I’m a grown man with grown children and a house and a wife and a dog. I’m also a night owl. My wife usually calls it a day around eleven, and then me and my dog stay up until about three. My dog lies patiently on her cushion until I’m ready to retire; but first, like the traditionalists we are, we both go out into the backyard to relieve ourselves before heading to bed.

I’m a fairly sensible fellow, too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the capacity to allow my imagination to scare the shit out of me. Walking out into the dark I can usually conjure up all manner of frights of an irrational nature. But vampires, space aliens, Slenderman, Sasquatch—shit like that doesn’t do it for me. Demons do. Demons light my fire—occult-type stuff or any other thing that falls under the demonic rubric.

Tonight at three o’clock I went out with my dog; and as usual, she trotted out into the yard as I walked to the edge of the patio to pee. Also as usual, she finished before me—I heard her nails clicking as she approached the backdoor where she would wait for me—and I began to wonder over whether tonight might be the night I’d experience something extraordinary. What if when I turned around I’d see my dog suddenly stare at something behind me and be so frightened that the hair wouldn’t even stand up on her back? Dogs bark like crazy at anything that alarms them, even if they eventually run away, but what if she saw something so terrifying tonight that she didn’t bark at all? What if she just stood there, petrified, head low until she finally mustered the courage to scurry away?

Imagination.

I actually felt a tingle down my back as I shook off the last drops. I was truly scared—deliciously scared—and the sensation intensified as I slowly turned to face the backdoor and my dog—but alas, nothing. She was just watching me with disinterest, then she looked lazily at the door, then back at me just like she did every other night, waiting for me to let her in so she could go to bed.

Only mildly disappointed, I walked to the backdoor and pushed it open, and I began to follow her in—but something happened. She’d stopped just before the threshold—I almost tripped over her. And the hair on her back, it was smooth, and her head was low.

That’s when I sensed it—and I don’t know what it was I sensed, but . . . something. Something was waiting inside. I felt my dog slither past my legs like a slippery eel, and I turned my head and watched after her as she scurried away, soon disappearing into the darkness. I craved to follow after her—but I couldn’t. My feet weighted a thousand pounds each—and my wife . . . she was inside.