It should have been an easy score.
Rob an old man and leave without much fuss.
We never could have guessed how south it would go.
Everyone had heard of Duncan Adams. He had been a fixture in the community for generations, living in that wild old house up on Mount Yoller. He had been a writer, a professor of antiquities at Georgia State College, and any number of other things. His house was supposed to contain all sorts of expensive things, and we were going to go see if the rumors were true.
Mike didn't like it.
"A guy like that is certain to have all the best security measures, and you just expect the four of us to walk in like it's nothing?"
Julius, Gavin, Mike, and I liked to call ourselves a crew but that was just from watching too many heist movies. In reality, we were just four guys who liked to break into people's houses and steal things. We weren't druggies, we weren't criminals, despite what our records said, but we did like to buy nice things, and stealing often paid for them better than real jobs.
"You'd think so, but my brother went up there to do a job and said there was no security system, no cameras, no nothin. The dude is just asking to get robbed and I say we take him up on it."
My younger brother is a plumber and was actually where I got the idea for the job. He got called about a month ago to go fix some pipes in the old man's bathroom and came back telling us how cool the place was. He had all these mirrors on the grounds and in the house and the walls were like a funhouse and it was all really cool looking. The old man had paid him a mint to do the job, and I had spent the next three weeks thinking about that house and planning the biggest heist I could imagine.
"The plan is that we go there just after dark and jump the side wall. We can go in through the garden out back and come up on the back porch and into the house. The old man is a hard sleeper, my brother said he had to ring the bell a dozen times before he woke up. We can be in and out before he even knows we're there and live like fat rats off the spoils."
Mike still wasn't sure, but greed was slowly eroding his sense of self-preservation. He said he would bring it to a vote with the rest of the crew, and later that afternoon he called to say that the vote had been carried unanimously. The other two were in, and Mike wasn't about to hold us up over some tickling feeling of doubt.
"Hope your intel is right, 'cause if not we're all going to be royally screwed."
And that was how we came to be hunkered in the scrub around The Duncan Adams Estate waiting for it to get good and dark.
We were all dressed in dark clothing, Jules and Gavin wearing ski masks while Mike and I just had our hoods pulled up. I was pretty sure that we wouldn't need cover, but Jules had two prior arrests and Gavin was clean for the moment. Both wanted to stay out of prison if they could help it and had opted to cover their faces. As the dark began to settle around us, we crept up to the fence and prepared to vault over. It was just a simple concrete wall with no lights or cameras on the top, but Mike stopped before making a stirrup with his hands to point at a sign on the wall.
"You didn't say anything about a dog."
I looked at the sign, wrinkling my brow as I tried to remember if Louise had mentioned a dog. He hadn't, he'd said nothing about any kinds of animals on the property, but a dog could complicate things. The sign was the usual black and yellow one that bore the legend "Beware of Dog" on it, but it looked a little faded and I suddenly wondered if it was something from a while ago.
"It's probably old." I assured him, "Louise didn't say anything about dogs or cats or anything to do with animals."
Mike seemed unsure, so I doubled down.
"Tell you what, I'll go first and drop behind the gate. If there's a dog, it'll just tear me up and I'll find some way to get out so you guys can run. We'll only be out for the gas it took us to get here and I'll have to spend a night in jail, worst case scenario."
Mike still looked unsure, but he made a stirrup with his hands and I vaulted over the wall and landed in a well-kept little backyard. It had been landscaped to look oriental, maybe Japanese or something, and there was a bridge over a little creek and a well-cared-for walkway that led to the back of the house. There was a sand pit with rocks in it, some trees cut to resemble Bonsai trees, and several large reflective columns interspersed around. It was definitely different, but I liked it the longer I stood waiting to get mauled by a rottweiler or a pit bull.
"What do you see?" Mike whispered as I scanned the area for a slobbering beast that was waiting to strike.
"Nothing. Well, not nothing, but no dog. Come on over, I think it's safe."
They dropped over one at a time, Mike reaching back to pull Gavin over before landing himself. They all stared at the strange little garden, so alien in the twilight, and when no lights came on to mark them and no dogs came out to chase us away, they all sighed collectively.
