Imagine what the humans of Burden Hill must be thinking. Pets are brutally murdered or randomly go missing, and sometimes humans, including children and teenagers, get brutally killed as well. Considering how the people on the Hill are said to really love their pets, what do they go through whenever they find a pet gone missing, or a family member slaughtered by the Monster of the Week?
During the Demonic Possession in "Lost", the dogs — under the control of the ghosts of drowned puppies and kittens — break into a house, and brutally murder a teenager named David. At first you're horrified that the ghosts of freakin' baby animals would want to do such a thing — until we get a good look at the inside of David's locked bedroom closet. A box of pet collars, syringes, a hunting knife, a roll of duct tape...alongside several boxes of animal skulls, a jar of eyeballs, a jar containing a dead squirrel (or fetal domestic animal), and Polaroids showing bloodied animals. There's also a diagram detailing how to weigh down a box to make it sink, and one of two animals sewn together. David wasn't just drowning animals: he was experimenting with various methods of torturing and killing them, and using the pond to dispose of the evidence.
It also becomes darker when you know that serial killers start out by killing small animals, and they usually keep trophies of their victims. Dying young was probably the best option for this kid.
Tacked up in the closet are several Missing Pet posters; clearly, David's previous victims. However, there's also a page of what looks like pet classifieds, with several boxes crossed out and others circled. Not all of David's victims may have been stolen pets.
One must also wonder what David's parents thought, after discovering not only their son's dead, mutilated body, but his closet of horrors. What's worse, they likely had no idea how disturbed he truly was.
"Stray" resolves with Trixie the ghost dog passing on, eager to reunite with her human family in the afterlife. The later story "The View from the Hill" establishes that (at least according to dog mythos as told by Ben) the dog afterlife is dogs-only. Let's hope Ben was wrong...
