The Clatter of Tiny Hooves

When I was six, I received a dwarf goat named Pepper for my birthday. She was a curious little thing, with a coat of mottled gray and white, and ears that flopped over like loose pages. I spent every spare moment with her, except when I was at school, eating, or sleeping. She would trot around my legs in tight circles, letting out soft, bleaty trills that I took to be laughter.

As I grew, so did Pepper. She remained sprightly, her small hooves making a rhythmic click-clack on our barn’s concrete floor. One afternoon, when I was eleven, I sat on the milking stool, musing about what we would do when she eventually passed. I imagined a small grave under the elder tree, with a marker I’d paint myself.

Later that day, I went to the barn to feed her, and I saw her lying against the stall door, her eyes closed. I crouched down and stroked her warm fur, but she didn’t stir. A chilling realization crept over me: she had died, only half an hour after I’d played with her, chasing her around the hay bales. She was eight, an old age for a goat, but the suddenness was brutal.

My family grieved. We had her cremated, and my father scattered her ashes in the pasture where she loved to graze. I cried for nights, haunted by the image of her still body.

But the strangest thing began to happen. A week after her death, I heard a faint click-clack from the barn late at night. I crept down with a flashlight, but found nothing. Yet the sound persisted, growing clearer and more insistent. Soon, I saw small, ghostly impressions of hooves in the dust, as if an invisible animal was trotting around me.

Then, one evening, I felt a warm breath on my ankle, and a soft bleat right next to my ear. I looked down and saw the faint, translucent shape of Pepper, her eyes glinting with an unnatural light. She wasn’t a peaceful spirit; she was a furious, vengeful presence. She began to circle me faster, her hooves clattering louder and louder, until the barn walls shook.

I tried to run, but the barn door slammed shut. Through the gaps, I saw Pepper’s ghostly form grow, her ears stretching into ragged points, her hooves elongating into claws. She spoke in a voice that was both goat and human, a distorted, guttural whisper: ‘You spoke of my death with such ease, as if I were just a thing. Now you will join me in the unending pasture.’

I screamed, but no sound came out. The last thing I saw was her gaping maw, filled with teeth like tombstones, closing over my head. The barn fell silent, and the only remaining trace of me was a single, bloodstained clump of gray and white fur, which my parents found the next morning, still warm.