I need a place to stay indefinitely until I can find somewhere more permanent. No shelter in my state will take me because I technically already have a place to live. I also have a cat, and no shelter in my state takes pets. I’m not leaving my fucking cat.
A year ago, I got a job that allows me to work completely from home. Immediately, I asked my aunt if she would be okay with me moving into her vacation cabin. It’s empty most of the year, anyway, and I would be able to look after it. She was fine with it. I was fine with it. I don’t have a boyfriend, and all my friends are internet friends through discord. I like being alone and it doesn’t bother me. There was a time where I decided I was going to go out more and start doing stuff, but that year covid happened. I don’t need to elaborate.
The cabin isn’t even that remote, I had one neighbor who lived in the house next door. I can get groceries delivered. Whenever I called the useless local police, it only took them twenty minutes to get here. I’m not that far from town. If I had a car, I would be gone by now and living out of it. My aunt offered to buy me a car, and I stupidly didn’t take it because I didn’t have my license at the time. I still don’t. I never needed one. My aunt always drove me to work, and other than that, I never went outside.
The weird stuff started happening after a week, and it started with bouts of amnesia. The episodes began periodically, but now every night, I wake up around 4:00am and I have forgotten everything except who I am. The cabin has three bedrooms and I sleep in the smallest one, I keep the door open, and there is no shade on the window, but it doesn’t help. The woods are completely dark, and there are no streetlights at all. Once I turn off the lights for the night, it is completely pitch black. The first night I woke up like this, I found myself in a completely pitch-black void, no sensory input except the vague feeling of sheets under me. I didn’t remember where I was, or when it was, or if I was even on earth. Somehow, every time this happens, I always get the vague sense that there is a lamp somewhere in this dark space, and I find it. Once I switch it on, the room comes back, and I remember, I moved into a cabin by myself. I tried leaving the lights on or using the nightlight my aunt still had from when I was a child, but then I couldn’t sleep at all.
The first night it happened I didn’t go back to sleep right away. I went out into the living room, which is the same room as the kitchen. My cats, Jinx and Minx, were asleep on the back of the plaid, yellow couch. Minx was white and fluffy, and Jinx is a shorthaired black cat. They woke up when I came out of my bedroom.
I’m going to explain the layout of this cabin. The front door leads into the kitchen. The kitchen is half of the big room, on the other half is the living room. What separates them is a bar seating area, and a door to the backyard. The door to the backyard is half glass window, and that’s where I first saw him. The bathroom and bedrooms are directly off the living room, except for the attic bedroom, whose stairs are in the kitchen.
That night I went to sleep on the couch and had my first nightmare in the cabin. This is where it gets weirder. Whenever I slept in the living room, I would have dreams about this monster I could not see. However, the monster was immortal and invincible and if it saw me, I was instantly dead. This is always the nightmare I have in the living room. When I tried sleeping in the bigger bedroom, I always have a nightmare about mutant animals living in the ground- they are starving and will hunt humans. When I sleep in the attic bedroom, I have the nightmare where I am walking around a random house, and I make my way up into the attic, where there is always a giant horror. Every time I wake up from these dreams, my heart is beating so fast and hard that I feel like I’m on fire. The only place I don’t have these dreams is the small bedroom, so I have settled for the bouts of amnesia, and they aren’t as painful as the dreams.
I used to let my cats outside into the backyard every day. They’d almost always come back by nighttime, but if they didn’t, I would go out looking for them. They aren’t allowed outside anymore. I’m going to explain why.
Months ago, I was on my lunch break and wanted to eat in the backyard in the small clearing. I stopped myself when I saw a giant dog through the backdoor. I’m not a dog person, I don’t know the breeds, but he was the same breed as Scooby doo, but he wasn’t spotted, he was completely black. Standing on all four legs, his head would have reached my shoulder. I am 5’3”. He was chasing around a fluffy brown dog that could fit in a purse. The purse dog had a collar and was running for his life in the clearing. The black dog was viciously chasing him, but it was obvious he wasn’t putting all his strength into it, almost as if he enjoyed seeing the small dog panic and run. Neither of them saw me. I felt jinx rub against my leg, eager to go out. I realized did not see Minx, Minx was outside with this dog.
I panicked. I couldn’t keep Jinx from trying to get out, so I locked him in the bathroom, just temporarily. I opened the back door, and the cries of the little dog became louder. There was no other sound. I began calling for Minx, and the relief when she tip-toe-ran along the side of the house to sneak inside, was like a gust of fresh air. I closed the door, locked it, and held her for a moment. She slammed her head into my shaking hand, affectionately. She left to go find her food bowl, and I stood up to make sure the door was closed, and I saw him again.
