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Everyone thinks the uncanny folk steal children, but they steal adults too, steal their minds and memories, put their own folk where ours used to be. The new folk don’t know their loved ones, don’t know what a toilet is, don’t know how to deposit a check. Of course they don’t. Why would they? They didn’t need any of that, didn’t know any of those people, where they came from.

We all know the changelings wander. They want to go home but don’t know where home is, just that it’s not here, so off they go, shuffling along the sidewalks and into the streets, and we think they’re looking for where they used to live with us, but they aren’t. They’re looking for the other place, the uncanny place.

And so am I, because I want my husband back.

• • • •

Jack used to be smart and funny, an engineer who did calculus to relax and loved woodworking and hated it when I beat him at cards. He used to golf and sail and swim, and he was a great dancer, which made me sad because I have two left feet and I could never keep up with him.

Whatever’s living in his body now can’t walk without shuffling, dragging his feet as if each one weighs a thousand pounds, head bent to stare at the ground so he won’t fall. He holds his pants legs up like a woman holding up the hem of a dress. He can’t do simple arithmetic, doesn’t know what cards are for—he tried to eat one like it was a cracker, until I stopped him—and was about to stick a fork into an electrical socket until I stopped that, too. Finally he started a fire in the kitchen by putting peanut butter on the stove and turning it on, and I couldn’t trust him at home anymore. Now he’s in a memory care unit with a bunch of other changelings, who drool and walk into walls or lie catatonic in bed, who get much worse when the sun goes down, who keep trying to get out.

My best friend Stella says they aren’t changelings, that obviously they’re zombies, but if they’re zombies there’s no way to get them back, so I’m sticking with changelings. The memory-care social worker says it’s our job to remember who they are because they can’t, but whatever’s in Jack’s body now never will. Somewhere my Jack is being held in a strange place, a place he must like no more than his replacement likes it here. Both of them are miserable. Both of them need to return to where they belong.

The aides say I’m one of the only family members who visits. They say it’s too hard for most people to see their loved ones like this, blinking and mumbling and incontinent. It’s hard for me too, but I know this isn’t really Jack. I feel sorry for his changeling, and I try to be kind to him. I hope someone in the uncanny place is being kind to the real Jack.

The aides and nurses who work in memory care are kind, they are, even though there aren’t enough of them and they aren’t paid enough. Places like this can be awful, but I did a lot of research. I looked for the best one, even though it’s farther from our house than some of the others. I visit almost every day, unless I’m sick. I take the longer route instead of the fastest one, because I like to drive through the country, with its cows and horses, to avoid the freeway. The animals remind me that there are still healthy growing things in the world.

Every time I visit, I see the staff being kind. They feed the changelings who can’t eat by themselves, patiently spooning food into their mouths: applesauce and oatmeal, mashed potatoes and ground beef. They change diapers and change sheets and clean up messes. They play patty-cake and sing lullabies and talk to the changelings in soft, calm voices, commenting on the nice dessert the cooks made, or on how pretty someone’s bedspread is, or on the family pictures hanging in the rooms. Each changeling has a private room, and that’s unusual in a place like this, and I’m paying through the nose for it, but these poor creatures deserve a little bit of privacy, one room at least that’s theirs, that maybe they can come to see as home.

The staff never talk about the weather, because that would only make the changelings sad about not being able to leave.

• • • •

Every Tuesday I have coffee with Stella, a double espresso for her and a decaf cappuccino and chocolate muffin for me. We always go to the same cafe, which has a fireplace and rotating exhibits from local artists. Most of the other people in here are university students hunched over laptops. I like it because Jack never came here; it’s always been my and Stella’s place, so it’s one of the few things that doesn’t remind me of him. Everywhere else in town, and certainly in the house, is layered with memories. This is where Jack and I used to walk; this is where we sat to eat dinner; here are the professional offices where we saw dentists and doctors and our accountant and lawyer. The cafe doesn’t have any of that. It’s peaceful.

But Jack’s here anyway, because we talk about him. Stella takes a sip of her espresso and says, come on, Lucy, they aren’t like changelings at all, because changelings get switched out suddenly and this came over Jack gradually, you know it did, you’ve been telling me for years how his memory’s getting worse. You showed me the picture of his brain scan with all that white space, dead brain cells or whatever they were. How could they steal Jack only a little bit at a time, one brain cell at a time, huh? Tell me that.

