When I woke up this morning the front door was ajar. It was locked and bolted when I went to bed, as you may well imagine given the strange goings on around here lately. As far as I can tell, nothing was taken or disturbed in any way. I've decided not to file a police report. They'd probably just tell me that I'd been mistaken about locking the door. Anyway, given the general moistness of the weather, if somebody had walked into my house they probably would have tracked in at least a leaf or two.
Still, it gives me pause to consider how easily the barriers I erect against the outside world are brushed aside. At least the physical barriers, anyway.
I notice that the spider in the corner benefited from the incident. There were two new shrouded corpses in his web, no doubt unwary wanderers looking for a dry place to spend the night. If insects have any thought processes indentifiable as such, I wonder what their last thoughts were.
The rain has eased up a bit, and now drifts down lazily, almost playfully, like it had all the time in the world. Nobody should ever make the mistake of believing they have all the time in the world.

The cat seems a little more smug than usual this evening. Maybe he's the one who opened the door. Nothing surprises me these days.

It's been pouring outside all day. I asked around at the school if there was any new information about Amy. Nobody has heard anything. Andy wasn't there today either. The other kids were too subdued by the somber mood of the teachers and the fierceness of the weather to sing me any more songs, so I gave up and went home early.
Something isn't right here - beyond the obvious, I mean. I've got the beginnings of another headache sinking its claws into the meat at the base of my skull, and a sick feeling inside which starts at the back of my throat and waterfalls into my gut. The sky spits rain against the back windows, blurring the contours of the trees into dreamy indistinctness.
Why do I feel... why am I certain that little Amy is out there in the woods? How do I know that she is not alone? Why can't I clear my head of these cobwebs? I thought of cobwebs just now because there is a spider up in the corner by the back door. I imagine a town criss-crossed with invisible spider webs. They stretch between old brick buildings and street lights. They wind their way down cluttered alleys. They form a taught mesh in drainage ditches. Every so often, a citizen blunders into one of these sticky strands, and vanishes into memory. Something beyond our sheltered experience, perhaps waiting just beyond the horizon, swells a little and casts aside a husk.
Of course, the spider by the door just eats insects, and is welcome in my house.

To me, one of the saddest things about reading or hearing about any sort of disappearance or disaster is to imagine that last moment of innocence. What was the person (or people) in question thinking right before the roadway collapsed? Or before the man with the gun stepped out of the doorway? Or during that last tick before the time bomb exploded? The thoughts were probably mundane. What am I going to eat for dinner tonight? Did I remember to feed the cat this morning? I wonder if it will rain tomorrow? If foreknowledge was granted, would the thoughts be any loftier?

Amy, wherever you are, know that people are bending their thoughts in your direction. Will it help? Who knows? The human mind is a strange and powerful thing.

Something utterly horrible is happening to somebody somewhere as I sit here staring at the computer monitor. Outside my study window, which faces the backyard, I can see a light drizzle moistening the world. Beyond my small yard, separated from it by the barest of ancient, wooden picket fences, the forest waits silent and gleaming and greener than green.
I wonder at my choice of words just now. I wrote that the forest "waits". Waits for what? For whom?
"For thee, young man!" my inner clown insists.

I had a beautiful dream in which Jen and I were making love in front of the fireplace, bathed in the glow of the flames. Even now I can feel her beneath me and see the pinpoints of flame reflected in her eyes. She has her arms stretched out above her head to brace herself against the hearth. She is so smoothe and perfect, washed in a comforting orange glow. We are each other's worlds in this moment.
...Until it is interrupted by the rattling of a doorknob.
I came awake with the rattling still in my head and my heart throbbing in my ears. I could still hear the rattling - the front door. I felt ice work its way down my back. The rattling went on for another minute or so, then ceased.
By the time I was awake enough to wonder why I was afraid, and had gone to check outside, I could find no one. There was a faint, pleasant smell in the air that caused a sense of deja vu.
Nothing else.
I went in and made coffee. I spent the rest of the day with a bad case of extremely unproductive nervous energy - starting many little tasks and finishing none of them. It's on days like this that I wish my real world and my dream world were reversed. There was no new news on Amy either, although (to be honest) I didn't spend more than fifteen minutes listening to the news.

I woke up with a relentless, pounding headache - like dwarves mining away inside my temples. No work got done today. I tried listening to the radio to occupy myself while the Tylenol kicked in, but had to shut it off after about ten minutes. ...But not before hearing about the missing child. One of the students at Stenbock has not been seen in two days. Police have questioned the resident registered sexual offenders, but "have no leads". I am disgusted with humanity. What kind of monster steals away a child? Is it the same kind of monster who would abuse his or her own child? Is it because children in our society are often treated as property? I am remembering a story I heard once. A woman went to a restaurant with her child, and when he ordered what he wanted, she cut him off and ordered what she wanted him to want. The waitress (a thousand blessings be upon her) brought him what he ordered, which angered the mom to no end. This seems frivolous in light of the news today, but I feel it's all part of the same problem - there's a thin line between those who dehumanize a segment of the population (be it children, women, racial minorities, or anybody else for that matter) and those who take it a step further and prey on people to satisfy some twisted "need" of their own..
I hope they find Amy Sanderson. I hope she's all right both physically and emotionally when she is found. I feel that my hopes are in vain. I curse the monsters of the world.

I had a nice, uneventful walk in the woods yesterday, followed by a dreamless (for once) sleep. The cat is winding his way around my ankles as I write, as if he knows I'm about to mention him. ...or maybe he just wants attention. To cats and kids, attention is attention. It doesn't matter if it's of the negative variety.
The events this morning were a little unsettling, to say the least. The cat brought home another present. This time I got a good look at it. It was a white rat. When I bent down and picked it up, it vanished. I was holding it by the tail when it simply wasn't there anymore. Since I consider myself a denizen of the real world, I spent way too much time looking for it - on the floor, under the little table by the door, out front - places it couldn't possibly have fallen. I finally came to the conclusion that it must have been still alive and that it had run away.
The only problem is that I don't really believe it. I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. The human mind is capable of dismissing the unacceptable; of throwing away the puzzle pieces that don't quite fit. If enough pieces get thrown away, however, one finds that there is no puzzle left to assemble. I'm not sure what that really means... or what to do. Maybe tomorrow will shed new light on the problem.
At the moment, I feel like I'm in some sort of waking dream. I'm listening an old Townes Van Zandt record, and it has just occured to me that I'm listening to a ghost - the sad voice of a man who has passed on. His soul is wrapped up in these songs, and reaches weary fingers into this room to color my emotions. In my present state of mind, I find this truly haunting.