The black dog stood facing the door, looking at me with its grey eyes. It was so still, just staring at me. I thought he didn’t see me sneak Minx in, but he did, and he wanted me to know that he knew.
I fell onto the floor again, under the window so that I’d be out of his sight. No window in this house has a curtain, but I didn’t want him to see me. I crawled to the kitchen to make sure the front door was locked and shut. It was, and the front door also has a window. Outside I would see on my deck, the small body of the brown purse dog. No blood, no injuries, just a fucking body.
I called the nearest animal control and told them about the dog.
“What address is this dog at?”
I told them my address. I’m not stupid enough to put that information on reddit.
“Well, we are [REDACTED] country animal control, we don’t service that area. You’re only option based on your location is to call the police.”
The police were at my cabin in 20 minutes and asked about the dog.
“My aunt has cameras outside the house, I can show you exactly what it looks like.”
I pulled up the footage on my laptop as the two officers stood in the kitchen. First, I pulled up the footage of the backyard, where the black dog can be seen chasing the purse dog. However, the black dog remained in the backyard until the police arrived.
Then, we looked at the footage to see how the brown dog ended up at the front of the house.
“Looks like that’s another dog,” the officer sighed. In the footage, an identical black dog laid out the body of the purse dog in front of my door. Behind him, in the trees, a third black dog waits for him to finish. They both run off. “A third.”
The female officer rapidly took notes on her small notepad, I noticed she had a blank, almost bored expression.
“You’re just about the hundredth person who’s come calling us about these dogs,” the older, white haired male officer said. “Pets are going missing, pets are being found dead, and we have the disappearance of a child that we’re dealing with now, also. Know that you are being taken seriously, however, whenever we do manage to catch these dogs, more do show up. We do have an investigation running, and your report will be part of that.”
“Call us if you see anything else,” the female officer said. “As of now, I wouldn’t let ay of your pets outside, for the time being.”
They left. I locked the door. For the first time, I switched on the deadbolt.
I tried to forget about it. Every other night, my internet friends from one discord server play video games, I usually join them. Between a round, my best friend, Mary, reached out to me.
“You okay?” she dmed me.
“Why?”
“You seem off,” she explained. “I figured it was work stress? Maybe?”
“A stray dog almost killed my cat today,” I explained. “And when I called the police, they told me there are possibly hundreds in the woods, and they even got to a child.”
“Holy shit,” she said. “Move???”
“I can’t,” I said. “And I don’t really want to. Even if I did, My aunt is in France for the next four months, and I really have nowhere else to go besides her house.”
“If I didn’t live with my parents I would let you stay with me,” Mary said.
“I know,” I responded. “If I didn’t live in a haunted cabin surrounded by wild dogs, I’d let you stay with me.”
“Still sounds nicer than living with my parents at 26,” she responded. “A new round is starting.”
We ended up playing until 1:00am, and then switching to another game until 3:00am. Afterwards I checked the local news. A woman went missing. The child was still not found. A couple of black dogs were shot.
That night I went to bed in my small bedroom. My cats joined me on the bed, they were out of energy and affection after begging to go outside all day. I had to set up a litter box, again, and they weren’t happy about sharing it. But that night they calmed down, and were hogging the top of my bed, but I still managed to find space to squeeze in.
That night I dreamt of a bleak, tan café. There were large windows facing empty streets. There was no smell of coffee, no barista, and no customers. I was sitting at a table across from my friend, Mary.
We had never met in person, but we video call at least once a week, and call almost every day. I know what she looks like. Midsize, comfy gray clothing, long black waves brushing against her arms. She was paler in my dream.
“You know you’re dreaming right?” she asked me.
“Well,” I said. “Now I do.”
“Good,” she said. “Listen, those dogs aren’t dogs. The monster you dream of, but you can’t see, he’s real. You can’t let Jinx and Minx out, and you can’t go outside. There’s no way to fight it or to outrun it, and there’s no way to kill them. They just come back.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And no matter what happens today,” Mary said. “Do not go outside by yourself.”
“Don’t I need to leave?” I asked.
“You SHOULD,” she snapped. “But not by yourself. It won’t go after you in front of an audience, so, getting a police officer escort, or even an uber driver is how you stay safe. If you try and go out alone, you’re dead.”
