Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

He hefted it out of the back of his Range Rover and put it on the ground against a rear tire. "Figured you wouldn't have dog chow on hand just in case someone happened by with a golden retriever." He explained what and how much to feed a dog Falstaff's size.

"What do we owe you?" Jack asked. "Zip. He didn't cost me. Just doing a favor for poor Harry."

"That's nice of you. Thanks. But for the dog food?"

"Don't worry about it. In years to come, Falstaff's going to need his regular shots, general looking after. When you bring him to me, I'll soak you plenty."

Grinning, he slammed the tailgate. They went around to the side of the Rover farthest from the house, using it as shelter from the worst of the biting wind.

Travis said, "Understand Paul told you in private bout Eduardo and his raccoons. Didn't want to alarm your wife."

"She doesn't alarm easy."

"You tell her then?"

"No. Not sure why, either. Except… we've all got a lot on our minds already, a year of trouble, a lot of change. Anyway, wasn't much Paul told me. Just that the coons were behaving oddly, out in broad daylight, running in circles, and then they just dropped dead."

"I don't think that was all of it."

Travis hesitated. He leaned back at an angle against the side of the Rover bent his knees, slouching a little to get his head down out of the keening wind. "I think Eduardo was holding out on me. Those coons were doing something stranger than what he said."

"Why would he hold out on you?" — "Hard to say. He was a sort of quirky old guy. Maybe… I don't know, maybe he saw something he felt funny talking about, something he figured I wouldn't believe. Had a lot of pride, that man. He wouldn't want to talk about anything that might get him laughed at."

"Any guesses what that could be?"

"Nope."

Jack's head was above the roof of the Rover, and the wind not only numbed his face but seemed to be scouring off his skin layer by layer.

He leaned back against the vehicle, bent his knees, and slouched, mimicking the vet. Rather than look at each other, they stared out across the descending land to the south as they talked.

Jack said, "You think, like Paul does, it was something Eduardo saw that caused his heart attack, related to the raccoons?"."And made him load a shotgun, you mean. I don't know. Maybe.

Wouldn't rule it out. More'n two weeks before he died, I talked to him on the phone. Interesting conversation. Called him to give him the test results on the coons. Wasn't any known disease involved-"

"The brain swelling."

"Right. But no apparent cause. He wanted to know did I just take samples of brain tissue for the tests or do a full dissection."

"Dissection of the brain?"

"Yeah. He asked did I open their brains all the way up. He seemed to expect, if I did that, I'd find something besides swelling. But I didn't find anything. So then he asks me about their spines, if there was something attached to their spines."

"Attached?"

"Odder still, huh? He asks if I examined the entire length of their spines to see if anything was attached. When I ask him what he means, he says it might've looked like a tumor."

"Looked like." The vet turned his head to the right, to look directly at Jack, but Jack stared ahead at the Montana panorama. "You heard it the same way I did. Funny way to word it, huh? Not a tumor. Might've looked like one but not a real tumor." Travis gazed out at the fields again.

"I asked him if he was holding out on me, but he swore he wasn't. I told him to call me right away if he saw any animals behaving like those coons-squirrels, rabbits, whatever-but he never did. Less than three weeks later, he was dead."

"You found him."

"Couldn't get him to answer his phone. Came out here to check on him.

There he was, lying in the open doorway, holding on to that shotgun for dear life."

"He hadn't fired it."

"No. It was just a heart attack got him."

Tnafr the influence of the wind, the long meadow grass rippled in brown waves.

The fields ref rolling, dirty sea. Jack debated whether to tell Travis about what had — happened in the graveyard a short while ago. However, describing the experience was difficult. He could outline the bare events, recount the bizarre exchanges between himself and the Toby-thing. But he didn't have the words-maybe there were no.words-to adequately describe what he had felt, and feelings were the core of it. He couldn't convey a fraction of the essential supernatural nature of the encounter.

To buy time, he said, "Any theories?"

"I suspect maybe a toxic substance was involved. Yeah, I know, there aren't exactly piles of industrial sludge scattered all around these parts. But there are natural toxins, too, can cause dementia in wildlife, make animals act damn near as peculiar as people. How about you? See anything weird since you've been here?"

"In fact, yes." Jack was relieved that the postures they had chosen relative to each other made it possible to avoid meeting the veterinarian's eyes without causing suspicion. He told Travis about the crow at the window that morning-and how, later, it had flown tight circles over him and Toby while they played with the Frisbee.

"Curious," Travis said. "It might be related, I guess. On the other hand, there's nothing that bizarre about its behavior, not even pecking the glass. Crows can be damned bold. It still around here?" They both pushed away from the Rover and stood scanning the sky. The crow was gone.

"In this wind," Travis said, "birds are sheltering." He turned to Jack.

"Anything besides the crow?" That business about toxic substances had convinced Jack to hold off telling Travis Potter anything about the graveyard. They were discussing two utterly different kinds of mystery: poison versus the supernatural, toxic substances as opposed to ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. The incident on the cemetery knoll was evidence of a strictly subjective nature, even more so than the behavior of the crow, it didn't provide any support to the contention that something unspeakably strange was going on at Quartermass Ranch. Jack had no proof it had happened. Toby clearly recalled none of it and could not corroborate his story. If Eduardo Fernandez had seen something peculiar and withheld it from Travis, Jack sympathized with the old man and understood. The veterinarian was predisposed to the idea that extraordinary agents were at work, because of the brain swelling he'd found in the autopsies of the raccoons, but he was not likely to take seriously any talk of spirits, possession, and eerie conversations conducted in a cemetery with an entity from the Beyond.

Anything besides the crow? Travis had asked. Jack shook his head.

"That's all."

"Well, maybe whatever brought those coons down, is over with. We might never know. Nature's full of odd little tricks." To avoid the vet's eyes, Jack pulled back his jacket sleeve, glanced at his watch. "I've kept you too long if you want to finish your rounds before the snow sets in."

"Never had a hope of managing that," Travis said. "But I should make it back home before there're any drifts the Rover can't handle." They.shook hands, and Jack said, "Don't you forget, a week from tomorrow, dinner at six. Bring a guest if you've got a lady friend." Travis grinned. "You look at this mug, it's hard to believe, but there's a young lady willing to be seen with me. Name's Janet."

"Be pleased to meet her," Jack said. He dragged the fifty-pound bag of dog chow away from the Rover and stood by the driveway, watching the vet turn around and head out.

Looking in the rearview mirror, Travis Potter waved. Jack waved after him and watched until the Rover had disappeared around the curve and over the low hill just before the county road.

The day was a deeper gray than it had been when the vet arrived. Iron instead of ashes. Dungeon gray. The ever-lowering sky and the black-green phalanxes of trees seemed as formidably restricting as walls of concrete and stone. A bitterly cold wind, sweetened by the perfume of pines and the faint scent of ozone from high mountain passes, swept out of the northwest. The boughs of the evergreens strained a low mournful sound from that rushing river of air, the grassy meadows conspired with it to produce a whispery whistle, and the eaves of the house inspired it to make soft hooting sounds like the weak protests of dying owls lying with broken wings in uncaring fields of night. The countryside was beautiful even in that prestorm gloom, and perhaps it was as peaceful and serene as they had perceived it when they'd first driven north from Utah. At that moment, however, none of the usual travel-book adjectives sprang to mind as a singular and apt descriptive. Only one word suited now. Lonely. It was the loneliest place Jack Mcgarvey had ever seen, unpopulated to distant points, far from the solace of neighborhood and community.