Something is rotten in Danemark

A low rumble issued from the house as I stumbled up our brick-laid path, interrupting the wet sounds of a loose, flopping jaw tearing clumsily at fresh meat. Inside, I could sense its presence evaluating me.

With the house lights off and no illumination save for the guttering of a tea light in the jack o’lantern on the porch, there was no way to ascertain what horrors lay within but this was home — my family’s place — and I owed it to Pretty Wife and Smalldaughter to discover the truth, howsoever grim it may prove to be. At the cost of my veriest life — nay, even my honor and soul! — if such should prove to be required…

Through the front door glass, the darkness swallowed me onward with the evil inveiglement of a downward-spiraling, Hell-bound Appalachian cave. As I trembled, there on the stoop, no dogs barked a happy greeting. No lights burned the terrors within to visibility. Even my wife’s computer monitor — her very lifeline! — was shuttered and dark, staring blindly out into a living room without a living soul in it.

Beneath the lightless porch lamp, I reached my hand slowly toward the brass knob, fearing what might be found. Even as I touched it, the hallway lights snapped abruptly on!  That auto-switch gets ’em every time…

Around the corner, backlit in silhouette, stepped an enormous, slavering creature of hideous visage. In its powerful maw was clenched a blood-lathered gobbet of quivering flesh, trembling between its polished white teeth as the beast shook viciously the pathetic victim parts, growling and pawing at its own face. I froze outside the door as the thing beheld me thoughtfully with its red-rimmed eyes, perhaps evaluating whether to abandon its current snack for a fresher taste. Shrinking from its clear intent, my very brains curdled in my heart-hammered skull.

Behind it, some ill-defined, lumpy form of dwarfish hellhound shadowed the looming creature with angry, barbed-wire fur erected, sniffing and darting at its hyperlabial orifice in trancelike worship of the awakened cuttlefish lips of Cthulhu!

O, Smalldaughter, I breathed in an ecstatic transport of horror, you deserved better than this!

From Hell itself the beast had come, on this most cursed night to steal from me my very wife and progeny. Jesu, return from thy tomb to put down this zombie menace!

Then the frozen second was shattered by the horridly shrieking clangor of a sickly bell, rattling in my pocket! Frenziedly, I scrabbled at my jacket, unearthing the hellish thing — a cell phone, ringing at the wrong time as always!

“H-hello?” I squeaked into it, eyes locked on the Thing In The Hall.

“Hi, sweetie.” In a demonic deception from beyond the grave, the voice of my beloved taunted me in the typical Chinese water torture of a tinny speaker sponsored by Verizon (its name is Legion!).

“Smalldaughter and I went out trick or treating,” the disembodied voice prattled forth in a queasy approximation of my wife’s typical cheer. “We gave the doggies a meat snack; hope they didn’t make too much of a mess.

“Could you flip the porch light on and get out the candy bowl? We’ll be home in a few minutes.”

“Uh, sure sweetie,” I answered faintly, nearly swooning in my relief as I clawed open the door, reaching into the house to fumble for the switch. It was my own sweet Tucker dog in the hallway, gnawing on leftovers, not the voracious, undead soul-gnasher of doom he had seemed, just moments before, to be.

I opened my house and reached in to snap on the light as Tucker Dog leapt and capered around me, abandoning his soggy treat in a moment of the pure, joyous affection of a good dog for any master. As he did so, the old dog dashed in and stole his meat.

I am safe here, I realized. This is only holiday fun. 

Just then, Tucker hackled up in a ridge that extended all the way down his mastiff tail and sent a deep growl rolling forth into the night. Lowering his Brobdingnagian brow, he shuddered with concentration and pent-up instinct as he stared fixedly out the door to see… what?

Behind me, some dark creature was lurching up the path…