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 gave 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 confirmation followed, despite Chuck’s indignant grunt.

The Caretaker handed bin bags to the group and pointed to the trash piled in the middle of the hall.

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

Chris’ Story

Five days ago, I found a stray dog. He was a rough haired little beastie who took a shine to me, probably more to do with the ham sandwiches I tossed him than my winning personality.

The poor mutt had hair falling over his eyes, something I can’t stand on my own face, so I lopped 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 identifying his owner, but judging from his enthused rummaging of our bins for scraps, I doubted any previous owner would’ve cared enough if he returned or not.

I didn’t tell my parents he was there. A makeshift kennel in the concrete yard we laughingly called a garden saw him sheltered from any rain and wind. All he had to do was stay there, quiet like, until my folks were in a more receptive mood. The mangy mutt couldn’t even manage that.

My dad heard him whining and pawing at the door the moment he got home. For someone professing anger at the stray mutt scratching away in our home, he still aimed his mood squarely at me.

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

The sound of glass smashing to the floor woke me that night. Dad was likely having one of his late night card games. My own glass by my bed was empty, so I trudged downstairs to refill it.

The lights were off. A quick glance at the clock informed me dad’s game would have ended hours ago. In fact, faint traces of daylight were already illuminating the curtains, even highlighting a silhouette over in one corner.

I stopped. The glass I held joined whichever one of its shattered siblings in spreading across the floor. A silhouette? Someone was standing behind the curtains. I didn’t wait to find out who, instead tripping up the stairs and screaming for the whole house to wake up.

Dad burst out his room and screamed at me to shut the dog up. I hadn’t realized he was barking. It was coming from downstairs, inside.

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

Dad jumped the last few steps and barged into the lounge, flipped the lights and grabbed the mop from behind the kitchen door. The dog was inside all right, barking at the window where I’d seen the shadow. Dad pulled the curtains apart. The window was open but whoever was there had gone.

“Scared ‘em 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 said. “I’m scared now.”

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

I called the dog and his wagging tail followed. I slipped under the covers and ruffled his ears. The dopey mutt took the bottom of the bed as his spot. I must’ve fallen asleep almost instantly, because next I knew, it was a minute to go before my alarm sounded. Something had woken me.

The cover had bunched up near my chin, obscuring the rest of my room, but there was no mistaking the sound of footsteps. Someone was in there, walking. I pulled the cover down to see my dog, paws up against the window, standing on his hind legs and wagging his tail at something outside the open window. Then a hand pressed against the glass from outside and closed it. The dog’s tail flopped and he dropped to all fours, growling, then turned and saw me awake and bounded over, working his way into my arms. The poor mutt must have been terrified.

I wasn’t feeling so brave either. Having an intruder at your window twice in one night is worrying enough, but I sleep in the attic. It was a tense minute. When my alarm went off, I screamed.

I told dad, but he said I was having nightmares because of earlier. Maybe I was, so I went through my morning routine, a twenty minute toilet trip, a twenty second breakfast, and back upstairs to get dressed. My dog stared at my window the whole time. He growled at every sound outside. A bird, a squirrel, almost like he expected our intruder to try again.

Curiosity got the better of me. I turned my laptop to face the window and hit record to let the camera do its magic.

Back home after school, I found the dog pacing in the kitchen.

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

I let him out into the garden and ran up to my room. Making sure to face the window in case something happened, I switched the laptop’s screen on and fast forwarded all it recorded. For almost three hours of footage, nothing happened. My dog stared at the window, slept at the foot of my bed again while the colours of the leaves outside drifted across the window. Then his ears perked up and so did his head and I hit play.

A sickly green hand knocked on the window, each finger tipped with a catlike claw. This was no intruder. The hand had two thumbs, one where a thumb would normally be, the other in place of a pinkie.

My dog sat back on his hind legs and pulled up its front paws. Was it begging? Then it rocked back and stood. Not a puppy trick. It stood. My dog was standing on its hind legs. It reached out with a paw, undid the latch and the hands hidden under its fur had two thumbs, too.

The green arm slithered through the window and placed something in my dog’s palm. He grunted and closed the window after the hand left, and walked over to the chair I was sitting on now. He sat in it like a man and fingered the object given to him. A black ring.

He slid in on his middle finger, then made a fist, brushed the fur back over it and squatted down on all fours again like he’d always been a dog.

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

“No,” a soft voice over my shoulder said, “he won’t.”

A furry arm reached past me and deleted the video. It had three slender fingers and two thumbs, and on its middle digit was the ring. I turned as the arm withdrew. Standing there in my bedroom on two legs was my dog.

“I wouldn’t tell anyone about this, if I was you,” he said, “but then I doubt anyone would believe you if you did.”

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