We found Sadie when she was about a year old. At least, that was our veterinarian’s best guess. She had wandered out of the forest at the edge of our property, her tail wagging furiously. I whistled at her once and she came right over. I gave her a bowl of water and some scraps of meat from our last meal, and before I knew it she was curled up between me and my wife in our bed. We did our due diligence to make sure no one was looking for her. We took her to the shelter to check for a microchip, we put up flyers around town, and we posted on every “lost pet” website we could find. When it became clear that she had been on her own, we decided to officially welcome her to the family. It didn’t take much convincing.

Sadie was a happily anxious dog - the type that would excitedly roll over and pee on herself when meeting another creature. You could tell she liked the idea of being protective, but she wasn’t very good at it. She was always on high alert when we had visitors after dark, but she wasn’t exactly the type of dog to scare away any potential dangers.

Since we lived on the edge of a small town, I never had any strong reservations about letting Sadie enjoy a free-range life. On most mornings, she would eat her breakfast, excuse herself to the forest, and return when the setting sun or her appetite told her it was time to come home for dinner. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good idea; there were coyotes, copperheads, and God knows how many ticks out there. But she was loyal, and she always came back safe and sound. On the rare occasions that she wasn’t home for dinner, I would experience a slight tinge of panic, worrying that she may never come back. I never expected that she would come back twice.

One night last autumn, I crawled into bed next to my wife. I put my hand over the book she was reading and gently pushed it down to her lap. She turned to peer at me over her reading glasses, a look of playful irritation etched across her face.

“Should we look for her?” I asked.

My wife sighed and put her hands together. “It’s a nice night. She’s probably having the time of her life.”

“You’re probably right.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek before resting my head on the pillow.

“Don’t worry about Sadie,” she continued to assure me. “She’s tough. Let’s just enjoy the extra space tonight.” We laughed, and without another word I descended into what was admittedly the best sleep I had gotten in a long, long time.

As a week passed without Sadie’s return, we did a poor job of remaining calm. My wife and I would spend hours each day calling for her from the back patio or splitting up to trudge through the edge of the forest. We left out food and water and dirty laundry that smelled like home, but nothing was working. I found myself once again stapling flyers with her face around town - something that I had hoped I would never have to do again. Then, as if nothing had happened, there she was: standing by the sliding glass door and smiling from ear to ear.

I had been pacing throughout our ranch-style home as I brushed my teeth, dreading another night without my sweet girl. After two nights of her absence, I had begun having nightmares. Sadie, shivering in the woods, cold and alone. Sadie, settling in with another family two states over. Sadie’s mutilated body on the side of the road.

My heart nearly lept out of my chest when I saw her. She hadn’t made a sound yet. She was just standing there, her eyes and mouth opened as wide as I had ever seen them, staring at me through the glass. Her tongue hanged lower than I thought possible. Her collar was missing; it must have slipped off when she was in the woods. I yanked open the door and fell to my knees as my best friend attacked my face with slobbery, stinky kisses.

My wife and I were so excited to have Sadie home that we immediately fired up the grill and threw on two thick chicken breasts. She scarfed them down so quickly that I wasn’t even sure she had chewed them at all.

Moments later, the three of us were crawling into bed when we heard a sound. It was indistinct at first. It could have been a knock on the front door, or the wind knocking something over on the patio. Sadie immediately began to growl while baring all of her teeth. I had never seen her so angry. The hairs on her back stood on end, all the way from her neck to the base of her tail.

Just as I opened the bedroom door to take a look, I heard the sound again. This time, it was more clear: a single tap on the sliding glass door. I rushed back into the bedroom to retrieve the handgun from my nightstand drawer.

“Stay put. Don’t move,” I said to my wife as Sadie bounded off the bed and rushed to the living room.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Probably nothing.” I almost believed myself until Sadie erupted with a series of furious barks.

I carefully made my way through our home, wondering whether we had remembered to lock the door that night. A wave of relief blanketed me as I peeked around the corner to our backdoor. There was another dog, the same size and color as Sadie, standing on our patio. Immediately, I felt glee. Prior to Sadie’s disappearance, I had been trying to convince my wife that we should adopt another dog. She was reluctant, to say the least, but I knew she wouldn’t turn away a scared stray - assuming, of course, that we couldn’t find this one’s rightful home.

Based on her uncharacteristic reaction, Sadie would clearly need to warm up to the idea.

