The woman slept naked, the sheet and blanket wrapped tightly around her husband, leaving her barely enough to cover one leg and one arm. Her body was slim and conditioned, the hair on her head an auburn shade, much lighter than the semen-encrusted hair between her legs. The stench of sex hung thickly in the air. The husband, with dark greasy hair curled around his head and black beard stubble gracing his ample jowls, slept noisily in striped pajamas.

She was beautiful, the woman, just as beautiful as her children. I walked to her side of the bed and played the music for her as I gently touched her, touched the portions of a woman that I had never touched before, never even seen before. I saw her through the eyes of eternity; I stroked her flesh, absorbing the warmth, as I watched her body mature and grow old right before my eyes. I gently tickled, pinched, and probed, and in spite of myself, the music changed and she began to respond.

I knew I was treading dangerous ground, but I felt I had teased my nature beyond any reasonable amount of restraint this night, and I urged her responses, and swallowed as saliva threatened to overflow.

And then I heard the voice. It was my own voice this time, clear and sweet. “Angelina, the dawn is upon us,” and it was true, I could see my own shadow over her as the sky began to lighten.

Reluctantly I pulled back, kissed her lightly on the breast, and vowed to return. I made my way with weakening steps back downstairs, consciousness falling away, willing myself one more minute and one more, cursing myself for being so foolish, and I crawled under the stairs with the dirt and dust and crispy insect carcasses, and I stretched out and slept.

SONJA HARDESTY: “It’s all my fault. Oh God, I knew it was down there in the basement, I knew it. I felt it. I—I almost saw it.

“Okay. From the beginning. Right about when all those murders started happening, I started having these erotic dreams. So did my husband, but not quite as much as I.

“I thought it was some kind of sexual-identity stage I was going through. Al least I hoped it was . . . and yet I thought maybe it was something else too, something real, a physical force that was doing something to me late at night while I slept. I was so scared . . . I would sit at Amy’s bedside for hours and wonder if it was real enough to affect her and Will, and still I hoped it was just me, a stage I was going through, a mid-life crisis or something.

“But all the while, I was kidding myself because I knew about that—that feeling in the basement.