Horror - Short
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs. No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.
All rights reserved. Canis Daemonium Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026
CANIS DAEMONIUM
Charlie Ranger popped to his feet from behind his desk and typewriter with a copy of the Globe in his hand. He ran into the editor’s office, waving the paper. Three of the room’s walls were decorated with certificates and plaques. The fourth wall was glass so the editor could keep an eye on his newsroom’s bullpen.
“Bobby, look’it. That hack Petra Kesler at the Globe ran with a full moon angle!”
The editor of the Tribune, Bobby Washington, was a plump man was slicked black hair and a pencil moustache. “I know she ran with it.”
“She got it all wrong. She even brought up werewolves.” Charlie shook the paper fuming.
“I know that too,” Bobby said, grinning now.
Charlie slapped the paper against his leg, squinting at his boss. “Did you read it already?”
Bobby shook his head playfully before putting his size thirteen loafers up on the corner of his desk next to a dancing hula girl with glued on googly eyes.
“What’d you do?”
“Called in an anonymous tip to Ms. Kesler. Told her about your theory.”
Charlie shook all over. “My theory! First off, it’s not the full moon, anyone with half a brain can see the killings occur four days straight before the new moon. New moon! Not full moon!”
Bobby swatted at this information. “It’s all hogwash. Lieutenant Kaminsky says it’s coincidence. Three killers, working to similar patterns, and all in custody. The story’s over until the trial begins.”
Charlie leaned on Bobby’s desk. “You’re wrong. There’s almost certainly two dead bodies out there right now, either not yet located or not yet connected.” Charlie put on a pained expression. “You have to give me this one. I’ve studied the new moon. The cops have it wrong, you have it wrong, and,” Charlie waved the balled paper in his fist, “Petra Kesler has it wrong.”
Bobby shrugged.
“It’s about chakras aligning. Every month, this individual is out of whack until a new moon ceremony realigns their chakras. I think they’re sacrificing people to the moon, and that’s why the bodies have steady gotten more and more mutilated. You have to give me this story. I’m this close to solving it.” Charlie held the index and thumb of his right hand about a half-inch apart.
“No,” Bobby said, simply, firmly.
“What? Why not!” Charlie was thrumming.
Bobby dropped his feet and selected a piece of paper from his desk. “You’re on this.” He held it out for Charlie to take.
Charlie snatched it away and read aloud, “Jones Family Annual Pumpkin Patch Festival? Are you kidding me? There’s a killer on the loose and you want me to cover a pumpkin patch festival?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I won’t do it. I’ll go on strike. I’ll quit!” Charlie stamped his right foot and shook his head. “I’ll quit; I’ll do it.”
—
Charlie climbed out of his six-year-old, 1982 Buick Regal, his Nikon camera dangling by a strap around his neck. He kicked the door closed behind him and started toward the admission gate of the Jones Family Pumpkin Patch. He had a tape recorder and an extra roll of film in his pockets.
“One dollar, please,” said the child inside the booth.
“Let me guess, you’re a Jones?” Charlie said. This was an opportunity to teach Bobby a lesson.
The kid puffed up his chest. “Yes. I’m Gus Nathanial Jones. My daddy owns this whole place.”
Charlie whipped out his tape recorder. “How old are you Gus Nathanial Jones?”
“Nine.”
“Uh huh, and do you get paid to mind this position?”
“You mean sit here and take money?”
Charlie nodded.
“No.”
Charlie continued nodding. “And how does it make you feel to perform slave labor while all your friends run around playing?”
Little Gus scrunched his face. “I got invited to Chrissy Hunter’s birthday tomorrow and I can’t go because I got to work the booth and parking cars.”
“All for no renumeration?”
Gus crinkled the bit of his face not already crinkled. “Huh?”
“And they don’t even pay you?”
“That’s right.”
“Since they don’t pay you, do you consider your parents slavers?”
Gus tilted his head in thought. “I guess so. Daddy makes all kinds of money and never pays me nothing.”
“And did you ask to be born?”
“No. And now Mom’s pregnant.”
“Another slave?”
Gus’ jaw dropped. “I bet that’s why. They work me hard and I don’t get anything. Even at Christmas! Danny Rowbotham got a Power Wheels Jeep, just like what I asked for, and my parents only bought me a new bike. I have to pedal! It’s not like a Power Wheels at all!”
Charlie clucked his tongue. “Terrible state of affairs. I bet it makes you mad.”
“And Danny never even lets me ride it!”
