“…he’s right through here,” the doctor said as he swept the pea green curtains away from the bed.

She had been waiting so long to see him again that she hesitated to look. Her mind filled with images of her missing husband. Mrs. Bradford saw him swimming in the ocean beneath the golden sun. She saw him snoring softly on their bed in the silvery moonlight. His smile and uncontrolled laughter invaded her thoughts. The thoughts of his comforting strength, long ago abandoned, were coming back to her with incredible force.

She turned and looked.

The tall powerful man she had expected to see was not there. This man, this thing before her, it was some horrible mockery of her husband’s memory. Almost skeletal in its emaciated thinness, the thing sunk into the sheets as if consumed by them. Its one hand twitched. Its one foot shuddered. Its one eye turned to her. It recognized her and she it. Ragged lips curled into a smile to reveal jagged teeth.

“It’s not him,” she said as she turned away, “I’m so sorry.”