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“Will showed me MapQuest has this new feature where you don’t need the address anymore, just a person’s name, and it gives you directions to wherever they are in the continental United States.”
    â€œOh my God,” he said and walked toward Rose to give her a hug.
    â€œNot now Barnacle Bill, there’re some pale creeps coming this way. We just passed them and one lunged for the car. Get in.”
    Hatch got in the front passenger seat and turned toward his sons. He wanted to hug them but they motioned for him to hurry and shut the door. As soon as he did, Rose pulled away from the curb.
    â€œSo, Hatch, you went under?” asked his older son, Will.
    Hatch wished he could explain but couldn’t find the words.
    â€œWhat a pile,” said Ned.
    â€œYeah,” said Will.
    â€œDon’t do it again, Hatch,” said Rose. “Next time we’re not coming for you.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. “I love you all.”
    Rose wasn’t one to admonish more than once. She turned on the radio and changed the subject. “We had the directions, but they were a bitch to follow. At one point I had to cut across two lanes of traffic in the middle of the Holland Tunnel and take a left down a side tunnel that for more than a mile was the pitchest pitch-black.”
    â€œListen to this, Hatch,” said Ned and leaned into the front seat to turn up the radio.
    â€œOh, they’ve been playing this all day,” said Rose. “This young woman soldier was captured by insurgents and they made a video of them cutting her head off.”
    â€œOn the radio, you only get the screams, though,” said Will. “Check it out.”
    The sound, at first, was like from a musical instrument, and then it became human—steady, piercing shrieks in desperate bursts that ended in the gurgle of someone going under.
    Rose changed the channel and the screams came from the new station. She hit the button again and still the same screaming. Hatch turned to look at his family. Their eyes were slightly droopy and they were very pale. Their shoulders were somehow out of whack and their grins were vacant. Rose had a big bump on her forehead and a rash across her neck.
    â€œWatch for the sign for the Holland Tunnel,” she said amid the dying soldier’s screams as they drove on into the dark. Hatch kept careful watch, knowing they’d never find it.

ARIADNE’S MOTHER
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    Her name was Ariadne. She was in her early twenties, and she sat, tilted in her wheelchair, her arms folded up at the elbows and wrists like she was a praying mantis. No matter what happened, she wore an expression of surprise—mouth an “O,” eyes wide, nostrils flaring for air. There was a white diaper on the tray of her chair to be used to wipe the drool from her chin. When I first met her, I asked her to tell me about her writing. A short time passed and then there came a series of breathy and brief high-pitched squeals like some kind of machine giving a warning. I couldn’t make out a word. Her mother, who came with her every week to class, always spoke for her. She told me that Ariadne had been a brilliant writer in high school, had gotten a scholarship to college, and then took ill. I never found out what the disease was. The mother proposed that they sit in the back of the classroom, that the girl dictate to her the essays and stories, and that she would type them for her onto the computer. What could I say? Whenever the girl made noises, I tried to parse out the words but never could. Not so themother—she nodded at Ariadne’s bird song, typing like mad. And the papers, when they were done, were ingenious and grammatically perfect. One was a languorous ghost story in which the spirits of the departed, a mother and daughter, lived a quiet life in an abandoned mansion. By mid-semester, I was certain the girl wasn’t actually speaking at all.

THE NIGHT