A stench of putrefied soil and vegetation wafted up to him as the sun’s rays warmed much of the bog. Mist curled in dark pockets where sunlight failed to shine. The sun burned the back of his neck, and he swatted at a biting insect. Ahead of him, a group of Boreal Chickadees pecked a spruce for insects, their tiny brown heads twitching. As he watched them, his foot slipped into a hole laced with deadfall. He tried to brace the fall, but his hands only met water. With nothing to brace him, he smacked his face onto a log that jutted out of the murky bog. Matt screamed as pain ripped through his head. Even worse, the impact resounded into the water like a bass drum. The Boreal Chickadees fluttered above the treetops and scattered like a thinking cloud of dust.

Matt rubbed his aching jaw, trying to massage the pain away.

I’m done, he thought. I just gave myself away.

He paused, expecting a reply from the little voice. There was nothing.

Matt hugged the gnarled log, his foot still entangled in the snag hole. His heart thudded against the wood as sweat trickled off his nose into the stagnant water.

With each second, the bog grew quieter, almost achieving the utter stillness Matt had experience up to this point. But across the water, fifty yards towards where he’d started the day, two tremendous splashes ruptured the inky water. His first thought was that an elephant entered the bog. The water roiled as if pushed by two massive columns, and he realized the Being might be bipedal, similar to humans. The wake sloshed onto the grass islands, kicking up muck and other rotten debris.

Stay calm, stay down, he thought. Stay down.

The island shook with every splash, shuddering the dead trees. The log he clung to vibrated, shooting ripples into the water. As the elephantine splashes drew closer, Matt smelled the pungent muck that had been drudged up from the bottom. He thought he saw the air distort above the wake for just a second, like looking through a jug of creekwash.

The abnormal splashes stopped for a moment, then resumed in his direction. Forgotten branches skeletal in the depths cracked with muted notes.

Matt Kearns knew what was coming next. He was a little bitch who’d wandered too far from his master. He was the dog with the tail between its legs, submitting to the alpha.

Or was he?

The vibrations shuddered into him through the log. Bile crept up his esophagus and burned. The splashing ceased fifteen yards out as a flotilla of muck and grass floated towards him, interspersed with bubbles from the deep. Now there was no mistaking the distorted air above the water.

He heard the all-too-familiar heavy breathing, with bass notes that could only be produced by enormous lungs.

The Being moved towards him.