I ran back to my room and pulled the .22 from the nightstand drawer.

I walked through the house, peering out into the night. The light in the living room still flickered—growing to a glow almost blinding before plunging the room into darkness. My pupils were in spasm. Any ability to see past the glass was lost. But I could see the kitchen chair—not where I had left it—under the errant light fixture.

“Warren? Come out here, please.”

He crept out from the hall, his blanket over his head and framing his face, like he always used to do. For a moment, he was five years old again, until he came up next to me, eye-to-eye.

“Did you come out here and mess with this light?”

“No.”

“Warren, it’s not safe to mess with shit like this!”

“I didn’t!”

The light blinked out and stayed dark. Warren’s breath sounded in fits, in the rhythm that the light had left behind.

“Mom, I don’t like it here.”

I closed my eyes, let my pupils stretch—and when I opened them again, I could see his silhouette against the dark windows.

Then the light swelled, and he was gone. His bedroom door slammed, and the sound echoed off all that glass like a bell.

***

Sunglasses, again, at breakfast. Still, the light above us blinked, its pattern lost in the flood of sunlight.

I nursed my coffee, rubbed my temples. “I’m just going to take the bulb out. I’ll be careful.”

I climbed onto the chair, screwdriver between my teeth.

The fixture was coated in dust. Cobwebs laced away from it to the textured ceiling.

I handed the screws down to Warren. “Stand back.”

The light flashed in my face as I tugged at the glass dome. It pulled away from the metal base, and then the whole fixture slid out of the ceiling, dropping into my arms. The bulb still blinked as a tide of grey and brown spilled from the hole in the plaster. Warren shouted and stumbled back.

I looked at the puddle of dark particles pooled in the broken fixture—moths. Dead and dry, an army of them collected above the light. “I guess we know why it wasn’t working.” I looked up at the hole in the ceiling. A piece of brown paper stuck out from the attic crawlspace.

I balanced the heavy fixture against my chest and reached up, careful not to brush the exposed wires. I pulled down an old envelope. It was brittle and coated with the dusty fuzz of moth wings. It was sealed, nothing written on the outside. I shoved it into my pocket and heaved the light fixture back up through the hole in the ceiling. The bulb continued to flash, casting momentary light on the roof beams and the drapes of cobweb hanging from them.

I climbed off the chair, feet crunching in the moth husks, all curled into paper crescents.