Charlie withdrew his wallet. “Can I buy a pumpkin?”
Gus’ outburst switched off. “Okay. Medium is one dollar, a big one is two.”
Charlie held out cash. “Better get myself a big one, and a receipt.”
“You got to pick,” Gus said and pointed over his shoulder, meaning from the wagon beyond the shack he was in.
Charlie hurried over and found the biggest soft pumpkin of the bunch. Black spots were already forming around the stem. He returned to the booth. “Gus, you ever smash a pumpkin?”
The kid’s eyes lit. “Yeah.”
“How about you come out here and smash this pumpkin?”
“The one you bought?”
Charlie nodded, accepting the little slip of cash register tape with pale purple printing on it. “Bought it to smash.”
Glee danced on Gus’ face. He stepped out of the booth and followed Charlie around to the corner of the lot that faced the road, stopping in front of the huge JONES FAMILY PUMPKIN PATCH sign. Charlie set the pumpkin down and lifted his camera.
“Smash away, my friend.”
Gus didn’t disappoint and the picture alongside the story of a slave boy to his parents’ pumpkin patch would give Mr. Bobby Washington second thoughts next time he denied Charlie Ranger a juicy story.
—
Starlita’s Astral Bazaar was a singular little shop on the east side of the city next to an antique dealer’s shop/warehouse. Charlie had an urge to find Starlita and ask her if she knew the word bazaar did not refer to one store but instead to many stores. He decided he’d save it for if she pissed him off.
Starlita was a tiny white woman with thick dreadlocks and enough cheap jewelry on her neck, wrists, fingers, lip, and nose to start a recycling business. She spoke slowly, likely a wee bit stoned rather than being methodical in word choices.
“Anything funny going on the last three months concerning the new moon?”
“Funny?” Starlita said.
“New customers going really gung-ho, anything like that?”
“Umm, maybe…no. No.”
Charlie picked up a candle with a full moon carved into the glass holder. “How much for this?”
“Fifteen. That’s a very special piece, its scent promotes luck and—hey, you know, there was a girl. Maybe seventeen or eighteen, she bought all my black candles.”
“When?”
Starlita tittered. “I’m not good with days.”
“Right. Was it recently or—how many new moons ago?”
The woman did not pause. “Three. Will be four in four days.”
Charlie handed over three fives. “I’ll need a receipt. Business expense, you know.”
Starlita wrote a receipt in pencil. “If you’re interested in the cycle of the new moon, I have calendars.” She took her eyes off her work for a moment and pointed across the store. “Setting intentions on paper emboldens your charge, doubly so if you use pencil and then burn the pencil with palo santo wood and sage—both can be found over there.” She shifted where she was pointing to a display of what appeared to be bundled twigs and weeds.
Charlie didn’t look, was too busy studying the image of the noble looking wolf on the calendar. It made him think of werewolves, and the Globe, and that sonofabitch, Bobby. He spun on his heels and headed back across the store for his receipt. “Just the candle for today, thanks.”
Outside, Charlie began lobbing the heavy candle to about eye-level before letting it drop back into his hands. It was a warm morning for October and the air was clean and fresh. Until it suddenly smelled of mothballs. Charlie craned his neck and looked at the back end of a cube truck that had clanked open its tailgate. Inside were dozens of antiques and paintings wrapped in brown paper. A man hurried out of the antique shop/warehouse next to Starlita’s. He was a big guy, balding up top with strong arms and tree trunk thighs. He pumped his fists in tight little jerks with a wide-open smile on his face. Charlie quit tossing the candle and stepped to him. He was now watching two men unload the truck and cart what they carried into the antique shop/warehouse.
“You’re a happy camper,” Charlie said to the man.
“You don’t even know!”
“Oh?”
The man turned, obviously ready and willing to spill his beans. “I scored the motherlode.”
“Oh?”
The man rubbed his hands together like a caricature of a gold prospector. “So, you know how the museum was underwater and then was miraculously saved by an anonymous benefactor?”
Charlie straightened. “Sure.” He’d asked for the story because it sounded all too neat to be clear of shenanigans. Bobby, of course, had denied him; instead had put him on the story of a dog and his owner who were working toward a world record of consecutively caught Frisbee tosses.
“Well, it seems Winston Drake cleaned out every dollar he could get his hands on to give the museum the five million, but it wasn’t a donation. He purchased a painting; it’s all hush-hush. Fast forward five months, the Drakes need cash to stay afloat and called me to take some items off their hands. My god, there are pieces here I’ll flip for fifty times…they set the prices, not me.”
