“All officers on duty, we have just received a call from a woman claiming that something is outside her home. Report to the scene immediately.”
I immediately step on the gas pedal and drive onto the highway. I look over at my partner Christian and give him an eyebrow raise.
“You think we gonna see a monster tonight?” I joke about the call.
“Shut the fuck up, Dawson,” Christian responds to me, laughing. “they said we should take every call seriously but fuck it, I guess,”
I was supposed to be home in an hour so me and my wife, Michelle, could have a late-night TV dinner, but it seems that at this rate, we wouldn’t be able to. I was too nervous to call her at the moment because I didn’t want her to get upset at my possible absence from home tonight.
We continued driving down the highway and looked at the given address from the dispatcher. It was only a couple more minutes away so I sped up a little bit to get there quicker.
“You think you’re gonna have that TV dinner with your wife tonight now?” Christian asks me. I shrug, watching the cars and street lights pass by.
“If this is the last call, hopefully. We haven’t been able to do anything together for weeks,” I sigh. “I… I really miss the times we used to have together,”
“I get what you mean. Work is a pain in the ass. Let’s just get this call done. It’s probably nothing,” Christian reassures me.
I take a turn and go into a silent neighborhood, pulling into a row of houses. I drive towards a diverting 2-story house. I double-check the address and look back at it. We were here.
We get out of our car and we see the distraught woman who made the call outside of her home, awaiting our arrival. We quickly make our way over to her as she steps off her porch. I could see that she has been crying, seeing a stream of tears running down her eyes.
“Ma’am, it’s okay, we’re here now. Is the guy still outside your home?” I put a hand on her shoulder and calm her down. I hear her sniffle.
“It’s… It’s not a person…” The woman cries. “I… I can’t even explain what it was doing-“ She stops mid-sentence and starts breaking down. Me and Christian look at each other and exchange concerned gazes before turning back to the woman.
“Where do you think it is? Is it still here? Are you even sure it’s not a person?” Christian says with a little more order in his voice. The woman continues sniffling.
“It’s in the backyard. I’m sure it wasn’t a person, just hurry!”
We tell the woman to go inside her home as we pull out our guns from our holsters and flashlights since there wasn’t a source of light coming from her backyard.
We made our way into the backyard and flicked on our flashlights. As we stepped foot into the grass, I immediately got an eerie and unsettling feeling setting in me. I didn’t hear or see anything yet but I also didn’t feel safe.
Me and Christian moved our flashlights around and moved the light throughout the entire yard, taking prompt glances, but there was nothing in sight.
“You seeing anything?” I say to Christian. He shakes his head.
“Nope, seems like bullshit so far,” He responds, still glancing around. We both notice a deck beside us that connects to the house, and we move our flashlights below it. We didn’t see anything from where we were standing but we saw wooden poles holding the deck up that was blocking a portion of our view. We decided to check underneath the deck.
The deck was pretty tall, so we walked towards it and just walked underneath it, moving our flashlights up and down to see if anyone was hiding down there. We figured it was pretty likely since before when we’ve gotten calls like this, people did hide under decks frequently.
There wasn’t anything under this deck though. For the most part, it was empty. It was long in length so we walked across and checked it out in its entirety, yet we still didn’t see anyone- or anything.
I lowered my flashlight and felt that something was off about all of this. I shook it off and was ready to rule this a false alarm when I heard Christian say; “Dawson, come here,”
I made my way over to him and saw him hunched over in the far left corner of the deck. I got beside him and tried to see what he was looking at.
“What is it?” I say as he gives me a confused look.
Christian moves his hands through the dirt, picking up whatever he was looking at, and hands it to me, which I reluctantly take. I give a look at it.
It was the leg of a dog, blood covered on the fur with teeth plunged into it.
I gasped and dropped the leg, looking at Christian, who was equally as freaked out.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask him. He gives no response, there was just shock written all over his face. I could see it in his eyes.
I knew how much Christian hated seeing dead animals or animal remains so I didn’t question him. I looked back down at the leg and examined it. It looked like something was eating it but as it bit down, all of its teeth came out of its gums, but I wasn’t sure. It was a weird, disturbing sight and something I can’t explain.
I hesitate before taking the dog leg as evidence. I could distinguish a horrible, rotting smell to it, and the leg felt flabby. I wanted to vomit but I knew I needed to take it with us.
Me and Christian both get up as I started to feel pale. Holding the leg of a possible dead dog didn’t sit right with me. Christian patted me on the back.
“I’ll go in and talk with the woman. You can go sit in the car, alright?” Christian seemed to be fine now.
I nod my head and gulp. “Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.”
I put the leg in the trunk and slam it down, feeling my phone vibrate in my pocket. I take it out. Michelle was calling me.
I take a deep breath and answer it, putting my phone towards my ear.
“Hey, Michelle,” I say into the phone, still feeling uneasy about the situation.
“Honey, are you okay? You’re not home yet,” I hear Michelle talk into the phone. I look at the ground below me.