"Looks like there wasn't a dog after all," Julius said.
"Or he's inside," Mike said skeptically.
"Whatever, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We've got to get inside first." I reminded them as we set off across the little garden path.
It was a little eerie to walk across the shadowy garden with only the moon to guide us. The place seemed to be made of strange angles and the reflective monoliths didn't help matters much. They were everywhere, a new one jutting up every seven or eight feet, and they played strange games with the moonlight. I would catch myself looking at them out of the corner of my eye, and more than once I had to turn and make sure something wasn't following us. The reflections created strange shadows and I was sure I saw something dart out of sight before turning to find nothing and nowhere that it could have gone.
"These things are weird," Julius said, keeping his voice pitched low, "I could swear I keep seeing something in them, but it's gone when I turn to look."
"Me too," Gavin said, sounding a little unnerved.
"Eyes on the prize, boys." I reminded them, but it didn't sound as sure as I tried to convey.
The backyard hadn't looked very big, but as we moved towards the house, it seemed to go on forever. We were staying low, trying not to to draw attention to ourselves, but it seemed like we should have been there by now. Whenever I looked at the back porch, it always seemed to be about fifty feet away, and every step seemed to bring us no closer.
"What the hell was that?" Gavin asked, and his voice was too high.
Julius shushed him, whispering back, "What are you talking about?"
"There was something right there, I saw it," Gavin said, pointing at one of the polished monoliths.
I glanced at it but it was just a flat reflection of the weird tree sitting by the back wall.
"There's nothing there, Gav. Get it together man, in a few hours we'll be leaving with more loot than we can carry, and then you can freak out if you still want to."
Gavin looked unsure but he nodded and kept pace as we made our way through the collection of odd trees and topiaries.
He wasn't the only one getting a little nervous, though. I could see something in those reflections too, something I was beginning to think might be our dog. It was big, way too big to vanish like it always seemed to do. It was a mastiff or a wolf hybrid and the longer we trekked through the garden, the closer it seemed to get to us.
At first, it was just curiously observing us, seeing what we were doing, and enjoying its little game of startling us. As we neared the house, however, the game changed. Now it was getting closer to our group, weaving between statutes and plants, getting bigger as it stalked us. I still wasn't sure how it was doing this, the thing had to be nearly five feet tall on all fours, but it would disappear any time I turned to look behind me. I wondered if these were some sort of electronic gadget, maybe a display mount to scare intruders, but when I looked right at the polished mirror fronts, I saw nothing but my own reflection and the larger-than-usual bonsai or topiary behind me.
I'd like to tell you that we made it to the house before things went sideways, but that's not true.
The truth is that we never even saw the inside of the house.
We had come within about ten feet of the porch, a trip that had seemed to take longer than it should when the purpose of the monoliths became apparent.
We were hunched around some of the oddities of the garden, trying to get our nerves up before heading in. Gavin and I weren't the only ones who had been seeing things out of the corner of our eyes, and nerves were high as the goal came into view. Now the real work would begin, but we weren't sure what to expect from this funhouse garden. Would we be allowed to make it to the house? Would we get mowed down by some huge hound on our way up the porch? I didn't know, but suddenly this didn't seem like the easy score I had promised them.
"Jules," I whispered, "Go see if the backdoor is unlocked."
"Why have I gotta do it?" Jules asked, his nerves jangling a little.
"Cause you're closest to the door. Just get up there and see."
Jules looked at the house like it was the absolute last place he wanted to go, but greed had its teeth in him again. We could still make something from this, still come out okay, and he scampered up the porch steps with all the stealth he could muster. The doors were glass, fronting a huge glassed-in kitchen, and when Jules reached out for the handle, he seemed as shocked as we were when it pulled down easily.
"Damn, guys it's not even," but as he took his eyes off the glass, I saw something loom up behind him that made me tremble.
It was the dog, a huge black hellhound with a gaping maw full of sharp teeth and piercing red eyes. It was behind the glass, and I thought for sure that it would jump through and bury Jules in its bulk. I started to yell, started to warn him, but when it leaned out of the glass and snapped its teeth around him, I was surprised by the lack of a crash. Jules looked surprised, his shock absolute, and when the creature yanked him into the glass and out of sight, we were left in stunned silence with only the crickets for company.
