He rose quietly, taking the lantern and his boots and the shotgun from its place beside the door, and descended to the living room. He sat on the stairs to put on his boots, not bothering with the laces; he lit a piece of kindling off the coals of the fire, setting it to the wick of the lantern, and opened the door.

He had expected to find Conroy sleeping on the porch, but it was empty. Raising the lantern to spread its light, Theo stepped down into the yard. No moon or even stars; a damp spring wind was blowing, bearing rain. He lifted his face into the gathering mist, a light spattering on his brow and cheeks. The dog, wherever he’d run off to, would be glad to see him. He’d want to get inside, out of the rain.

“Conroy!” he called. “Conroy, where are you?”

The other houses stood silent. Conroy had never shown more than passing interest in these structures, as if, through some dog sense, he knew them to be of no value. There were things inside, the man and the woman made use of them, what did it matter to him?

Theo advanced slowly down the trace, the shotgun clenched under one arm while, with the other, he swept the area with the light of his lantern. If it started to rain in earnest, he didn’t think he’d be able to keep the thing lit. That goddamn dog, he thought. Now was not the time for him to run off like this.

“Conroy, damnit, where did you go?”

Theo found him lying at the base of the last house. He knew at once the dog was dead. His slender body was still, his silvery mane drenched in blood.

Then, coming from the house—the sound traveling with an arrow’s swift assurance to pierce his mind with terror—he heard Mausami scream.

Thirty steps, fifty, a hundred: the lantern was gone, dropped on the ground by Conroy’s body, he was racing through the dark in his unlaced boots, first one and then the other launching off his feet. He hit the porch at a leap, ripped open the door, and dashed up the stairs.

The bedroom was empty.

He tore through the house, calling her name. No sign of a struggle; Maus and the baby had simply vanished. He raced through the kitchen and out the back, just in time to hear her scream again, the sound strangely muted, as if rising toward him through a mile of water.

She was in the barn.

He entered at a dead sprint, bursting through the door, spinning his body to sweep the dark interior with the shotgun. Maus was in the backseat of the old Volvo, clutching the baby to her chest. She was waving frantically, her words muffled by the thickness of the glass.

“Theo, behind you!”