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something else the kids might be interested in. She came out with a remote and switched channels until she found Scooby Doo. She told Hugh not to worry, that she would keep an eye on them from her window. He went back through the swinging double doors.
    Emily was lying on a gurney, dressed in one of the flimsy white, blue-speckled gowns they make patients wear in hospitals, the kind that ties in the back. A thin white blanket was drawn up to her chest. Her beefy right forearm was resting across her forehead. A pale green curtain had been drawn around her to give her privacy.
    The moment she saw him, she dropped her arm and sat up, her mouth and eyes open to their limit.
    â€œOh, Hugh, oh God , Hugh!” she said, and her face screwed up as she began to cry. Her arms reached out to him and he bent forward and embraced her, held her close. His hands moved over her back, over the rolls of fat she’d been trying so hard to lose. She pushed away from him and looked up into his eyes. As she spoke, her voice gradually grew louder and louder. “Oh, Hugh, he-he, his face was—he didn’t have—his eyes, Hugh, his eyes !” She stopped talking long enough to sob a couple of times. She gripped his upper arms, squeezed them hard. “He growled at me and, and he made this sound, this high screaming sound, luh-like he was trying to, I don’t know, trying to howl , like some kind of animal , and his eyes, my God, his eyes , they weren’t right , Hugh, something was very wrong with his eyes and his face because it changed, his face, it changed !”
    â€œCalm down, honey, please.”
    Tears rolled down her already moist round cheeks. “And his eyes, there was something wrong with his eyes, they were—”
    â€œ Please , Emily—”
    â€œâ€”silver, his eyes were silver—”
    â€œâ€”calm down, now, okay?”
    â€œâ€”silver, Hugh, oh Jesus , his eyes were silver !”
    The curtain pulled aside and Dr. Lattimer peered around its edge.
    Hugh turned to him. “Doctor, do you have something to calm her down?”
    He nodded, then disappeared.
    Emily continued to babble and cry, her sobs fracturing her words. She went on about hair and eyes and teeth and nails, and Hugh wondered if she’d been attacked by a man or an animal. But she’d been raped—how could an animal rape her?
    The curtain pulled aside again a few minutes later, and a nurse came in with a syringe.
    â€œThis is just some valium, Mrs. Crane,” she said, “to calm you down.”
    â€œNo,” Emily said, “you’ve got to listen to me, this man, he wasn’t a man, he was something else , he was, wait, listen to me!”
    â€œCalm down, honey, and let her give you the shot, okay?” Hugh said.
    The needle went into her inner elbow, the plunger was depressed.
    A moment later, Emily slowly laid back on the gurney, her head on the pillow. Her chest rose and fell with frantic breaths, but those calmed, and she put her right forearm across her forehead again.
    â€œHugh,” she whispered, “he was ... he wasn’t right , he ... he wasn’t human .” She closed her eyes then, and her breaths came evenly, slowly.
    â€œDon’t be alarmed,” the nurse whispered. “She’s been through a lot.”
    Hugh nodded as the nurse left.
    He looked down at his wife and wondered what had happened to make her say such crazy things.
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    2
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    The Naked Corpse
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    The television was on, but Sheriff Farrell Hurley wasn’t watching it—he was reading a collection of essays by Mark Twain. His wife Ella crocheted as she watched a rerun of Law & Order . It was a quarter after ten—almost bedtime.
    At fifty-one, his rust-colored hair was greying and thinning on top. He stood six feet, three inches tall, with a bit of a belly on him. His face was squarish with blue eyes that he’d always thought were a tad too