Crossing the Threshold (Part 3 of The Ash Hound)
By Paul Koontz
The ash-hound did not look back as the trees began to thin. Liam’s boots were split across the toes, the freezing mud of the gaps oozing through his grey wool socks with every step. He was lightheaded from three days on nothing but wintergreens and charred acorns, his Springfield rifle swinging limply from his shoulder by its leather sling.
Then, the hound stopped. It didn't melt into the brush this time. It stepped boldly into a neat, quiet clearing and let out a single, deep bark that echoed off the limestone cliffs.
Through the grey twilight, Liam saw a small log cabin. A thin wisp of oak smoke curled from the stone chimney. The door swung inward, and a woman stepped onto the porch, holding a double-barrel shotgun across her apron.
"That’s far enough," she called out, her voice sharp but steady.
The hound didn't hesitate. It walked straight up the timber steps, sat down at her feet, and pressed its massive grey flank against her skirt. The woman lowered the barrels an inch, her eyes widening as she looked from the beast to the shivering soldier in Union blue. She glanced back down at the dog, then up at Liam.
"Who are you, soldier?" she asked. "And why is this beast bringing you to my door?"
Liam stumbled closer to the porch, his knees nearly giving out. "Private Liam O’Shea, ma'am. Sixty-Ninth New York Infantry. I... I don't know how I got to your ridge. I’ve been running blind through these hollows since my unit broke three days back."
The woman looked down at the hound once more, noting how it sat quietly by her feet, completely at ease with the blue-coat's presence. "If the dog brought you, you’d better come inside before the frost takes your fingers. I am Elizabeth Adkins."
Liam crossed the threshold into the welcome warmth of the cabin. Elizabeth shut the heavy oak door behind him and shoved a thick iron bolt into place. She pointed toward a wooden chair by the hearth, where a basin of warm water already sat steaming.
"Take off those boots before they rot right to your skin," she said, setting her shotgun within arm's reach on the dresser. She handed him a tin plate of cold cornbread and salt pork.
Liam swallowed a mouthful of the bread, the heat of the fire making his shivering skin sting. "I found an old shack up on the high ridge two nights ago," he said, the words spilling out as the warmth unloosed his tongue. "Thought I was saved from the freezing rain. But there was an old woman inside. A witch, or something close to it. She knew my name, soldier or no soldier. She had a smile that pulled back too far, nothing but black gums and tar spit. She had a heaviness that settled right on my bones. I couldn't move my legs."
He paused, his thumb rubbing hard against the stock of his Springfield resting against his knee. "Then this beast stood between us. He didn't bite her, mind you. He just stood there and let out a roar from his chest like thunder beneath the limestone. She couldn't stand the sound of him. The whole shack vanished into smoke, and there was nothing left but a mound of chimney stones abandoned forty years ago. I’ve been tracking his grey flank through the laurel ever since."
Elizabeth listened in total silence, her hands tightly folded over her apron. She looked at the hound, then back at Liam with a guarded, measured expression. She did not share her own story. She simply picked up her shotgun, rested it against her chair, and gestured toward the braided rug near the hearth.
"You can sleep by the fire tonight, Private O’Shea," she said quietly. "We’ll see what the morning brings."
Morning brought a heavy, steel-grey frost that locked the mountain in silence. Liam expected the hound to lead him away at dawn, but the beast remained stretched out on the sunny boards of the porch, watching the woodline.
Knowing he could not offer coin, Liam set to work to earn his bread. He took a broadaxe and a heavy mallet from the lean-to and spent the afternoon splitting logs for Elizabeth’s woodpile. His hands were blistered and bleeding within a few hours, but he kept his back to the wind and chopped until the stack grew high and square.
Elizabeth watched him from the kitchen window. At noon, she brought him a tin cup of hot chicory water and a fresh hoe-cake.
"I was nearly out of wood. Just so much to do in a day." she remarked, leaning against the doorframe.
"My Mamo used to say it takes three times as much as you think it does," Liam said, wiping sweat and wood chips from his forehead with his sleeve. "Wood is wood, ma'am, whether it grows in Ireland, New York, or Kentucky."
She gave a small, approving nod, taking the empty cup when he finished, but remained reserved.
By the third afternoon, the quiet rhythm of shared labor had softened the air between them. Liam hauled wooden pails of clear water up from the spring, while Elizabeth mended the split seam in his wool uniform coat with thick waxed thread. When they sat on the porch steps during the quiet lull before dusk, the great ash-hound lay between them, resting its heavy chin on Elizabeth's foot while its flank pressed firmly against Liam.
