My wife Alice was upstairs in bed, dying of cancer, but she insisted we put out candy for

Halloween. She hoped to sit by the window and watch the kids and costumes roaming in packs along the streets and coming down our walk.

It made me nervous, her pushing herself out to bed like that, and it didn't like the distractions at the door.

But anything to take a mind of things was worth it.

After a few clusters of kids had come to the door, I brought tea to Alice, and sure enough enough found her in the chair by the open window.

The IV line running from a stand by her bed into her arm was hopefully buying us more time.

She smiled when I placed a warm mug in her hands but kept her attention

outside. We were only in our late 20s. We had been married four years and the last thing we expected was to have our time together

cut so short. A large group of kids were turning down our walk and the doorbell would ring in a moment.

But it was the direction of my wife's attention that caught my eyes.

A solitary child, or what I assumed was a child, standing across the street, watching her house from the window of a stately oak tree.

Have you ever seen something mundane and otherwise normal that completely unnerves you for no apparent reason.

For example, you might be driving through town, thinking about nothing in particular

when an alley you pass makes your blood run cold.

In a reason, just something about it. You might wonder if a terrible thing had once

happened there, or perhaps if you believe in premonitions, you might speculate that something

terrible was destined to happen there at some

point in the future.

There's just a feeling.

I got that feeling looking at the small silhouette across the street.

My instinct was to close the window, coax my wife into bed, and turn off the porch light after this group of trick-or-treaters.

But the doorbell pulled me away.

...