seemed, by some strange, dismal and spectral light which encompassed it.  It gazed at Steele much as Charger did in life...with a proud arrogance.  And yet it was immediately apparent to Steele that no smirk escaped the corner of Charger's mouth, as he recalled so marked Charger's gaze in the past.  Now Charger's mouth was closed and sternly set.  His fur was strangely stirred and tossed, as if by some spectral breeze or wind and, though the eyes were wide open, they remained set and utterly motionless.  All this, and its strange, livid color, disturbed Steele, down to the very fiber of his being, and he momentarily averted his attention, shaking his head in nervous apprehension.

Steele turned back to glance at the phenomenon, but saw that it was once again just a non-descript face of a husky.  It would, of course, be quite inaccurate to say that he was not conscious of a terrible sensation...one which he had not felt since he was a puppy, and was startled by far less disturbing imagery.  But he shook his head and, hesitatingly at first, climbed the stairs to the second floor and immediately settled into a corner of the main hallway into his bed...a large wooden box with low sides and several hefty wool blankets stuffed inside.  Nervously, he took hold of a large bone he had been working on for some time, which was splintered along its ends and well-gouged by tooth marks. 

The house was dark, but for a shaft of moonlight pouring through an upper story window at the end of the hall opposite where he lay.  It was quiet.  Steele lay awake for some time, deeply disturbed by the experience with the umbrella stand but, at long last, he started to nod off. 

Suddenly, from the lower floor of the house, came a loud metallic rattle and clank, which startled Steele right out of his sleep.  He raised his head and peered down the hall towards the stair case, but his view of the stairs and the lower level were obscured by a wall.  Again came a loud metallic rattling, and a scraping sound, as if a large chain were being dragged across the wooden floor below.  Steele was astonished and, at the very same, filled with an ominous dread, his gaze drawn almost irresistibly towards the top of the stairs.  And then he wondered, if whatever was making such an impossible racket had not roused his master, nor even the other dogs out in the yard, why should he put any stock in what had to be nothing more than his imagination getting the better of him?

"It's nonsense!" he assured himself out loud, and laid his head back down...yet still staring nervously towards the top of the stairs off in the gloomy darkness.

But once again he raised his head in surprise, eyes wide and mouth drawn in a grimace, as the dreadful sound of heavy chain now seemed to be working its way up the stair case, the links rattling and tumbling upwards, step-by-step, and inexorably towards the upper hallway.  On it came, the sound of the stairs creaking as if giving under the weight of someone advancing upward, and the disturbing and percussive tumble of an occasional heavier weight thumping down upon the individual steps.  Steele felt a growing fear seize hold of him, but he froze, unable or perhaps instinctually unwilling to flee.  And really, where could he?  The only escape was his master's bedroom, and that door was shut.  Beyond that was a closet door, also closed, and the staircase itself.  No, all he could do was wait upon whatever it was ascending the stairs towards him.

Down the hall, and from around the corner where the stairs met the second floor, there appeared a few silvery-gray tendrils...smokey and yet translucent.  They snaked their way along the wall as, all at once, a figure appeared...that of a large dog, pulling hard at a harness he wore, which itself seemed to strain against a heavy weight.  Steele recognized this all...the harness pulling against a taut gang line...but one made strangely of thick spectral chain rather than corded rope.  As the ghostly figure rounded the corner of the stairway, straining (rather painfully it seemed) against the apparent weight it pulled behind it, Steele could make out a variety of things attached to the gang line: other leather and metal harnesses...devoid of team members; wooden mail crates and boxes of various sizes and design; and, here and there along the line, large canvas "U.S. Mail" bags, stuffed to capacity.  The ghost continued to pull mightily as it advanced slowly, amidst the spectral noises, down the hallway towards Steele.

