Just then I hear several sharp clacks, something bouncing and rolling across the floor. A white orb, like a flash-frozen blind cow’s eye, rolls into the laundry room and eventually comes to a stop. It is the cue ball.

The laundry room door, which I left ajar, creaks open a little more, and the shadow steps in.

“I’m going to find you,” he says.

He is holding one of the two remaining pool cues, its dull tip pointed up and the heavier end below. When the light approaches his face, it seems to blur even further until it is no more than a strange white oval.

Julian jabs the cue into a pile of laundry like a javelin and uses it to lift up the crumpled shirts. He comes around to the washing machine and taps the cue against it, three small hard taps with increasing force.

He starts laughing as he hits various objects, laughing at nothing.

I could tackle him, I think. I could burst from this closet and throw myself upon him, wrestle the pool cue free—

But what if he is stronger than his size suggests? What if I am not fast enough, or not strong enough? I am small, yes, perhaps not small enough to be bested by a twelve-year-old, but who is to say?

At last he approaches the closet. He brings the cue up and drags it down the slats, making a staccato sound.

“Auntie,” he whispers into the slats. “Are you in there?”

He can hear my breathing. He must know I am here, even if he cannot see me through the slats of the dark closet, where the moon doesn’t penetrate.

Then, bringing his mouth up close to the nearest opening: “Found you.”

He rips open the closet doors as I lift the camera and hit the shutter, and a bright flash sears the air but does not seem to slow him; he swings the pool cue wide and hard. The stick connects with my shoulder and I cry out at the sting, fold over to my knees on the floor, the camera swinging around my neck. He hits me again on the small of my back; the force nearly puts me flat on my stomach, but I manage to crawl forward, away from the blows as he laughs above me, and reach out for the cue ball. As I do, he lunges forward, stomping where my fingers were only a moment ago, trying to stomp them like he did to those frogs, to that bird, and laughing. When he steps back, I reach out again, swiftly this time.

Before he can bring the stick down on me, I turn over and heave the ball at him like a shot put. To my amazement, it passes through him as if he were no more than smoke, then passes through the window with a great shattering crash. Julian disappears before his laughter does.

The cold moon creeps in upon me through the hole in the window as I lie panting on the floor, feeling a red sting in the places where he hit me.