Mason

It was a long inhale, slow and shaky, like an animal smelling the crack around the door.

Duke started shaking.

I could hear his collar tags faintly rattling.

I should have gone to the bedroom, locked the door, and called somebody.

That is what I should have done.

But fear does weird things to your decision making.

Part of me still needed this to be explainable.

I wanted it to be Ray's brother stopping by, or some neighbor messing with me.

or a lost hunter, or even a deer that had wandered up to the porch and bumped the door.

I needed to know, because not knowing felt worse.

The back door had a peephole.

That was the part that makes the least sense to me now.

Most back doors don't, but this one did.

Probably because Carla and Ray were the kind of people who didn't open doors without checking.

I leaned in slowly and looked through it.

At first I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

The porch light was bright, and the peephole warped everything around the edges.

There was tan fur filling most of the view.

Not a person.

Not a face.