My head throbbed all the way in the back, by my spine.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Huh?” Maggie said.

“What’s going on?”

“What are you talking about?”

A dead cat lay on the sidewalk while a flock of jet-black crows closed in on it from a leafless branch. City Hall’s windows were cracked, and its stone walls were streaked with black as if there had been a fire, even as I could see people inside. The Mount Hope, South Carolina, and U.S. flags flying in front were tattered, almost in ribbons.

“The town had been looking so great and now … this,” I said.

“Now … what?” she responded.

On the street ahead of us crept some creepy animal: short, maybe the size of a large porcupine but without quills or fur. It looked more like an oversize bug, a beetle on steroids with a hard, shiny exoskeleton. It was snuffling in the gutter.

“Okay,” I said. “What the hell is that?”

“What the hell is what?” Maggie asked, exasperated.

“Are you not seeing any of this?” I asked.

“Jordan, I don’t know what you’re seeing these days.”

She leaned her head closer to the windshield, as if doing so might give her a better view of whatever was catching my eye, and then the car banged into an enormous pothole, making a grating noise, like the axle or frame had smashed into the asphalt. It gave us a terrific jolt as well; my seat belt kept me from hitting my head on the car’s low ceiling.

“Yowza,” I said.

“That was some pothole, but I didn’t see anything weird,” she said, looking back at the road.

“It’s right there,” I said, and pointed back toward … a dog. No, that couldn’t be right. Could it?

“That’s a blue heeler, the Perkinses’ dog,” she said after taking a quick look. “They let it roam around without a leash. It’s not a bad dog.”

I watched the animal recede in the side-view mirror and noticed that the road now was clean and free of weeds. Everything seemed normal again, with green leaves in the trees and the lawns all nice and trimmed. The dark veil had been lifted, and the town appeared bright and inviting once more.

“You didn’t notice anything weird for, like, a minute?” I said.

“Aside from what was coming out of your mouth? No.”

I flashed back to the moment after my concussion, when the football field looked ragged and weedy before I woke up to the freshly mown turf and sunshine.

Maggie reached her hand over to my cheek.

“I appreciate that you keep touching my face, but no, I don’t have a fever,” I said.

“Okay, Jordan. Excuse me for worrying.”

“Excused.”

Maggie turned the car onto my street, which still resembled a bomb site. A cleanup crew was hauling away rubble next to the huge dark crater where the Carters’ propane tank had been. My house looked decapitated. The first floor still stood despite the burn streaks, broken glass, and ashy chunks. What had been the second floor and attic was now a charred sunroof.