Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

He hefted the bag of dog chow onto his shoulder. Big storm coming. He went inside. He locked the front door behind him. He heard laughter in the kitchen and went back there to see what was happening.

Falstaff was sitting on his hindquarters, forepaws raised in front of him, staring up yearningly at a piece of bologna that Toby was holding over his head.

"Dad, look, he knows how to beg," Toby said. The retriever licked his chops.

Toby dropped the meat. The dog snatched it in midair, swallowed, and begged, for more.

Isn't he great?" Toby said. "He's great," Jack agreed. "Toby's hungrier than the dog," Heather said, getting a large pot out of a cabinet. "He didn't have any lunch, he didn't even eat the raisin cookies I gave him when he went outside.

Early dinner okay?" me," Jack said, dropping the bag of dog chow in a corner, with the intention of finding a cupboard for it later.

"Spaghetti?"

"Perfect."."We have a loaf of crusty French bread. You make the salads?"

"Sure," Jack said as Toby fed Falstaff another bite of bologna.

Filling the pot with water at the sink, Heather said, Travis Potter seems really nice."

"Yeah, I like him. He'll be bringing a date to dinner next Sunday.

Janet's her name." Heather smiled and seemed happier than at any time since they had come to the ranch.

"Making friends."

"I guess we are," he said. As he got celery, tomatoes, and a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator, he was relieved to note that neither of the kitchen windows faced the cemetery.

The prolonged and subdued twilight was in its final minutes when Toby rushed into the kitchen, the grinning dog at his heels, and cried breathlessly, "Snow!"

Heather looked up from the pot of bubbling water and roiling spaghetti, turned to the window above the sink, and saw the first flakes spiraling through the gloaming. They were huge and fluffy. The wind was in abeyance for the moment, and the immense flakes descended in lazy spirals. Toby hurried to the north window. The dog followed slapped its forepaws onto the sill, stood beside him, and gazed out at the miracle.

Jack put aside the knife with which he was slicing tomatoes and went to the north window as well. He stood behind Toby, his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Your first snow."

"But not my last!" Toby enthused. Heather stirred the sauce in the smaller pot to be sure it was not going to stick, and then she squeezed in with her family at the window. She put her right arm around Jack and, with her left hand, idly scratched the back of Falstaff's head.

For the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt at peace. With no more financial worries, having settled into their new home in less than a week, with Jack fully recovered, with the dangers of the city schools and streets no longer a threat to Toby, Heather was finally able to put the negativity of Los Angeles behind her. They had a dog. They were making new friends. She was confident that the peculiar anxiety attacks that had afflicted her since their arrival at Quartermass Ranch would trouble her no more. She had lived with fear so long in the city that she had become an anxiety junkie. In rural Montana, she wouldn't have to worry about drive-by gang shootings, carjackings, ATM robberies that frequently involved casual murder, drug dealers peddling crack cocaine on every corner, follow-home stickups-or child molesters who slipped off freeways, cruised residential neighborhods, trolled for prey, and then disappeared with their Wlch into the anonymous urban sprawl. Consequently, habitual need to be afraid of something had given rise to the unfocused dreads.and phantom enemies that marked her first few days in these more pacific regions. That was over now.

Chapter closed.

Heavy wet snowflakes descended in battalions, in armies, swiftly conquering the dark ground, an occasional outrider finding the glass, melting. The kitchen was comfortably warm, fragrant with the aromas of cooking pasta and tomato sauce.

Nothing was quite so likely to induce feelings of contentment and prosperity as being in a well-heated and cozy room while the windows revealed a world in the frigid grip of winter.

"Beautiful," she said, enchanted by the breaking storm. "Wow," Toby said. "Snow.

It's really, really snow." They were a family. Wife, husband, child, and dog.

Together and safe. Hereafter, she was going to think only Mcgarvey thoughts, never Beckerman thoughts. She was going to embrace a positive outlook and shun the negativism that was both her family legacy and a poisonous residue of life in the big city. She felt free at last. Life was good.

After dinner, Heather decided to relax with a hot bath, and Toby settled in the living room with Falstaff to watch a video of Beethoven.

Jack went directly to the study to review the gun available to them.

In addition to the weapons they'd brought from Los Angeles-a collection Heather had substantially increased after the shootout at Arkadian's service station- a corner case was stocked with hunting rifles, a shotgun, a.22 pistol, a.45 Colt revolver, and ammunition.

He preferred to select three pieces from their own armory: a beautifully made Korth.38, a pistol-grip, pump-action Mossberg twelve-gauge, and a Micro Uzi like the one Anson Oliver had used, although this particular weapon had been converted to full automatic status. The Uzi had been acquired on the black market. It was odd that a cop's wife should feel the need to purchase an illegal gun-odder still that it had been so easy for her to do so.

He closed the study door and stood at the desk, working quickly to ready the three firearms while he still had privacy. He didn't want to take such precautions with Heather's knowledge, because he would have to explain why he felt the need for protection. She was happier than she'd been in a long time, and he could see no point in spoiling her mood until-and unless-it became necessary.

The incident in the graveyard had been frightening, however, although he'd felt threatened, no blow had actually been struck, no harm. He'd been afraid more for Toby than for himself, the boy was back, no worse for what had happened. And what had happened? He didn't relish having to explain what he had sensed rather than seen: a presence lrl and.enigmatic and no more solid than the wind.

Hour by hour, the encounter seemed less like something he had actually experienced and more like a dream. He loaded the.38 and put it to one side of the desk. He could tell her about the raccoons, of course, although he himself had never seen them and although they had done no harm to anyone. He could tell her about the shotgun Eduardo Fernandez had been clutching fiercely when he'd died. But the old man hadn't been brought down by an enemy vulnerable to buck shot, a heart attack had felled him. A massive cardiac infarction was as scary as hell, yes, but it wasn't a killer that could be deterred with firearms.

He fully loaded the Mossberg, pumped a shell into the breech, and then inserted one additional shell in the magazine tube. A bonus round.

Eduardo had prepared his own gun in the same fashion shortly before he died. If he tried to explain all this to Heather now, he'd succeed in alarming hen- but to no purpose. Maybe there would be no trouble. He might never again come face-to-face with whatever presence he had been aware of in the cemetery. One such episode in a lifetime was more contact with the supernatural than most people ever experienced. Wait for developments. Hope there were none. But if there were, and if he obtained concrete proof of danger, then he would have to let her know that maybe, just maybe, their year of tumult was not yet at an end.

The Micro Uzi had two magazines welded at right angles, giving it a forty-round capacity. The heft of it was reassuring. More than two kilos of death waiting to be dispensed. He couldn't imagine any enemy-wild creature or man-that the Uzi couldn't handle. He put the Korth in the top right-hand desk drawer, toward the back. He closed the drawer and left the study with the other two weapons. Before slipping past the living room, Jack waited until he heard Toby laughing, then glanced around the corner of the archway. The boy was focused on the TV, Falstaff at his side. Jack hurried to the kitchen at the end of the hall, where he put the Uzi in the pantry, behind extra boxes of cornflakes, Cheerios, and shredded wheat that wouldn't be opened for at least a week.