On a night over two months past, an unexpected summer storm blew over the city and strong winds stirred the shadows in my family’s apartment. As thunder rolled overhead, my husband and I were arguing, money and sex, when we had lost so much of both. From down the hall, our child cried out. We argued a bit more, about my skills as a parent. In the end, I was elected to check on the boy. Mothers are supposed to be comforting, and better at putting children at ease, he said.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, not the argument still waiting to be put to bed for the evening, and nothing in the buttery yellow light of the nursery’s nightlamp. My son was awake, but not fussing, just lying in the crib, his fleece blanket kicked into a bunch in the corner. The window had been cracked open earlier that afternoon and left that way, chilling the room. Trying to make our baby sick, wifey, Munchausen syndrome, is it? I chided myself. I quickly shut the window, and folded my son into the warmth of his chinchilla-soft blanket, running my fingers over the curve of his belly.

It wasn’t until the morning that things seemed wrong. My son, because I didn’t start to think of him as anything otherwise until later, moved differently. That was the first thing that seemed off, somehow. Animals learn to stand, walk, and run quickly after they are born – they must if they are going to survive in the wild. But humans are slow at the start, at the same time vulnerable and secure in their surroundings, because they really aren’t prey to anything but each other. And who would ever hurt a baby? But this creature in the crib didn’t trust me. Eyes the color of terracotta looked at me as if I was a stranger, and he struggled to control his chubby little legs and scoot away from me. As if I would, or had ever, done something to hurt him.

They say that the look of a child is an unstable thing, that what once was an infant’s goldspun down can become the auburn hair of a man, or that babies’ eyes the blue of thunderclouds at birth often darken to a deep brown over time. This, I am told, is normal. But what child changes overnight, is truly different from the one you placed into its bed the night before? What human eyes are the color of rocky red mountains on an unknown shore? My son’s eyes were brown as chocolate syrup and just as sweet, and his hair was never so blond. Wasn’t it?

Nothing could have hurt me more than to see my son turn away from me. No matter what anyone said or what thoughts they barely kept to themselves, it made my chest ache deep inside. I showed my husband what I found beneath the crib that morning after the thunderstorm only because I wanted a logical explanation to make the sinking feeling in my stomach stop so badly. It didn’t, it still hasn’t stopped.

If he did not notice our son’s hair, the eyes, the way they looked at us, there was something my husband could not ignore. A perfect circle of ten mushrooms had pushed up between the boards of the nursery’s oakwood floor, like ten fat toes the color of gray spoiled meat standing at attention.

My husband whistled low and rubbed his eyebrows with his thumb and index finger, his thinking habit. “Probably just water damage, maybe the people downstairs. I’ll bring it up with the landlord.”

He began to break them off of the floor by their stems, his hands dripping greasy brown juice that fell from between his fingers and spattered the floor. The smell was sour and wet, curling in my nose and down the back of my throat until I felt my stomach clench. Our son began to cry, and even my husband looked a little clammy.

“Nasty things, eh?” And that was it, the matter was settled at least for himself. The floors have since been scrubbed clean, but the wood is still dotted with oil stains that have never gone away.

I once hinted at my suspicions about our child, about a month ago, and my husband only looked at me nervously, the words crossing his mind as clearly as if he’d spoken them: post-partum depression. But no one knew my son better than me, who was with him every moment of his waking life. I don’t bring up the strange mushrooms again either, because if anyone ever understood how I think they have anything to do with our son. Their minds are already made up about me. No use making it worse.

Look at the small creature now, standing stock-still in the crib, hands like tiny starfish wrapped around the wooden bars, plotting its escape. If I look out of the corner of my eye, it certainly looks human. But the difference is in the details. I can see the frustration knotting its round little face, not used to being trapped inside such an awkward form.

I am afraid to go near the crib, to pick up the thing that almost looks like my son, but I do. I feed it and coo sugary words into its ear and everyday pretend that everything is okay, just to keep my husband from looking at me like I am the one who is wrong, or crazy, out of place in my own home.

