03 – Chris

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“And that’s what happened,” Wyllow said.

“Yeah, right,” a voice from the other end of the hall said. Probably Chuck.

A boy from the year above shot Chuck a scowl.

“She’s telling the truth,” he said, then turned to Wyllow. “My dad read about that in the paper. We’ve been keeping an eye on weird occurrences since the weekend.”

Several nods and murmurs of agreement followed, despite Chuck’s indignant grunt.

The caretaker handed out bin bags and pointed to the trash piled in the middle of the hall.

“I take it you have a tale to tell as well,” he said to Chris. “Why don’t you share it while we bag this stuff up?”

Chris’s Story

Five days ago, I found a stray dog.

He was a rough-haired little beast who took a shine to me, probably more because of the ham sandwiches I tossed him than my winning personality.

The poor mutt had hair hanging over his eyes. That is something I cannot stand on my own face, so I chopped it short with a pair of scissors from my pencil case and sent him on his way.

His way, it turned out, was my way.

He had no collar, so there was no way to identify an owner. Judging by how enthusiastically he rummaged through our bins for scraps, I doubted any previous owner would have cared whether he came back or not.

I did not tell my parents he was there. A makeshift kennel in the concrete yard we laughingly called a garden kept him sheltered from rain and wind. All he had to do was stay there quietly until my folks were in a more receptive mood.

The mangy mutt could not even manage that.

My dad heard him whining and scratching at the door the moment he got home. For someone supposedly angry about a stray dog making a mess of the place, he aimed his mood squarely at me.

He locked the dog in the garden and told me it would leave the house when we did in the morning. From his tone, I doubted he intended to let the dog back in when we returned.

The sound of glass smashing woke me that night. Dad was probably having one of his late-night card games. My glass by the bed was empty, so I went downstairs to refill it.

The lights were off. A glance at the clock told me Dad’s game should have ended hours ago. In fact, faint traces of daylight were already glowing through the curtains.

Then I saw the silhouette.

I froze. The glass slipped from my hand and joined its shattered siblings on the floor. Someone was standing behind the curtains.

I did not wait to find out who.

I bolted up the stairs, screaming for the whole house to wake up.

Dad burst out of his room, yelling at me to shut the dog up. I had not realized he was barking. The sound was coming from downstairs. Inside the house.

“There’s someone in the living room,” I said. “I saw them hiding behind the curtain.”

Dad leapt down the last steps, barged into the lounge, flipped on the lights, and grabbed the mop from behind the kitchen door. The dog was inside all right, barking at the window where I had seen the shadow.

Dad yanked the curtains open. The window stood ajar, but whoever had been there was gone.

“Scared them off, did you?” Dad said, patting the dog. “Maybe we ought to keep you.”

The dog wagged his tail. I hugged Dad.

“Can he sleep in my room?” I asked. “I’m scared now.”

Dad shrugged and told me to get back to bed. Nobody needed to be awake for another couple of hours.

I called the dog. His wagging tail followed me upstairs. I slipped under the covers and scratched behind his ears. The dopey mutt curled up at the foot of the bed. I must have fallen asleep almost instantly, because the next thing I knew, it was one minute before my alarm went off.

Something had woken me.

The covers were bunched near my chin, blocking most of my view of the room. Still, there was no mistaking the sound of footsteps. Someone was moving around up there.

I pulled the covers down.

My dog was standing on his hind legs with his paws braced against the window, tail wagging at something outside. Then a hand pressed against the glass from the other side and slowly closed it.

The dog dropped back onto all fours and growled. Then he saw I was awake and bounded over, forcing his way into my arms. The poor mutt must have been terrified.

I was not feeling very brave either.

An intruder at your window twice in one night is bad enough, but I sleep in the attic. It was a long, tense minute. When my alarm finally went off, I screamed.

I told Dad what happened, but he said I was probably having nightmares because of earlier. Maybe I was.

I went through my morning routine. A twenty-minute toilet trip. A twenty-second breakfast. Then back upstairs to get dressed.

My dog stared at the window the whole time. He growled at every sound outside. Birds. Squirrels. Anything. It was like he expected the intruder to return.

Curiosity got the better of me. I turned my laptop toward the window and hit record.

When I got home from school, I found the dog pacing the kitchen.

“You poor mutt,” I said. “You’ve been cooped up all day, haven’t you? Go on. Go poop.”

I let him out into the garden and ran upstairs. I turned on the laptop and fast-forwarded through the footage.

For almost three hours, nothing happened.

My dog stared at the window. He slept at the foot of my bed while the colors of falling leaves drifted past outside. Then his ears perked up.

So did mine.

I hit play.

A sickly green hand knocked on the glass. Each finger ended in a claw like a cat’s.

This was no intruder.

The hand had two thumbs. One where a thumb should be, and another where the pinkie belonged.

My dog sat back and raised his front paws. Was he begging?

Then he rocked forward and stood.

Not a trick.

He stood upright.

My dog reached out and undid the latch. Beneath the fur, the hands at the ends of his arms also had two thumbs.

The green arm slid through the open window and placed something into my dog’s palm. He grunted and closed the window again.

Then he walked over to my chair.

He sat in it like a man and examined the object.

A black ring.

He slid it onto his middle finger, made a fist, brushed the fur back over it, and dropped to all fours again like he had always been a dog.

“Dad’s never going to believe this,” I said.

“No,” a soft voice behind me said. “He won’t.”

A furry arm reached past my shoulder and deleted the video. It had three slender fingers and two thumbs, and the ring gleamed on its middle digit.

I turned as the arm withdrew.

My dog stood there on two legs.

“I wouldn’t tell anyone about this if I were you,” he said. “But I doubt anyone would believe you anyway.”

With that, he strolled across the room, opened the door with his doubled thumbs, and let himself out.