"If I could only live at that pitch that is near madness. When everything is as it is in my childhood. Violent, vivid, and of infinite possibility." —Richard Eberhart

"Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous." —Nathaniel West

"Before Elvis there was nothing." —John Lennon

Spring is the season when the tulips flower. Summer the season with the longest hour. Fall is the season when the roses bloom. And winter is the dead season, when everything is doomed. —Child's rhyme

I MOVED THE children's beds into our bedroom. I took them out of school and in between assignments I tutor them as best I can. They're always with me now. They have to be. I dress with them, eat with them, and when they go to the bathroom I'm there with them too. Amanda, my daughter, she's six now and it's embarrassing for her with me standing there while she relieves herself. I know it is because it's embarrassing for me but I have to be there. There's nothing I can do about that. I know Maggie won't put up with much more of it. Each day she threatens to leave me and each day I grow stronger in my belief that she will. My wife thinks I'm dangerous. I just can't help that either. I never let the kids out of my sight anymore. Not since I've started seeing Him again.

There was a story my grandmother use to tell me and it was about a dog she owned. I know this seems out of place but it isn't. You see, she had this dog, her name was Inga and Inga was this big german shepherd. Anyway, Inga was more trouble than she was worth. The animal was always getting loose from the yard; chasing kids on bikes, running after cars, attacking the postman, just being a nuisance in general. My grandparents just couldn't keep up with it. So one day my grandfather took the dog in the car and drove out somewhere in the country with it. He opened the door, let Inga out and drove away. Two weeks later the dog had found its way back to my grandparent's house. My grandfather put it in the car again and drove out even further this time, so far in fact that he got himself lost, couldn't find his way back. But Inga did. Four months later, there she was again, her scrawny, tick-ridden body coming through the woods. She wore her battles of the road on her. There were patches of fur missing from all over its body and one of its eyelids had been torn clean off so that the exposed white ball was always open, always staring at you even when the dog would be asleep. Finally, my grandparents put the animal to sleep. They had to, they had no choice. Even then my grandmother wasn't believing it. She told me she held a mirror to its nose to see if there was any breath left because she just didn't believe the dog was dead. But the mirror didn't cloud and they buried Inga right after. Still, my grandmother would not believe it. Because every now and then, sometimes when she woke before morning, sometimes just at bedtime before dark, my grandmother would look out through the woods and see Inga. She swore she saw that pathetic, drawn frame coming stiffly through the trees, that single open eye guiding it like a beacon as it returned from someplace that was further than any drive my grandfather could have taken on this earth.

When I think back to it now, to that time in my childhood, to my grandparent's house, to the fire, to the mountain top in St. Johnsbury, to all those dead memories of that night, it seems none of it could really have happened. At least not the way I remembered it. I was eight when it took place and after it happened my parents took me to every child psychiatrist they could afford. I was hopeless then, shocked out of my mind. It took me nine months even before I could speak again, utter an intelligible syllable. And with all that money and all those professional degrees, all those psychiatrists could do was make me do what I was trying most not to do.

Remember.

That's why I fought Maggie on seeing one again after so long. I guess it was admitting to something I didn't want to. Then, I don't know why, I woke up one morning, got straight out of bed, went to the phone and dialed the number of Maggie's referred shrink. His service picked up, I think it was seven in the morning, and I made an appointment with them to see the doctor that afternoon.

I got there around three. The doctor was a small man in a small office. I sat on the analyst's couch and he did what it had taken me my whole life to undo. Made me remember. For me there was no forgetting. It all came back, everything that had happened that Christmas Eve night. I went straight through it—there was no stopping me once I had started. To tell the whole story maybe I had to guess at certain parts, invent some dialogue, it's been almost twenty-three years, but I know what I told him was pretty close to what actually took place. The man seemed to melt into the woodwork as I jabbered on. The office; the desk, the chair, the books, it all disappeared.

When I had finished five hours had gone by and it was already dark outside. My shoe had unraveled. I felt drained, unborn. I looked over at the doctor in the gloom and though I couldn't make out his face I knew he didn't believe a word I had said. I could have shown him proof; newspaper clippings, court transcripts, but it still would have been useless. Those framed degrees honoris causa behind him were as worthless as the wallpaper they hung on. There was nothing he could do for me. Oh no, he did something. He charged me for only one hour instead of five. I think he realized how useless those diplomas were too.

I never wanted children. I told Maggie that before we were married. But I never told her why until after. That's when she started spiting me. And I think hating me. I know this is true because she told me. Not directly, but it might as well have been to my face. It came out at a party on our tenth wedding anniversary. She was drinking too much, one glass of wine after another, and someone started playing. "Thanks For The Memories" on the piano. All of a sudden I heard Maggie singing along but crooning her own version, singing, "Chanks for the memories..." No one knew what she meant. They all thought the wine was making her slur her words. But I knew it wasn't that. If anything the wine had sharpened her. The exasperations, the taunts, it all made sense to me now. It was the cruelest thing/she could ever say to me and the wine just gave her the courage, to say it. That showed me a darker side to her nature that I never thought existed before. Whose wife was this? She was mine and she hated me. And with perfect clarity and understanding I knew she hated me because I would not give her children.

So I gave her the kids. First David, then Amanda a year later, because I just couldn't live with Maggie's hate anymore.

I wonder if I love my children the way a father is supposed to. I think if I really did love them I would not have given into Maggie and created them. Because that black terror, that familiar terror is still with me. And now I fear for my children's lives as well as my own.

But it's Maggie I fear most for. Because when He comes for her, and I know He's going to, there'll be no way on earth I can stop Him from getting to her.

When I think back on it now, to that time in my childhood, to my grandparent's house, to the fire, to the mountain top in St. Johnsbury, to all those dead memories of that night it seems none of it could have happened. At least not how I remembered it. I can almost get myself to the point of actually believing most of it was pure fabrication on my part, a fairy tale I just never stopped believing in. And I think to myself, maybe it never really did happen. There was an account, I had read about, on a movement which says the Holocaust never happened. They say the Jews in fact, were never persecuted and that they have been riding a wave of cheated sympathies for the last forty years. With all the photographic proof and all the memories of those who survived it, living testimony that six million men, women and children had died, I do not understand how these people can deny the final solution ever took place. You'd have to be crazy, or a fool not to believe what happened, happened.

But I'm not crazy. And I'm no fool. And I'm not denying what happened.

Because it did.