THE HUNDRED-AND-FORTY-THIRD PAGE

As the lights of the helicopter shone through the skylight, I realized it was time to get from under it.

I’m not certain I can describe what happened next. The sound was beyond horror. It went beyond my ears, flooded my brain, covered my skin, leapt through all my organs at once.

Light, red and white, refracted through my glasses and blinded me in alternating pulses: my vision would adjust from one assault only to be obliterated with the next flash. In the alternate moments of sight, I made it out of the room with neither gun nor flashlight before the skylight glass shattered from above.

The dog blocked my fall on the first staircase, but he could not save me from tumbling down the second to the blackened living room. Uninjured, I picked myself up and groped in the darkness for a familiar object to guide me. I felt a bookshelf, but since they were on all sides of me, I couldn’t tell where I was, so I walked about the perimeter of the room, holding on to the shelves. The hideous display of light was gone, but the sound turned into motion as it resonated through the sounding boards of fiction-crusted walls and the books began to tremble.