He finished plugging in the wires, then reran the movie. The TV screen offered over one hundred times the viewing area of the camera’s LCD. It offered sound as well. The movie began with the rattle of the lawn-ornament cans and Oyv’s barking, but that broke off with a high-pitched squeal just as the last of the clan reached the front of the house. A couple of minutes later the things streaked away. Jack was ready with his finger on the PAUSE button.

“Got ‘em!” he said. He leaned closer to the screen. “But what the hell are they?”

The camera’s image intensification coupled with the speed of the things left little more than amorphous, blurry streaks on the screen, but there was enough resolution to reveal five shapes instead of three in the first batch. He’d missed the other two because they were farther from the camera and hadn’t caught as much light. He could see that the three in front had slightly curved bodies that reflected light like a shell might; their wings were fuzzy blurs.

“Y’ask me,” Carl said. “They look like flyin’ lobsters.”

Not a bad characterization, Jack thought. But lobsters didn’t fly, so what on earth were these?

Jack felt his neck muscles tighten. On earth…

Nothing on earth can harm you here.

But what if those flying lobsters weren’t from anywhere on earth? What if they were somehow from the Otherness? Semelee had gone down into that sinkhole. Maybe she’d found something down there that she could control like she did the creatures in the Glades.

Jack pulled the rolled-up paper towel out of his jeans pocket and unwrapped the little crystal shard.

“What have you got there?” Dad said.

“Not sure.” He handed it to him on the towel. “Careful. It’s sharp. Ever seen anything like it?”

“I did,” Carl said. “Saw one just like it stickin’ outta the tore-up wood on Miss Mundy’s door. I just figgered it was glass.”

Dad was holding it up, rotating it back and forth in the light. “You know, it almost looks like some weird sort of fang.”

Carl laughed. “Glass teeth! That’s funny!”

Dad lifted the beer bottle he’d been sipping at during the endless weather reports and scratched the fang’s point along the glass. It gave out a faint, high-pitched squeak as it scored the surface.

Dad frowned. “Not glass. Much harder. The only thing I know that can scratch glass like that is a diamond.”

“If it is a tooth,” Jack said, “that means that Anya was attacked by things with diamond teeth.”

They all sat silent for a moment, then Jack restarted the movie. They watched more of the things fly out, then the clan crowd into the house. When they emerged this time he kept freezing the frames but got no better view of what they were carrying than before. What else could it be but Anya?