The third night after the midsummer exams, George had the dream again. It was always the same, and it always left him feeling confused afterward. It had come to him often over the last year, ever since his father had disappeared.

In the dream, he saw his father climb through the window of his bedroom, come over next to George and sit down on the edge of his bed. He didn’t say a word, and even though George wanted to cry out, to call his name and jump up and grab him, for some reason he couldn’t speak or move. His father then took George’s right hand into his own hands and silently began writing on George’s palm with his finger. George could never tell what he was writing.

This went on for some time until George’s father abruptly stopped, then walked over and climbed out the window and disappeared, all still without saying a word. After this, George always woke up. He would always jump out of bed and go quickly over to the window, but his father was never in sight.

George had mixed feelings about the dream. Part of him enjoyed it, because it allowed him to spend a few minutes with his father again. But there was also something eerie about it that made George feel uncomfortable. Maybe it was because his father always looked so sad. Or maybe it was the strange, tingly feeling he always felt while his father was writing in his hand, a tingling that was uncomfortable and almost painful.

It was a different kind of tingling than when he held the clear rock he had found by the fallen star. Yet somehow, it was almost the same.

George lay staring at the ceiling for some time after the dream, unable to go back to sleep. The dream had seemed so real. It always did. Had his father really been there? It would be both frightening and comforting if he had.

Suddenly, George noticed that there seemed to be a glowing light radiating from somewhere near the foot of his bed. Fearful yet curious, he sat up and looked over the edge of his bed to where the light was coming from. It seemed to be glowing in his pants pocket. Then George remembered that he had left the rock in his pocket when he went to bed.

Slowly he got out of bed, reached down and pulled the rock from his pocket. It was hot and glowing brightly, but was not too uncomfortable to hold. As soon as he picked it up, George felt strangely drawn to the window of his room. He stood there for several minutes, staring out at the twinkling stars while holding the glowing rock in his palm.

Suddenly, as he was gazing at a particularly bright star, a very strange thing happened. George’s vision seemed to zoom right out into space, as if he were looking through a high powered telescope that was focusing on a distant object with tremendous speed. The bright star he had been looking at grew rapidly larger until George realized with a shock that it was not a star at all. It seemed to be a spacecraft of some sort that was glowing softly in the blackness of space.

It was long and silvery, with numerous protruding arms and devices, like so many tentacles. George’s vision seemed to be zeroing in on a rectangular patch of light that George realized was a window. As his view of the window expanded, the rapid telescoping effect of his vision seemed to slow down, until at last it stopped with the window consuming all of his vision, and blotting out all else.

Inside the window, he saw a dog. At least it looked somewhat like a dog—and yet, it didn’t. The thing had a protruding snout and hairy face like that of a dog or wolf, and slobber was dripping from its protruding fangs. Yet there was something very undoglike in its appearance that George could not identify. The creature was looking to the side, as if looking at or listening to someone or something just beyond the frame of the window that George could not see.

But it was the creature’s eyes that most captivated George as he looked at it. Although they were coal black, they seemed to be lit within by a smoldering fire. There was something frightening and deeply unsettling about those eyes. And as George watched transfixed, the dog creature slowly turned toward him as if it somehow was aware that it was being looked at.

The instant the eyes of the creature met with those of George, he felt a shock of cold leap out at him like a tongue of living flame. With a cry George stumbled back, raising his hand to shield himself from the cruelty that emanated from the creature’s eyes like a black shadow. And in that instant, George was horrified to see his father just behind the creature, his deep, soul-less eyes radiating an unspeakable sense of sadness.

Overwhelmed, George dropped the rock he had been holding. The instant he did so, the vision vanished and he found himself staring out at the starry night once more.

George was shaking and breathing heavily, the horror of what he had just seen still grappling with his mind. Was his father a prisoner of the strange dog-like creature he had seen? Was he in pain? The memory of the soul-less look in his father’s eyes was fixed in George’s mind, torturing him.

George looked down at the strange rock that he had dropped. Its glow was growing dim, and George knew that if he picked it up, it would already be cool to the touch, and would soon turn icy. What was it? Where had it come from? What power did it hold? He shook his head as if to clear it from a fog. He simply didn’t have the answers.

After a time, George gingerly picked up the rock and put it on his dresser, then got back into bed. Now at least he could watch it, to see if it started to glow once more.

It was a long time before George could go to sleep again. When he did, his dreams were troubled with images of slobbering dog-like creatures with eyes of malice, laughing cruelly while controlling his father with puppet strings.