I stepped across the hall and into the kitchen.  Instead of heading to the refrigerator or cabinets, I turned left and walked to the window instead.  It was a large view of the entire northern end of the screened-in porch.

I reached the window and looked out, standing quietly.  There was nothing to see as I’d expected.  It was complete darkness.

But as I looked closer, I began to realize there was something different about this view than that afforded by the glass walls of the sunroom.  I could see the furniture on the porch outside.  I could see the screen walls enclosing the entire west side of the house.  I had to strain to see these things, but I could see them nevertheless.  I found that in stark contrast with the sunroom where I was unable to see even the nearest tree that stood only a few feet away from the windows.

How can I see what’s on the porch?  I couldn’t answer my own thought.  All I could tell was that the porch was barely visible in the darkness.

I leaned close to the window as I reached out and turned on the outside lights.  The porch lit up just as I’d expect it to do on a dark night.  The only major difference was that I could see nothing beyond the screen walls.  I would normally be able to see out into the trees and toward the lake, but none of that was visible.  Instead, there was only impenetrable darkness hovering right outside the screen barriers.

Looking to my left and to my right offered no difficulty seeing the porch itself.  Everything appeared normal.  I’d stepped to the window first because my curiosity threatened to drive me insane.  I needed to see the darkness again, to see if it had changed in the short time since I stood so close to the windows in the sunroom.

I hadn’t expected the porch to be visible, yet it was.  I hadn’t expected to be able to see everything on the porch with no difficulty, yet I could.  I knew when I walked into the kitchen that I intended to test the porch lights, but that was based on assuming the porch would be filled with whatever was out there, which it wasn’t.

I stared out the window as my confusion grew by leaps and bounds.  If the darkness is a cloud of some kind, it has to have passed through the screens and be on the porch… but it’s not.  My own thoughts bothered me because they revealed a greater mystery and proved this was no ordinary storm, which I knew but sought to deny.

“Vey?”  Mom’s voice frightened me so completely that I jumped away from the window while letting a small scream escape my lips.

I spun around to face her.  “Mom!  I mean, Mom, you scared me.”

“I noticed.  I’m sorry.  I thought you heard me walk in.”

“I guess I was so wrapped up in what I was looking at that King Kong could have entered the room without me knowing.”  We both laughed uneasily at that.  I felt a bit better knowing my sense of humor hadn’t disappeared, and I felt even better hearing my mother giggle a bit, even if it was tainted with fear and concern.  “What’s up?”

She looked at me closely before her eyes shifted over my shoulder to the window.  “That’s curious.”  She walked across the kitchen to join me.  Her eyes never left the window.  As she stopped next to me, she added, “Now why do you suppose we can see the porch?”

“I wish I knew.  That’s why I came in here.  I wanted to turn the lights on and see if that made a difference in the darkness.  I didn’t have to turn them on to see that it wasn’t inside the screens.  It’s very odd, I know.  If you look closely, you can see it’s just on the other side of the screen walls, but it’s not inside.  I don’t get it.  The porch is clear…”

We stood in silence for a minute looking out into the darkness.  I was certain neither of us could explain what we were seeing.  A cloud should pass right through the screens and fill the porch, yet this hadn’t.  Although I couldn’t see clearly, it was obvious the darkness was pressed against the screens on the outside but was not passing through the porous barrier.

“That’s unnatural,” she finally said.  I remained silent but knew she had only stated what both of us could see.  After another minute she continued speaking.  “Vey, listen.  It’s about Brogan.”

“What’s up, Mom?”

“It’s his eyes.  When I said they weren’t dark, I wasn’t lying, but I wasn’t telling the whole story.”

“I was afraid of that.”  I faced her as she continued staring out the window.  I’d seen the smallest glint of concern when she’d looked into his eye while we watched.  I’d disregarded my impression as nothing more than noticing her increasing concern for her beloved pet.  I was quickly finding out it was more than that.

“Like most animals, dogs generally lose voluntary control of their eye mechanisms when they’re asleep, unconscious, comatose, or disabled in any other way.”  Her voice seemed small.

I continued staring at her although she’d stopped talking.  I didn’t think I liked where she was going, but I needed to know.  I also had a morbid sense of curiosity at that time that made me feel like I was watching a train wreck in slow motion.  Because, like all humans, I couldn’t look away from that metaphorical wreck, I prodded, “And?”

“And, when I looked at Brogan’s eye, it appeared completely normal.  But it was normal only for a dog that’s awake.  He’s not.  Dog’s have a third eyelid under the outside two.  If a dog’s voluntary control is turned off, that eyelid should close.  Both of his are open.  They’re wide open, in fact.”

“I don’t get it, Mom.  What does that mean?  Is he awake?”

“No, he’s not awake.  His eyes don’t respond to light, and I even tried touching them to see if he’d flinch.  He didn’t.  Your father pinched the pads of his feet to see if he’d respond to pain.  Again, he didn’t.”

I could hear my own voice growing more desperate as I said, “Helene mentioned he was twitching like he was dreaming, like he was chasing something in his sleep.  Could those have been seizures instead?”

“It’s possible.  I’m not a vet, you know, and I don’t know everything there is to know about animals.  What I do know is that Brogan’s condition is odd.”

“Could he have had a stroke or aneurysm or something like that?”  I was grasping at straws and I suspected she knew it as well as I did.

“Maybe.  As far as I know though, none of those would explain his condition.  I’m telling you, Vey, something’s wrong with Brogan that goes well beyond any health problem I know about.”

Her words cut me deeply.  Mom was anything but ignorant when it came to animals.  She’d grown up on a farm.  She’d lived on farms almost her whole life.  She knew animals.  She knew animals.

And that meant she knew a lot about their various medical conditions and how to interpret the signs.  If she couldn’t explain Brogan’s state, it was either something so obscure that it was practically unheard of, or it was…  Well, it would have to be something else entirely.

I stared at her for a moment more before turning back to the window and the bizarre situation on the screened-in porch.

[Introduction | Part 8 | Part 10]