Two days later, twilight. The sounds of the city were hushed this far out in the suburbs. Moth wrinkled his nose at the neighborhood’s ambiance of prosperity, the kind that bleached over rot, its blotted pastels still shrouded in the muted dark. He stood by the tree in front of a house off Third Avenue. He held a card in his hand as he watched the darkened windows. The card showed a seated greyhound facing right against a red-and-green split background. The Ace of Hounds, he thought. He stared at it a moment as he saw the image shift, the jaws open slightly, teeth bared. He heard a soft growl.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “She’ll love you all the same.”
Moth saw movement in a window. Then he heard it: the screaming, the unearthly terror filling the air from inside the house, the sound of flesh ripping, of testicles torn from the body. More screaming. Moth could see it playing out in his mind. The man had reached for the door. He never made it. He was in the hall. Bleeding. Screaming. Begging. Struggling. Blood sprayed over the walls. His face was twisted with pain and horror. He whipped his arms and hands, trying to grab at his disconnected parts on the floor, reached for the flesh still in the jaws of the monstrous canine as it snarled and snapped between his legs. He was already dead and didn’t know how to come back from it.
The hellhound had finished with him. Moth watched a window open at the front of the house. A little girl slid out into the front yard; tears streamed down her face, but silence was all her mind could accept from the violence she left behind. She saw the shadow of Moth up against the tree. She stared for a moment, then ran to him, hugged him, and sobbed into his coat.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe now.” She said nothing. She just cried.
The hellhound appeared at his side. The child lifted her head and stared at it. Then she put her hand out toward its bloody muzzle. It dipped its head toward her, and she pet it softly as it whimpered at her touch.
Moth knelt, looked at her face, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Run to the neighbor, child. Run tell them your poppa is dead, that he can’t hurt you anymore.”
She nodded and ran.
He watched her go, then lifted the card and waved it at the hound. It vanished in a swirl of dust and spark. One down.
Moth walked back down the street as the sun rose above the horizon, illuminating the sins of a father.