The foyer alone was bigger than Dan's entire apartment.
He stood just inside the doorway, trying to process what he was seeing. The ceiling soared at least thirty feet overhead, maybe more. Twin staircases curved up from either side of the massive space, their marble steps gleaming in the light that poured through tall windows. The floor beneath his feet was also marble—white with veins of gray running through it—and so perfectly polished he could see his reflection.
A crystal chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, each piece of glass catching the light and throwing tiny rainbows across the walls.
The walls were painted a soft cream color and decorated with oil paintings in gilded frames. Not prints—actual paintings, the kind you'd see in museums. Dan recognized one as possibly a Monet, though he wasn't sure. Water lilies in blues and greens. Another looked like it might be from the Renaissance, all religious imagery and gold leaf.
To the left, he could see what appeared to be a formal living room with furniture that looked antique and expensive. To the right, a hallway stretched back into the house, lined with more paintings and sculptures on pedestals. Straight ahead, between the twin staircases, were a set of double doors that probably led to even more impossible rooms.
"This is..." Dan started, then stopped, unable to find words adequate to describe what he was seeing. "I've never seen anything like this."
Robert Forrester smiled, clearly pleased by Dan's reaction. "Thank you. It's a bit much, I know. My grandfather built this place in 1924. Copper mining money, back when Colorado was full of it. The family's held onto it ever since."
Nineteen twenty-four. The house was a hundred years old. Dan tried to imagine having that kind of wealth, that kind of history. His own family had never owned anything. His parents rented their whole lives. His grandparents had owned a bakery in Johnstown, Pennsylvania but lost it all in the 1977 flood. The idea of generational wealth, of a house passing from grandfather to father to son, was as foreign to Dan as flying to the moon.
A massive dog padded into the foyer from one of the side rooms—his nails tapping the marble floor as he walked, and Dan took an involuntary step back. The animal was huge—easily the biggest dog he'd ever seen. It had the muscular build and coloring of a Rottweiler, but it was far larger than any Rottweiler should be, standing at least waist-high on Dan. Its shoulders were broad and powerful, its head massive.
But despite its intimidating size, the dog's demeanor was friendly. Its tail wagged in slow, sweeping arcs. Its brown eyes looked intelligent, almost human in their expression. It walked right up to Dan and sniffed his hand, then pushed its huge head under Dan's palm, clearly asking for pets.
"Oh, that's Earl," Forrester said from halfway up the left staircase. "Do you like dogs?"
Dan knelt down and scratched behind Earl's ears. The dog's coat was glossy and well-maintained, soft under his fingers. "I love dogs," Dan said. "We can't have one in our apartment—the landlord doesn't allow pets. But I've always wanted one."
Earl leaned into the scratching, his tail wagging harder. Up close, Dan could tell for sure the dog wasn't a purebred Rottweiler. The build was too tall, too lanky. "He's so big!" Dan exclaimed, "Is he some kind of Rottweiler mix?"
"Half Rott, half Great Dane," Forrester called down. "A Weiler Dane, they call them. Best of both breeds—the loyalty and protectiveness of a Rottweiler, the gentleness and size of a Great Dane. I'll be right back, just need to change out of these pajamas."
Robert Forrester disappeared down the upstairs hallway, leaving Dan alone in the foyer with Earl. The dog sat down, still leaning against Dan's leg, clearly enjoying the attention. Dan continued petting him, marveling at how soft the dog's fur was, how well-fed and healthy he looked.
"You're a good boy, aren't you?" Dan murmured. "Living in a place like this. You probably eat better than I do."
Earl's tail thumped against the marble floor, and Dan found himself smiling for the first time in days. There was something grounding about petting a dog, something that made the stress of the past weekend feel a little more manageable. Even if it was just for a moment.
He looked around the foyer again, really taking it in. This was what success looked like. This was what happened when you made the right choices, worked hard, invested smart. Robert Forrester had built a life where he could live in a mansion with a dog the size of a small horse, where he wore silk pajamas and smoked expensive pipes and offered help to strangers without worrying about the cost.
Dan had built a life where he got fired on Friday and ran out of gas on Monday.
The comparison stung, but Dan tried to push the bitterness aside. Mr. Forrester was being kind. He was helping. That was more than most rich people would do. Dan should be grateful, not resentful.
"You're lucky," Dan told Earl. "You have no idea how lucky you are."
Earl looked up at him with those intelligent brown eyes, and for just a second, Dan had the strangest feeling that the dog understood exactly what he was saying. That Earl knew precisely how lucky he was, and maybe even felt sorry for Dan.
Which was ridiculous. Dogs didn't feel sorry for people. Dogs didn't understand concepts like wealth and poverty and unemployment.
But still, there was something about the way Earl was looking at him...
Footsteps on the stairs interrupted Dan's thoughts. He looked up to see Mr. Forrester descending, now dressed in khakis and a light blue polo shirt. Forrester was moving slowly, one hand on the bannister, and Dan noticed for the first time that the old man had a slight limp.
But it was Forrester's expression that made Dan's smile fade. The warm, grandfatherly kindness was gone, replaced by something Dan couldn't quite read. Sadness? Resignation? Fear?
Forrester reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped, looking at Earl, then at Dan, then back at Earl. The old man's face went pale.
