The house was suffocatingly quiet, save for the low, rumbling growl vibrating deep in my golden retriever’s chest. Buster was standing stiff as a board, his tail pointing straight out, his eyes locked onto the glass of the back sliding door.
I stayed pinned against the hallway wall, my breathing shallow, my hand squeezed tight around my heavy metal flashlight.
Honestly? If you asked me yesterday what I’d do in a break-in situation, I’d say I’d grab a kitchen knife, dial 911, and wait for the cops. But fear doesn’t make you logical. It paralyzes you. It makes you double-check things that don’t make sense.
My phone buzzed again in my hand.
Motion detected in backyard.
My thumb swiped the screen, opening the live camera feed from the floodlight mounted above the patio. The infrared vision made the yard look washed-out and grey. The lawn was completely still. No wind, no stray cat, no intruder sneaking through the bushes.
Then I noticed the glitch.
Every four seconds, the live feed dropped a frame. It was subtle—just a micro-stutter in the timestamp counter in the top right corner. 2:34:11… 2:34:12… 2:34:13… 2:34:10.
The clock on the video feed wasn’t moving forward. It was looping back on itself.
I backed away from the kitchen entry, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Buster,” I whispered, my voice barely a thread. “Come here, boy.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. He just kept staring at the dark glass of the sliding door. The glass reflected the warm yellow light of my kitchen, rendering the dark yard outside completely invisible from where I stood.
Suddenly, Buster stopped growling.
He didn’t relax, though. His ears pinned back flat against his skull, and he began to back away slowly, whining, his nails clicking rhythmically against the hardwood floor. Step by step, he retreated into the hallway, leaving me standing alone near the kitchen island.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It wasn’t a loud knock like the one on my front door ten minutes ago. It was three soft, deliberate knuckle taps against the glass of the sliding door.
I couldn’t help it. My head snapped toward the noise.
Standing on the dark side of the patio door, illuminated faintly by the indoor kitchen light bleeding through the glass, was a figure. They were wearing a dark raincoat, the hood pulled down tight over their head. Their face was pressed flush against the window pane.
Because of the angle and the oil on the glass, their features were distorted—flattened out into an unnerving, featureless oval.
