“You know what? I can’t talk right now—”

“Don’t you want to hear what it’s about? You’ll love this—”

James stopped him. “I’m picking up my—I’m picking up Finn right now. It’s Halloween. So can I call you back tomorrow? Is that cool?” The shrieking got louder. “Doug, you know what? You’re going out on me. This phone is shit. I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks for thinking of me, man.”

Finn had his coat over his panda suit. He was waiting at the door for him, vibrating with excitement.

“Camera!” he called, pointing at the camera. James took his hand. They walked along the street quietly.

After a block, James said: “You know, I used to have a job. That’s a little factoid about me that you may not know.” He cautioned Finn to look both ways at the crosswalk. They continued on.

“I don’t know if I really want that job anymore. But today I was thinking: A camera is a very useful thing. Beautiful even. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather make a movie with. Do you want to make a movie?”

Finn looked up at him and nodded.

“Let’s make a movie,” said James.

All the way home, James took footage of Finn. Finn ran up staircases. Finn sat on a manhole. Finn kicked at leaves. He stopped every few minutes to look at James’s footage, entranced by his own image in the camera’s small window.

But when they got to the park, Finn stopped suddenly.

“What now?” he said.

James put the camera down on a picnic table and stood next to Finn, both caught in the camera’s square eye.

“Now this!” And James beat his chest and began yelling up to the sky. “RARARRARA!” A few trick-or-treaters ran past, giggling, trailed by a mother who glanced at James nervously. James jumped up and down. “RARARARARRR!” he screamed. He made gorilla sounds, scratching his armpits and leaping in the air. Finn looked up at him, grinning. “RARARA!” said Finn. He beat his own small hands against his panda chest and ran around James in circles. “RARARRAR!” he called, too, circling and circling and circling.

Halloween Night

IT HAPPENED BECAUSE the door was open. The sun had just set and the trick-or-treaters arrived immediately, released with the darkness. A baby butterfly in the arms of her father. A trio of Chinese kids on the verge of adolescence who hadn’t bothered with costumes.

“Do a trick,” James demanded. The kids looked at him blankly. Finally, the tallest one began singing “Happy Birthday” in a thick accent. James cut him off.

“Never mind. Forget it.” James handed each of them two miniature chocolate bars from a blue glass bowl.

The doorbell kept ringing. James decided to prop it open with a chair, leaving the bowl of candy on top.

“Ready!” said Finn. It was true. He stood in front of James, arms at his side, grinning broadly, his face shrunken by the fluffiness of the panda hood. The legs hung over the boots, raggedy and odd.

“I’ve got to take a leak. I’ll be right back,” said James.

Finn hopped on the couch and stared out the window at the creatures on parade in the falling dark. James was gone for less than a minute—forty seconds? Thirty seconds? He would be asked for the exact number of seconds several times. He zipped up his fly as he emerged from the bathroom below the stairwell. No, he had not washed his hands, because he was rushing, because he was aware of the boy alone.

“Ready, Freddy? Let’s get some loot!” He emerged into the living room to find the white leather couch empty.

“Finny?” called James. He moved quickly through the rooms, his eyes landing on the open front door. A Spider-Man appeared in the space, his finger on the bell.

James shoved past him and onto the porch.

“Trick—”

“Just take it,” said James. He looked down at a mother on the sidewalk.

“Did you see a panda? I can’t find my—there’s a boy—he’s two—” The woman shook her head.

“Your son?”

James didn’t answer. “He’s in a panda costume—” James said this as he walked backward into the house. “Finn! Finny!” He began opening cupboards, closets. Without hesitating, the woman followed James inside.

“When did you last see him?” she called to James, who had sprinted up the staircase. The woman crouched down, checking under the couch. Spider-Man, a few years older than Finn, opened closets and cupboards, too, following James’s lead.

“I’ll check the basement. Is your wife here?” the woman called up the stairs. James peered down at her, a stranger with a kind, unyielding look, the firmness of a beloved librarian.

“She’s on her way home from work. Yes, yes, check the basement.”

She did that, too—How long? How long these footsteps?—and returned to the main floor.

“Upstairs again,” said James. He led her up to the long, dark floors of the hall, into the white bedroom.

The woman said: “You have a beautiful home. It’s so clean!” Then she put her hands to her mouth. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

“It’s fine.” James had a sensation in his stomach of bread leavening, something expanding, moving up into his chest.

Spider-Man followed, homing in on the guest bedroom that was only half transformed into a child’s room. He picked up Finn’s Moo blanket, twirling it around by the head. Quickly, his mother pulled it from his hand and laid it across the quilt.

“I’m calling my husband,” she said, pulling a cell phone from her jacket.

James nodded. Finn could not be found. The house was stuffed with his absence. James could smell him, peppery and sweet; he could hear him howling outside to come back in, straining at the windows. He put his hands out for his hair, his warm skin—and then dropped them to his sides.

James ran outside, jogged up the street calling: “Finn! Finn!” Small children moved aside, and he leaned down, walking crouched, trying to see their faces, to see through the masks and hoods. None was Finn. James went the other way, south, weeding through the bodies. He was out of breath, sweating in the cold. None was Finn.

James ran back to his porch, certain Finn would be there, waiting, but there was only a man on the front steps, hulking and peering through the open door. Chuckles. Spider-Man clung to his leg.

“My wife called me,” he said.

A stream of fairies and princesses moved up the stairs. The sun had set now; the sky was black. The trick-or-treaters wore bright armbands on their wrists and ankles. Some waved glow sticks, artifacts from parties James had once attended. Spider-Man passed out candy from Ana’s bowl.

James could not meet Chuckles’s eyes. He began to speak, tumbling: “He was here. I went to the bathroom—”

“Do you have a picture?”

James nodded. He floated up to the guest room and took the photo of Finn with Marcus and Sarah that rested on the bedside table, a boy being hugged on both sides by his mother and father. He glanced at it, at the breadth of Finn’s smile. He went into the bedroom and grabbed his camera, too, with the footage from the afternoon.

Chuckles said nothing about the parents in the picture.

“My buddy’s a cop. Hang on.” He dialed his cell phone, speaking into the earpiece that was permanently clipped to his skull like a hearing aid.

On the street, Sandra Pereira, whom James now knew to be Chuckles’s wife, was standing at the center of a circle of adults. Chuckles handed her the photo. They glanced back at James, fear bouncing back and forth between them. They looked focused, ready, as if they had been practicing for this. Sandra returned to James on the porch and drilled him: What was Finn wearing? How tall? How heavy? Where did he like to go?