It's Coming For You!

     A lonesome night.  The traveler pulled his cloak a little closer as a piercing gust of wind jabbed at him from behind.  An eddy of dry autumn leaves spiraled across the his path.  He paused for a moment, listening.  Slivers of light from the crescent moon lighted the way, interspersed with total darkness caused by patches of low clouds moved quickly overhead.  Why did he think that he could make his destination after nightfall through the county roads of Brittany?  He desperately wished he had stayed safe and warm at the tavern.  Then came the sound, a hated sound.  It could have been almost anything: an animal, a bird, it could even be the creaking wheel of an approaching cart.  Please don't let it be that!  But didn't a cart suggest a friendly companion with whom he could travel.  If it were truly a cart, would it not speed his way?  No, please don't let it be that.  Hadn't people in the tavern warned him?  He knew it.  The creak of a cart on these solitary roads could only mean the certain approach of Death.

      Nearly every culture has a creature that warns of a coming fate, an omen of death.  In Northwest France, the people of Brittany still tell of Ankou, a dark figure driving a cart pulled by a skeletal horse, who gathers the souls of the dead.  To see him is death itself.  Ankou is described as wearing a broad-brimmed hat that cannot conceal the flaming eyes beneath.  In some variations of the story, Ankou no longer has those glowing eyes.  A lonely farmer spotted him and his cart one night and climbed aboard, assuming that his time in this mortal live was over.  It was a mistake, but Ankou did not inform him of the error and prepared to deliver the farmer prematurely to St. Peter.  The great gate keeper of heaven was not amused and poked out Ankou's eyes in three-stooges fashion.  Now, he is guided in his quest by smell alone, sniffing out his victims, similar to the the description of the Ring-Wraths in the Lord of the Rings.  Though the creak of Ankou's cart is a critical element of many stories, some Bretons insist that the cart is absolutely silent.  That eerie characteristic identifies to all that this is no ordinary traveler.

     Across the Channel, various parts of the British Isles tell of a hound that signals of the coming of death.  In some parts it is the Grim, in others Black Shuck, and others still, Skriker.  In all tales, it is a black, hairy animal with unnatural eyes and sometimes drooling liquid fire.  Across in Ireland is the Banshee, wailing through the night, and often seen near a stream washing burial clothing.  In some tales, she is washing the blood from her own infant's clothing, condemned to do so until judgement day because of an unnamed act of violence perpetrator when she was still mortal.  Further north is the wild hunt.  Should anyone see the mass of spectral riders accompanied by their yell hounds or hell hounds, death will come soon.