And I say I don’t know, but the uncanny folk have magic, don’t they? This must be how it works. Maybe they don’t know how to take care of their own folk who are like this, don’t know how to do that as well as we do, so they send them here where we can do it. Or maybe they don’t care about their confused ones any more than so many people here do. Or maybe they make the trades because they need the skills our folk have. Maybe Jack’s building bridges and doing calculus for them in the uncanny place.

The residents are happy here, one of the nurses tells me, really they are, Lucy, at least once they get used to it. They have food and warm beds and games to play, and TV, and people who care about them. You know how hard we work to make them happy, with all the art classes and bingo and music. We love them like our own.

• • • •

The changelings love music, especially old music, and the aides say that’s because it’s the music they listened to when they were young, so it triggers memory. Music does that just about better than anything else, except maybe smell. Scientists have done studies on it.

The residents are almost like their old selves when they hear the music, the aides say, and so there’s always music in the memory care unit: R&B and Big Band and Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Elvis, Judy Collins and Joan Baez, Ella Fitzgerald. The changelings do look happier when the music’s on. They smile more, and some of them even dance a little. I figure the uncanny folk love music too; that’s what all the stories say, anyway. I’m not sure why the changelings would love the same music the folks they replaced did. Maybe it has something to do with the brain cells that are left.

Jack loved Baroque music and Renaissance brass, all that Masterpiece Theater stuff. I bring CDs, but Uncanny Jack doesn’t seem happy even when I play them. If he were happy, he wouldn’t keep hitting his head on the wall and moaning. He wouldn’t keep trying to get out.

• • • •

There are all kinds of locks and codes to get through the doors, or even into the elevators, but sometimes you can take your person outside if you promise to bring them back. Only if they’ve been behaving, though.

Jack, I tell Uncanny Jack—he’s not my Jack, but I don’t know what else to call him—you have to behave. You have to calm down. If you do what they want you to, if you smile and act happy, they’ll let you leave. I’ll tell them I’m bringing you to my house for a party, but really I’ll bring you back home and bring my Jack back home too. Okay?

He can’t really talk, and I can’t tell if he’s nodding. He looks to the side and his eyes go all funny, and he moans, like a cow mooing, and then he starts picking at his clothing and that scares me. My mom did that right before she died, and if Uncanny Jack dies here, I’ll have no way to get my own Jack back.

I reach out to still his hands. He fights me for a minute but then lets me, lets me hold his hands, and he looks at me and he looks very sad.

• • • •

Maybe he understood me, though, because the facility staff’s happier with him for the next few days. They say he seems more accepting of being there. He’s eating better and he doesn’t yell as much, although he still wanders at night, but all of them wander at night, all those poor souls just trying to get back home. They get scared. They cry and yell. I wish I could save all of them, and the folks they were traded for too, but trying to save my own person is a big enough job. I don’t know if I can do it, but I talk to one of the nurses anyway. I tell her it’s Jack’s nephew’s birthday and I’d like him to come to the party.

She purses her lips. Depends where it is, she tells me. A short outing to a park might be okay, or a restaurant, but Jack might get upset if you took him home and then he had to leave again.

Well, I tell her, we can do it in a park if the weather’s good, or in a restaurant if it’s not.

Of course we aren’t doing either of those things. There’s no nephew, no birthday, no party.

A restaurant would be better, another nurse says. Not the right time of year for parks, and that’s true because it’s March, even though it’s warmer than usual. I’m going to break Uncanny Jack out on March 21, the spring equinox, because I’ve heard that kind of date is important to uncanny folk, and even if it isn’t, well, it can’t hurt.

So on March 21 I go to memory care and help an aide get Jack dressed in slacks, and a shirt and a fleecy pullover I brought from home, and a rain slicker, because it’s wet and cold out. We put his feet in socks and real shoes, because he’s been wandering around in slippers. He doesn’t like the shoes and keeps trying to take them off, and I can’t tell if they hurt his feet or just feel unfamiliar, but finally I tell him that we’re going outside and he has to wear the shoes and that quiets him down, so maybe he understands. I can never tell what he understands and what he doesn’t.

He cowers against the rain when we go outside. We get him into the car and he cowers there, too, because he’s tall and the roof’s too close to his head. He whimpers. I can tell he’s scared. We put his seatbelt on and the aide says I have to have him back there in two hours and I say no problem, and I start the car and Uncanny Jack keeps whimpering and I tell him it’s okay, it’s okay, we’re only going to drive for a little bit, and then we’ll be outside again.

