🪙 The Gold Coin Chronicles: The Weight of the Beast

The Michigan Dogman — 1976

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📻 Prologue: CB Static and Sickening Air

It started like any other road trip, but the air was wrong the second we piled into Kyle’s dad’s rust-colored Dodge Dart. The car smelled permanently of stale gas, wet upholstery, and something faintly decaying — a smell we tried to cover with smoke. Cassette tapes rattled in the glove box like loose teeth. The CB radio didn’t just crackle; it hissed, loud and aggressive, as if it were trying to drown out a faint, wet sound beneath it.  

Breathing. Or growling.  

We were headed north to Grayling, Michigan. Fishing, hiking, bonfire — the usual excuses.  

But quiet weekends don’t stay quiet.  

Not when the silence presses against your skull.  

Not when the coin is involved.  

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🚧 The Truck Stop and the Compulsion

We pulled into a truck stop just past Bay City. The neon sign above the diner sputtered and failed, strobing the parking lot in sickly flashes of pink. The diner smelled like burnt bacon grease, old coffee, and that familiar, sweet-rotten smell I still couldn’t place.  

I wasn’t stretching my legs.  

I was being pulled.  

I walked toward the gas pump. The coin was wedged deep in the pavement, stuck to the oil-slicked concrete by something thick and black. As I pried it free, a spike of ice-cold dread shot up my arm. My mouth filled with a metallic taste, like I’d licked a battery.  

The coin shimmered faintly, etched not with a snarl, but with jagged, uneven teeth.  

I slipped it into my jacket pocket. It instantly began to radiate a feverish heat.  

Inside, a grizzled old man sat by the window, staring into the sludge at the bottom of his coffee mug like it was a crystal ball.  

When he saw us, his eyes narrowed — not at us, but at my pocket.  

“You kids headed up north?” he rasped.  

Kyle nodded. “Grayling.”  

The man smirked. It wasn’t a joke. It was pity.  

“Hope you packed silver.”  

We laughed — a desperate, brittle sound.  

He didn’t laugh back.  

“The Dogman’s been active lately,” he said. “And it tracks what’s shiny.”  

Later that night, I dreamed of teeth — not biting, but waiting. Rows of them. Patient.  

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🌲 Into the Woods and the Unnatural Scent

The next morning, we hiked behind the cabin. The woods were dense, pine needles thick underfoot, the air damp and quiet.  

Unnaturally quiet.  

The coin in my pocket was hot.  

Every natural sound — a jay, a snapping twig — made my hand twitch toward it. I started to resent the others; they were loud. Their laughter was brittle. The coin seemed to demand silence.  

Then we found the deer.  

The stench hit first: iron and rot, but also something sickeningly sweet and human — like spoiled meat and unwashed sweat.  

It was torn apart. Ribs bent backward. Flesh stripped clean.  

The flies weren’t swarming the meat.  

They were swarming a single, deep impression in the damp dirt beside the head.  

Not a paw print.  

A massive, clawed hand-print. Too big. Too defined.  

“What the hell could do that?” I muttered.  

“Wolves?” Lex offered.  

“Dogman,” Kyle’s cousin whispered.  

I laughed. A sharp, angry bark that didn’t sound like me.  

For a moment, I suspected the cousin of staging it — a flash of paranoia, irrational and hot.  

I squeezed the coin. It pulsed.  

No one spoke for the rest of the walk.  

Only the scuff of boots.  

And the thump-thump of my own heartbeat.  

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📼 Nightfall and the Siege

The cabin was quiet when we returned. A note sat on the counter:  

> “Ran into town. Forgot ice. Back late.”  

Back late.  

The phrase looped in my head like a curse.  

We threw on Fleetwood Mac. Tried a card game. For half a second, I believed it was all in my head.  

Then — a howl.  

Long. Low. Not wolf.  

It sounded like a man trying to howl — a grotesque imitation of sorrow and hunger.  

The music died.  

“Coyotes,” Lex insisted.  

But his eyes darted to the windows.  

Then came the scratching.  

High up. Thick, dull nails dragging across the glass.  

Kyle crept toward it. “Probably a loose branch—”  

BANG.  

The window shook violently. Something massive hit it — not a body, but a deliberate shoulder strike, like a battering ram testing the structure.  

We screamed. Claws shrieked down the siding.  

It circled the house.  

Testing the doors.  

The walls.  

Then — the front doorknob turned.  

Click. Click. Click.  

So slow, like the turning hand was savoring the terror.  

“It’s unlocked!” I shouted.  

We slammed our weight against it just as it began to swing inward.  

A thick, black, matted clawed hand shot through the gap. Wet with dirt and something else.  

It swiped.  

Lex screamed — a sound ripped from his throat. Crimson sprayed the wall, mixed with a glint of white — bone or tooth.  

We dragged him back.  

The rotary phone was dead.  

The CB radio hissed.  

Then — a voice.  

Through the static came words, distorted and low.  

It wasn’t a stranger’s voice.  

It was mine.  

“Let me in.”  

Growls echoed around the house.  

We could hear it breathing.  

Heavy. Ragged. Waiting.  

Then — headlights.  

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🚗 The Arrival and the Exchange

A car tore up the driveway, horn blaring maniacally.  

The Dogman turned. Its snarl became a roar.  

The car didn’t slow. It accelerated.  

For a moment, I saw its silhouette — tall, shoulders sloped, head massive — before it dissolved into the trees.  

Kyle’s parents burst through the door. No questions. Just action.  

We carried Lex to the car. I followed. Shaking.  

I reached into my pocket.  

The coin was gone.  

But my hand came back smelling intensely of iron and rot.  

The coin hadn’t been dropped.  

It had been returned.  

Its purpose fulfilled.  

Later, I noticed a faint ring on my thigh — red, irritated, shaped like teeth.  

We sped toward the hospital. At the ER, the story fell apart.  

The deer.  

The howls.  

The claws.  

Kyle started screaming.  

Lex wouldn’t stop shaking.  

And outside the hospital window —  

something howled.  

It didn’t sound angry.  

It sounded satisfied.  

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🪙 Epilogue: The Cycle

They searched the woods the next morning.  

Found nothing.  

No blood.  

No footprints.  

No sign of any animal.  

But a week later, the truck stop clerk called the police.  

Someone had slipped a gold coin onto his diner counter.  

When he picked it up, he didn’t just hear a growl.  

He felt it.  

A cold dread.  

A violent compulsion.  

To drive north.  

Toward Grayling.  

The diner’s lights have stayed off ever since.  

But some nights, truckers say the CB crackles alive, whispering about a coin that gleams in the dark.  

> “The coin doesn’t buy safety.  

It buys attention.  

And attention is how it feeds.”  

> The Dogman is only half the problem.  

The worst part is the voice on the radio —  

knowing the monster you let in might’ve been trying to protect you.  

And that it sounded like you.  

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⚜️ The Gold Coin Chronicles Continue

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