That evening, as a bitter wind began to howl through the stone chimney, Elizabeth set two bowls of thick bean soup on the table. The firelight flickered across her face, casting long shadows against the log walls.
"My husband, Thomas, went off to fight last winter," she said softly, her voice breaking the silence. It was the first time she had spoken his name. "A courier brought a letter three months back saying he’s buried in some trench in Virginia. I nearly went into the ground with him, Liam."
Resting his spoon in the soup, Liam looked up from his bowl.
"After that letter came, I stopped going out," she whispered, staring into the red coals of the hearth. "I sat right in that corner for weeks. I didn't tend the garden patch. I didn't cut wood. The mountain... it knows when the grief takes you. It started with footsteps on the porch at night. Heavy boots, just like Thomas wore. Then the wind started whispering my name. It sounded like him, wet and rattling from the river silt. I was sliding right into the dark, and I didn't care to stop it."
Her fingers buried deep into the hound's thick grey fur as the dog shifted closer to her knee.
"Then one morning, the sun came up so bright it looked like white fire," she continued, a faint, tender smile touching her lips. "I walked out on the porch, and this beast was sitting right where you stood. I talked to him, fed him. He looked into my eyes, and the fog in my head just broke. He stayed at my side for weeks. When the wind tries to call my name out in the garden patch, he stands right between me and the timber and growls until the breeze dies. He kept the dark out."
She looked across the table at Liam, her eyes clear and untroubled for the first time since he had arrived.
"You can call me Liza, Liam," she said gently. "Thomas was the only one who did, but... Elizabeth feels like a woman who died in the dark weeks ago."
"Aye, Liza," Liam said quietly. "I’m glad the dog found you first."
On the fourth night, the wind shifted from the north, bringing an unnatural, suffocating gale that rattled the heavy oak shutters and shook the dried herbs hanging from the rafters.
The ash-hound stood up from the braided rug, its ears flat against its skull, its hackles rising like iron needles along its spine.
From the dark woods outside the cabin, a voice called out through the roaring wind. It was wet, rattling, and painfully familiar to Liza.
"Liza... let us in, girl. It's cold in the dirt."
Liza froze, her face draining of color as her hand went to her throat. She reached reflexively for the shotgun against the dresser. "Thomas..."
"Don't listen," Liam rasped, stepping swiftly across the room to lock his hand around her wrist, holding her back. "It's a trick, Liza. I heard my own sergeant out on the path four nights ago, and he was buried at the Rapidan."
Liam scrambled to the window, sliding the small wooden peephole open to peer into the storm. Through the dark and the swirling fog, he saw a silhouette standing in the garden patch. The figure was wrong. It was terrifyingly tall and thin, its arms hanging down past its knees, swaying like dead willow branches in the gale.
The creature began to move toward the house. With every few paces, its frame convulsed in sharp, jerky movements. The joints snapped with the sound of green timber breaking as the overly long arms shrunk, the towering height collapsed, and the silhouette warped. By the time it reached the edge of the porch, the shape had twisted itself into the tattered black shawl of the old woman.
She drifted up onto the porch, her face pressing directly against the grime of the glass just inches from Liam’s eyes. Her features were a pale, sightless void in the gloom, but her mouth was stretched into a terrible, unhinged grin. A thick, oily black drool fell from her lips, sizzling like hot grease as it struck the cedar floorboards of the porch.
"Lost things," she cackled, her voice like dry husks scraping together on the wind. "Lost things belong to the hills."
Before Liam could draw his rifle, the ash-hound stepped between him and the window.
The beast lowered its head, its eyes glowing like pale embers in the dark room. It opened its massive jaws and let out a terrifying, guttural roar from the depth of its chest. It was a solid wall of sound, a fierce wall of thunder that vibrated through the logs of the cabin and shook the handle of the shotgun in Liza's grip.
Outside, the old woman shrank back from the sound. The unhinged grin vanished from her face, replaced by a mask of ancient rage. She cackled once more into the gale, turned, and dissolved back into the swirling black mist of the treeline.
As she disappeared, the unnatural breeze suddenly died. The heavy silence of the winter mountain returned, and the hound went still, turning its pale eyes back to Liam and Liza.
Liza looked around the dark cabin, then met Liam's eyes. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, firm resolve born of the four days they had spent together.
"She knows we're both here now," Liza said softly. "The dog drove her off, but she'll be back when the wind changes."
"Aye," Liam agreed, tightening the leather sling of his Springfield over his shoulder and picking up her carpetbag from the corner. "The clearing isn't safe anymore. The dog knows the paths out of these mountains. Pack what you can carry, Liza. We’re leaving together."