Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

"Give him to me I want him back!"

"Dad, you're scaring me," the Toby-thing said, trying to tear loose of him.

"You're not my son."

"Dad, please!"

"Stop it! Don't pretend with me-you're not fooling me, for Christ's sake!"

It wrenched free, turned, stumbled to Tommys headstone, and leaned against the granite.

Toppled onto all fours by the force with which the boy broke away from him, Jack said fiercely, "Let him go!"

The boy squealed, jumped as if surprised, and spun to face Jack.

"Dad! What're you doing here?"

He sounded like Toby again.

"Jeer, you scared me!

What're you sneaking in a cemetery for? Boy, that's not funny!" They weren't as close as they had been, but Jack thought the child's eyes no longer seemed strange, Toby peared to see him again.

"Holy Jeer, on your hands and knees, sneaking in a cemetery." The boy was Toby again, all right. The thing that had controlled him was not a good enough actor to be this convincing. Or maybe he had always been Toby. The unnerving possibility of madness and delusion confronted Jack again.

"Are you all right?" he asked, rising onto his knees once more, wiping his palms on his jeans.

"Almost pooped my pants," Toby said, and giggled.

What a marvelous sound. That giggle. Sweet music. Jack clasped his hands to his thighs, squeezing hard, trying to stop shaking.

"What're you…" His voice was quavery. He cleared his throat.

"What are you doing up here?" The boy pointed to the Frisbee on the dead grass. "Wind caught the flying saucer." Remaining on his knees,Jack said, "Come here." Toby was clearly dubious. "Why?"

"Come here, Skipper, just come here."

"You going to bite my neck?"

"What?"

"You going to pretend to bite my neck or do something and scare me again, like sneaking up on me, something weird like that?" Obviously, the boy didn't remember their conversation while he'd been… possessed. His awareness of Jack's arrival in the graveyard began when, startled, he'd spun away from the granite marker. Holding his hands out, arms open, Jack said, "No, I'm not going to do anything like that. Just come here."

Skeptical and cautious, puzzled face framed by the red hood of the ski suit, Toby came to him. Jack gripped the boy by the shoulders, looked into his eyes.

Blue-gray. Clear. No smoky spiral under the color. "What's wrong?"

Toby asked, frowning. "Nothing. It's okay." while first, you and me?

A Frisbee's more fun with. Frisbee tossing, hot chocolate.

Normality hadn't erely returned to the day, it had crashed down like a weight. Jack doubted he could have convinced anyone that he and Toby had so recently been deep in the muddy river of the supernatural.

His own fear and his perception of uncanny forces were fading so rapidly that already he could not quite recall the power of what he'd felt.

Hard gray sky, every scrap of blue chased way beyond the eastern horizon, trees shivering in the frigid breeze, brown grass, velvet shadows, Frisbee games, hot chocolate: the whole world waited for the first spiraling flake of winter, and no aspect of the November day admitted the possibilities of ghosts, disembodied entities, possession, or any other-worldly Compulsively, he pulled the boy close, hugged him.

"Dad?" henomena whatsoever.

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Huh?"

"Good."

"Your heart's really wild," Toby said. "That's all right, I'm okay, everything's okay."

"I'm the one scared poopless. Boy, I sure owe you one!" Jack let go of his son and struggled to his feet. The sweat on his face felt like.a mask of ice. He combed his hair back with his fingers, wiped his face with both hands, and blotted his palms on his jeans. "Let's go back to the house and get some hot chocolate."

Picking up the Frisbee, Toby said, "Can't we play "Can we, Dad?" Toby asked, brandishing the Frisbee. "all right, for a little while. But not here. Not in this…" It would sound so stupid to say not in this graveyard. Might as well segue into one of those grotesque Stepin Fetchit routines from old movies, do a double take and roll his eyes and shag his arms at his sides and howl, Feets don't fail me now.

Instead, he said, "… not so near the woods. Maybe… down there closer to the stables." Carrying the flying-saucer Frisbee, Toby sprinted between the gateless posts, out of the cemetery. "Last one there's a monkey!"

Jack didn't chase after the boy. Hunching his shoulders against the chill wind, thrusting his hands in his pockets, he stared at the four graves, again troubled that only Quartermass's plot was flat and grass-covered. Freakish thoughts flickered in his mind. Scenes from old Boris Karloff movies. Graverobbers and ghouls. Desecration.

Satanic rituals in cemeteries by moonlight. Even considering the experience he'd just had with Toby, his darkest thoughts seemed too fanciful to explain why only one grave of four appeared long undisturbed, however, he told himself that the explanation, when he learned it, would be perfectly logical and not in the least creepy.

Fragments of the conversation he'd had with Toby echoed in his memory, out of order: What are they doing down there? What is dead? What is life? Nothing lasts forever. Everything lasts. Nothing. Everything becomes. Becomes what? Me.

Everything becomes me. Jack sensed that he had enough pieces to put together at least part of the puzzle. He just couldn't see how they interlocked. Or wouldn't see. Perhaps he refused to put them together because even the few pieces he possessed would reveal a nightmare face, something better not encountered. He wanted to know, or thought he did, but his subconscious overruled him.

As he raised his eyes from the mauled earth to the three stones, his attention was caught by a fluttering object on Tommy's marker. It was stuck in a narrow crack between the horizontal base and the vertical slab of granite: a black feather, three inches long, stirred by the breeze. Jack tilted his head back and squinted uneasily into the wintry vault directly overhead.

The heavens hung gray and dead. Like ashes. A crematorium sky.

However, nothing moved above except great masses of clouds. Big storm coming. He turned toward the sole break in the low stone, walked to the posts, and looked downhill toward Toby had almost reached that long rectangular buildg. He skidded to a halt, glanced back at his laggardly father, and waved. He tossed the Frisbee straight into the air. On edge, the disc knifed high, then curved toward the zenith and.caught a current of wind. Like a spacecraft from another world, it whirled across the somber sky. Much higher than the greatest altitude reached by the frisbee, under the pendulous clouds, a lone bird circled above the boy, like a hawk maintaining surveillance of potential prey, though it was likely a crow rather than a hawk. Circling and circling.

A puzzle piece in the shape Of a black crow. Gliding on rising thermals. Silent as a talker in a dream, patient and mysterious.

After sending Jack to discover what Toby was doing among the gravestones, Heather returned to the spare bedroom where she had been working with her computers.

She watched from the window as Jack climbed the hill to the cemetery.

He stood with the boy for a minute, then knelt beside him. From a distance, everything seemed all right, no sign of trouble. Evidently, she'd been worried for no good reason. A lot of that going around lately. She sat in her office chair, sighed at her excessive maternal concern, and turned her attention to the computers.

For a while she searched the hard disc of each machine, ran tests, and made sure the programs were in place and that nothing had crashed during the move.

Later, she grew thirsty, and before going to the kitchen to get a Pepsi, she stepped to the window to check on Jack and Toby. They were almost out of her line of view, near the stables, tossing the Frisbee back and forth. Judging by the heavy sky and by how icy cold the window was when she touched it, snow would begin to fall soon. She was eager for it.