“Being dead doesn’t sound so bad, anymore,” I joked.
“You don’t want this death,” emotion fell from her face, and she spoke sternly.
“How do you know all this?” I asked her.
“I’m ‘dream Mary’, not ‘real Mary’,” she said. “I know things. Now, you need to wake up.”
“I don’t think I want to,” I said.
“No, girl,” she snapped again. “You have to wake up before you forget how.”
The dream was gone. I woke up in the void. I turned on the lamp.
I had toast for breakfast that day because I was out of eggs, milk, and most other things. Groceries were getting delivered at noon, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. The cats were out of wet food and getting impatient. I started my workday, and the delivery came on my lunch break. I opened the door just enough for me to squeeze through and drag in the bags. I was pulling in the last bag.
That’s when Minx leapt out. My heart must have stopped. I was screaming, “No, Minx, come back, Minx please come back.” He was sitting on the ledge of the deck. I stood up, stepped out, bracing to grab him. In a moment, he saw something in the woods that scared him, and ran to the back of the house. I looked at what has startled him, and saw the dog, glaring at me.
I slammed the door and was on my knees. I was suffocating while I hyperventilated, I gripped my legs and slowly realized, if Minx was at the back of the house, I could call her in from there.
I ran to the back door, threw it open, no shoes, stepped out and my foot hit something. It was Minx’s body.
Picked her up and turned the knob on the back door. It was locked. It automatically locked. Barefoot, outside in the grass, with my cat hanging limply from my arms. I’ve never run so fast in my life. I left the backyard, went past the side of the house. I made it to the front door, locked, bolted. Of course, it was. I began trying every single window, until I got to the small bedroom window. It was unlocked. I opened it and made it to safety, slamming the window shut behind me.
I carried Minx into the living room. I didn’t want her to be dead, so I didn’t believe that she was. I did the checks. She wasn’t breathing, she wasn’t moving, and Jinx wouldn’t stop crying.
I called out of work for the rest of the day. I was sobbing in a blanket, strewn out on the couch, I didn’t move for hours. Eventually, when I ran out of tears, I laid out a white towel on the coffee table. I lit a few candles, and lined the towel with flower clippings from my vase and scattered cat treats out. Minx was stiff by now, and I lay her on the towel as some sort of wake. New tears came, and I don’t know really what I was thinking, I was just trying to cope with my grief.
I fell asleep late afternoon and dreamt of him again. I was hiding in a closet and couldn’t breathe, or else he would hear me.
I woke up to the sound of Jinx eating the crunchy cat treats that had been laid out on the funeral pyre. Eventually, he fell asleep next to Minx’s body. I paced the house, and through the glass window, I saw the dog again. Rage filled up my chest. Why did you let me live?
I called the police again. In twenty minutes, new officers were in my front yard, hearing me yell and scream about how they aren’t doing anything about the dogs, and how my cat wouldn’t have died if the dogs had actually been dealt with. I was so loud; my one elderly neighbor came outside to spectate.
“Ma’am,” the officer said. “I’m sorry about your cat. We’re doing everything we can with the resources we have. We can do a sweep of your property, but we probably won’t find any dogs.”
“Don’t you have any search equipment??” I stammered. “Like search dogs?”
“Our search dogs lead us away from the loose dogs,” the officer explained. “Now, we have a ‘shoot on sight’ order for these animals, and if we find a dog on your property, we won’t let him get away. However, because of our investigation, that’s all we can do at the moment. I am sorry about your cat.”
The officers left after doing a sweep of the yard. I went back into my house. A moment later I heard a knock. I saw my elderly neighbor’s face through the glass. His leathery wrinkles formed a serious expression, and his bushy eyebrows loomed over his sad eyes. He had a beard, a flannel, and an American flag hat. I thought twice about opening the door. Before letting him in I locked Jinx in the bathroom, just temporarily.
He stepped inside and I shut the door.
“The police know what’s going on,” he explained. “I had two huskies and a retriever, all big girls. A few weeks ago, gone. I called them, they didn’t even search my property.” He paused for a moment. Jinx was crying to be let out of the bathroom. “They got your cat?”
Tears welled up, “Yeah.”
“Well don’t bother calling the police,” he said. “Call me. I have guns, we will take care of them, ourselves.”
“There are so many,” I said. “And I don’t think it’s safe-.”
“There aren’t that many,” he stammered. “The police know exactly how many there are. They’re letting them live. Why? Who knows.”