I made my way to the backdoor amidst the snarls and howls coming from my once-timid mutt, and my glee was quickly replaced with nausea. Gazing through the glass door, past my own reflection, I became aware that the new dog wasn’t just Sadie’s size and color - it looked exactly like her.

They had the same silky white coat with the same gray spots, distributed in the same pattern across their identical bodies and faces. The same eye colors: one blue, one brown. The same chipped lower-front tooth.

The same bare necks. Not a collar in sight.

Maybe this one is Sadie, I remember thinking to myself. She sure was acting more like our girl. Her tail, gently wagging, was tucked between her legs. She was clearly frightened by the snarling to my right, but continued to stand her ground, suggesting that she wanted to come inside only slightly more than she wanted to stay outdoors.

“Honey,” I called. “You need to see this.”

My wife joined me in our living room. After a quick, amused remark at their similarities, she took Sadie - or at least, the one who was already inside - into our bedroom and locked her in. I opened the door to welcome our second Sadie, who remained calm but shot me a look of gratitude as she made her way to the kitchen. Sniffing as if to search for a meal, she paced the perimeter of the room with caution. She glanced, maybe knowingly, at the empty dog food dish. I wondered whether she recognized it.

I called out what I thought to be her name. Her ears perked a bit - not enough to confirm any sense of familiarity, but not enough to refute it, either.

When my wife joined me again, we stayed awake for hours discussing our situation.

“Are they sisters? Litter-mates?” she asked.

“They’ve got to be,” I answered. “They’re way, way too similar to be unrelated.”

“Which one is Sadie? How can we tell?”

I paused for a moment to consider the question. “What if neither one is? What if there’s three of them?” We laughed.

Before going to bed that night, I grabbed a Sharpie and drew a smiley face on top of our new visitor’s head.

The following days were challenging for all four of us. Sadie-One remained furious about Sadie-Two, and Sadie-Two remained terrified of Sadie-One. We had dubbed them these names in the order of their appearance at our door. Fearing that the smiley may soon fade, I made a trip to the pet store for new collars: red for One, and blue for Two.

After much debate, my wife and I found ourselves wandering through town, putting up posters with Sadie’s pictures for a third time.

“Even if we do find the owner, what next?” my wife had pleaded. “We can’t let them take either one of them. They could be taking our girl.”

I gestured toward Sadie-Two. “It has to be that one, right? She acts just like Sadie did.”

“Are you kidding?” my wife scoffed. “Don’t you remember how One reacted when she found you? She was so excited. She knew you.”

The girls grew more comfortable - or at least, tolerant - around one another. Sadie-One became less angry, while Sadie-Two became more confident. I found myself hoping that our search would be fruitless. My wife had made a good point: how could we give one of these dogs away without truly knowing which one we had raised? Plus, I had grown to love them both. They were slightly different, and I still strongly suspected that Two was the true Sadie, but I could see elements of my girl in both of them.

Fortunately for us, the posters didn’t generate any good leads. They stayed up for weeks, until the wind and snow had essentially stripped them from the telephone poles, and we only got a few calls. The first one sounded like an older man, speaking in a gruff, raspy voice.

“Get rid of that bitch. She don’t belong here. She-”

I hung up the phone before the man could finish his thought. I had enough on my plate as it was; I didn’t need to deal with crazy townspeople, and God knows we have a few of those in the area.

The rest of the callers were just good Samaritans who recognized Sadie from before her disappearance. “I think she belongs to a young couple out on County Line Road,” they might say. You can probably guess where we lived.

One guy, a former coworker, even called to give me my own phone number - the same one he had just called.

I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t until two weeks had passed that I remembered Sadie had a microchip. The girls were still somewhat unsure of one another, so we drove separately to our vet’s office to have them scanned: Sadie-One in my wife’s car, and Sadie-Two in mine. When both scans turned up nothing, I asked them to try again and again and again until they finally gave up.

“These things migrate sometimes,” Dr. Brennan told us. “It’s rare, but if they get too far under the skin, the scanners won’t pick them up anymore. I’m sorry.” She offered us her pity in the form of a shrug and a frown.

“What does your gut say?” I asked. “You’ve seen her a few times. Which one is the real Sadie?”

She shrugged again. “Your guess is as good as mine. They definitely have the same parents, though. No doubt about that.”

