Bad Glass

The pictures weren’t great—the light was too dim, the focus too soft—but I managed to salvage a trio of interesting shots: one taken between the walls, capturing the line of electric blue and that eerie face (the face just barely visible after extensive masking and gamma correction); a wide-angle shot showing the horde of spiders swarming out of the hole, cluttering the surrounding wall; and finally, a close-up of the spider with the human finger. In that last shot, the bizarre subject matter had to make up for a bad angle and weak, muted colors.

After I retired for the night, these static images followed me down into sleep, changing and multiplying in my dreams.

I spent the entire night tweaking dream photos, watching as spiders took life, stepped out of my pictures, and crawled across the computer screen while I tried desperately to capture and freeze them in place with my trackpad. I was trying to create the perfect photograph, I knew, the one that would make me famous, the one that would save me from a life of accounting. But the spiders refused to hold still. And as the night wore on, I grew increasingly frustrated.

When Amanda touched my shoulder, I jolted upright, coming fully awake.

“Shhhhh!” Her pale skin and blond hair glowed in a trickle of predawn violet. “It’s early,” she said. “Everyone’s asleep.”

I nodded and stifled a cough, then scooted up into a sitting position.

I was still camped out on the living-room sofa. The photo of Charlie’s mother had brought the entire house to a screeching halt, filling the rooms with a funereal stillness and putting my move on hold.

It had been a difficult evening. As soon as we got back home from Sherman and Second Avenue, Charlie had retreated to his room upstairs. The rest of us—including Devon, Floyd, and Sabine—had gathered in the living room, unsure how to respond to Charlie’s pain. Should we offer him comfort? Give him time to think and heal? Ultimately, we decided to just let him be.

There was no pot that night and no laughter, and dinner proved a rather subdued affair. After we finished eating, Taylor disappeared upstairs with a plate of food. She stayed up there for the rest of the night.

I, for my part, made my own retreat, cracking open my notebook computer and immersing myself in Photoshop.

“What time is it?” I asked Amanda. My sleep had been fitful, and I was still confused, disoriented. It took me a moment to place my location. Not California … Spokane. The city.

“Seven. Seven-fifteen.” Amanda sat down on the sofa and turned toward the window. In profile, I could see the skin hunched up on her forehead and the worried downward curve of her lips. “Just before sunrise.”

I waited for her to continue. The look on her face was the look of someone staring out over the edge of a building, gathering up the courage to jump.

She took a deep breath. “They were out there again last night,” she said. “The dogs. The wolves. They’re looking for something. They’re doing … something. I know it. I just know.”

“What are they doing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have the specifics, but it’s got to do with the city. It’s got to do with what’s happening here.”

I nodded. There was a certainty to her voice—a desperate, beleaguered certainty. Confronted with that, there was absolutely nothing I could say.

“I have to find them,” she said. “You … you have to help me find them.” She fixed me with sad, pleading eyes; where before I had found innocent, bubbly curiosity, there was now nothing but desperation. She was exhausted. Dispirited. Emotionally drained.

“Okay,” I said. “Just tell me what to do.”

We left the house just as the sun touched the horizon. The day was cold, and our breath hung frozen in the air. I regretted not grabbing my gloves and an extra sweatshirt.

“Why me?” I asked as we headed west on the residential street. “Why didn’t you want to take Mac?”

“He doesn’t see them,” she said, watching her feet. “I’ve dragged him to the window, pointed them out—clear as day—but he just doesn’t see.” She glanced up, fixing me with bright blue eyes. “Christ, I thought I was crazy! I thought I was suffering a psychotic breakdown, seeing things that just weren’t there. But that’s not true, is it? You saw them, too. They’re real … Right?”

“I saw something. A pack of canines. Only different. Their paws …”

At my words, Amanda’s face brightened noticeably, relief breaking through that mask of exhaustion. “Right! Exactly.”

“How many times have you seen them?”

“I don’t know. A couple dozen?” She shrugged. “The first time was at the park, right before the evacuation. I was looking for my own dog, Sasha. She escaped from the backyard—I was living in a house close to the university back then. The city was crazy—everyone confused and terrified, no idea what was going on. But the park was empty. We used to walk there a couple of times a week, Sasha and me, and I figured that that’s where she’d end up.”