entered the forest. He stumbled into many fallen trees, the head of roots suspended in mid air like some fossilised mythological beast. Undergrowth and stingy branches seemed to strive to arrest his progress. His lamplight cast more shadows than light. He wasn’t sure if he was following a path. And then he felt the stench again, certain as a searchlight, guiding him eastwards. He followed it across a little stream and around a hill. It led him to a crater-shaped clear amidst the tortured branches of three old oaks. He stopped, searched around with his lamplight. Turned the camcorder on, swept with the nocturnal vision. There were strange growths in the ground, lichen like shapes. Through the camera they looked dead white and ectoplasm green. He switched it off and scanned them with the lamplight. They were the weirdest, biggest lichens or fungi he had ever seen. He couldn’t even remember seeing things like that in nature documentaries. And perhaps it was the yellow light of the lamp, but they were rosy in colour, even fleshy. He crouched and tried to look closer. The edges of the fleshy petal things were darker, almost red, and it gave the things the appearance of pig’s ears on the countertop of a family butcher’s. He couldn’t bring himself to touch them, and he actually took one step back so that he wouldn’t stand on them. They felt like treading on a pile of meat. He scanned the whole area again. The fungi covered a good ten square metres. Some fungi stood almost two feed high. Tom pointed the lamplight at the closest one. He gasped. It could not be. What in the world was that? It looked almost, it was very similar to, oh my god, it’s exactly like...

He felt an explosion at the back of his neck and started to fall. He still had time to thing that the weird, horrible fungi looked exactly like a dogs head. He was unconscious before his face touched the ground.