(Edited for ease of reading flow)
I seen this funny-looking dog once…
Now, don’t look at me like that…
Do you seriously think I’d be out here, in these woods at night, with this beer in my hand and no moon in the sky, and nothing to see by but this campfire, and have the goddamn balls to tell you a story about somebody’s snaggle-toothed woodpile mutt?
Oh, no. This one’ll make your butthole pucker.
So no shit, there I was, walking home from a friend’s place a few years back. We’d been drinking, but I wasn’t hammered or anything. Just a little more limber, and maybe a bit hungry, you know?
So I’m walking down the street, and it’s ass-thirty in the morning, so absolutely nobody is outside. I can tell some people is still up from the lights of their TVs in the windows…but they ain’t nobody moving around outside.
And keep in mind that late as it was, it was a full moon that night, and so everything I COULD see was as clear as broad daylight. Lot of shadows all over the place, but a lot of wide open spaces and plenty of light to see by, too.
So I’m walking, and I’m walking, and I’m maybe half a mile from home, when I suddenly get this chill all over my body. Not that creepy feeling like you get when something’s watching you, or anything like that…
It was more like that chill you get when you THINK about the feeling that something’s watching you.
And when that chill ran over me, I just stopped walking. Stopped right there in the middle of the street, dead still. Tried to look around me to see what might be off, but I wanted to do it without moving my head at all, you know?
Then I seen something.
It was off to my right, up against the house I was walking past. There was this funny-lookin’ dog stood up against the side of this house, and looking in the window.
You know how when a dog wants to see over a fence or something, and it stands up on its back legs and leans on the fence with its front paws?
Well, that’s what this funny-lookin’ dog was doing…just standing up against the side of the house, and looking into the window. Sounds normal, right?
And it was a big ol’ dog. Like one of them, whatchacallem, Irish wolf-hounds. Long, tall, got sorta shaggy short fur, kinda rangy-looking. It seemed normal enough on its own…but then I turned my head and actually LOOKED at it.
I seen a lot of dogs, all different kinds…seen ‘em standing, and sitting, and laying down, and stood up against the side of things…
This dog didn’t look right. The shape was right, and the way it looked was right…looked just like a regular ol’ dog staring into that window…
But something about HOW it was looking in that window was just wrong. To me, it felt just the same as if I’d seen a person standing outside a window at night and looking in.
Then it turned its head and looked at ME.
Looked me dead in the eye, and then it opened its mouth and hung its tongue out in this big, doofy-looking doggy grin.
And that’s when the shit got weird. Because right after it made that grin at me, its eyes started glowing sky blue.
And I don’t mean like when you shine a light on a animal in the dark and its eyes glow. This wasn’t that. I’ve seen that a million times, and this wasn’t that.
Those eyes was glowing blue, like they was lit up from the inside. I could see the barest blue glow on the fur right around those eyes. It made my blood run cold.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. After it looked at me, it turned back to looking in that window again.
And then it stood upright. Stood up as straight and tall as a man. And then it threw its head back.
Like, I mean all the way back, pointing straight up at the sky and then over onto the back of its neck…like there was no bones holding it up, and its neck was no more solid than a sock full of mud.
And it’s just standing there now, straight and tall and with its head hanging upside down over its back…and it turned its head and looked at me again with those creepy glowing blue eyes, only they was even more spooky now from being in a upside-down head.
And then it…I guess you might say it started twitching…twitching all over. Like in some horror-movie where they show something moving real fast, but it’s mostly just standing still, and they speed it up to make it look like it’s moving real fast…
Well, that’s what this thing did. Twitching and vibrating for maybe two seconds, and then the head turned itself upright…
And I heard this crunching and crackling sound as its back legs sort of twisted around, and the same thing happened with the front legs…only now they looked a lot more like arms…
And when it was done twitching, and was just a-standing there with its head and arms and legs on backwards…
That’s when I realized what had been off about it from the start.
No tail. Not even a stub of one. Not then, and not after the twitching stopped.
So now it’s just standing there, all croggled and bent but still recognizable for what it had been…it looked at me for maybe thirty seconds, and then it just…walked off.
Walked off down the street like it was taking a Sunday stroll. I just stood there and watched until it turned a corner and disappeared…
Then I hauled ass the rest of the way home, and didn’t sleep for two days.
Real funny-lookin’ dog.