"What in the hell was that?" Gavin said, his voice trembling audibly.
"I dunno," said Mike, his voice inches behind me as he inched away with every breath, "but I'm not sticking around to find out."
He was off and running then, tearing back towards the wall we had come over. He looked scared enough to jump it without help, and when I called for him to stop, I winced as a light came on in the house. Great, we had woken up the old man. Gavin saw the light and took a few steps back himself, but when Mike screamed suddenly, Gavin and I froze as we turned back to see what had happened.
In the fleeting rays of the back porch light, I saw Mike caught beneath a massive paw. It was coming from the surface of the polished square, and as the head emerged, the beast looked as big as a grizzly bear. Its fur was wiry and stiff, something I believed they called brindled in the dog world, and its muzzle was already dripped with blood. It bent down over Mike, the poor guy screaming and thrashing as much as his smooshed lungs would allow, and when it covered his head with its mouth, the crying and yelling was cut off abruptly.
It took Mike's head with it but was nice enough to leave the body behind as it disappeared back into the polished surface of the brooding rectangle.
Gavin and I just stood there for a minute, unsure of what to do.
When the door to the back porch opened, we both got low as we tried to hide from whoever had come to check on the ruckus.
"Whose there?" said a deep voice that had probably once been more impressive. Age had done it no favors, and now it was a little less imposing, a little less commanding, but the owner seemed to know that he wasn't the most dangerous creature in his garden. The sound of a cane thumping on the boards could be heard, and as he saw the body, he croaked out a rough laugh.
"Decided to come and steal from an old man, huh? You didn't think you were the first, did you?"
I looked at Gavin as we hid, trying to tell him to be still, though he seemed to be losing that particular fight.
"More than a few people have thought they could come and plunder what I have rightfully taken in my prime. They see an old man, living alone, and think to make his home their find of the century. They never guess that the most dangerous thing here might be my own biggest find."
As we watched, he put out a hand and the hellish beast stuck its nose out of the windows it had sucked Jules into so the old man could scratch it like any other hound.
"I was excavating a tomb in Russia when I found them. These strange black monoliths were just sitting in a cave towards the back of the old tomb. I had never seen anything like them or the beast they held, but it had enough intelligence to understand me when I made it an offer."
It didn't seem to be enough that he was going to kill us; this old codger meant to monolog before his hell beast devoured us.
"Come back to my home, come into the lighted world again, and I will take you from this place and let you hunt my enemies for me. And so I have. It has hunted a long line of would-be thieves and robbers and eaten well in the process. You will be no different."
Gavin looked at the back wall, a path that would take him over the unmoving corpse of Mike, and seemed to be trying to decide if it was worth the risk. I shook my head at him, trying to tell him not to, but when he suddenly sprinted across the lawn, I found myself right behind him. I could no more stop myself from fleeing in my terror than he could, and we dodged around the monoliths at every opportunity. The hound lunged at us nonetheless, coming out of either side as it tried to stop us. We were neck and neck, nearly the wall when Gavin suddenly tripped.
I looked back and found that Gavin's foot was stuck in a trap too devilish to escape.
The creature had him by the ankle, and as it dragged him backward, I sprinted for the wall and lept at the top.
My fingers burned as they tried to dig into the concrete, and I'm not ashamed to say I left a few fingernails behind as I scrambled over the top.
I drove home, expecting that creature or the police to come after me every mile of the way. When it didn't come lunging out of my rearview mirrors and no blue and whites dogged my heels, I breathed a sigh of relief. I drove home, locked all the doors on my trailer, and went to my room so I could write this down while it's fresh.
Now that I have, I'm not sure what to do.
Do I call the police?
What would I tell them?
Can that thing get me through my own mirrors? My computer monitor? The surface of my spoons?
I don't know what to do, but I do know one thing.
If you ever hear of Duncan Adams and his strange house in the mountains and think that an old man living alone will be an easy score, think again.
The dog he has can't be bribed with treats and pets, and all you'll take from that place is death for you and anyone who comes with you.
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