Charlie considered this. “They?”
“I spoke to the daughter. I guess Mom and Pop are embarrassed about how things happened.”
“Ah, I see. Congratulations.”
The man tapped his forehead with a fistful of knuckles. “Knock on wood this luck keeps up.”
Charlie returned to his car, uncertain of where to go on the new moon killings and decided he’d get the pumpkin patch story down so Bobby didn’t ring his neck for no reason—he’d ring Charlie’s neck, no doubt, but with the pumpkin patch slavery story in hand, he’d have a damned good reason.
—
As he listened with a single earphone plugged into his tape recorder, Charlie’s mind wandered. He couldn’t help but wonder what painting the Drake family had purchased. He hit stop on the cassette and pulled the earbud from his ear canal, then flopped his phonebook onto his desk from one of the drawers. He ran his right index finger down the M page of the Yellow Pages until he came to the word Museum. There was only one in the city.
“Greyland County Museum, how may I direct your call?”
“I just have a question,” Charlie said to the pleasant-sounding woman on the other end of the line.
“If I can answer it, I will.”
“Great. What painting did the Drakes get for their donation.”
The woman exhaled. “Is this line of questioning in some official capacity?” She sounded a lot less pleasant now.
“My name is Charlie Ranger, I’m with the Tribune.”
The woman sighed. “Hold, please.”
Elevator muzak played while Charlie spun a pencil around a clean space of his messy desk. The line clicked after about thirty seconds and a man answered with, “Yes?”
“Hi, who is this?”
“You called here, sir.”
Charlie mentally shrugged. “What painting did the Drakes take for their donation.”
The man sighed just as the woman had. “It’s all—you know what, those assholes…it was Canis Daemonium de la Luna Nueva, by Francisco Goya.”
Charlie stiffened at the word Luna. “What is that, Spanish?”
“Partly. It involves a Greek myth about a nameless dog of Hades—not Cerberus—so that’s the Canis Daemonium part. The other bit is in Spanish because the artist was Spanish. De la Luna Nueva: of the New Moon. The title roughly translates to Devil Dog of the New Moon.”
Charlie went numb all over. “When was this deal done again?”
“First or second of September. Look, if there’s nothing else—”
Charlie hung up without another word. The pumpkin patch story could wait. Thinking of Starlita and of the antiques dealer, Charlie lit the candle and rapped his knuckles on the corner of his desk.
“Write that pumpkin story?” Bobby said, leaning out of his office doorway.
Charlie blew out the candle and wafted the smoke into his face. “Just following up on a finishing touch,” he said before rushing away, grinning over the silliness of the actions.
—
In the parking lot behind the Tribune, Charlie stood outside his car. Something was funny. There was a scratch along the chrome accent of the passenger’s side window. He cupped his hands around his face and looked into the tight backseat, discovering a lumpy black blanket rising amid the shadows. He knocked on his window.
“Are you here to kill me or tell me something?” he said.
The lump did not move.
“I see you plain as dry white toast.”
The lump didn’t move for another five-count, but then an arm lunged up, flipping away the blanket, and Petra Kesler looked around. Her hair was all over the place and her blouse was crooked.
Charlie huffed and stepped around to the driver’s door. “Might as well ride up front,” he said once behind the wheel.
Petra climbed over and fell into the shotgun seat. “Hi.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Tell me about the new moon.”
Charlie frowned. “Didn’t I just read you called it the full moon?”
“Well, when your editor called and pretended to be an anonymous tip, I pretended I didn’t know it was him, he said it was a werewolf, full moon killer, which sounded hokey. But when I looked it up, I discovered they align more closely to the new moon. That’s when Brenda told me Bobby wouldn’t give you the story.”
Charlie straightened his back and tilted his head. “Brenda Thomas?”
“She put in her resignation about twenty minutes ago. She’s been working incognito with the Globe for about a week. You should really come over. With Bobby at the helm, the Tribune’s a sinking ship.”
“Huh.” Charlie looked forward; this was some news.
“Peter thought it was a flash piece—he’s not much of a newsman, but he can sell ad space like he was born to do it. So he changed it from new moon to full moon and added the bit about werewolves.”
“So, what?”
Petra dropped the visor and looked in the mirror, began fixing herself. “So, you and I work up a real story and sell it to your boss. Peter’s given raises to every man in the newsroom for five years running and I haven’t gotten so much as a bump. This’ll put a scare into him, using his own tricks against him.”
“What makes you think I need you?”
