Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

Big cat, really big, stands on his hind feet, has claws like razors …" Down and around, slow step by slow step. "… this big devil cat, he wears a cape made out of dog fur, necklace out of dog teeth.

… " Down and around. "… and when he plays marbles…" Wood creaking underfoot. "… he uses dogs' eyes! Yeah, that's right …"

Falstaff whimpered. "… he's one mean cat, big mean cat, mean as shit." They reached the bottom. The vestibule. The two doors.

"Kitchen," Toby whispered, indicating one door. He turned to the other. "Back porch." He could probably twist open the deadbolt, slip onto the porch, scoop up a double handful of snow, even if he had to go as far as the yard to get it, but still make it back inside and all the way up to his room without his mom or dad ever knowing about it.

Make a real snowball, his first. Take a taste of it. When it started to melt, he could just put it in a corner of his room, and in the morning, there'd be no evidence. Just water. Which, if anyone noticed it, he could blame on Falstaff.

Toby reached for the doorknob with his right hand and for the dead-bolt turn with his left. The retriever jumped up, planted both paws on the wall beside the door, and clamped his jaws around Toby's left wrist.

Toby stifled a squeal of surprise. -Falstaff held the wrist firmly, but he didn't bite down, didn't really hurt, just held on and rolled.his eyes at Toby, as if what he would have said, if he could speak, was something like, No, you can't open this door, it's nuts, forget it, no way. "What're you doing?" Toby whispered. "Let go." Falstaff would not let go. "You're drooling on me," Toby said as a rivulet of thick saliva trickled down his wrist and under the sleeve of his pajama tops.

The retriever worked his teeth slightly, still not hurting his master but making it clear that he could cause a little pain anytime he wanted. "What, is Mom paying you?" Toby let go of the doorknob with his right hand. The dog rolled his eyes, relaxed his jaws, but didn't entirely let go of the left wrist until Toby released the thumb-turn on the lock and lowered his hand to his side. Falstaff dropped away from the wall, onto all fours again.

Toby stared at the door, wondering if he would be able to move quickly enough to open it before the dog could leap up and seize his wrist again. The retriever watched him closely. Then he wondered why Falstaff didn't want him to go outside. Dogs could sense danger.

Maybe a bear was prowling around outside, one of the bears that Dad said lived in the woods. A bear could gut you and bite your head off so quick you wouldn't have a chance to scream, crunch your skull up like hard candy, pick its teeth with your armbone, and all they'd find in the morning was a bloody scrap of pajamas and maybe a toe that the bear had overlooked. He was scaring himself.

He checked the crack between the door and the jamb to be sure the deadbolt was actually in place. He could see the dull brass shine of it in there. Good. Safe.

Of course, Falstaff had been afraid of the door above too, curious but afraid.

He hadn't wanted to open it. Hadn't wanted to come down here, really.

But nobody had been waiting for them on the steps. No bear, for sure.

Maybe this was just a dog who spooked easy. "My dad's a hero," Toby whispered. Falstaff cocked his head. "He's a hero cop. He's not afraid of nothin', and I'm not afraid of nothin', either." The dog stared at him as if to say, Yeah? So what next? Toby looked again at the door in front of him. He could just open it a crack. Take a quick look. If a bear was on the porch, slam the door fast. "If I wanted to go out there and pet a bear, I would." Falstaff waited. "But it's late. I'm tired.

If there's a bear out there, he'll just have to wait till tomorrow."

Together, he and Falstaff climbed back to his room.

Dirt was scattered on the stairs. He'd felt it under his bare feet on the way down, now he felt it going up. On the high landing, he stood on his right leg and brushed the bottom of his left foot, stood on his left foot and ushed off his right. Crossed the threshold. Closed the.-door. Locked it. Switched off the stair light. Falstaff was at the window, gazing out at the backyard, and Toby joined him.

The snow was coming down so hard there would probably be nine feet of it by morning, maybe sixteen. The porch roof below was white. The ground was white everywhere, as far as he could see, but he couldn't see all that far because the snow was really coming down. He couldn't even see the woods. The caretaker's house was swallowed by whipping white clouds of snow. Incredible. The dog dropped to the floor and trotted away, but Toby watched the snow awhile longer.

When he began to get sleepy, he turned and saw that Falstaff was sitting — in the bed, waiting for him. Toby slipped under the blankets, keeping the retriever on top of them. Letting the dog under the blankets was going one step too far. Infallible eight-year-old-boy instinct told him as much. If Mom or Dad found them like that-boy head on one pillow, dog head on the other pillow, covers pulled up to their chins-there would be big trouble.

He reached for the draw cord to shut the drapes, so he and Falstaff could go to sleep on a train, crossing Alaska in the dead of winter to get to the gold rush country and stake a claim, after which they'd change Falstaffs name to White Fang. But as soon as the drapes began to close, the dog sprang to its feet on the mattress, ready to leap to the floor. "Okay, all right, pleez," Toby said, and he pulled the drapes wide open. The retriever settled beside him again, lying so he was facing the door at the head of the back stairs. "Dumb dog," Toby muttered from the edge of sleep. "Bears don't have door keys."

In the darkness, when Heather slid against him, smelling faintly of soap from her hot bath, Jack knew he'd have to disappoint her. He wanted her, needed her, God knew, but he remained obsessed with his experience in the cemetery. As the memory grew rapidly less vivid, as it became increasingly difficult to recall the precise nature and intensity of the emotions that had been part of the encounter, he turned it over and over more desperately in his mind, examining it repeatedly from every angle, trying to squeeze sudden enlightenment from it before it became, like all memories, a dry and faded husk of the actual experience. The conversation with the thing that had spoken through Toby had been about death-cryptic, even inscrutable, but definitely about death. Nothing was as certain to dampen desire as brooding about death, graves, and the moldering bodies of old friends.

At least, that's what he thought when she touched him, kissed him, and murmured endearments. Instead, to his surprise, he found that he was not only ready but rampant, not merely capable but full of more vigor than he'd known since long before the shooting back in LA.

She was so giving yet demanding, alternately submissive and aggressive, shy yet all-knowing, as enthusiastic as a bride embarking on a new marriage, velvet and silken and alive, so wonderfully alive.

Later, as he lay on his side and she drifted asleep with her breasts pressed to his back, the two of them a pair of spoons, he understood that making love with her had been a rejection of the frightening yet alluring presence in the cemetery… A day of brooding about death had proved to be a perverse aphrodisiac.

He was facing the windows. The draperies were open. Ghosts of snow whirled past the glass, dancing white phantoms spinning to the music of the fluting wind, waltzing spirits, pale and cold, waltzing and pale, cold and spinning, spinning… in cloying blackness, blindly feeling his way toward the Giver, toward an offer of peace and love, pleasure and joy, an end to all fear, ultimate freedom, his for the taking, if only he could find the way, the path, the truth.