My dog hates my new apartment

My dog hates my new apartment. 

It's a brand new complex in an expensive Kansas City suburb. The rent is obscene, but I just landed my first big girl job out of college after years of bartending and food service. I feel like I deserved to splurge. It has it all: hardwood floors,12-foot ceilings, shiny stainless steel appliances, and crown molding (whatever that is). The neighborhood is really what jacks up the price, though. Quiet like the suburbs, but right next to a major highway with all of the modern conveniences at my fingertips. I fell in love with the atmosphere right away - bright, busy, and safe.

My little dachshund mix, Maddie, vehemently disagrees with my assessment. She rejected the place from the minute we moved in a month ago. I brought her inside before I started unloading boxes, excited for my best friend to see our fancy new digs. 

“Welcome home, Maddie-girl!” 

Maddie tilted up her nose and gave the air a haughty sniff. She turned in a circle, made direct eye contact, and dropped a massive shit in the middle of the living room floor.
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I’ve had Maddie for 8 years and she’s always been housetrained. I scolded her, but I didn’t get too upset. I know that dogs can revert to puppy-like disobedience when getting used to a new home. I also didn’t take it seriously when she started growling at empty doorways and scratching up the wood by the baseboards like she was trying to dig her way out of the apartment. Even when she started whining during the night, pawing at me with frantic little yips, I just put her in her crate with a firm “no, Maddie” and tried to sleep through her pitiful crying. 

After a couple of weeks with no improvement, I took her to the vet. They gave her a clean bill of health and some overpriced anti-anxiety meds to help her through her “adjustment” period. The pills make her sleep through the night, but they’ve done nothing to quell her new rebellious streak. She peed on the couch and chewed off a corner of my bedroom door; she strains at the leash during walks until she chokes herself, and she’s even tried to slip her collar a couple of times. 

I feel a little guilty that I dismissed her signals as bad behavior instead of an indication that something was wrong. In my defense, I’ve never believed in ghosts or “bad energy.” I certainly never expected to have my first encounter with the supernatural in the suburbs, in the shadows between luxury condos and a Lexus dealership. 

That’s where it lives, though. Whatever it is.

My apartment has buildings on both sides of a quiet side street. On one side the complex sprawls the length of an entire block, but it only covers half that distance across the street. The property just ends, leaving a huge, unkempt lot between the road and the wooded creek that separates our neighborhood from the shopping centers beyond. A wide, paved walking path lines that side of the street, winding past the complex and the empty lot into the rest of the neighborhood.

I live in a building by the empty lot, so this is the path I take Maddie on her morning and evening walks. One second you're walking alongside a well-manicured lawn, the next it's just a field of wild, tangled prairie grass extending from the sidewalk to the dense, dark copse of trees lining the creek.  The lot has a pretty creepy atmosphere, I’ll admit, but I figured it was just because it’s so incongruous with the surroundings - a glimpse of wild nature standing stark against the manufactured pretense of the suburbs. 

Maddie, however, hates the place. Her whole body starts shaking as soon as we approach the lot. She stretches as far as she can into that untamed grass, leash strained almost to the point of breaking, her ears pointed forward toward the dark thicket of trees, eyes alert and tail pointed. Her hackles will raise, and she'll growl so low that I can barely hear her over the street noise.  It’s a far cry from the four-alarm bark that she normally lets loose to warn me that the dangerous elderly beagle from next door is outside. It’s odd and unsettling, but I assumed that she's just on her usual bullshit. I love that dog more than I love most people, but she's a high-strung little mutt. A butterfly flies too close and she loses her goddamn mind. With all of her other recent eccentricities, I've been writing it off as another example of her anxiety in our new home. 

Until last night.

I've been putting in a lot of overtime, and by the time I logged off my computer for the night, it was nearing midnight. It's a well-lit neighborhood, so I didn’t think twice about taking Maddie for a late-night walk. As we approached the empty lot, the streetlight we were passing flickered and sputtered out the moment we stepped into its warm circle of light. I stopped walking. Maddie was already growling toward the creek, and I followed her gaze. It was like the light from the rest of the neighborhood didn't reach that darkness. Twisted branches in the dim moonlight created the illusion of creatures lurking in the trees. I shivered and kept moving, pace a little brisker.

