Dog Days of Summer (Day 1)

A murder mystery involving the Michigan Dogman

I took a much-needed break after the ALA conference to go back and visit family and friends in my home state of Michigan. I’m currently preparing to head down to San Diego Comic Con this week. I’ll be at booth G-03 so please come say hi and pick up some comics and our SDCC exclusive trading card. Before packing and hitting the road, I am excited to drop this horror short inspired by the Michigan Dogman.

panel art from Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters

panel art by Anna Wieszczyk for Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters

Journal Note from Necro:

One fascinating thing about being a grimoire is that I can pull stories right out of the minds of the humans and monsters I meet. This story about the Michigan Dogman is exactly one such story. I siphoned these words from the mind of an angsty eleven-year-old. This young girl was stuck in the twilight of her childhood and stuck in the middle of her cousins—three little babies under her, and five super sophisticated teens above her. She didn’t belong in either group, so she found herself alone quite a bit on family vacations up at the lake in Northern Michigan. No one left her out intentionally, but it happened all the time. She was just too little to sneak beers and cigarettes, and she fancied herself too big to play Ghosts in the Graveyard. That summer, being an accidental loner turned out to be dangerous. She discovered something in the woods that completely ended her childhood in the bloodiest way possible. 

This is the first entry a short summer horror series called Dog Days of Summer.

Dog Days of Summer (Day 1)

Two bikes slammed down on the dirt drive in front of the campground’s small store, wheels spinning, as my younger brother and sister ran toward the shop’s screen door, shouting over their shoulders for me to hurry up.

Grimacing back at them, I swatted a horse fly into a bloody smear against my calf.

“Just get me some Hubba Bubba and a Nehi!”

Photo by Joel Gaff on Unsplash

“Walk Like and Egyptian” blared out of the shop’s radio into the woods around us. They both stopped and did the song’s popular dance before cracking up and rushing into the shop, slamming the door behind them. The shop owner barked at them, “Watch the door!”