Except that I don’t know where we’re going. I ask Jack to show me how to get him back home, to point where the car should go, but he just cowers into his seat and makes little scared noises and covers his eyes, and I feel terrible. I stop the car as soon as we’re a decent distance from the memory care, at a park after all, because the uncanny folk like trees and grass, don’t they? So if there’s a way back home for him, maybe this is the place to look for it.

I make sure his hood is pulled up, and then I undo his seatbelt and get him outside. I was afraid he wouldn’t want to leave the car, or else that he’d bolt and I wouldn’t be able to catch him, but he just stands next to the passenger door, blinking as the rain comes down.

I take his hand. I’m taking you home now, I tell him, but you have to show me where that is. He starts off nicely enough, holding my hand like he’s five, our arms swinging, water dripping down our rain parkas. He shuffles the way he always does, but otherwise it’s almost like walking with the real Jack. He heads for a group of trees at the edge of the park, a copse I think they call it, and he walks into the middle of the trees and I follow him and what do you know, there’s a kind of shimmering tunnel in the air and we both walk into it and the rain stops, and it’s warmer, and I hear music and smell flowers.

Uncanny Jack looks happier now. He stands straighter. He smiles. He still shuffles, but faster, hurrying down the tunnel so fast I practically have to run to keep up with him. I’m afraid he’s going to fall, but he doesn’t, and even if he did, the tunnel floor is soft and springy, carpeted with moss, so he probably wouldn’t hurt himself.

Finally the tunnel opens into a clearing. It’s warm and sunny and filled with flowers I’ve never seen before, and strange birds, and there’s a table with all kinds of food on it but I’ve read the stories, so I know not to eat any of that. Uncanny Jack stands and beams and I wonder where my Jack is, the real Jack, but then Uncanny Jack walks off between two trees until I can’t see him anymore, and after a minute or two someone else comes.

It’s my Jack. The real Jack. He sees me and his face lights up and I run to him, but I can’t reach him. No matter how far I go, he’s the same distance away. He’s trying to run towards me, too. Finally we stop and blow each other kisses, and he starts talking and I can hear him, but it’s like a really bad phone connection, soft and crackly. He says he’s so grateful to me for coming for him. He tells me how brave I am, and I ask what they’ve had him doing here and he says dancing mostly, but sometimes math for reasons he doesn’t understand, even though he knows how to do the problems.

I look behind me, worried that the tunnel’s disappeared after all that running, but it’s still there too, still the same distance away. I tell Jack I’m taking him home now, and he stops smiling and says—even more quiet and crackly, so I have to strain to understand him—Lucy, listen, there are rules. You go up and I follow you. You can’t look back.

I feel a chill when he says all that, because I’ve read that story, too. So this is hell, I tell him.

For hell, he says, it’s not so bad, except that you aren’t here.

I thought there had to be music in this story. I thought I had to play music and he’d follow it. I’d have brought a portable CD player if I’d known, played some of the Masterpiece Theater music. I try to hum it, to sing it, but Jack makes a face and laughs and says, we both know you’re about as musical as a groundhog. Go on, Lucy. Let’s go home.

I blow him another kiss and he blows one back. I’m desperate to touch him, to hug him, but I guess I can’t until I have him back in our own world. I tell him I love him, and he says he loves me too. Ready? I ask.

Ready.

So I turn around and walk back up the tunnel, and I follow the rules, I do, I don’t look back to make sure he’s following. I think as hard as I can about how happy we’ve been, about all the trips we’ve taken and things we’ve done together, the pets we’ve loved, the meals we’ve enjoyed. I listen, and I hear footsteps behind me, and I square my shoulders and keep going. When the footsteps turn into shuffling and become less steady, it’s all I can do not to turn around, but I follow the rules. I don’t look. I walk out into my own world, into the rainy park, and I keep walking until I hear someone walking behind me, shuffle shuffle.

Why is he shuffling again? Why?

It must be safe to turn around now. We’re out of the tunnel. So I turn, but the person behind me is Uncanny Jack, not my Jack. His face is slack and his shoulders droop and I feel a surge of rage because I followed the rules, I did, I did. I didn’t look back!

But then I realize there are two ways to understand that. I didn’t look behind me, but I looked back at who Jack had been, at what we’d done together. I’ve done nothing but look back since Uncanny Jack arrived. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.

And now he’s right in front of me, with that shuffling gait, and he looks lost and miserable. I reach out to take his hand, touching this Jack because the one I want isn’t here, and he hangs on like I’m a life raft. I’m crying, and so is he. Everything hurts, but I know this is the only Jack I have now. “Let’s get you home,” I tell him, and I put my arm around him as we start walking back to the car.