I got up from the couch and began to wander about the room. I went into the woman’s bedroom, saw the children scattered over her like broken puppets. Something drew me to her bathroom, and I went in, cautiously.

I was drawn to the scent of lavender soap. The woman bathed with lavender soap. I had smelled it on her skin; maybe that was the reason for this unconscionable melancholy. Lavender soap. Alice had used lavender soap; so had I, but I had left my last bar of it at Lewis’s, and had not smelled it since.

Slowly I untied my cape and let it fall to the floor. I took off my boots and socks and pants and shirt. My body, lean and white, gleamed in the dimness. I turned on the shower and stepped in, feeling the water wash over me, but gaining no warmth from its heat.

The soap would not lather. It rubbed about my cold skin in a greasy way and would not leave its scent. I scrubbed, with growing desperation, but to no avail. I sank another level into dark depression.

I turned off the water and stepped out, drying off without feeling that I had ever gotten wet. I went through her closet and found fresh black underwear that looked bizarre next to my pure white skin. She also had a black sweater and pair of black silk pants.

I was admiring myself in the mirror when I heard the noise in the kitchen. Automatically I fell to a crouch, the music went up, cloaking me from attention, from view, and as I concentrated on the music, on the pounding of my heart, on scanning the house for intruders, for the cause of the noise, I saw my reflection in the mirror fade.

I was not real.

My subconscious judged the noise to be a natural settling of something, nothing of threat, and I stood in front of the mirror and brought the music up and down and watched my reflection fade in and out. I was no longer a thing of substance. I was no longer real. At some point I had passed over the physical line from life into shadow . . . It was others like me who passed me in the shadows of the night. I must appear to them the very same.

But Daniel—Daniel saw me, didn’t he?

What did Daniel see when he looked at me?

I looked again at the three bodies on the bed.