Ian M. Anderson

Three people, one night, a long morning. January 13 & 14, 20--. One of our subjects is 18 months old, dressed in little more than a diaper. Another tries to pray himself to sleep but fails. The third drifts -- like the snow that began to fall around 10:00 the night of the 13th. 9:48pm, 13 January The child heard the popping duct, and she waddled to the nearest register. Her hand touched the warm air. "Hot," she whispered around the opposite middle and index finger. She squatted down to look into the vent cover, but the heat brought water to her eyes and took her breath for a moment. She would have moved away if her feet and legs, which were both uncovered, had wanted to; she put her toes where the metal had warmed and smiled. "Hot," she said. Then she cried for a minute because her stomach rolled and squirmed, there, while the warm air pushed strands of her hair straight back, but it wasn't long enough for tears to come because of it, and her knees rema

Daniel stood on the second floor landing in bare feet. Hidden by the shadows, his head rested on the newel post. Light from below revealed his arms and hands. They hung at his sides. Maybe his eyes were open. Daniel's father looked at him from the bottom of the stairs. He thought the boy's legs were skinny. "I am listening," he said. Back and forth and pressing it down, Daniel rolled his head on the spiraled wood. "They said 'Idiot.' It was quiet, but I heard them laugh and say it." "At the grave?" "I already told you that." An itch developed behind his father's ear, and Daniel saw him reach up and scratch it. He also saw the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his shirt. Now the finger that had scratched behind his ear moved along the bannister, following his hand, and the fingernail caught on a paint chip. Daniel noticed that a flake of white paint fell to the floor. "It was good that you went." "

Stop! Stop it, I said! Hee-haw, hee-haw! No! Don't! What? Are you going to tell? Hee-haw! And the tapping continued -- in the center of my forehead, rapidly, rapidly; turn, slightly, but the tapping -- out of the darkness, from? Where? -- it continued, at first slow and hard, then fast fast, now slow; methodical; cold-cold and wet... Don't drop water on my face! *** The relief of waking, of escaping, was replaced by a full wakefulness: My face was soaked, and a steady dripping from above made me shield my head with my arm and roll out of bed. "No, ah, come on!" A dark spot on the ceiling, a minute crack in the middle -- "A leak?" I swore. Which, I must admit, surprised me even then. Early though it was, I headed to the attic, images of the disaster I might find flashing in my still-murky head. "They said they had it fi-xed." Was that sing-song? Oh, I'm not awake -- this is still a dream. I stopped. Took a breath. "Okay.