I do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own.

Could there be irony crueler than this? How, upon his rescue, the truth had brought him here, to a house for the mad, for only a madman believes what every child knows to be true: There are monsters that lie in wait under our beds.

I don't move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it's become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log.

I'm not encouraged by the silence. I can think of no benign reason for it. I'm afraid we may expect something closer to Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas than a scene from Close Encounters, and we all know how that turned out for the Native Americans.

Good God, man, what is that smell?" He eyed with disgust the doctor's filthy cloak. "Life," answered the doctor.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

It's hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned for.