She awoke unknowing. She lay there awhile, still as the lake of her childhood romps on a windless day, mirroring the empty sky. Then she jumped in, disturbing the surface of calm, clear blue, suddenly waking up all the way. They hit her then, the horrors of the day before, the pain -not physical, but visceral, more than real and the devastation of all she had thought to be-.

Her son was gone, she knew it. Taken. From her, from their future. From all the possibilities that had seemed within reach. They hadn’t believed her, said she was having a nervous breakdown, hysteria. An overworked mother claiming her son was taken from her by claws, tentacles, gripping, chameleon-like hands. Crazy, delusional. And they had left.

So. Up to her then. She got up, still dressed as she had been yesterday. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Didn’t even remember drifting off. What now? She’d go back. Get him out of there. Leaving the new creature, the chameleonlike octopus thing in the form of her young son seemingly asleep in (not his, not his) bed, she walked out the door of their rental cabin. Climbed the hill at the other side of the long, verdant yard, to the stone circle atop. There were supposed to be elves here, benign creatures of nature according to lore. When offered a bit of milk, a piece of bread, some honey, they would bless you, maybe make your world a little better, more magical. So she had told her boy, her six-year-old, her heart of hearts, who believed in magic with a fervor unencumbered by reality. She hadn’t believed. Not until she saw them, that night on the screen of her babymonitor. Tentacles, glowing in the dark, viciously barbed. Claws dripping black ooze. A bonewrenching scream, high enough to seemingly split her head in two and her boy, her everything, was gone. She knew. The creature in the bed had looked at her, stared, with eyes shining forth an unholy light. She had called the police and they hadn’t believed her, not for a minute. The recording from the videomonitor showed only static to the officers responding. Impossible. But real. She knew.

Up the hill she walked in bright sunlight, but there was nothing to find, not even a trace of the offering they had so ceremoniously made yesterday. Not a shadow to be seen or otherwordly sound to be heard. Back to the cabin. There he stood, in the doorway. The body of her son, the smell of damp, dank swamp in his hair. Not hers. “Goodmorning mother mine, what’s for breakfast? I feel like I could eat forever!” He ran to her. Held out his hand. Opened his mouth. Too wide, too black. She smelled a foul mixture of rotting plants and babypowder. Saw the little mole she used to kiss disappear under a layer of thorny vines. The last thing she felt as he hugged her, was the sharpness of his teeth.