I made my way outside with Sadie-Two while my wife checked out at the front desk with Sadie-One. The girls were still figuring out how to interact with each other in their own home; who knows how they would behave together in a public space. As I waited in the parking lot, puffing on a cigarette, a man approached me. He was a few decades older than me - probably in his late sixties, if I had to guess. He was tall and burly, and wore a gray newsboy cap. Sadie-Two lunged for the man excitedly, wagging her tail and slobbering on herself in her attempts to kiss him. Without so much as a greeting for me or the dog, he pointed through the front door of the veterinary office. My gaze followed his gesture. I saw Sadie-One, standing perfectly still next to my wife and staring at us through the door.

“You need to get her as far away from you as possible,” he said. His voice was like old leather. “There’s something dark there. It ain’t right.” With no other words spoken, he patted me on the back and carried on down the sidewalk to his destination, wherever that may be.

When my wife finished checking out with the receptionist, I told her about the old man. She laughed.

“You hear that, One?” she said, tousling the fur on the dog’s head. “You’re nothing but trouble.”

Weeks turned into months, and our girls were slowly but surely becoming best friends. We were finally starting to feel like a perfect little family - a feeling that was only intensified when my wife surprised me with a positive pregnancy test. Sadie-One and Sadie-Two didn’t take long to figure out what was going on. At night, they would sleep in our bed on opposite sides of my wife, resting their heads on her belly. Their protective instincts grew to levels I had never seen before. If not for their collars, I would have mixed them up every time I left the room.

One night, at around three in the morning, I awoke in my bed with a sharp pain in my chest. My mouth and throat were as dry as they had ever been. A strange taste coated my tongue. Something metallic. Copper, maybe.

I crawled out of bed, careful not to disturb my sleeping wife and dogs, and made my way to the kitchen for some water. I downed three glasses one after the other, drinking so fast that water spilled down my chin and soaked the T-shirt I was wearing. The pain was worsening. I placed a hand across my chest as if to subdue it. The coppery taste in my mouth was getting stronger and stronger as the minutes passed. A faint, low-pitched sound suddenly emanated from the living room.

I peered from the kitchen to see Sadie-One standing by the sliding glass door, staring into the edge of the forest. Her hackles were raised and her entire body was quivering. She was on high alert. The sound I had noticed was her growling: subdued and fearful. Anticipatory.

I joined her by the door, hoping to figure out what was upsetting her so deeply. The forest was still, save for the gentle wavering of the pine trees in the breeze.

After a minute or two, a figure began to emerge from beyond the trees. You could almost sense its arrival before it was even visible. It was a person - light-skinned with long, disheveled hair. It stumbled out of the brush and into our backyard, continuing on a bee line to my backdoor with a determined pace. As it grew nearer, I could see that it was a woman.

The noises coming from Sadie-One grew more frantic. She cycled through a repetition of growls, whimpers, and barks. She didn’t know how to react, but she knew she didn’t like what she saw.

The woman was pale, emaciated, and completely naked. Every one of her ribs jutted out of her torso, sharp as blades. Her skin was covered in dozens of bruises and lacerations. Her eyes were gaunt and almost appeared to be retracted into their sockets. If she weren’t half-dead, she would be beautiful. She stopped just inches shy of the sliding glass door.

She was my wife.

Her eyes offered a silent plea for a moment before she spoke.

“Honey,” she said. Her voice was muffled through the glass. “Oh my God, I found you.”

“How…” I began, turning my head slightly towards the hallway that led to our bedroom door, but careful not to let her leave my peripheral vision.

She reached for the handle and attempted to pull the door open. It didn’t budge. “Please,” she begged. “Let me in.”

I stood still with my mouth agape, unable to move and equally unable to respond. Sadie-Two began barking from the bedroom. Sadie-One was now snarling at the glass.

“I see you found her,” she laughed through tears. “Hi Sadie girl! Mommy missed you. I was out looking for you, but I ended up… somewhere else.”

Sadie-One seemed even angrier now.

“You have to let me in,” she pleaded once more. “There’s something horrible out there. It’s coming.”

The wind had picked up. Her hair blew sideways across her face, obstructing all of its features. The trees were shaking violently now.

“Why are you just standing there? Let me IN!” With her final word, she raised a hand and slapped her palm against the glass. Startled, I took a step back and dropped the glass I was still holding. It shattered onto the floor below.

“Honey,” a voice called out from our bedroom. “What’s going on?”

My wife, the one standing by the door, took a step back. The hair fell away from her face, revealing bulging, terrified eyes.

My freeze response kicked in once again. Despite one dog’s snarls and another’s barks, I heard the unmistakable sound of a drawer opening. My nightstand drawer.

“Is everything okay? I’m coming out there!”