"Don't," the boy said, feeling light-headed. The hand came down again, across his eyes.

"Don't!" It was a command. And while the blow struck, Jeremiah's watering blue eyes locked into his father's, and the lights and colors appeared again. But this time there was a sound along with the colors, a hissing, crackling noise mixed with the orange and yellow of... his father's hair...

"You're on fire," the boy said, astonished.

His father screamed, a wild, mountain yell, and slapped frantically at the too-orange flames on his too-blue flannel shirt.

It's the picture, Jeremiah said to himself. It's not real— yet. He wanted to move— help his father, run away, anything— but he was rooted to the spot. He tried to make the killing picture go away, but he knew it was too late. He couldn't stop.

His mother, alarmed by the screaming, ran onto the porch, a broom in her hand. She dropped the broom, and both her hands flew to her mouth. She was running toward her husband.

"Go away," the boy snapped, but the picture was too strong. With a gasp, she clutched at the place on her skirt where the flames had erupted. His father caught her by the wrist, and they stumbled off together like two giddy dancers engulfed in flame.

It's not real yet...

They were headed for the pond.

It's not real...

Where they drowned.

* * *

"Can't nobody rightly say how it happened," Pap Lewis told the woman from the welfare office a week later at the train station. The woman had come to take Jeremiah to Dover City where, she told him, he would live in a place full of other children who'd lost their parents. Pap Lewis had wanted the boy to live with him and his family, but the welfare office said they were too poor to support another child.

Jeremiah waited quietly as the train steamed up to the platform and the woman took the boy's hand. Pap Lewis gave him a pat on the back and hoisted him up the steps into the train.