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I could hear Violet moving around directly above me in the loft, the boards creaking, thinking how many nights had I lain here in the dark listening to her movements, hoping she felt what I did, that she might decide to creep down the ladder in the middle of the night and join me in bed. A part of me still didn’t quite believe it was about to happen.

It was cold under the blankets, and I was drawing them up to my chin to keep in the heat when Violet shrieked.

I bolted up.

"Andy!" she screamed.

I jumped out of bed, rushed over to the ladder.

"What’s wrong?" I asked, climbing.

"He’s gone."

I stepped into the loft.

Dark up here and nothing to see except where the firelight reflected off surfaces of metal and glass.

"Who?" I asked, but I understood the moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw Vi leaning over into the crib, shuffling through the blankets.

"Max," she said.

"There’s no way he could have crawled out?"

"He’s four months, Andy. He can’t even roll over."

I turned on a lamp and moved toward her.

"You put him down after supper, right?"

She nodded, wild-eyed, her pupils dilated, chest billowing.

"He went down fast. Ten minutes. Then I came down and we were talking by the fire for what? A couple hours?"

"Yeah."

Vi shook. "This isn’t right, Andy. This isn’t right."

I stepped around the crib toward the only possible exit from the loft—a two-by-two square foot window just under the pitch of the roof.

"Is it open?" she asked.

I knelt down, studied the hasps. "No. But it isn’t locked."

"Was it?"

"I’m ninety percent sure it...fuck."

"What?"

Vi hurried over.

I touched the floorboards.

"They’re wet." A cold, sinking blast of panic ran through me. "Someone was up here while we were down there."

She looked at me, her eyes flooding.

A lump swelling in my throat.

"He’s here, isn’t he? He found us and took my son."

I headed for the ladder.

Immediately, I could tell something was off—a softness in my knees that I realized was numbness.

"I don’t feel right," I said as I reached the ladder and started down.

Through her tears, Violet said, "I’ve been getting more and more lightheaded. I thought it was the wine."

I descended carefully, a tremor in my legs threatening to upend my balance. My mind redlined, the last sixty seconds such a nightmare I wondered if this was really happening. I’d had a dozen dreams in the last year that he’d somehow found us, and every time I’d wake sweating in the night, paralyzed by naked fear until that wash of relief would sweep over me, reality reinstated. I’d go to the kitchen sink, drink a glass of water, and wait for the nerves to recede.

My feet touched the floorboards at the base of the ladder.

Violet still cried hysterically in the loft and the numbness in my legs still grew, and I was still in this horrifying moment, either unable to wake, or worse, there was no nightmare to wake from.

My knees hit the floor beside my bed, and I reached underneath it.

Pulled out the shotgun, but it was too light, too small, and it wasn’t black metal but orange and green plastic.

I stared at the Nerf toy in my hands and said, "What the fuck is happening?"

My voice sounded strange, as if it had been relegated to some alcove in the back of my head. I turned and the room moved slower than the swivel of my head, the firelight leaving trails across my field of vision.

Violet stood at the bottom of the ladder, swaying on her feet.

"He drugged us," I said, and she responded but I couldn’t interpret her words, which dissolved in a swarm of echoes.

I staggered to the front door and pulled it open.

Rain fell through the sphere of illumination cast by the porchlight.

Unflinching darkness beyond.

My breath steamed in the cold, and I could feel the chill on my face, but there was distance from it—a chemical apathy getting stronger by the minute.

I stumbled down the steps into a puddle, the freezing water seeping through my socks, realized I still held fast to the Nerf shotgun. I threw it down in the mud.

My CJ-5 stood just beyond the light’s reach, and I