Steele watched with growing fear and apprehension as the ghost at last gave one long, heaving tug against the line and, with several loud clanks, rattles and thuds, a large ghostly birchwood sled, with no human owner (ghostly or otherwise) bumped around the corner of the stairway and into the hall.  The ghost stood there hunched over, seemingly exhausted from the ordeal.  It's fur was curiously disturbed, as if by a continual and bitterly-cold breeze.  And though this was indeed a ghost, the figure seemed to be straining and panting as though attempting to catch its breath.  Finally, after a long, torturous moment, it lifted its head.

Steele was taken aback to once again see the face of his old friend and co-leader, Charger, before him.  This time, however, Charger's face seemed wracked with pain and despair.  And even though his brow was deeply furrowed, there yet still was a strange blank gaze from the eyes themselves...a seeming incongruity, given how his body also appeared wracked with pain and exhaustion. The eyes seemed fixed on some far-off and, to Steele, invisible thing.  The whole of this apparition disturbed Steele very greatly, and he shivered unconsciously at the presence of it.

Yet still, in spite of clearly recognizing the face of his old friend there before him, his overt fear and nervousness compelled him to question the ghost in a rather obvious and excitable way.  "Who are you?!"

The ghost answered without meeting Steele's fearful gaze.  "Ask me who I was."

"Alright, who were you then?" Steele replied, his voice still raised in apprehension.

The ghost let out a tortured sigh.  "In life, I was your co-leader, Charger."  Steele blurted out a nervous, stuttering guffaw at that, almost as if the revelation of it was impossible for him to accept in spite of what he was seeing.

He then nodded towards Charger and asked "Can you sit down?"

"I can", the ghost replied vacantly.

At that, Steele brusquely commanded "well do it then!"  He kept his gaze fixed on the ghost.  He had asked the question and, upon Charger's affirmation, rudely invited him to sit, even though he was fully unaware of whether or not it would even be possible for a ghost to take its ease in such a manner.  But he was still plagued with a dreadful fear, and felt perhaps that, by engaging this apparition in some manner of conversation, he might avoid anything even more unpleasant than that which was already unfolding before him.  But the ghost sat back on its haunches, the heavy chain of the gang line clattering loudly as it slipped back along its spectral form.  Charger's eyes continued to stare blankly out past Steele.

"You don't believe in me", the ghost observed.

Steele sniggered at the observation.  "I don't".

"Why do you doubt your senses?" Charger inquired.

"Because", Steele replied, a bit more confident of himself at this moment, "there are lots of things that can affect them.  An upset stomach can make them cheat.  You?  You may be an undigested bit of salmon or beef; a hunk of cheese; a fragment of stale tallow.  There's more of gravy than grave about you, whatever you are." 

Steele was now trying to truly convince himself of this as much as hoping that this apparition would then vanish from the hall, being nothing more than what he had just claimed.  He was not much for cracking jokes unless they happened to be at someone's expense.  But the truth is that he was doing whatever he could to shake off his dread...the voice of Charger's ghost, and the spectral devices to which it seemed hopelessly chained, disturbed the very marrow in his bones, and greatly unsettled him.  There was something quite awful, too, in the ghost's being provided with a strange, infernal atmosphere of its own.  Steele could not discern it, but it was clearly real enough for Charger, whose fur continued to be curiously disturbed by it.

"You see this bit of bone?" Steele asked Charger, pawing at a small shard of the beef bone he had, at some point earlier in the day perhaps, gnawed upon determinedly.

"I do," Charger replied.

Steele moved the bony shard around on the floor with his paw, trying to draw Charger's gaze, which was obviously ineffective.  "You're not looking at it!"

"But I see it," Charger replied again, "notwithstanding."

"Well," Steele acknowledged abruptly, "all I have to do is swallow this, and be plagued for the rest of my life by a swarm of devils, all of my own imagination.  It's nonsense!  Utter nonsense!"

At this Charger stood up and let loose a terrifying cry, his lower jaw dropped down seemingly beyond its physical capacity to do so (in life at least); while the heavy chain around him shook and clanked with an appalling noise, such that Steele suddenly cringed and shrunk back into his bedding, shivering with abject fright.

Steele poked his muzzle out from underneath the blankets,