Every night my dog Beckie barked at the fence 8:30pm on the dot. We assumed it was just a cat or something. She would bark her head off for 30 seconds, sometimes up to 5 minutes. She refused to listen to our commands during these episodes, so we gave up trying after a while.
We live in a pretty typical suburban neighbourhood. Most people in our area keep to themselves and we rarely spoke to anyone other than our neighbours and a few other young couples while out walking Beckie. The only difference between our neighbourhood and others that we had lived in, was the fact that everyone had at least one dog. And every night, the dogs of the neighbourhood took turns barking like crazy. It was almost like they had a schedule for it. The barking usually stopped at around 10:30, with the last house being just in audible range. It drove us pretty crazy at first, but we got used to it eventually. Around a week after moving into our home, Beckie joined in the nightly ritual, barking at the formerly silent 8:30 slot.
Last night we tried locking her inside for the night as our neighbours were having trouble putting the baby to sleep. As per usual, Beckie went for the dog door but, finding it locked, started to paw at it and whine. We ignored it and continued watching tv. Then there was the slow panting noise. We blew it off as wind through the window blinds. Beckie was going crazy at the door. Out of the corner of my eye, a pair of pale, grey hands reached through the dog door, grabbing my dog by her neck as another pair clutched her front paws. In an instant, Beckie was gone. We sprung up in time to see the fence shaking. A pale figure climbed into the yard behind.The next morning we drove around searching for our dog. To our surprise, Beckie came trotting up to us with a big dopey grin. She was covered from head to toe in blood, and had chunks of fur ripped out but was otherwise fine. After spending all day giving her a bath and a whole lot of love, we decided to wind down the usual way, sat in front of our tv. Soon enough Beckie hopped down from her seat and sauntered over to the dog door. I looked at the time: 8:30pm. I hadn’t noticed until now, but we hadn’t heard the usual cacophony of barking from the other houses either. The night was completely silent. That’s when I saw a pale grey arm reach through and hesitantly place the body of a lifeless bird in front of Beckie. We rushed to the door but this time saw no sign of anything disappearing into the night… To this day Beckie never grew back those patches of lost fur, and we never saw that pale figure again. But we will still find dead birds at our door. Every night, at 8:30pm on the dot