Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

Upstairs in the master bedroom, breezy music played behind the closed door to the adjoining bathroom. Soaking in the tub, Heather had turned the radio to a goldenoldies station. "Dreamin' " by Johnny Burnette was just winding down. Jack pushed the Mossberg under the bed, far enough back so she wouldn't notice it when they made the bed in the morning but not so far back that he couldn't get hold of it in a hurry.

"Poetry in Motion." Johnny Tillotson. Music from an innocent age.

Jack hadn't even been born yet when that record had been made. He sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the music, feeling mildly guilty about not sharing his fears with Heather. But he just didn't want to upset her needlessly.

She'd been through so much. In some ways, his being wounded and hospitalized had been harder on her than him. because she'd been required to bear alone the pressures of day-to-day existence while he'd recuperated. She needed a reprieve from tension. Probably nothing to.worry about, anyway. few sick raccoons. A bold little crow. A strange experience in a cemetery which was suitably creepy itial for some television show like Unsolved Mysteries but hadn't been as threatening to life and limb as of a hundred things that could happen in the average police officer's workday.

Loading and secreting the guns would most likely prove to have been an overreaction… Well, he'd done what a cop should do. Prepared himself to serve and protect.

On the radio in the bathroom, Bobby Vee was singing "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes."

Beyond the bedroom windows, snow was falling harder than before. The flakes, previously fluffy and wet, were now small, more numerous, and dry. The… wind had accelerated again. Sheer curtains of snow rippkd and billowed across the black night. After his mom warned him against allowing Falstaff to sleep on the bed, after good-nigh kisses, after his dad told him to keep the dog on the floor, after the lights were turned out-except for the red night-light- after his mom warned him again about Falstaff, after the hall door was pulled half shut, after enough time had passed to be sure neither his mom nor his dad was going to sneak back to check on the retriever, Toby sat up in his alcove bed, patted the mattress invitingly, and whispered, "Here, Falstaff. Come on, fella."

The dog was busily sniffing along the base of the door at the head of the back stairs. He whined softly, unhappily. "Falstaff," Toby said, louder than before.

"Here, boy, come here, hurry." Falstaff glanced at him, then put his snout to the doorsill again, snuffling and whimpering at the same time.

"Come here-we'll play covered wagon or spaceship or anything you want," Toby wheedled. Suddenly getting a whiff of something that displeased him, the dog sneezed twice, shook his head so hard that his long ears flapped loudly, and backed away from the door.

"Falstaff!" Toby hissed. Finally the dog padded to him through the red light-which was the same kind of light you'd find in the engine room of a starship, or around a campfire out on a lonely prairie where the wagon train had stopped for the night, or in a freaky temple in India where you and Indiana Jones were sneaking around and trying to avoid a bunch of weird guys who worshiped Kali, Goddess of Death.

With a little encouragement, Falstaff jumped onto the bed. "Good dog."

Toby hugged him. Then in hushed, conspiratorial tones: "Okay, see, we're in a rebel starfighter on the edge of the Crab Nebula. I'm the captain and ace Inner You're a super-superintelligent alien from a lanet that circles the Dog Star, plus you're psychic, you can read the thoughts of the bad aliens in their starfighters, trying to blow us apart, which they I don't know. They don't know… They're crabs with sort of hands instead of just claws, see, like this, crab hands, rack-scrick-scrack-scrick, and they're mean, really really vicious. Like after their mother gives birth to eight or ten of them at once, they turn on her and eat her alive! You know? Crunch her up.

Feed on her. Mean as it, these guys. You know what I'm saying?"

Falstaff regarded him face-to-face throughout the briefing and then licked him from chin to nose when he finished. "All right, you know!

Okay, let's see if we can ditch these crab geeks by going into hyperspace-jump across half the galaxy and leave em in the dust. So what's the first thing we got to do? Yeah, right, put up e cosmic-radiation shields so we don't wind up full of pinholes from traveling faster than all the subatomic particles we'll be passing through." He switched on the reading lamp above his headboard, reached to the draw cord- "Shields up!" — and pulled the privacy drapes all the way shut. Instantly the alcove bed became a cloistered capsule that could be any sort of vehicle, ancient or futuristic, traveling as slow as a sedan chair or faster than light through any part of the world or out of it.

"Lieutenant Falstaff, are we ready?" Toby asked. Before the game could begin, the retriever bounded off the bed and between the bunk drapes, which fell shut again behind him. Toby grabbed the draw cord and pulled the drapes open.

"What's the matter with you?" The dog was at the stairwell door, sniffing. "You know, dogbreath, this could be viewed as mutiny."

Falstaff glanced back at him, then continued to investigate whatever scent had fascinated him. "We got crabulons trying to kill us, you want to go play dog." Toby got out of bed and joined the retriever at the door. "I know you don't have to pee. Dad took you out already, and you got to make yellow snow before I ever did." The dog whimpered again, made a disgusted sound, then backed away from the door and growled low in his throat.

"It's nothing, it's some steps, that's all." Falstaff's black lips skinned back from his teeth. He lowered his head as if he was ready for a gang of crabulons to come through that door right now, scrackscrick-scrack-scrick, with their eye stalks wiggling two feet above their heads. "Dumb dog. I'll show you." He twisted open the lock, turned the knob.

The dog whimpered and backed away. Toby opened the door. The stairs were dark.

He flipped on the light and stepped onto the landing. Falstaff hesitated, looked toward the half-open hall door as if maybe he would bolt from the bedroom

You're the one was so interested," Toby reminded him. "Now come on, I'll show you-just stairs." As if he had been shamed into it, the dog joined Toby on the landing. His tail was held so low that the end of.it curled around one of his hind legs. Toby descended three steps, wincing as the first one squeaked and then the third. If Mom or Dad was in the kitchen below, he might get caught, and then they'd think he was sneaking out to grab up some snow-in his bare feet! — to bring it back to his room to watch it melt. Which wasn't a bad idea, actually.

He wondered whether snow was interesting to eat. Three steps, two squeaks, and he stopped, looked back at the dog. "Well?" Reluctantly, Falstaff moved to his side. crural. Trying to make as little noise as possible. Well, one of them was trying, anyway, staying close to the wall, where the treads weren't as likely to creak, but the other… one had claws that ticked and scraped on the wood. Toby whispered,

"Stairs.

Steps. See? You can go down. You can go up. Big deal. What'd you think was behind the door, huh? Doggie hell?" Each step they descended brought one new step into view. The way the walls curved, you couldn't see far ahead, couldn't see the bottom, just a few steps with the paint worn thin, lots of shadows because of the dim bulbs, so maybe the lower landing was just two steps below or maybe it was a hundred, five hundred, or — maybe you went down and down and around and around for ninety thousand steps, and when you reached the bottom you were at the center of the earth with dinosaurs and lost cities. "In doggie hell," he told Falstaff, "the devil's a cat. You know that?