Petra smiled. “Bobby calls me all the time, usually for dates—to which I refuse. He’ll run the story if we share a byline.”
“Sonofabitch,” Charlie hissed.
Petra made a smoochie face at him.
—
It was full dark by the time they made it to the Drake mansion. The moon was barely a sliver—one night away from the new moon. The guard gate at the bottom of the hill was empty and Petra pushed the gate open with minimal effort. Charlie continued up to the massive building only to discover every light was out.
“You really think Winston Drake is killing people?” Petra whispered.
“I think the whole family is in on it. I don’t know how the Goya painting comes into it. That one kind of kicked my chakras idea to the curb. Come on,” Charlie said, leading the way around to the side of the house.
At the back of the mansion, the ground was landscaped into a brief valley to facilitate a pool. Windows led into the basement. Candlelight flickered in a huge room beyond the glass. There was a scent on the air, and it wasn’t pool chlorine.
“What is that?” Petra wrinkled her nose.
Charlie said nothing. He continued, moving closer to the big doors by the pool while snapping shots without looking through the viewfinder. The smell was intensifying, though its origin was not yet obvious. Charlie tried the door and was surprised when it opened, was not at all surprised when the stench hit them tenfold.
“Ugh,” Petra said and covered her nose.
Charlie breathed through his mouth as he followed the flickering light. A voice filled the basement, feminine, youthful. “Accept these sacrifices. Canis Damonium, I offer my vessel to thee once more.” Then he saw her. She was on her knees, surrounded by black candles, the floor glistening beneath her. Charlie snapped shots while Petra charged again, her tape recorder out front of her like a license to survive any old thing.
“Petra,” Charlie hissed.
She ignored him. “Excuse me! Excuse me!”
Charlie swallowed, and after finally looking through the viewfinder, he came to understand a portion of the magnitude of this story. Beyond the crouched and robed girl was the painting. Goya had depicted a scene of slaughter at the feet of a forty-foot dog. Sacrifices to a hinted moon. Beneath the painting was a lumpy slick of blood and errant human organs strewn about like chocolate chips on a cookie. Charlie had to corral a gag.
“Excuse me!” Petra said again.
The girl rose and turned, her eyes blazing red in the dim basement. “The great one told me you’d come. Told me tonight’s sacrifice would feel the will of the universe and be dragged here.”
Petra stopped, arm still out. “Ms. Drake, tell me, how many have you killed? Are your parents in on it?”
The girl began laughing so hard she shook, then dropped to her knees. “They! Went! First!” The laughter in the excited words bore hints of a howl. The girl then began to vibrate all over, her cloak bulging and dancing as her shoulders spread. Great snaps rang out—accompanied by the click-crank-click-crank of Charlie’s camera.
“What the hell’s she doing?” Petra said, looking back at Charlie.
His gaze remained pinned. The girl was growing. The pale flesh of her hands had gone furry and dark. Her face had elongated and was still stretching as coarse fur began to sprout. Pops and grinding sounds, the girl was changing internally.
Charlie continued snapping pictures, right up to the moment the girl was no longer a girl, but instead had become a massive dog. One so big she had to crouch to remain beneath the high ceiling.
“Am I seeing this?” Petra began stepping in reverse. “This can’t be real.” She turned to run.
The massive beast leapt at her then, pinning her hard enough that both Petra’s eyeballs popped from their sockets and dangled against her cheeks like geriatric testicles. Her tongue bulged and stretched out while blood gushed like projectile vomit from her pretty mouth. Charlie snapped five more shots as the massive beast began lapping at the fresh blood.
“Good enough,” Charlie said and spun, running toward the door.
Outside, he breathed deeply of the fresh night air. He cut tight to the side of the house, moving up the hill to the front yard. What he’d seen and heard and smelled, it left him lost and clumsy. He made it to his car, certain he’d hit the headlights and there’d be that massive, beastly dog, free of the mansion’s confines. But no. The mansion again appeared lifeless.
—
He’d considered going home, but he needed the story to run tomorrow and developing film and writing copy took time. He could phone the cops from home or the office, so that worked out fine as well. He got out of his car and ran into the shadows of the back of the building, unthinking, unseeing.
Thump!
The strike sent him sprawling. Charlie blinked up at a bulky man in blue overalls. In his hand was a tire iron.
“You tell my son I was slaving him?”
Before Charlie could answer, the man thumped him again. He went woozy, heard the man hiss, “Dammit,” then felt his body being dragged. He was sitting upright somewhere, then heard the man growl about slavery, and a perfectly pitched fist nailed him in the temple.
