Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

Flexing the muscles in her back, she went to the window to see if flurries had begun to fall ahead of schedule.

The November sky was low, a uniform shade of lead gray, like an immense plastic panel behind which glowed arrays of dull fluorescent tubes.

She fancied that she would have recognized it as a snow sky even if she hadn't heard the forecast. It looked as cold as ice. In that bleak light, the higher woods appeared to be more gray than green.

The backyard and, to the south, the brown fields seemed barren rather than merely dormant in anticipation of the spring.

Although the landscape was nearly as monochromatic as a charcoal drawing, it was beautiful. A different beauty from that which it offered under the warm caress of the sun. Stark, somber, broodingly majestic. She saw a small spot of color to the south, on the cemetery knoll not far from the perimeter of the western rest. Bright red. It was Toby in his new ski suit.

He was standing inside the foot-high fieldstone wall. I should have told him to stay away from there, Heather thought with a twinge of apprehension. Then she wondered at her uneasiness. Why should the cemetery seem any more dangerous to her than the yard immediately outside its boundaries? She didn't believe in ghosts or haunted places.

The boy stood at the grave markers, utterly still. She watched him for a minute, a minute and a half, but he didn't move. For an eight-year-old, who usually had more energy than a nuclear plant, that was an extraordinary period of inactivity. The gray sky settled lower while she watched. The land darkened subtly. Toby stood unmoving.

The arctic air didn't bother Jack-invigorated him, in fact-except that it penetrated especially deeply into the thighbones and scar tissue of his left leg. He did not have to limp, however, as he ascended the hill to the private graveyard. He passed between the four-foot-high stone posts that, gateless, marked the entrance to the burial ground. His breath puffed from his mouth in frosty plumes.

Toby was standing at the foot of the fourth grave in the line of four.

His arms hung straight at his sides, his head was bent, and his eyes were fixed on the headstone. The Frisbee was on the ground beside him.

He breathed so shallowly that he produced only a faint mustache of steam that repeatedly evaporated as each brief exhalation became a soft inhalation… "What's up?" Jack asked.

The boy did not respond.

The nearest headstone, at which Toby stared, was engraved with the name THOMAS FERNANDEZ and the dates of birth and death. Jack didn't need the marker to remind him of the date of death, it was carved on his own memory far deeper than the numbers were cut into the granite before him.

Since they'd arrived Tuesday morning, after staying the night with Paul and Carolyn Youngblood, Jack had been too busy to inspect the private cemetery.

Furthermore, he'd not been eager to stand in front of Tommy's grave, where memories of blood and loss and despair were certain to assail him.

To the left of Tommy's marker was a double stone. It bore the names of his parents-EDUARDO and MARGARITE. Though Eduardo had been in the ground only a few months, Tommy for a year, and Margaret for three years, all of their graves looked freshly dug. The dirt was mounded unevenly, and no grass grew on it, which seemed odd, because the fourth grave was flat and covered with silky brown grass. He could understand that gravediggers might have disturbed the surface of Margarite's plot in order to bury Eduardo's coffin beside hers, but that didn't explain the condition of Tommy's site. Jack made a mental note to ask Paul Youngblood about it.

The last monument, at the head of the only grassy llot, belonged to Stanley Quartermass, patron of them. An inscription in the weathered black stone surprised a chuckle out of Jack when he least expected it.

Here lies Stanley Quartermass dead before his time because he had to work with so damned many actors and writers.

Toby had not moved.

"What're you up to?" Jack asked.

No answer.

He put one hand on Toby's shoulder.

"Son?"

Without shifting his gaze from the tombstone, the boy said, "What're they doing down there?"

"Who? Where?"

"In the ground."

"You mean Tommy and his folks, Mr. Quartermass?"."What're they doing down there?"

There was nothing odd about a child wanting to fully understand death.

It was no less a mystery to the young than to the old. What seemed strange to Jack was the way the question had been phrased.

"Well," he said, "Tommy, his folks, Stanley Quartermass… they aren't really here."

"Yes, they are."

"No, only their bodies are here," Jack said, gently massaging the boy's shoulder.

"Why?"

"Because they were finished with them."

The boy was silent, brooding.

Was he thinking about how close his own father had come to being planted under a similar stone? Maybe enough time had passed since the shooting for Toby to be able to confront things that he'd been repressing.

The mild breeze from out of the northwest stiffened slightly. Jack's hands were cold. He put them in his jacket pockets and said, "Their bodies weren't them, anyway, not the real them."

The conversation took an even stranger turn: "You mean, these weren't their original bodies? These were puppets?"

Frowning, Jack dropped to his knees beside the boy.

"Puppets? That's a peculiar thing to say."

As if in a trance, the boy focused on Tommy's headstone. His gray-blue eyes stared unblinking.

"Toby, are you okay?"

Toby still didn't look at him but said, "Surrogates?"

Jack blinked in surprise.

"Surrogates?"

"Were they?"

"That's a pretty big word. Where'd you hear that?"

Instead of answering him, Toby said, "Why don't they need these bodies any more?".Jack hesitated, then shrugged.

"Well, son, you know why-they were finished with their work in this world."

"This world?"

"They've gone on."

"Wwhere?"

"You've been to Sunday school. You know where."

"No."

"Sure you do."

"No."

"They've gone on to heaven."

"They went on?"

"Yes."

"In what bodies?"

Jack removed his right hand from his jacket pocket and cupped his son's chin.

He turned the boy's head away from the gravestone, so they were eye-to-eye.

"What's wrong, Toby?"

They were face-to-face, inches apart, yet Toby seemed to be looking into the distance, through Jack at some far horizon.

"Toby?"

"In what bodies?"

Jack released the boy's chin, moved one hand back — and forth in front of his face. Not a blink.

His eyes didn't follow the movement of the hand.

"In what bodies?" Toby repeated impatiently.

Something was wrong with the boy. Sudden psychological ailment.

With a catatonic aspect.

Toby said, "In what bodies?"

Jack's heart began to pump hard and fast as he stared into his son's flat, unresponsive eyes, which were no longer windows on a soul but.mirrors to keep out the world.

If it was a psychological problem, there was no doubt about the cause.

They'd been through a traumatic year, enough to drive a grown man-let alone a child-to a breakdown.

But what was the trigger, why now, why here, why after all these many months, during which the poor kid had seemed to cope so well?

"In what bodies?" Toby demanded sharply.

"Come on," Jack said, taking the boy's gloved hand. "Let's go back to the house."

"In what bodies did they go on?"

"Toby, stop this."

"Need to know. Tell me now. Tell me."

"Oh, dear God, don't let this happen."

Still on his knees, Jack said, "Listen, come back to the house with me so we can-" Toby wrenched his hand out of his father's grasp, leaving Jack with the empty glove.