Brandon is not sure he's seeing things correctly, so he calls out:
"Hey. Hey, boy. Boy, that you?"
The shape stirs slightly, and lets out a strange gurgling growling noise. It doesn't sound hostile to Brandon, who takes a step closer. Rick is watching all this from the foot of the stairs with amusement.
"Hey, boy," Brandon says, "You all right?"
Then he stops, frozen in place, and Rick looks at him oddly before hopping to his paws and walking up beside him. Brandon had been watching the vague outline of their dog in the corner, thinking it was oddly shaped. Just now, however, when he had called it, the form had done something decidedly un-doggish: it had stood up.
Out of the pink mist came, teetering unsteadily with his arms out at awkward angles, a fourteen-year-old boy.