Barking. Mad?

I actually was published in a book one time.  I don't know if it was my first published story (or my last), but I once wrote a short piece about a dog barking at something in my house, something I could not see.  It was inspired by something that happened when I was a child (that I think I've told many, many times), and was one of my few brushes with the unknown I remember fondly.

My sister went camping this weekend, and was unwilling to take her yappy little dog with her, so I got saddled with dogsitting.  She didn't ask if this was okay, merely sent me a text that said I was watching the dog and it was already at my place, so have fun.

I have grown pretty intolerant of that dog (who I referred to as an "it" in the last paragraph, but will now refer to as "she" from here on out), since she is old and whines a lot.  I realize that I am not yet old, and whine just as much, but you know how it is.

So, it was around 3:45 in the morning, and I was trying to sleep, when the dog began to bark.  I had left the door to my room open, and got up to investigate.  The little dog was standing at the top of the stairs, barking and growling at something down there, in the darkness.

Well, this gave me pause.  I turned on a light, and the dog stopped barking, but kept growling low in her throat, all the while looking downward.  I went back to my room and got my baseball bat (this I bought it Los Angeles after my apartment was broken into time and time again, and sadly, has never been used for either baseball or beating miscreants).  I walked down the stairs, quietly, telling my imagination to do me the favor of not projecting the image into my mind of a leering old man or a ghostly screaming woman standing there in the dark.

To make a short story shorter, I saw nothing, and no one lurking outside or in the house, or any reason the dog would have to freak out like that.  She doesn't bark at the mailman or thunder or garbage trucks or Jehovah's Witnesses (a pity that), but something at quarter to four in the morning did get her barking.  I'm almost disappointed I don't have a cool, index finger outstretched ending to this tale.  A warning that animals can see or sense more than we can, or that the evil spirits are furious about DOMA being struck down.

But it's better I found nothing, in the long run.

Rish Outfield, Paranormal Ignoricator