scritch scritch scritch
thunk thunk thunk
That’s Pepper at the backdoor…
Oh shit!
I lurched forward from sleeping position and swung my feet from the couch to the tiled floor of the living room. My phone, which must have been laying on my chest while I napped, catapulted towards the end of the couch where my feet rested a second ago. I was standing before my eyes fully opened.
How long had I been asleep? And, more importantly, how long had I left Pepper in the backyard?
The living room was dark. The whole house was. I looked towards the kitchen and saw that even the lights above the stove, which I always kept on, weren’t shining, the oven display below even absent its little neon-green strikes spelling out the time.
The power must be out.
As if to punctuate that thought, a silent flash of lightning illuminated the living room, bathing everything in electric white. In that second I saw Pepper’s silhouette outside, tall and strong and pressed against the sliding glass door. His sleek, muscular Doberman build propped on one back leg—he’d lost the other to an infection last year—and padding urgently at the door.
scritch scritch scritch
thunk thunk thunk
That obnoxious, oversized collar I’d gotten him tapped against the glass as he pawed, begging to be let in from the…
Rain. It’s raining. He’s been out in the rain for god knows how long and I’ve just been laying here sleeping without a care in the world.
I stepped across the living room to the door, still in that hazy place between sleep and wake, fueled by muscle memory and instinct instead of conscious thought, but without the need for light because this little jig was common to me; three steps, hand to handle, pull right, Pepper barrels in or out.
And he did.
As soon as the gap between the door and the frame was big enough, Pepper squeezed through into the living room. Instead of launching straight onto the couch upon reentry, which seemed more a rule than a routine at this point, he high-tailed it past me, turning sharply where the little breakfast bar ended and into the corridor which ran through the kitchen and into the dining room, nails clicking on the tiles as he went. Then came a creak—the basement door swinging outward, undoubtedly nosed open by a sopping-wet Pepper—followed by quick, hollow thumping as he descended the haphazard wooden stairs into the unfinished basement.
A roar of thunder crashed through the half-open sliding glass door and I slammed it shut.
The entire series of events—waking up, noticing the power was out, letting Pepper in, and hearing him scurry down into the basement—had probably taken twenty-five seconds start to finish. But now the urgency had bled out of the situation and I stood alone (or so I thought) in the living room, rubbing the last crumbs of sleep from my eyes and ready to rejoin the world of the entirely awake.
He must be real upset with me.
I began brainstorming ways to make it up to Pepper. To apologize in dog-language for leaving him out in the rain. And all of them started by coaxing him out of the basement with a handful of treats. The dried salmon skin probably. Stinky, high-reward stuff.
It was still nearly pitch-black in the living room and my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted. I moved back towards the couch, leaned forward, and plopped an open palm onto the cushion, sliding across the fabric in search of my phone. Its flashlight would help me find the treats and the treats would get Pepper out of the basement and into a warm towel. My hand groped across the center cushion and down towards the far side of the couch where my feet had been resting a moment ago. And there they bumped into something…
Something warm. Warm and smooth and trembling.
Whatever it was recoiled slightly when I touched it but settled back into my palm. Then I felt a cold, inquiring touch on my cheek, followed by the wet slap of a tongue and the pungent smell of kibble-breath.
Pepper?
I was awake now and it all rushed back to me.
I had let Pepper back in before the storm started, before I’d drifted off to sleep on the couch. In fact, I’d had to cock my legs out to make room for him between myself and the backrest. And now, with my eyes adjusted to the dark just enough to see outlines, I could make out his shape, coiled into the far corner of cushions with my hand on his haunch. But his nose wasn’t pressed to my cheek anymore, it angled instead to the dining room where Pepper had just…
Where Pepper had just run? But Pepper’s right here.
The whole thing flashed through my head again. Waking up, seeing Pepper at the door, letting him in, and hearing him hurdle through the house and into the basement. Was it even real? Some half-awake sleepwalker’s dream maybe?
I saw my phone then and snatched for it, flicking on the flashlight as quickly as I could.
Sure enough, there was Pepper on the couch. Pressed tightly into a defensive posture and trembling terribly, glancing back and forth between me and the dark outline of the dining room archway.
He’s just scared of the thunder. I made the rest of it up. Right?
To be sure, I dropped the beam of light from Pepper to the floor, swiveled around, and began tilting my phone towards the backdoor.
Brown, muddy paw prints.
I gasped and moved forward, hunching over even more to get a better look. They were there alright, clear as day, and they looked like Pepper’s. Not only in size but in gait. I could see that there were only three paws. Quick math; that’s three legs. And then I remembered seeing the big collar on him while he was outside, and hearing it clunk against the glass as he pawed away at the backdoor.
They were Pepper’s paw prints and they did arrow towards and around the breakfast bar.
He ran downstairs and then snuck back up. I just didn’t see him. The mud had all stamped off by then too, that’s why there’s no return trail.
It’s funny how our mind comes up with impossible explanations to keep us sane in the face of the unknown and the unnatural.
Still, I began to walk along the path of paw prints, hunched over with my phone held down almost to the ground, looking like some sort of Sherlock Holmes caricature. I don’t think I really wanted to, and I don’t think I was being brave, but maybe I was. I just wanted answers. Not just any answers, the right ones. The safe, normal ones.
Just past the breakfast bar the prints started looking different. At first I thought they were just smudging, that most of the mud had already stamped off onto the tile (just as I’d suspected, my dear Watson!), but that didn’t seem quite right.
No. Not smudging. It was more like they were changing. Elongating on some and widening on others, digits growing longer and the entire print becoming larger as I moved further down the line. And then I was through the archway and into the dining room, turning left to cast light down the basement stairwell, and on the stairs leading down into the dark they were no longer Pepper’s paw prints or unknown smudges.
They were human. Prints from bare hands and feet.
Whatever had run down there certainly wasn’t Pepper. What did it look like now?
I snapped to attention but kept the light shining down the stairs, fully expecting someone—or something that only looked like someone—to vault up towards me.
“What do you want?” It was the only thing I could think to say, and it came out more of a whisper than a question.
There was an eternity of silence, no more than a few seconds long, and then a response floated back up the stairs, sounding almost like last words wheezed from the throat of a dying man.
“We don’t like the rain either.”
Any bravery I’d contained up to that point evacuated me with the contents of my bladder.
I turned around and floored it back into the living room, grabbed Pepper—the real Pepper—by the collar and dragged him out the front door, through the rain, and into my car, where I called the police. And where I’m writing this now.
In hindsight, I should’ve just told the dispatcher that I had an intruder. But I was so frazzled and confused and horrified that I just blabbered the whole thing out. She was nice enough to let me finish, but just told me to eat something and get some sleep before hanging up.
So here I am in the driveway, sitting in my car with my shivering Doberman on my piss-soaked lap, too scared to go back into my house but with nowhere else to go. And looking for help.
What did I let into my house? And how do I get it out?