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closer to home. If you had to let somebody die, o padre mio, who would it be: your own kid or the rest of our town?”
    â€œWould that include my wife and my other child?” Steve asked.
    â€œYes, Dad,” Matt said with a condescending laugh. “Who would you save, Tyler or me?”
    â€œMatthew!” Jocelyn cried. “That’s enough of that.”
    â€œI’d save you both,” Steve said solemnly.
    Tyler grinned. “That’s politically correct, Dad.”
    Just then, Matt leaned back too far on his chair legs. He flapped his arms wildly in an attempt to regain his balance, red sauce flying off his spoon, but the chair fell backward with a crash and Matt rolled onto the floor. Jocelyn jumped up, startling Tyler and causing the GoPro to slip out of his hands and fall into his plate of chicken chow mein. Steve saw that Matt, still with the flexibility of a child, had caught his fall with an outstretched elbow and was giggling hysterically, lying on his back and trying to hold the towel around his waist with one hand.
    â€œLittle bro overboard!” Tyler whooped. He aimed the GoPro down to get a good shot, wiping off the chow mein.
    As if he’d received an electric shock, Matt began shaking: The expression on his face turned into a grimace of horror, he knocked his shin against the table leg, and he uttered a loud cry.
    *   *   *
    FIRST: NO ONE will ever see the images that Tyler’s GoPro is shooting at that moment. That’s unfortunate, because if anyone were to study them they’d be witness to something very odd, perhaps even unsettling—to put it mildly. The images are crystal clear, and images don’t lie. Even though it’s a small camera, the GoPro captures reality at an astonishing sixty frames per second, producing spectacular clips taken from Tyler’s mountain bike racing down Mount Misery, or when he goes snorkeling with his friends in Popolopen Lake, even when the water’s cloudy.
    The images show Jocelyn and Steve staring with bewilderment past their youngest son, still on the floor, and into the living room. In the middle of the image is a spot of congealed noodles and egg yolk. The camera jerks the other way and Matt is no longer lying on the floor; he rights himself with a spastic twist of his body and shrinks back, bumping into the table. Somehow he has managed to keep the towel around his waist. For a moment it feels as though we’re standing on the undulating deck of a ship, for everything we see is slanted, as if the whole dining room has come apart at the seams. Then the picture straightens up, and although the splotch of noodle hides most of our view, we see a gaunt woman making her way through the living room toward the open French doors to the kitchen. Until then, she has stood motionless in Jocelyn’s Limbo, but suddenly she’s right there, as if she has taken pity on the fallen Matt. The dishcloth has slid off her face, and in a fraction of a second—maybe it’s only a couple of frames—we see that her eyes are sewn shut, and so is her mouth. It all happens so fast that it’s over before we know it, but it’s the kind of image that burns itself into your brain, not just long enough to pull us out of our comfort zone but to completely disrupt it.
    Then Steve rushes forward and slides the French doors to the living room shut. Behind the half-translucent stained glass we see the gaunt woman come to a halt. We even hear the slight vibration of the glass as she bumps up against the pane.
    Steve’s good humor has vanished. “Turn that thing off,” he says. “Now.” He’s deadly serious, and although his face is hidden from view (all we can see is his T-shirt and jeans, and the finger of his free hand stabbing at the lens), we can all imagine what it must look like. Then everything goes black.
    *   *   *
    â€œSHE CAME RIGHT for me!” Matt