Regardless, I knew I would only get one shot, so I waited and watched with the camera held up to my face. Through the square viewfinder, the room brightened and dimmed as moonlight waves crashed and receded, but the horrific vision did not return and all the pieces I thought fit together no longer matched, but then I remembered the photo of the woman we buried and its hovering, green maybe-it-wasn’t-a-thumbprint blob, and how maybe the idea was to take a picture when nothing obvious was there or happening, and of course, that was how the inexplicable worked, like it had rules to follow too. With no plan beyond applying pressure with my digit, I pressed the shutter button.

The flash went atomic white, detonating the whirring, porcine-like camera screech, and Mercy sat up like a stepped-on rake before I had even pulled the photo out of the camera. I said, “I’m sorry,” I think, or I wanted to, but I was already backing away, and the room had gone pitch-dark, maybe because of the camera flash, maybe not, and Mercy was an amorphous shape sitting on the couch and I couldn’t see her face, and while still backing away her jacket rolled off her. It didn’t roll and formlessly parachute like a sweatshirt you shed when it’s too hot. The shadowed form of the jacket stretched and taffied toward the floor. Instead of a wet thud on impact was the clacking of her punk-band pins, unless it was something else that was clacking, or chittering.