Jungle Fever

The jungle night pulsed with heat. Cicadas droned beyond the lantern glow, their chorus braiding with the bass thumping from a shack at the river’s edge. Sweat, smoke, and music leaked through its warped boards long before you reached it.

No sign marked the place. Everyone just called it the Club.

Inside, bodies packed tight, swaying in the half-dark. A battered ceiling fan groaned overhead, stirring the heat without moving it. The air tasted of rum and sugarcane, undercut by the sharp, metallic tang of sweat. The floorboards shivered as the band drove the rhythm harder, louder, until it felt like the music was climbing up through the soles of your feet.

When the song hit its verse, the guitarist leaned into the mic.

His voice came out low and raw.

I got to keep movin'... I got to keep movin'
 Blues fallin' down like hail…

The crowd answered with their bodies—hips swaying, heels striking wood in time. Glasses clinked at the bar as the bartender, shirt plastered to his back, slid drinks into waiting hands.

Then the next verse rolled in—and something shifted.

At the far end of the bar, two men lingered in the shadows, watching the singer. One, a jagged scar cutting along his jaw, leaned close and spoke just above the music.

“They say he wasn’t born with that voice,” he said. “Says he made a bargain.”

The other snorted. “With who?”

The scarred man didn’t look away from the stage. He cleared his throat. “Out there, where the jungle swallows the road. That’s where the deal was done.”

Onstage, the singer’s eyelids fluttered open. His pupils rolled back until only the whites showed, catching the lamplight as his gaze drifted over the crowd—smiling, drunk, swaying—until it snagged on something in the doorway.

Something that wasn’t moving with the music.

Then he heard it.

A bark. Low. Distant.

Another.

Then more—closer now.

The guitar stuttered. Feet slowed. The singer stood frozen, staring at the open door where the night pressed in thick and heavy, darker than it should’ve been. The sound deepened into a growl, rough and close, as if it had crossed the threshold already.

A bandmate nudged him.

He blinked, startled, muttered an apology into the mic. Laughter rippled through the room—uneasy, forced. The rhythm lurched forward again.

But something in the air had shifted.

Hellhound on my trail… hellhound on my trail…

The words fell heavy into the room, and though no one else seemed to notice, the singer’s eyes—now normal—never left the open doorway, as if expecting something, or someone, to step through.