Lexa's Diary: Tuesday, August 27, 2002

We all went to bed. What happened next is so weird. It was some ungodly hour, nearly morning but still dark, when some sound downstairs woke me up. I grabbed and robe and ran downstairs from my attic room to the next floor, where I saw Seth, who clutched a baseball bat. There was a heavy banging sound somewhere below us. All of a sudden Fiona yelled through the door of her room that Michael just called on her cell phone and said not to open the door. Seth and I ran downstairs.

Beneath the stairs is the door down to the basement. Something was on the other side of that door, clawing to get out. We heard a horrible thudding down the stairs, wood snapping, then shortly thereafter clawing again. Fiona came downstairs at that point, saying she'd called the police. We dragged furniture in front of the door and waited tensely.

The cops were prompt, a man and a woman, Ray and Sarah, I think were their names. Ray shoved back the furniture and opened the basement door. On the back of it were deep claw marks, and the top step was broken, but when he turned the light on, the bulb exploded.

Just then, Sarah, who was outside the house, yelled to her partner. He ran out while we looked out the window. We couldn't see much, but did catch a glimpse of a black shape slinking into the bushes in the dim streetlight.

When Sarah came in the house, she was white as a sheet, her eyes wide and hands shaking. She told us it was some kind of dog, with a cancerous bulge on the side of its head. The basement window was broken in, but the hole seemed much too small for a dog that size.

The cops left after alerting Animal Control, saying they'd patrol the area.

By that time it was getting light outside, and Fiona was about to fix omelettes for us (she makes the best!), when we heard what sounded like hail on the roof.

Nope, not hail.

It was raining tadpoles.