Carole squats on bare feet in a pool of urine and gives all her calm, her quiet, her sober attention to the flailing thing on the floor. It is Denise but not Denise. It’s a body in motion, motion weird and unnatural, something I’ve never before seen or imagined, but also strangely like something remembered.

It’s like my sister’s dancing skeleton. Cindy got it one Halloween when we were small, a set of plastic bones loosely connected by ligaments of fishing line, hooked at the skull to a Popsicle stick. Cindy shook the stick, and the skeleton danced. Harder she shook it, and wilder it danced. Pinwheel arms. Piston legs. Whipping spine. A ballet of unnatural impossible movements.

Dem bones, dem bones.

But this isn’t a game. This isn’t a toy. These dancing bones are covered with living flesh, and the meat too is dancing, forming chorus lines of convulsions under the skin.

“Let’s get her clear of the cot,” Sue says, and the two counselors pull the flailing body away from the iron frame. They scrunch the pillow under the head and try to keep it there. Thousands of twitches overtake hands, arms, feet, legs, spine, neck. Some explode like volleys of machinegun fire; others click with player-piano precision. Following their own rhythm, the actions seem deliberate, the product of a powerful force.

Is it the Devil, like in Bible Days? No. A devil would look more human. Those eyes stare but don’t see; there’s no spirit behind them. The force must be unconscious. Something like electrical current.

We wait I don’t know how long. I want to yell “stop!” but there’s no one to yell at, nobody shaking a Popsicle stick, so I wait and wonder if her muscles will get exhausted or how it will end. I think the rhythm may be breaking. Yes, it’s winding down. Stopped. Denise is asleep, snoring deep in her chest. Carole drops down to her knees. She hasn’t noticed the pee, I think. Or, wait, yes, she has: She’s purposefully dragging Denise out of it. She stretches Denise’s long limbs, aligns her head on the pillow, and tidies the collar of the pink pajama top. Sue is up, going after the mop. It’s over. The smell of Pine-Sol fills the air.

“Who was it?” Sara repeats. “Denise?”

I nod. I’m shaking.

“You’ve never seen that before, I bet,” she says quietly. “It’s pretty horrifying, no matter how often you see it. Grand mal. ‘Big bad.’ At least they’ve quit using tongue depressors.”

We’re all awake, and reveille has passed unnoticed. Sue and Carole busy themselves with other things. “Put your bathing suits on under your clothes! Swimming today!” Sue chirps.

Not one word about what’s happened. As quietly as I can, I tell Sara, “It looked like she was being elec-trocu-ted.”