Chamber of Blood. The Tale that Follows.
Constable Duncan J. Smith said thousands of dogs haunted him wherever he went, but no one else saw them. To get away from the dogs he would hide in the crawl space underneath his cabin, or he would hide in the shed where he kept his snowmobile, or sometimes he would escape to the glaciers and hide in the ice caves where he prayed for the howling and the yelping and the whimpering to stop. But the howling and the yelping and the whimpering never stopped, and no matter where he hid, the dogs always found him.
The first day Duncan saw the dogs was the day he started questioning his job. Or rather, it was the day he started questioning the law and what he was doing with the law. There was something about legally destroying dogs that felt off… that felt… wrong… something that tugged at his heart and wouldn't let go… something telling him that he needed to get out of the cold, lonely Arctic Archipelago before it was too late — if it wasn’t already too late.
For Duncan, it was the first time in his career as a police officer that he realized that the law wasn’t always the glorified tool for civilisation he had imagined it to be. Sometimes the law was something else. Something blunt. Something hard. Something almost like a gavel… a gavel of destruction or oppression or perhaps both — destruction and oppression.
Truth is, Duncan wasn’t sure what he was thinking anymore. He was exhausted, and the dogs… well… the dogs just wouldn't leave him be, and all he wanted to do was return home and farm. He liked working on the farm. Things were simpler on the farm. But here, up north, things were more complicated, and Duncan couldn't help but think about the law.
About the gavel.
And the last thing Duncan wanted to do was wield that gavel against anyone. And yet — to his everlasting regret — he had used it against the dogs.
And though he had done everything by the book… and though the law said he had committed no crime… his heart continually testified to the opposite.
To be sure, Duncan had led countless dogs to the bay, where he had shot them like vermin in front of their owners. And it was only when he was alone and surrounded by their ghosts that he would admit to himself that what he had done didn't feel so right and that maybe... just maybe... these dogs weren't the dangerous beasts or the diseased rats his captain had made them out to be. They were… well… they were something else.
They were friends.
They were family members.
They played with children, entertained them and kept them safe. They warned against approaching wolves and polar bears, and even snowstorms. And more than anything they made sure no hunter ever got lost in a blizzard unlike those unreliable ‘iron dogs’ or snowmobiles that broke down in the middle of nowhere and left a trail of black smoke across the cold, white, endless expanse. No ‘iron dog’ ever led someone out of a blizzard. The same... well... the same could not be said of the dogs…
…the dogs he had so heartlessly destroyed.
But in those days — when the production of the first commercial ‘iron dog’ commenced — there weren't many challenges to the law, and so Duncan certainly tried to convince himself that he was doing the good and lawful thing for everyone.
And while it’s true that the mind might not make the difference between what is right and what is lawful, the heart certainly does.
The heart — it is often said — doesn't lie.
Nonetheless, Duncan found ways to trick himself and ignore the appeals of his heart. He told himself these dogs weren't like other dogs, and he actually believed his lie for a few months. But as time wore on, he very quickly realized that these dogs were… well… like the dogs he had known back home.
Knowing this made it harder and harder for him to fall asleep, and soon he started to hallucinate and see all the dogs he had shot.
At first it was just one. Then it was two. Then a dozen. Then a dozen became a hundred. And a hundred became a thousand. A thousand dead dogs howled and stared at Duncan every night, preventing him from sleeping, from dreaming, from thinking—preventing him from living the life he had once known.
Everywhere Duncan went, there they were, the dogs, looking at him with those eyes—those pleading, confused eyes, wondering what they had done wrong, or how they had failed their family and friends to deserve such a cold and indifferent end.
Truth is, Duncan couldn’t escape those ghosts any more than a dog could escape its own tail. Wherever he went, there they were, following him, reminding him of all the lives he had disrupted and destroyed with… well… with that gavel.
One evening, Duncan sat in bed, holding his aching head in his hands, staring at the decaying dogs sitting all around him. They watched him closely as he tried to fall asleep and howled or barked every time his eyelids began to slip. Trembling with fear and exhaustion, Duncan murmured he had done nothing wrong and that he had acted in accordance with the law and that they should just leave him alone. But —
The dogs wouldn't leave him alone. They just stared at him in silence with those eyes — eyes that reminded him of his own dog.
Anguished, Duncan lurched from his bed, screaming at the dogs, telling them he needed to sleep and that he wasn’t going to feel guilty for doing his damn job! He outright refused to apologize or feel guilty for doing what the law required him to do. What the law said he had to do!
The dogs suddenly stirred anxiously about the cabin with their heads down and tails between their legs. Duncan's screams grew louder and louder, and one by one, the dogs whimpered and whined for their lives like they had done when they had been destroyed. Then — just like that — they vanished into thin air as though Duncan had finally scared them away.
When Duncan realised the dogs were gone, he collapsed into his bed and prayed that they should finally leave him alone. He just wanted his life back, for the dogs had robbed him of his strength and freedom and even his sense of identity as a morally upright officer of the law.
That night, a storm picked up and blew all around his small cabin. Feeling a chill seep through his bones, Duncan rose from the bed, and he made a small fire in the iron stove as he remembered his first and only dog, Buster, a plump Yellow Labrador Retriever with a black snout.
