Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

"Talking to whom?" he asked Toby.

After a hesitation, the boy said, "No name."

His voice was not flat and soulless as it had been in the graveyard but neither was it quite normal.

"Where is he?" Jack asked.

"Not he."

"Where is she?"

"Not she."

Frowning, Jack said, "Then what?"

The boy said nothing, gazed unblinking at the screen.

"It?" Jack wondered.

"All right," Toby said.

Approaching them, Heather looked strangely at Jack.

"It?"

To Toby, Jack said, "What is it?"

"Whatever it wants to be."

"Where is it?"

"Wherever it wants to be," the boy said cryptically.

"What is it doing here?"

"Becoming."

Heather stepped around the table, stood on the other side of Toby, and stared at the monitor… "I've seen this before."

Jack was relieved to know the bizarre display wasn't unique, therefore not necessarily related to the experience in the cemetery, but Heather's demeanor was such that his relief was extremely short-lived.

"Seen it when?"

"Yesterday morning, before we went into town. On the TV in the living room.

Toby was watching it… sort of enraptured like this. Strange."

She shuddered and reached for the master switch.

"Shut it off."

"No," Jack said, reaching in front of Toby to stay her hand. "Wait.

Let's see."

"Honey," she said to Toby, "what's going on here, what kind of game is this?"

"No game. I dreamed it, and in the dream I came in then I woke up and I was here, so we started talking-"

"Does this make any sense to you?" she asked Jack.

"Yes. Some."

"What's going on, Jack?"

"Later."

"Am I out of the loop on something? What is this all about?" When he didn't respond, she said, "I don't like this."

"Neither do I," Jack said. "But let's see where it ads, whether we can figure this out."

"Figure what out?" The boy's fingers pecked busily at the keys.

Although no words appeared on the screen, it seemed as if new colors and fresh patterns appeared and progressed in a rhythm that matched his typing.

"Yesterday, on the TV… I asked Toby what it was," Heather said.

"He didn't know. But he said… he liked it." Toby stopped typing. The colors faded, then suddenly intensified and flowed in wholly new patterns and shades… "No," the boy said.

"No what?" Jack asked. "Not talking to you.

Talking to… it." And to the — screen, he said, "No. Go away." Waves of sour green. Blossoms of blood red appeared at random points across the screen, turned black, flowered into red again, then wilted, streamed, a viscous pus yellow. The endlessly mutagenic display dazed Jack when he watched it too long, and he could understand how it could completely capture the immature mind of an eight-year-old boy, hypnotize him.

As Toby began to hammer the keyboard once more, the colors on the screen faded-then abruptly brightened again, although in new shades and in yet more varied and fluid forms.

"It's a language," Heather exclaimed softly. For a moment Jack stared at her, uncomprehending. She said, "The colors, the patterns. A language." He checked the monitor. "How can it be a language?"

"It is," she insisted. "There aren't any repetitive shapes, nothing that could be letters, words."

"Talking," Toby confirmed. He pounded the keyboard. As before, the patterns and colors acquired a rhythm consistent with the pace at which he input his side of the conversation. "A tremendously complicated and expressive language," Heather said, "beside which English or French or Chinese is primitive."

Toby stopped typing, and the response from the other conversant was dark and churning, black and bile green, clotted with red. "No," the boy said to the screen. The colors became more dour, the rhythms more vehement. "No," Toby repeated. Churning, seething, spiraling reds.

For a third time- "No." Jack said, "What're you saying 'no' to?"

"To what it wants," Toby replied. "What does it want?"

"It wants me to let it in, just let it in."

"Oh, Jesus," Heather said, and reached for the Off switch again. Jack stopped her hand as he'd done before.

Her fingers were pale and frigid. "What's wrong?" he asked, though he was afraid he knew. The words "let it in" had jolted him with an impact almost as great as one of Anson Oliver's bullets. "Last night,"

Heather said, staring in horror at the screen. "In a dream." Maybe his own hand turned cold. Or maybe she felt him tremble. She blinked.

"You've had it too, the dream!"

"Just tonight. Woke me."

"The door," she said. "It wants you to find a door in yourself, open the door and let it in. Jack, damn it, what's going on here, what the hell's going on?".He wished he knew. Or maybe he didn't. He was more scared of this thing than of anyone he'd confronted as a cop. He had killed Anson Oliver, but he didn't know if he could touch this enemy, didn't know if it could even be found or seen.

"No," Toby said to the screen. Falstaff whined and retreated to a corner, stood there, tense and watchful. "No. No." Jack crouched beside his son.

"Toby, right now you can hear it and me, both of us?"

"Yes."

"You're not completely under its influence."

"Only a little."

"You're… in between somewhere."

"Between," the boy confirmed. "Do you remember yesterday in the graveyard?"

"Yes."

"You remember this thing… speaking through you."

"Yes."

"What?" Heather asked, surprised. "What about the graveyard?" On the screen: undulant black, bursting boils of yellow, seeping spots of kidney red. "Jack," Heather said, angrily, "you said nothing was wrong when you went up to the cemetery. You said Toby was daydreaming-just standing up there daydreaming."

To Toby, Jack said, "But you didn't remember anything about the graveyard right after it happened."

"No."

"Remember what?" Heather demanded. "What the hell was there to remember?"

"Toby," Jack said, "are you able to remember now because…

because you're half under its spell again but only half… neither here nor there?"

"Between," the boy acknowledged. "Tell me about this 'it' you're talking to," Jack said. "Jack, don't," Heather said. She looked haunted. He knew how she felt. But he said, "We have to learn about it."

"Why?"

"Maybe to survive." He didn't have to explain. She knew what he.meant. She had endured some degree of contact in her sleep. The hostility of the thing. Its inhuman rage. To Toby, he said, "Tell me about it."

"What do you want to know?" — On the screen: blues of every shade, spreading like Japanese fans but without the sharp folds, one blue over the other, through the other.

"Where does it come from, Toby?"

"Outside."

"What do you mean?"

"Beyond."

"Beyond what?"

"This world." Is it… extraterrestrial?" — Heather said, "Oh, my God."

"Yes," Toby said. "No."

"Which, Toby?"

"Not as simple as… E.T. Yes. And no."

"What is it doing here?"

"Becoming."

"Becoming what?"

"Everything." Jack shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I," the boy said, riveted to the display on the computer monitor. Heather stood with her hands fisted against her breast.

Jack said, Toby, yesterday in the graveyard, you weren't just between. like now."

"Gone."

"Yes, you were gone all the way."

"Gone."

"I couldn't reach you."

"Shit," Heather said furiously, and Jack didn't look up at her because he knew she was glaring at him. "What happened yesterday, Jack? Why didn't you tell me, for Christ's sake? Something like this, why didn't you tell me?" Without meeting her eyes, he said, "I will, I'll tell you, just let me finish this."."What else haven't you told me," she demanded. "What in God's name's happening, Jack?"