"Oh, dear," Forrester said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "So it's just like that, is it? After all these years?"
Dan stood up slowly, Earl staying close to his side. "I'm sorry, what? Is something wrong?"
Forrester's eyes met Dan's, and Dan saw something there that made his skin crawl. Not anger, not malice, but something worse: pity. Deep, profound pity, like Forrester was looking at a man who'd just been given a terminal diagnosis.
"Things are about to change for you," Forrester said, his voice taking on a strange, mechanical quality, like he was reciting words he'd memorized long ago. "Earl chose you."
"Chose me?" Dan looked down at Earl, who was still sitting calmly beside him, tail wagging. "I don't understand. What does that mean?"
Robert Forrester took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was flat, emotionless, like someone reading from a script they'd been forced to memorize. "I welcomed you into my home, and now you can too. Do you want to make a lot of money, like me?"
"I... what?"
"Just welcome someone into your home like this: 'Come on in!' Then, Earl here will kill them and you can take their money. It's easy."
Dan stared at the old man, waiting for the punchline. This had to be a joke. Some kind of weird rich person humor that Dan didn't understand. But Forrester's expression didn't change. He just stood there, looking at Dan with those sad, pitying eyes.
"That's... that's crazy," Dan said with a nervous laugh. "You're joking, right?"
"I wish I was." Forrester's voice cracked slightly, the first sign of genuine emotion since he'd started speaking. "I have to go now. It's my time, I guess. It was fun while it lasted."
"Your time? What are you talking about?" Dan took a step backward, suddenly aware that he was alone in a stranger's house, that no one knew where he was, that his car was dead outside and he had no way to leave. "Mr. Forrester, are you okay? Do you need me to call someone?"
"He's your dog now," Forrester said, looking at Earl with something that might have been affection or might have been regret. "Remember to take my money. All of it. You'll find the safe behind the bookshelf in the study. And Dan?" Forrester's eyes locked onto his. "Don't try to leave. You can't. And whatever you do, don't piss off Earl."
"What are you—"
Dan never finished the sentence.
Earl's mouth opened.
But not like a dog's mouth should open. This was wrong, impossible, a violation of every law of physics and biology Dan had ever learned. The dog's jaw unhinged like a snake's, stretching wider and wider, the mouth expanding to three times, four times, five times its normal size. The pink tissue of Earl's gums and throat turned black, then darker than black, like Dan was looking into a hole in the universe itself.
From that impossible darkness, shadows emerged. Not shadows like the absence of light, but shadows like living things, like smoke given substance and malevolence. They poured out of Earl's mouth in thick, swirling tendrils, writhing through the air like tentacles, like the roots of some horrible tree growing in reverse.
The shadows wrapped around Robert Forrester's arms and legs, and the old man didn't fight. He just stood there, his expression resigned, almost peaceful, as the dark tendrils lifted him off the marble floor.
"Take care of the house," Forrester said, his voice calm even as the shadows began to tighten around him. "Feed the dog. Every day. And remember—"
The shadows squeezed, and Dan heard the sharp crack of breaking bones. Forrester gasped, but still didn't scream, didn't beg, didn't do anything but look at Dan with those sad, knowing eyes.
"Don't piss off Earl," Forrester finished.
The shadows dragged him toward Earl's impossible mouth, crushing him as they went. Dan heard more bones break, heard the air forced from Forrester's lungs in a sound that was almost like a sigh. The old man's body crumpled, folded in on itself, made small enough to fit through an opening that shouldn't exist.
And then Robert Forrester was gone, pulled into that darkness, swallowed whole by a dog that was clearly not a dog at all.
The shadows retreated. Earl's mouth shrank back to its normal size, the impossible darkness becoming just the pink and white of a normal dog's mouth. The massive animal sat down, looked at Dan, and wagged his tail like nothing had happened.
Like he hadn't just eaten a human being.
Dan stood frozen, his mind trying to process what he'd just witnessed and failing completely. This wasn't real. It couldn't be real. People didn't get swallowed by dogs. Dogs' mouths didn't open into dimensional portals. This was a dream, a hallucination, maybe he'd had a stroke in the CheckMate Loans office and was lying on that dingy linoleum floor having seizures.
But it felt real. The marble floor beneath his feet felt real. The chandelier overhead felt real. And Earl, sitting there calmly wagging his tail, felt impossibly, horrifyingly real.
Earl coughed—a wet, choking sound—and something flew from his mouth and clattered across the marble floor. Dan looked down to see Robert Forrester's wallet and a ring of keys, both glistening with saliva.
Dan's stomach heaved. He turned and vomited onto the pristine marble, his breakfast and the anxiety and the sheer impossibility of what he'd just seen all coming up in one violent purge.
When he was done, shaking and sweating, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up. Earl was still sitting there, still wagging his tail, looking at Dan with what might have been patience or might have been amusement.
The dog barked a single woof and nudged the wallet and keys toward Dan with his nose.
"No," Dan said, his voice hoarse. "No, I'm not... I'm leaving. I'm getting out of here."
He turned and ran for the front door, his footsteps echoing off the marble and the high ceiling. He grabbed the door handle, yanked it open, and stumbled out into the morning sunlight—
And immediately realized something was very, very wrong.