In The Baby Monitor

They are reading by the fire when there’s motion in the baby monitor, he looks up, there is a man standing over their daughter’s crib; he cannot and will never describe the way he shouts nor the way she screams, and they are running up the stairs with a fire poker; when they smash into the room the room is dark and light floods over their shoulders and the room is empty and they realize with thankful sobs their daughter lays in her crib; and so he pulls her from the crib and puts his daughter and her back protected into the corner of the room and tells her to call the police and goes into the hallway screaming for the intruder to leave go please just get out smashing into the hallway bathroom their office the bedroom but finding nothing and screaming into the bedroom bathroom because that’s the only place the intruder could still be but still finding nothing; and he can hear her on the phone with the police and there’s assurance and good creeping into the house perhaps the world and he is leading her down the stairs when he sees the baby monitor on the end table and he can see in the screen that the man is still standing over the crib so he pushes his family outside and looks up the stairs but sees then there in the baby monitor again that the man is picking up the baby and stepping out of the frame.