By the light of the moon

resistance produced by the restraint of electrical current
in the rheostat shrieked through his skull as if it were a
high-speed bone saw. Therefore, he resorted to the desk lamp with
the heavily tinted shade, in which the regular bulb had been
replaced with one of lower wattage.
    Shepherd hadn't worked a puzzle in the dining room in the past
ten years, having moved instead to the table in the kitchen. This
basketful of puppies had been the last jigsaw that he had finished
in this room.
    'Shep is brave,' the standing Shepherd said, but the younger
Shepherd at the table didn't look up.
    Nothing that had happened heretofore had filled Dylan with a
dread as terrible as the anxious fear that now seemed to shrink his
heart. This time what lay ahead of him in the next few minutes was
not unknown, as had been the case with all that had come before
this, but in fact was known too well. He felt himself being swept
toward that known horror as surely as a man in a small rowboat, on
the brink of Niagara, would be helpless to avoid the falls.
    From Jilly: 'Dylan!'
    When he turned to her, she pointed at the floor.
    Under them lay a Persian-style carpet. Around each foot, the
Persian pattern had been blotted out by a glimmering blackness, as
though their shoes rested in pools of ink. This blackness rippled
subtly but continually. When he moved one foot, the inky puddle
moved with it, and the portion of the rug that had seemed to be
stained at once reappeared unmarred.
    A dining-room chair stood near Dylan, and upon touching it, he
saw another ink like stain at once spread out from his hand across
the upholstery, larger than his palm and fingers but conforming to
their shape. He slid his hand back and forth, and the surrounding
black blot slid with it, leaving the fabric immaculate.
    Dylan could feel the chair under his hand, but when he tried to
grip it firmly, the upholstery didn't dimple. Applying greater
force, he attempted to jerk it away from the table – and his
hand passed through the chair as if it were an illusion.
    Or as if he were a ghost with no material substance.
    Aware of Jilly's shock and continuing confusion, Dylan put one
hand on her arm to show her that this inky phenomenon didn't occur
between them, only when they attempted to have an influence upon
their surroundings.
    'The boy at the table,' he told her, 'is Shepherd when he was
ten years old.'
    She seemed to have worked that much out for herself, for she
showed no surprise at this revelation. 'This isn't... some vision
Shep's sharing with us.'
    'No.'
    Her understanding came as a statement rather than a question, as
though she had begun to put the clues together before Dylan
revealed the young puzzle worker's identity: 'We folded not just to
California but also to sometime in the past.'
    'Not just sometime.' His heart sank in dismay, though it wasn't
weighted by an overwhelming peril, for he was reasonably sure that
nothing in this past place could harm them, just as they were
unable to influence anything here; instead, his heart was weighed
down with sorrow, and it sank in a familiar sea of loss. 'Not just
sometime. One night in particular. One awful night.'
    More for Jilly's benefit than to confirm his own perception of
their situation, Dylan stepped to the dining-room table and swept
one arm across it with the intent of spilling the jigsaw puzzle to
the floor. He was unable to disrupt a single piece of the
picture.
    Ten-year-old Shepherd, wrapped in the insulation of autism and
focused intently on a puzzle, might not have reacted to their
voices even if he had heard them. He would have flinched or at
least blinked in surprise, however, at the sight of a man sweeping
an arm across the table, attempting to undo his work. He reacted
not at all.
    'We're essentially invisible here,' Dylan said. 'We can see but
not be seen. We can hear sounds, but we can't be heard. We can
smell the cake. We can feel the warm air coming out of the heating
vent and breathe it, feel the surfaces of objects, but we can't
have an effect on anything.'
    'Are you saying that's how Shepherd wants it?'
    Shepherd continued to watch his younger self give feet to lame
puppies and eyes to those that had been blind.
    'Considering what night this is,' Dylan said, 'that's the last
thing Shepherd would want. He doesn't set the rules. This must be
how Nature wants it, just how it is.'
    Apparently Shepherd could fold them into the past, but only to
walk through it as they would walk through a