When I see lightning, it dissolves my knowledge and reason, allowing primal fears to spill into my mind. It was 11:38 when the clock went out. The lights were already off, and I was in bed trying to force myself out of consciousness. To my surprise, it wasn't coming from above the treetops or behind the tall fence, but, apparently, from the middle my backyard, about twenty feet in front of the shed. I was transfixed. It was as if lightning from the four corners of the sky was converging in a spindle-shaped globule of light. No, they weren't converging to form it. They were emanating from it.