The next streetlight winked out as we approached. And the one after that. Maddie was snarling wildly at this point, leash taut as she tried to lash out at the looming darkness across the lot. I quickened my pace, practically running, eager to get past the lot and into the neighborhood beyond. The next light blinked out; we were just about at the halfway point. I was considering turning back when the streetlight just ahead of us exploded in a violent shower of sparks, plunging the block into total darkness. I stumbled back and nearly fell on my ass. I managed to regain my balance, but in my flailing I lost hold of Maddie’s leash. She was off like a shot toward the treeline, spittle flying from her jaws. I screamed after her, but she didn’t acknowledge me. She hopped over a low shrub at the tree line, and then she was gone.

I stood for a long moment at the edge of the lot just staring at the trees. I could hear the occasional car whooshing past on the main road, owls hooting softly in the dark. But I couldn’t hear Maddie at all. 

I gulped and called for her again. “Maddie-girl, come back!”

Crickets. I took a step into the tall grass. 

“Maddie, please!”

I waited for a beat, willing her to come tearing out of the trees toward me, but there was still no response. My heart was pounding in my throat. I slowly waded through the waist-high grass to the tree line. Up close, the branches stretched high into the night sky, as dense and imposing as a jungle. 

I stepped through the gap between two trunks, footfalls muted on a bed of rotting, damp leaves. I turned on the flashlight on my phone, but it did little to penetrate the heavy darkness. 

“Maddie?” 

My voice fell flat, muted. It felt like my ears had been stuffed with cotton. Against my better judgment, I moved further into the trees. The air was cool but thick with humidity, heavy with the cloying scent of decay. Every once in a while, a sharp whiff of ozone stung my nostrils and made my eyes water. 

Something was seriously wrong. I had been walking for several minutes. I should have already crossed the creek and reached the brightly lit Costco parking lot on the other side. There was no sign of the creek, though, or the streetlights beyond; there was only damp earth and a seemingly endless sea of thick, gnarled tree trunks stretching into the blackness. The air seemed to hum, a vibrating energy I could feel in my sternum. An oppressive quiet had fallen over everything. There were no birds chirping or squirrels skittering among the branches, no sounds from the babbling water in the creek, no traffic noise from the busy main road that had to be less than a block away. 

Part of me wanted to turn back, but I knew that I would never forgive myself if I left Maddie behind. What if she was hurt? 

I picked my way over the tangled tree roots, moving deeper into the strange woods, calling for Maddie with increasing desperation. At one point I stumbled on the uneven ground and had to brace myself against one of the large trunks. My hand came away sticky, covered in a thick, clear slime. It smelled earthy and sickly sweet, like damp dirt and rotting flesh. Retching, I frantically tried to wipe it off on the leaf-covered ground. 

Once my stomach had settled, I heard a familiar sound coming from the trees ahead. My heart leapt; it was muted and distorted - like it was coming from behind a wall of thick glass - but it was definitely Maddie’s distinctive bark. It was impossible to tell how far away she was, but I sprinted off in her direction. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I just knew I was determined to find her and get us both out of there as quickly as possible, even if I had to carry her out howling and snarling.

Branches and leaves whipped my face, leaving stinging marks in their wake. My lungs started to burn. I don’t know how long I ran. Eventually the trees started to thin, and I was hopeful I would emerge back out into the real world, Maddie waiting for me, tail wagging like nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

Instead, I stumbled into a large, moonlit clearing. Maddie stood in the middle, small body tense and shaking with the force of her barking. Her lips curled back to bare her teeth, fur standing on end from neck to tail. Her eyes were locked on a point on the other side of the clearing, and she was staring intently at a seemingly empty gap in the treeline. 

“Maddie?”

She jerked her head around to look at me, startled; she clearly hadn’t heard me calling for her. Head low and ears back, she turned in a circle, whimpering and pawing at the ground. She looked at me, eyes pleading, and turned back toward the other side of the clearing to continue snarling. 

I followed her gaze again, squinting into the darkness. 