“Yeah, I know, I’m probably going to have a late shift tonight, sorry,” I respond with guilt.
“Oh, that’s fine, I guess. Is something happening?”
“Yup, everything is fine. Just had to respond to a weird call and…” I think about the dog’s leg. “Found a peculiar item.” I sighed into the phone.
The other end is silent for a few moments. “Well, I hope everything really is fine,”
“It is. Trust me on this one. It’s not a big deal,” I say. I see Christian walk out of the house.
“Alright then, but stay safe, Dawson, please.”
The call ends.
Me and Christian get into the patrol car, sitting there for a minute, thinking about what just happened. I examine the neighborhood. It was dark. Almost every house had no light reflecting onto the street, and no street lamps were on. Just darkness. The vibe was unlike anything I’ve been in before, even in my 9 years as a police officer.
“What did the lady say?” I finally say to Christian, beginning to start the car.
“I asked if she had any cameras so we could see anything enter her backyard but she said she didn’t. She said she saw some kind of creature in her yard eating some kind of animal,” He motions his head to the back of the car, where the dog leg is. I understood what it meant. “We probably need to take that dog leg to the station and check it out. Something feels supernatural about this,”
I went to say something but I didn’t. I agreed, no human could just rip a leg clean from a dog, and I don’t think any human would have the audacity to try eating it. I wasn’t going to jump to conclusions but the call was something to take into account.
We started to get a signal coming from a dispatcher on my radio. I quickly turn on my radio as me and Christian listen.
“We have just received 2 calls from people saying that something was in the backyard of their home. Officers are already on route to one address, I need other officers on scene at the other immediately,”
Christian and I lock eyes on each other out of confounding fear. Weren’t we just at a call about this?
We didn’t say a word as I received the address and started speeding to it. It was only 6 minutes away so not far, but something wasn’t right about this. Something was going on and it wasn’t good.
We hear the radio crackling on again and I start dreading what it’s gonna be about. I hear a dispatcher’s voice come on again.
“We have just received another call from someone saying that something was walking around their property. We need officers on the scene. I repeat, we have just received a fourth call that something was walking around someone’s property,”
“What the fuck is happening?” Christian says. My hands start shaking on the steering wheel as I take a turn.
“Something’s not right, man…” My voice quivers.
“Snap out of it, Dawson. It’s gonna be fine,” Christian tries to unnerve me. I shake my head.
The radio crackles on again. Me and Christian listen carefully.
“We have received a call from a man saying that something was hanging out at the side of his house. Officers are on the scene now,”
“Shit,” I mutter to myself. I continue heading to the address that was originally sent to us, speeding up now.
We were getting closer to our destination, and never has something happened like this. We’ve never gotten multiple calls in a row about someone being in people’s yards. This was different though, these were reports on something in people’s yards, whatever the hell that meant. It’s never been on this caliber before.
We pulled towards a house on the street and we immediately had our guns drawn. After the last call we checked out and after hearing all of these other reports, we weren’t taking this one lightly because something was seriously wrong.
Me and Christian peaked our heads in the backyard but didn’t see anything. The lights in the house were on so at least we knew the resident was still okay.
That was until we heard the sound of a man giving the most blood-curdled scream I have ever heard from inside the home.
We immediately rushed to the front door, preparing to enter with force. Christian gives me a scared look, and I give him a signal to be brave.
I look at the door and take a deep breath as I continue hearing screams. I wince as I take a step back from the door.
I sprint toward the door and bash my entire body into it with all my force right as the screaming stops, knocking the door down as I come crashing down to the floor shoulder first. I see Christian run into the house with his gun, yelling out “POLICE!”
The screaming was still absent, and I began thinking that we were too late. The living room and dining room were in sight from the front door and we didn’t see anything in either room. That’s when we decided to check the kitchen.
I sensed that the kitchen was right around the corner, so we walked towards the living room and took a hard left around the wall.
As we entered the kitchen, we saw the remains of a man, hunched over the sink, mutilated from the neck down to his calf.
I gagged a little bit, feeling the need to throw up. I put my head down, lowering my gun. We were too late.
I didn’t have time to beat myself up about it though, because I shortly felt Christian desperately trying to get my attention. I raise my head and see him pointing at the kitchen window.
The kitchen window faced the entirety of the backyard, and I saw a dark figure that wasn’t built or even shaped like a human quickly crawl out of the backyard, out of sight.
Christian and I quickly move to the back door and swing it open, swiftly making our way down the steps and sprinting farther into the backyard.
We no longer saw the figure anywhere and rushed to the backyard gate, and we still didn’t see anything. We ran and opened the gate and sprinted back into the front yard but again, no sign of the figure we just saw.
We lower our guns and sigh in disappointment. My question was though, what was that thing, and how did it get away so fast?
I hear my radio crackle on again as I start to slowly walk towards the car.
“Officers have found a woman dead in her backyard, she has been impaled through the fence. It looked like she died just minutes ago. We need paramedics on the scene right away,”
“What the fuck is happening…” I hear Christian say. He slumps against the garage door and lowers down to the ground.