There are other things, too, since that summer night.

See my husband, his legs wrapped in dirty denim splayed out behind the refrigerator, examining the motor because our food has gone bad again.

Watch him curse when he “can’t find his damn car keys” in the morning for the second time this week.

Hear him tell me it’s no surprise we’re always misplacing little things because the stress of a new baby puts your mind on other, more important things.

Look at the way it looks at the night sky, the strange being with the old, alien eyes that I tuck into the bed that used to belong to my son and his precious dreams. Eyes that have never seen a moon, or stars, at least not from this side.

I have dreams, too.

Last night I dreamed I sat in an audience of people I didn’t know, and we were watching a play in the park. I cradled my newborn son, my real son, to my chest and smelled talcum powder and milk, and he smiled at the lady who stood center stage. She wore a beautiful dress, thin and white like clouds, and wilting pink roses crowned her wavy hair, pink as my son’s toothless mouth or the inside of a seashell. I think the play is by Shakespeare, and maybe she’s supposed to be a queen, but she looks way too young for that role. And she can’t remember her lines. I feel sorry for her and when I look down, my son was gone.

In his place was empty air and silence, yawning around me for what seemed like a second and forever at the same time. I felt tiny footsteps on my shoulder, tickling my skin with the barest touch. I swatted at my neck and cheek, my fingers pricked by something sharp, something trapped in my hair. A whisper strokes my ear, and though I cannot decipher the words, wouldn’t even know where to begin the translation, I break down in tears. My hand, after I pulled it away from my face, is red and covered in scratches.

When I woke up this morning the little lie in the crib had died in the night. It left me as suddenly as it had arrived. I stood over the tiny body and wanted to cry. I really did. But I was saving my tears for later, to finally share the weight of my grief with my husband, because I knew my son better than anyone else, and I’ve been mourning his passing for longer, for more than two months, alone.

Though the baby’s hair was so unnaturally, impossibly blond, I ran my fingers through it anyway. It really did look a lot like my son. When I closed my eyes and lifted it from its bed, it certainly felt human.

I stood like that for a spell, my eyes shut and holding the heavy, unmoving bundle, I thought that my shaky breaths and rushing heartbeat were the only signs of life in the too quiet nursery. But beneath the leaden silence, there was a tap at the window, faint, yes, but loud enough to make me look, because I heard the same noise two more times. A dragonfly trying to get inside, but then I looked closer and saw that whatever it was throwing itself against the glass is trying to get out. I knew it before I saw it flit down from the windowpane, the powder blue curtain. It slowed as it approached me so that I could see it clearly, see that it is not an insect at all, not from this close.

Barbed legs dangled from a stick body, almost like an insect, shiny and black like some are, and the beating of iridescent green and blue wings like airy stained glass. From its webbed feet to a head no bigger than a thimble, I know it could fit in my hand, if I weren’t so afraid to touch it. And while I clutched the tiny infant body tighter in my arms, the thing that stood on air had no hands, not quite, just arms that ended like cupped leaves, sunlight nearly shining through the flimsy edges. The face that turned on a spindly neck to look at me was human, but for the clusters of eyes sunken beneath the black, leathery brow, twin silver raspberries that never revealed or reflected any hint of feeling. Its thin-lipped mouth split open and chittered between shiny white teeth.

I never knew what it said, whether it hissed its condolences or a curse. Maybe it offered an apology. But echoing behind my eyes was the thought that whatever had passed between me, my son, the creature that had died in the crib, and the whisper of unnatural words and wings, it was now at its end.

Slowly, I edged my way to the nursery’s window, never taking my eyes off of the tiny floating body as I pushed up the glass and sat on the sill. I watched it fly away, like a speck of dust upon a wind, slowly disappearing above the tops of trees and high-rise buildings.

The chill breeze at my back, I looked around the nursery and decided that there would be more than enough tears left over for me to shed with my husband when he got home.

I watched the circle of mushrooms sprout and unfold in the shadow of the empty crib and cried.