The hellhound trail

Over the clunk of the denk, black moor came the barghest, following.
There was a change in the weather, perhaps rain, and the night birds stirred in the hollow trees and the leaves very quivered.
Singing fur rustled as the first drops of rain fell bluntly on the runk black dog. His howl came bellowing like a rusted tuba; was he in pain, did God’s water threaten his eminence?
Into the tree cover padded a wheezing gentleman. He slobbered and spat his effluvium onto a blistered trunk. The barghest was almost upon him and he felt its powerful sight splitting the atoms of the wood surrounding, not even straining to peek.
From the woodland edge, he could see lights whizzing by below at the foot of the moor where the A-roads bled rubber and the dwellings began.
A viscous growling bent through the bark and swirled a cloud of greasy panic about the wood. Nature sighed and passed out as the barghest set foot in the glade.
A turn of the head - what a foolish thought or action when terror can guide you home - to see remoteness and infinity bearing splintered fangs and auburn eyes.
A freezing step is managed before the ice clamps its vice about you. The barghest bites once and leaves. The man tumbles down from hillside to roadside and sleeps among such tall grasses that can choose to cover bodies from urban eyes.
But he wakes. Wakes into a world where the rain has caught fire and is drenching him so that his spine very creaks.
He staggers across busy road and lives. The fox that follows is cut in two by a bus.
Through the park and play-area, filled with frogs croaking a path to the housing estate, he knows he must be bleeding but the rain has stained his clothes so.
There is one light on in his cul-de-sac, and but one door left ajar. It is his house, and his wife waits up for him.
He knows she smiles as she calls from the lounge that she’s kept his dinner warm for him. The kitchen table is lit by candles. Upon a silver dish and carved for two is a man’s soul.
This man sits down and waits for his wife to enter the kitchen. He strokes his sopping scalp and waits for her to serve.