—
Charlie awoke with a jerk, which sent his screaming headache into overdrive. Had he gotten drunk? There was no way he’d really seen what he saw. He blinked, looking around. He was in his car, in the Tribune’s parking lot. It appeared to be early morning or early evening.
With a shaky hand, he probed the three painful spots on his head. Lumps. Mr. Jones from the pumpkin patch, Christ; he hadn’t even run the story yet. He hand cranked his window down as a man in tight jeans and a crop top passed by his Buick.
“Is it morning or afternoon?”
The man snorted. “Pret’ near suppertime, bub.”
So he’d missed the day’s deadline…there was always tomorrow’s edition. He pushed out of his car and stumbled into the mostly deserted office. He picked up the phone and dialed the cops. This was a number he didn’t have to look up.
“Give me the chief,” he said as soon as the line clicked.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
Charlie rubbed at the sore spots again. “Charlie Ranger, from the Tribune. I know one hundred percent, no doubt about it who the killer is.”
The woman on the far end of the line sighed. “Hold, please.”
While waiting, deciding how much he could tell and be believed, he took his lighter from his pocket and relit the candle. He was going to need all the luck he could get, and this couldn’t hurt.
—
Mug of cold coffee downed, he hurried along to meet the cops at the Drake mansion. The final showdown would make for great photography. Pulitzer stuff. Maybe.
To his dismay, there were only two cop cars in the lot—when he’d mentioned they watch for dogs, the chief had actually chuckled and said, “Like werewolves? I read the Globe, too.” The cars were both empty. Silently, Charlie went around back, assuming the altar would once again be in the basement. It wasn’t. It was up on a hill fifty feet beyond the pool. Candlelight flickered enough to reveal four police officer silhouettes and one figure crouched on the ground. Charlie tried to move closer for the sake of his photos, but discovered he was too scared to do so.
Until the shots rang out.
The reporter in him was stronger than that self-preserving coward of his subconscious. The new moon was like a thread in the sky and he ran beneath it, stumbling blindly while snapping off shots and cranking the winding wheel between each one.
Shouts and screams filled the air alongside the gunplay. One cop was sprinting and blew by Charlie in the opposite direction moaning, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…” as he went. Not good. Charlie stopped short of the scene by about twenty feet. One of the cops was in the beast’s giant mouth, his blood raining down over the other officers. It chewed and spat before stepping toward the two remaining cops standing their ground, firing haplessly. The dog head reared back before chomping down while simultaneously shaking and flinging. The cop the devil dog had grabbed flew from its mouth, pinwheeling like a maple tree pod before landing next to Charlie in a fleshy, bloody, shit-smelling heap.
Charlie pointed his camera and pressed the flash button. The light whined before he clicked the shot, strobing and imprinting the gore, not only on the film, but also on his mind. The final remaining cop screamed as the huge beast pounced and slammed, almost dancing on the soon to be corpse. Done, it lifted its head and barked. Though outwardly it sounded like a dog with a megaphone, inwardly Charlie heard, “I’m coming for you, Charlie.” The reporter spun on his heels and raced back to his car.
—
The newsroom was barren. Charlie sat at his desk typing out the pumpkin patch story beneath the lamp on the corner of his desk. Beyond the windows of the third-story bullpen, chaos reigned. The devil dog had eaten dozens and killed dozens more; it was all over the police scanner. Buildings were smashed, burning, destroyed. And with every meal devoured, the beast got a little bit bigger. Men were sobbing on the airwaves, praying for God to come save them, one voice suggested commissioning silver bullets, another said he had an aunt who could maybe cast a protection spell, another suggested they corral it so as to lead it to a different county.
All the chatter made it very difficult for Charlie to focus on the pumpkin patch story, and he wondered how big the dog had to get before it was too big to handle. Local authorities had fired about a billion shots into its shaggy fur, and it had had zero effect. The military was on its way. But was it already too big to handle? Were they even close to handling it right?
“Not your business,” Charlie whispered, shaking his head gently.
He covered an ear so as to listen better to the one plugged into his tape recorder. Was Gus Nathanial Jones still alive? What about his angry daddy? Charlie shook his head harder. He had to get this written, thinking about the killer and the new moon and that giant devil dog, well none of that was the story assigned to him. He was writing about a pumpkin patch and nothing more. His job was the pumpkin patch story, Bobby had made that abundantly clear. Charlie knocked his knuckles on his desk once again but felt no safer.
XX