By HILLARY FREY

In ''The Ceiling,'' a dark mark in the sky expands to eclipse the moon, the clouds, the sun -- threatening, as it lowers to an altitude ''no higher than a coffee table,'' to destroy an entire town. In ''The Passenger,'' a young man who lives on a jet that never lands tells of his solitary, airborne existence. He had had his mother for company and comfort. But when she died, she was thrown into the sky. ''She had asked that it be so,'' he explains. ''When I die, she told me, let me go -- let me wing my way straight to the ground.'' In the less supernatural ''Apples,'' a boy's Bible teacher is struck and killed by a metal bucket as it crashes through a schoolroom window during a violent rainstorm.

Though more earthbound, ''These Hands,'' which opens the collection, is tied to Brockmeier's other stories by its preoccupation with loss. Lewis, the narrator, vows that he hasn't ''ever, not once'' read Nabokov. But ''These Hands'' is a creepily absurdist rewriting of ''Lolita.'' The 34-year-old storyteller-cum-baby sitter describes his love for Caroline, his 18-month-old charge. She inspires him: ''Caroline chews crayons, red like a fire truck, green like a river, silver like the light from a passing airplane, and there's something in my love for her that speaks this same urge,'' Lewis explains. ''I want to receive the world inside me.''

From the first, we know that Lewis, as he recounts his 144 blissful days with Caroline -- the eroticized bubble baths, the romantic trips to the park, the intimate story hours -- is no longer employed as Caroline's keeper; this only makes every detail of their short history inspire in the reader a not altogether unpleasant sense of anticipation, waiting for the worst. But as Brockmeier reveals the truth of what separated Lewis and Caroline, he throws in a nice twist that feels like relief -- a twist that takes the story beyond quirkiness to real brilliance.

''These Hands'' sets a high bar for the other stories in ''Things That Fall From the Sky'' -- one that those I have mentioned reach, though others do not. ''The Jesus Stories,'' a mock-scholarly account of the ''N. people,'' who believe Jesus will come again once every possible account of his works is told, falls flat. The excessively tidy title story, which concerns a lonely librarian, feels like an exercise from a fiction-writing workshop. ''A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstiltskin'' -- a story about, well, half of Rumpelstiltskin -- is an overly warped attempt to explore feelings of loss; as the fairy-tale figure mourns his missing half, he becomes too unreal. Brockmeier is better at exploring emotions through more recognizable characters.

Take ''The House at the End of the World,'' which closes the collection. In this story, a woman of indeterminate age named Holly recalls her young girlhood, when she lived in the far woods with her father and believed civilization had fallen -- that these two were the only people in the world. She is a hunter, a gatherer, a precocious and helpful child; her life is full. So when Holly's mother shows up to take her daughter back and introduce her to civilization, and Holly tightens her grip on her father's arm, their quiet, illegal, natural existence seems good, magical, preferable -- and the bond between father and daughter unbreakable. The anticipation of loss here is more heartbreaking than the real thing.

But back to that list. Here's another, this one of what you won't find in ''Things That Fall From the Sky'': gimmicks, a thinly disguised Brooklyn, drug use, fashion models, hipster parties, excessive footnotes, ironic detachment. Brockmeier's small, carefully made worlds are like Steven Millhauser's; they are definitely fantastic and, miraculously, utterly human.

Hillary Frey is assistant literary editor of The Nation.