See It to Believe It
On the third day of continuous rain, they had killed so many feisty crabs inside the house that Ezra had to cross his sopping courtyard and throw them back into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it might be due to the stench. It had been a sad world since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single hue of ash-gray and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a horribly common stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Ezra was coming back to the house following throwing the crabs an uncertain distance, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the back of the courtyard. He had to go awfully close to see that it was an old man, a horribly old man, lying with his face in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his large wings. Frightened by that nightmare brought to life, Ezra ran to get Scarlett, his wife...