I vaguely feel Gisco trying to force potato chips into my mouth. I’m aware of him reaching out to me telepathically: Jack, are you okay? Give some sign if you hear this. Move your fingers or your toes. Jack?

I don’t move. I still have questions for the dog, and I know he has more answers, but I keep silent.

Deep sleep, like slipping into a yawning cavern. Hallucinatory dreams. I see time as a blue river, flowing right by our gondola. There I am as a boy, playing football along its banks, in Hadley Park.

Time twists and suddenly I’m with P.J. at our make-out spot on the night before all my calamities began.

The dark band of river in front of us. A full moon hanging in the sky like a swollen sex gland.

P.J.’s warm, sweet lips on my own. Our hands on each other’s bodies. Our need for each other. Our closeness.

“Not tonight,” she says.

“When?” I ask.

“Soon,” she promises. “Just be patient.” Her face and words fade, and it’s like a door closing.

The door opens and P.J. looks out and screams. She’s in her home in Hadley, staring outside at something truly terrifying on her front steps.

Whatever it is, it yanks her outside. Her feet rise off the front porch, and she starts to fly away.

I call out to her. Reach with my hands. Grab for anything—an ankle, a foot even.

I miss her, but suddenly I’m airborne, too. Ripped skyward, yanked away, to use Gisco’s phrase.

That same out-of-body sensation I felt on the dinghy. I’m pulled out of my own skin. Can’t fight it. The pain is unbearable.

Dragged along on a magical leash.

And then set down, plunk, in a teeming jungle clearing.

A building nearby. Concrete. Terrified voices from inside. Pleading for food and water.

It’s a prison. Squalid. Rank. Suffocatingly hot. People suffering. Men. Women. Kids. Crowded into cells. Their faces pressed to the bars. Their eyes desperate.

I’m beyond them now, moving down a hallway past empty cells. Shackles dangling. Thick, rusting chains on stone floors, like coiled snakes. Who’s imprisoned here? Ghosts?

A light up ahead. Glinting off bars. A solitary cell. One voice, familiar, shrieking in terror. It’s P.J.! Calling my name.

She senses I’m near. Begs me to help.

I see her now. Clothes hanging in rags. Her arms chained above her head. Standing helplessly. Facing the door to her cell.

Fingers unlock it from outside. No, not fingers. Something strange going on. The jailer is not human. A shadow shuffles inside. It’s as big as a piano!