What followed was a mumbling rant about how all the US presidents are related if you go back far enough on the family tree, and if the country leaders could be chosen and inbred, then the police officers probably were, too.
“You can’t trust these people,” he insisted.
At this point I just wanted this man out of my house, but I took down his phone number. I would call him the next time I saw a black dog.
I asked my elderly neighbor to accompany me in burying Minx. I buried her under a rose bush in the front yard. I told my work I would need the next few days to grieve, I explained my pet had died. They weren’t understanding.
That night I video called with Mary. Majority of it was my tear-filled ramblings about Minx, the rest of it was general conversation.
“Did you have any dreams last night?” I asked at the end of a crying fit.
“I don’t think so,” her eyes looked off camera, she was doodling. “Wait, no, I did. You were in it.”
“What was the dream?” I asked.
“We were having brunch in a café,” she explained. “It was a good dream.”
I dragged my spare comforter to the bathroom. Jinx and I slept in the bathtub that night. I desperately hoped I wouldn’t have a nightmare. The idea of falling asleep was startling enough to keep me awake. Outside, there was this monster, ready to end my life. I don’t know what changed. When I first got to this cabin, I’d go outside all the time. I’d sleep outside on the hammock and wake up in the sun with Minx on my chest. I’d go out on night walks all the time. I have no idea what happened to make my sanctuary a nightmare. I don’t know what I did to anger him if anything at all.
I fell asleep and had another nightmare.
I was in an elevator, going up. The elevator door was gone, so I could see each floor as I passed or approached it. I was listening to Mary through a walkie talkie, she was giving me instructions. I looked up into the oncoming floor, and saw a black dog, huge teeth, drooling. The elevator wouldn’t stop, and I was getting closer, panicking, I pressed every elevator button that might stop the ascent. It was too late. I woke up.
The next day, I took a steak from my last grocery order out of the freezer. It was raw. I let it thaw for a few hours, then I tossed it into the front yard. I waited. Jinx was crying from the bathroom. One of the black dogs came out, pretending not to see me in the window. As he was chewing the raw meat, a bit irritated at the partial frozenness of it, I texted my elderly neighbor.
“There’s one in my front yard now,” I sent the message. “Now there are two.”
He sent me a thumbs up emoji, and then said, “I’m coming.”
I watched as he came out, got their attention, and quickly shot both of them, the gun was so loud that Jinx went silent. I saw the two black dogs fall limp on the grass. I saw my neighbor from his porch. He put out his cigarette, waved at me, and went back inside.
“Can’t stay outside for too long,” he texted me.
Later that day, I saw another dog in my backyard. He was right at the back door, looking inside. I texted my neighbor.
“There’s another one in my backyard.”
No response. I waited an hour.
I texted him again, asking if he was okay, then I called him. No answer.
I called the police that night to do a wellness check. His front door was wide open, but he was gone. It’s been weeks, and he is still a missing person. That day, all my hope died. I realized that he could get into our homes.
I hit my breaking point a few days ago and packed a single bag, put jinx in a carrier, and called an uber. The uber cancelled. I called about 10 more times; no driver would come to my area. I just wanted someone to pick me up and drive me to town so I could sleep in an alley or in a dumpster, I just need to get out of this cabin.
I called the police station again, sobbing. They said they could get a car out here to escort me to a new place because of the safety concern, but I would need a new place to go.
My aunt is in Europe for another month, but I can’t do it anymore. My aunt never keeps a spare key outside, so my plan is to have the police drive me to her house, break a window when they leave, and move in. I don’t know how angry my aunt would be, but I’ve lived in that house all my life up until now, and I would pay to fix the window.
If anyone has any better option, please let me know. I’ve called every shelter in the state, with no luck. I’m being escorted out tomorrow, but I don’t even know if he will let me go. I told Mary that if I ghost her, she should assume I was dead. I just need to get from my house to the cop car, and out of these woods. That’s it. I don’t know if I will make it.
Edit/ Update:
I made it to my aunt’s house with Jinx and I’ve been staying here for a week. I managed to go that entire week without nightmares, and I was finally beginning to feel okay again. I didn’t write an update because honestly, I just wanted to erase the whole situation from my memory. That didn’t last long. Last night I had a dream that the black dog was tearing me to shreds, he started with my face. I felt every bit of pain.
This morning I woke up and found large dog prints in the mud outside. I’m not letting Jinx out, anymore. I don’t know what to do.