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room. According to it, the house was at seventy-three degrees.
        We walked back down the hall, and I shut the door to the baby’s room. Then I sat him down on the floor in the kitchen to play while I got some things together. I grabbed his diaper bag and changed his diaper there on the floor. Then I got dressed and rounded up the baby and the dog and took them both out to the car. I strapped the baby into his car seat. The dog sat next to him, tongue lolling, his ears back up, his eyes wide with excitement. Sam loves to ride in the car, but a midnight ride with the baby in tow was something new for him. I started the car and left the engine running so that it would warm up inside. Then I went back into the house.
        When I walked through the door, I gasped. The baby’s train was singing, “Chugga chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.”
        Next to it, the baby’s Elmo doll was chattering in that all-too-recognizable-to-all-parents high-pitched voice, asking me for a hug. And beneath the sound of both, I heard that phantom cell phone beeping in my son’s room.
        “What do you want?” I shouted, staring around the living room. “What the fuck do you want from us?”
        “Can you give me a hug, please?” Elmo asked.
        “Chugga Chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.”
        My hands curled into fists at my sides. “You leave my fucking son alone! Do you hear me? Get the fuck out of here and leave us alone!”
        Everything stopped.
        Somehow, that was even more frightening.
        I grabbed the cat (she was hiding beneath the coffee table and when I picked her up, I felt her little heart hammering against my palm). Then I carried her outside, put her in the car with the dog and the baby, and we drove around for the rest of the night. The baby fell asleep. The dog and the cat rode in silence. I listened to Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory and a Howard Stern re-play and tried to keep my hands from shaking.
        Near dawn, I pulled into my parents’ driveway. It was their day to watch the baby, but normally, I don’t bring him to their house until 8 a.m. It wasn’t even six yet. When Mom asked why we were there so early, I told her that he’d had trouble sleeping and I’d resorted to driving him around all night. It was as close to the truth as I wanted to get.
        I crashed in my old room in a bed that no longer fits me, and when I woke up later, I asked my parents if they’d enjoy it if the baby and I spent the night. They said they would.
        I didn’t go back home until Cassi returned three days later.
        

ENTRY 15
        
        That takes us back up to the present. Or at least a close proximity of the present. After the baby monitor incident, things quieted down again. I still heard the occasional beeping sound. The baby still looked at the top of the driveway and waved hello. I still had the dreams once in a while, and Cassi was still uncomfortable smoking on the deck at night. But the glider didn’t rock anymore, at least, not that I’d seen. There were no floating orbs. No “Chugga Chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.” No Elmo asking me for a hug.
        I didn’t tell anyone about what happened. I didn’t want them to think I was crazy.
        And here we are. When I started writing this diary, I was forty-one, and as I finish it, I’ve been forty-two for a few months. Other than that, not much has changed.
        It is December 19, 2009, and as I type this, the Mid-Atlantic is in the midst of one mean motherfucker of a snowstorm. Earlier, I took a yardstick outside of my office and measured the accumulation. In the non-drift areas, we have twelve inches of snow. The National Weather Service is predicting we could have a lot more. I think they’re right, since the snow shows no signs of abating. On Twitter, Dave Thomas (my sometimes assistant,