I felt awful for Christian. It was clear this was a lot for him to digest. I understood, though. This was all so… Unexplainable.
I got in the car and slammed the door shut, unsure what to do. I surveyed the street and tried to search for that creature more but I still didn’t see it. It truly just disappeared, gone with the wind.
I heard my radio crackle on again. The dispatchers got another call from somebody saying that something was in their backyard. They needed officers on the scene immediately.
I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was convinced I was living in a hellish, repetitive nightmare, but I did the only thing that I could’ve done in that state I was in.
I pulled out my radio and said; “We have found a man dead in his home. I repeat we’ve found a man dead in his home.”
I got home an hour later. It was almost 1 AM at that point and I was exhausted. We had to wait at that house for paramedics to arrive and tell them what had happened. We had to take the dog leg to the station and explain to the sheriff what happened at THAT house, and it was a whole process that I won’t bore anybody with.
I reached for my keys in my pocket and fumbled with them for a second before inserting them into the lock and opening the door, breathing a sigh of relief that I was finally where I wanted to be. I threw my radio on a chair next to the front door, forgetting to turn it off.
My joy was instantaneously taken away from me when I saw my wife’s bloody head, hanging from the ceiling.
I screamed and fell to my knees and started crying. This was already a horrible night, I couldn’t have lost Michelle too, not her-
“Honey?”
I heard Michelle’s voice from the stairs, shortly before I heard her scream too.
I got confused as I raised my head up and looked at the stairs, and there she was. Standing on the stairs, looking at the ceiling in shock.
I looked back at the head on the ceiling. It looked almost exactly like Michelle. But… How? If her head was there but she was alive on the stairs, then that meant…
“What the fuck?” I didn’t know how else to express my thoughts. I look at my overwrought wife. “Did you hear anyone come in or anything?”
Michelle looked at me. I could see how terrified and utterly bewildered she was. “Dawson, I…”
“Michelle, this is important! Have you seen ANYTHING outside the house?”
“No! I didn’t hear anything come in either,”
I figured she was telling the truth. That still doesn’t explain how identical the head was to my wife. The facial features, the hair, everything.
I slowly got back up to my feet, walked past the stairs, and went towards the kitchen. Something was drawing me there, and my gut was telling me to go.
“What are you doing!? What are you gonna do about this… Decapitated head?” I heard my wife yell at me.
I stuttered for a few seconds before putting my words together. “I know, I just… Hold on,”
I walked into the kitchen, looked at the counter, and nearly had a heart attack.
“MICHELLE?” I shouted, but I didn’t hear a response back. I continued looking at the counter.
It was a head, covered in blood that was almost identical to me. I tried to put two and two together but I just couldn’t. I didn’t fucking know what was happening anymore. My mouth was agape, searching for more words to say but I was fearful of this situation. These heads, who were they originally, and how did they get here?
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and I pulled it out. It was a text from Christian. Normally he doesn’t text me this late so I was confused. I opened it.
I looked closely at the text. It read; “I’m still on my shift and we got a call from someone saying that they saw something in their neighbors’ yards. I got the address they provided. It’s your house. Don’t panic, I’m on my way.”
My heart dropped reading this. I still didn’t know what things were going into people’s yards to do whatever the hell knows, but I didn’t want to find out. I was unsure of everything at this point.
“Michelle??” I continued saying my wife’s name but I still didn’t hear a response back from her.
I walked out of the kitchen and saw her standing at one of the back doors by the dining room, looking out to the backyard, shaking.
I went next to her to see what she was looking at. That’s when I saw it.
The same dark figure I saw earlier was standing in the middle of our backyard, staring dead at me.
I could make out some of its features this time, though. It was tall and bulky, its arms and claws were so long that it just looked unnatural. I couldn’t make out any of its facial features, but I could see its eyes. There was nothing but darkness in them.
I didn’t feel anything anymore looking at it. I lost all feeling in my body and mind. I only felt fear and trepidation. I felt like a bomb ready to explode. What was once me responding to calls living this, was now me living through it myself.
There was a strong ambience now, and the creature had an emanation that made my heart beat faster and faster. My actions and thoughts started to feel that they were getting flooded and breached with something otherworldly. I was feeling abstracted now.
One thought and one thought only crossed my mind. My phone was still in my hand. I opened it, dialing 911.
I looked at Michelle as she was inching closer to me by the second, not saying a word. I look back at the thing that was out in our backyard. It got into a crawling position and it was making noises that I couldn’t even tell what it sounded like.
I put my phone to my ear as I hear a dispatcher pick up.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
I don’t say anything for a moment. All I can do is look at the creature. Look at the being that was in my backyard.
“What’s your emergency?” The dispatcher repeats themselves. I finally find the courage to say something. Something I didn’t think I was going to say that night.
“Something is standing out in my backyard.”
I start to hear my radio crackle seconds after saying that.