Smartest, kindest and warmest dog he had ever known.
To Duncan, Buster was more than just a dog. He was his guardian, his confidant, his best friend. He was the brother he never had. He caught rodents, guarded against coyotes and drove cattle on the farm. His father used to say a good dog was worth two or three farm-hands, and Buster was certainly worth four. Thinking about it now, he was glad that no one ever used the law against Buster, or any other dog in his town for that matter.
To be sure, Buster wasn’t as big or strong as these Arctic dogs, but he was quite the hunter and had once even saved him from a wolverine. But what Duncan remembered most was that Buster used to curl up in bed with him to calm his anxious heart and help him drift away to sleep.
And now Duncan longed for nothing more than the undisturbed, soundless sleep of youth. And as he longed for sleep, the wind blew harder and fiercer through the cracks of his cabin. The fire flared, flickered and snapped, casting violent shadows that seemed to tell stories.
Duncan rubbed his eyes to make the hallucinations go away. But wherever he looked the shadows took the form of officers and hunters shooting at confused and frightened dogs as a thick and unnatural black smoke began to fill the cabin.
Duncan tried to pinch himself awake. But when he realized he wasn’t asleep, he quickly shut his eyes and once again begged for the dogs to just leave him alone.
He wanted one night of rest. Just one night! His brain reeled with despair, and he began to hear the warped voice of his captain laughing at him, shouting at him, tormenting him, telling him the dogs were dangerous… aggressive… a definite blight on their future plans.
Duncan felt madness clutching at the seams of his soul. He screamed that these were lies! All of them! And when he opened his eyes again, the black smoke was gone, and the shadows were once again meaningless shapes flickering about the cabin.
But just as Duncan sighed his relief, he heard a sound.
A gentle, scratching sound. At the door. Then he heard a bark that sounded vaguely familiar. The bark came again and again and it sounded like —
'Buster.
Duncan narrowed his gaze and cautiously approached the thick, wooden door. The scratching stopped just as he placed his hand on the doorknob. He stood in silence for a long, tense moment. When the scratching came again, he quickly opened the door and caught a fleeting glimpse of yellow fur disappearing beyond thick sheets of falling snow.
Exhausted and confused, Duncan rushed into the churning storm in his undergarments and slippers, yelling for Buster to wait for him. Then he stopped suddenly when he realized he was being irrational. His tired mind was playing tricks on him.
Buster had been dead for over twenty years. He had been hit by a car. And for a fleeting moment, Duncan remembered holding his paw on the side of the road, calming him down as his life slowly seeped away. He had never cried so much in his life. There was no possible way Buster could still be with him.
Covered in snow, Duncan told himself the solitude was getting to him and that he just needed one night of undisturbed sleep. He turned back toward the cabin. But as he turned, he realised…
…he was lost.
He couldn't see an inch in front of him in any direction. Cold and panic swept over him at once. He turned and turned as the wind howled and shrieked and whimpered. In the raging blizzard, he could only make out —
Dogs.
Ghostly dogs. Dead and decaying dogs. Thousands of them. Running around him. Growling. Howling. Barking. Confusing him.
Duncan shouted for them to stop, and he tried to scare them off as he had done before. But the dogs grew faster and fiercer as though they were one with the storm.
Duncan fell to his knees and felt the cold bite all over his trembling body. His face twisted in terror as each dog seemed to pounce out of the storm to take its turn chomping down on him with cold, indifferent teeth. He collapsed to his side in agony. A terrible numbness crept over him, not so much from the cold but the memory of hurting all those poor dogs. He begged for them to stop, and then he did what he had never done before.
He confessed his shame and begged for forgiveness.
At once, the dogs froze and stared at him with eyes that seemed to look straight into his heart.
Duncan choked out that he was sorry, that he was truly sorry, and that even though he had done everything by the book, he had done everything wrong. He had done them wrong. He had done their families wrong. And he had done himself wrong.
And as he emptied his heart, he heard a familiar bark as Buster suddenly emerged from the ghostly pack and stood before him.
'The dogs looked at Buster, then Duncan, then Buster again. A wave of peace seemed to wash over them as they disappeared one by one and left Duncan with his guardian… his friend… his brother. And Buster curled down beside Duncan as his heart slowed to a stop, and the blinding, white storm swept his life away as it had done so many others.
When Constable Duncan J. Smith didn’t show up at the station the next day, his fellow officers searched for him and found his frozen corpse not ten feet from his cabin. He was lying on his side with a peaceful expression on his face. One officer noticed that he had been running around in circles, while the others questioned why he had been foolish enough to leave his cabin in his undergarments in the middle of a snowstorm.
The captain kneeled by Duncan’s frozen black and blue face and sighed. Just as he ordered someone to cover the body, another officer panicked and rubbed his eyes, claiming he saw dogs all around him. He stumbled back and screamed for the dogs to stay away from him. No one saw what he was seeing, and the captain told him to stop making jokes at Duncan’s expense. But the frantic officer shrieked in terror and swore that the dogs were real and that they were following him.
