In the middle of the night there was a knock at the front door. I opened it to find my son in the company of a group of "rescue workers," ordinary men and women with deep, soft, and loving faces. My son was naked except for a dark blue cap that one of them had put on his head. He was moving strangely, as if he had no control over his own muscles. His eves looked as if he were in some sort of trance. I gathered him in my arms, because they told me that touch and hugging would bring him back to normal. Then I looked around for my wife.

They shook their heads sadly, and the care and love radiating from their eyes was such that I was not bereaved but reassured that she would be back soon.

Then I was abruptly transported to another place. I was given to understand that Anne and our son had been found here, hiding. It was a cornfield. just like our son's dream.

At bedtime that night he wanted to talk more about dreams. I did not record our conversation, but he complained of two things. The first one was that when he started to go to sleep, his whole body would tingle and he would feel as if his hair were standing on end. A voice would then ask him about his day. how he felt, and "private things" which he did not wish to discuss with me.

He also complained that he saw a skeleton looking at him when he was trying to relax.

The conversation went as follows:

"A skeleton?"

"Yes, and it keeps staring at me like it was right in front of my face and it won't go away "

"What does it look like?"

"Well, its — oh. It's not a skeleton, it's one of the thin ones that stood around behind the doctors."

"What thin ones?"

"You know, the thin ones that are always saying 'We won't hurt you'? Them. It's not a skeleton, it's one of the thin ants."

The appearance of these people has never been discussed with my son at all, not by anybody, and vet his description of short ones and taller, thin ones is not only consistent with my own observations, it is consistent with the experiences of many of the other people who have encountered the visitors.

He had bought a book of haiku at the Strand used-book store that afternoon, a book entitled A Net of Fireflies. I did not tell him that I had bought the same edition when I was twenty and living with my grandmother, and derived immense pleasure and comfort from it.

He wanted us to read haiku to one another. I read:

With tender impact on the icy air,

The peach-buds burst: their silken petals flare.

He smiled his huge smile and commented, "That was really a lot of pictures for so little words." Then he read: