Hey Mom,

Crazy day in Pawsburg! Felt some weird vibes turning our bark into a whimper. Ended up howling with the pack at mysteries only the moon can tell. Turns out bravery’s just another word for family. Don’t worry, the spirit patch is still strong.

Licks ‘n wags,
River Bottom

Listen to the story here

So it goes, I was lounging on my favored tuft of grass just beyond where the human world blurs into Pawsburg’s mystical borders. The sun dipped below Pyrenean Peak, dripping the last of its golden honey over the horizon, and that’s when the shiver cut through Bichon Boulevard, whisking up Whippet Way and whispering secrets of the night.

I’m River Bottom, the black Labrador with a chest patch that tells more about my spirit than my tongue ever could. You know me. Well, you think you do.

The air, it held a tingle this evening, made my fur stand on end. I felt the urge to seek company, to share in the collective warmth of fur and loyalty. Doggie Diner would be serving supper now; their bone broth simmering like the unsaid thoughts that welled up inside me. Every padding step towards the diner felt like it echoed in the shadowy lift of twilight, muffled only by the soft chorus of my four-legged friends. They barked and barked somewhere far off.

Max would probably be there, and Bella. Oh, Bella with her silver streak of speed that could cut through the air like a knife through… well, you know. It was Bella who darted past me first, her eyes wide with what I could only figure was the feeling that was tugging at my tail.

“Sump’n’s up,” she gasped without stopping, a grey specter lost to the coming night.

“Nonsense,” I muttered, doing my best to wear the mask of sensibility. Labs are steadfast, you see. But steadfastness melts in the cauldron of the unreal. So it goes.

As I neared Labrador Lunch, I heard the hum. It was not the hum of bedtime stories our humans like to believe. It was submerged, deep like the marrow of bones that we dogs dream of—oh, we dream deep, don’t let the tail wagging fool you.

There, on the door of Pup’s Poutine, a note fluttered like the last leaf of autumn clinging to a branch. I nudged it with my snout. “The Howling Hour,” it said. The world tipped, or maybe it was just me, unbalanced for a moment, my white patch ghostly in the tavern’s reflection.

The streets were too quiet now, no clatter of bowls or jingle of tags. It seemed our beloved Pawsburg had been laced with a stillness that came uninvited. We were a town of dogs, creatures who sang to the moon, not a town held in mute horror by its call.

Seeking solace at Happy Hounds Dog Walking, I found only an abandoned leash swaying, as if in the wake of an invisible dog walker. The Tail Wagger’s Tailor stood silent, spools of thread in colors that no longer seemed to boast their vibrancy.

I could have howled. I might have howled. Would it be a beacon or a surrender? My padded paws took me to The Dapper Dog Salon, where mirrors showed nothing and everything all at once.

There, in the wisps of the Pawsburg twilight, the essence of the unforeseen danced with a squeaking toy — my favorite, the immortal tugger. It squeaked in a rhythm, a siren song amidst shadows. My brave bark faltered.

Dread, that was it. A horror story doesn’t need monsters; dread will do just fine. The kind that trickles into dog dreams and spreads like spilled water.

As I stood, perpetual as the fur I’m in, the silence broke with a symphony of howls, a crescendo that could wake the sleeping sun. It wasn’t dread; it was a call. So it goes, in Pawsburg we are never alone, even in the echo of our collective unease.

And I, River Bottom, with my heart worn openly upon my white-patched sleeve, knew then, even horror had its place. For in the fright, we found our bark, our howl, our undying canine chorus.

Bella reappeared, her eyes now lit by the kinship of alarm. “River, the moon’s telling tales again.”

And so we would listen. Together, amid the horror and the beauty of our wild, untamed Pawsburg. So it goes.

The End.