A Stranger's House by Bret Lott Page A

next to my bed, a boy and two girls. The boy, the oldest, I knew, stood in the center, the girls at either side. He was five years old—of course he was, I knew—and had a pageboy haircut, the soft, moonlit silver hair falling in straight lines from his crown to his forehead and ears. The girls—the youngestfarthest away, her head just above the edge of the bed—were wearing little white dresses that encircled them like tutus, the sleeves all puffy, the embroidery around the sleeves little flowers of thread even whiter, glowing there in the darkness.
    Of course they were my children. Our children. What we had created.
    I reached to touch them, first the girl closest to me, my middle child. She clasped her hands in front of her as if she were saying prayers. I reached for her, reached, and then she opened her mouth to speak, and what I saw terrified me: her mouth became an empty, black hole, nothing there but black and black, an endless hole off into space, and from that mouth came the sound of wind, dark and cold against my face.
    The other two opened their mouths as well, even the smallest one, my little girl on tiptoe down near the footboard, her hands grasping the edge of the bedspread. Their mouths opened to abysses, black pits, and the wind increased.
    I pulled my hand away, felt a scream form in my throat, but no sound came, my throat hard and taut, as if I’d never breathed before. I tried to scream, to do anything to replace the vast blackness I saw in my children’s faces, but nothing happened, and I brought my hands to my face to cover it, to block out what I saw. But still I saw them, my hands transparent, I imagined, until I saw that my hands had been severed, were merely bandaged stumps. I could feel the sutures beneath the bandages, the black threads laced across my wrists to keep my blood inside.
    Wind filled the room, edges of the sheets lifting up, flapping in the wind, and still my children’s faces were black holes. Now their hair swirled around their heads, the white cotton dresses lifted by the wind, dancing around the girls, dancing on the wind in my room. Then they were in the air, my three children lifted by their own wind, tossed about the room, above my bed, swirling and moving, and they fell in on themselves, disappeared into their own abysses, and were gone, the wind suddenly dead, the room still, empty.
    I screamed, finally, the sound cracking through my head and arms and body and into the room, and I awoke, shot open my eyes.
    I was alone in bed, the room light now, morning.
    I rolled onto my back, looked at the ceiling a moment. I listened, and heard the faint pop and hiss of the coffeemaker in the kitchen, heard Tom moving around in there.
    I lifted my left hand, and looked at the bandage. My hand shook with the dream, the fear still in me. White gauze had been wrapped across the palm and back of my hand, the dressing itself on the back of my hand between thumb and forefinger. It had taken seventeen stitches to sew up the wound.
    I remembered then the drive from the lab in Mr. Gadsen’s van, Sandra in the passenger seat, Will and I in the back, a couple of cages next to us, the smell of animals inescapable. Will held my hand with both of his, applying the pressure as best as he could, and I, still dizzy, leaned against him. Sandra, Will, and I said nothing the entire trip, but Mr. Gadsen had gone on and on, apologizing for the mixup, for the mistake, his voice high-pitched and cracking. From where I sat I could not tell if he were crying or not, but twice he wiped his eyes with the palm of one hand, the other on the wheel, maneuvering us through the campus parking lots and past security gates to the University Health Center.
    â€œI was awake all night,” he said, “awake all night, and I couldn’t sleep because I knew something was wrong. That I knew, I did.” He sniffed. “I knew I’d done something wrong and now, Merciful God, this is