And then I saw it.

Between two twisted tree trunks stood...something. My eyes didn’t want to focus on it; every time I tried, my head would start to throb in time with my heartbeat, and my eyes kept trying to slide away from it. The air around it shimmered, like heat radiating off of sun-baked asphalt. It was tall, and its limbs - too many limbs - twitched out from its long torso, undulating in waves, reaching out and retracting. Its eyes were the worst; deep, black pools that churned and swirled and pulled in the dim moonlight only to snuff it out.

I couldn’t look away from those eyes. The creature loomed in front of me; it grew larger, towering over me so that I had to crane my neck back to continue meeting its gaze, its limbs stretched around and over me. In a numb, distant corner of my mind, it reminded me of a spider preparing to descend on its prey.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp tug around my ankles, and a shrill whine broke my reverie. I looked down and saw Maddie’s teeth clamped around the hem of my jeans, pulling me back with all of her strength. When I looked back up, I realized I had crossed the clearing, and I was standing less than a foot away from the creature’s feet.

I didn’t even know I was going to scream until it was bubbling out of my throat.

That broke the creature out of its stasis. Its head tilted skyward, and it let out an ear-rending shriek that finally pierced the bubble of quiet that sat over the woods. Words can’t describe the sound; the electric fizzle of lightning buzzing underneath the rumbling boom of thunder, overlaid with a discordant layer of every sound made by every creature found in nature (and some that definitely aren’t). 

Still screaming, I grabbed Maddie’s leash from among the muck on the forest floor and started to sprint back in the direction I had come from. Maddie quickly took the lead, and I trusted her to be our guide. Behind us, that buzzing roar continued to echo, and I could hear tree limbs crashing and wooden trunks tearing apart as the creature pursued us. The back of my neck buzzed with static that trickled down my spine, and I had a wild thought that I could feel its breath rustling my hair. 

Before I could fall apart in panic, Maddie pulled me through a thicket of trees and we burst into the empty lot. We didn’t slow down; my foot caught in the weeds and I fell to my knees, hard, and I could feel a rock tear through denim and skin. Maddie jerked at the end of the leash and turned to grab it in her teeth, throwing her whole weight into pulling me to my feet, fierce little yelps encouraging me to keep going. Knees wobbling and threatening to give out again, I somehow managed to stand upright and continue sprinting toward the sidewalk. 

I didn’t stop running until we got back to the apartment. I fumbled my key in the lock, hands shaking. All of the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and my body was still vibrating in frequency with that inhuman shriek. I didn’t dare look behind me. As soon as the lock clicked open, I herded Maddie across the threshold and slammed the door behind us, throwing the deadbolt into place. Maddie was still barking and whining, jumping at my shins with her muddy paws and licking my scraped knee through the tear in my jeans. 

I didn’t wait around to see if that thing would come breaking down my door. Now that I had seen it, I could feel what Maddie had been trying to warn me about for the past several weeks - a low hum that reverberated through the floor, the frequency just slightly off from the buzz of electronics that permeates the modern world. Suddenly it was deafening.

Before I could start to question my sanity, I grabbed my overnight bag and ran through the apartment to collect the necessities. Maddie was shaking by the time we left. I drove to a hotel across the city, as far as I could get from that creek. Maddie hasn’t left my side since we got here. 

I barely slept last night. Every time I started to nod off, I heard the creature’s screams, and sometimes I thought I could still feel that low, subsonic hum shuddering through my ribcage. When I did finally fall asleep, I was right back in the woods, footsteps bringing me closer and closer to that nameless horror reaching for me with its many limbs. Before I could step into its embrace, Maddie woke me up with a soft whine and slobbery kisses, tail thumping the mattress in a comforting rhythm. My only consolation is that she already seems back to her normal, happy self. 

I definitely owe her all of the treats she wants for the rest of her life. 

I definitely appreciate the lesson she’s taught me. It’s easy to forget that all of these bright, shiny developments are built on land that has a history that stretches millennia before we brought in our bulldozers. There's ancient earth springing out of the cracks in the pavement, something old with deep roots, and it doesn't go away just because we built a Costco on top of it.