He headed over to the staircase landing and flicked off the downstairs lights and flicked on the upstairs hall light. “Come on, Hound.” Hound obeyed and started up the stairs a little more slowly than he used to, and East followed, a little more slowly than he used to. And the two large creatures lumbered up the stairs. When they reached the second-floor landing, canine and human shuffled into the room East had slept in his whole life. It was a large room with a big picture window that afforded a view of the backyard and, beyond it, the first potato field his parents ever planted.

Hound hauled himself up onto the bed with some help from his owner. East pulled the covers back and his old pup thunked down on his side of the bed and curled up into a dog doughnut. East kissed Hound on the head and pulled the covers over him and wished he could fall asleep as fast as his best friend did. Then he turned his bedside lamp on and went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and then flicked the hall light off and went back into his room.

He was about to get out of his Carhartts and Scotch-plaid flannel and turn off his bedside lamp and slide into his side of the bed—when he found himself drawn to his bedroom window. He stared out the glass pane and had the strangest, strongest feeling that someone was out there. Someone he wanted to know. Or needed to know.

But he couldn’t see anyone—or much of anything, save for his reflection in the glass. So he went over to his bedside lamp and switched it off and went back to the window.

His eyes eventually adjusted to the darkness, and he could make out the silhouettes of the old barn and the Dr. Seuss–like spruce trees in his backyard, and beyond it, the expanse of the old potato field.

And he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was out there.

But he couldn’t see anyone. Which wasn’t too surprising. Because it was dark out there.

And then he shook off the feeling, because why would anyone be out there in the middle of the night in the middle of winter?

So he peeled off his Carhartts and his flannel and went to bed. And lay there for a while. And was cold. Bedrooms in Maine are always cold in winter.

But soon his body heat warmed the bed covers enough that he started to drift off to sleep—but only started. Before he completely fell asleep, he was roused by a strange lightness that seemed to be filling his insides. The lightness made him feel like he had the glow of a welding torch burning inside him. And like he was floating in an inner tube on Echo Lake in the summertime.

It also seemed like it was what made him get out of bed and go to the window and look outside again.