Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

Too many pockets, Jesus, four on the outside of the jacket, three inside, pockets and more pockets, two on each leg of her pants, all of them zippered.

The other eye socket was empty, partially curtained by shredded lids and dangling strands of mortician's thread. Suddenly the tip of a tentacle extruded from inside the skull.

With an agitation of appendages, like the tendrils of a black sea anemone lashed by turbulent currents, the thing started up from the landing.

Matches.

A small cardboard box, wooden matches. Found them.

Two steps up from the landing, the Giver hissed softly.

Heather slid open the box, almost spilled the matches. They rattled.against one another, against the cardboard.

The thing climbed another step.

When his mom told him to go to the bedroom, Toby didn't know if she meant her bedroom or his. He wanted to get as far as possible from the thing coming up the front stairs, so he went to his bedroom at the end of the hallway, though he stopped a couple of times and looked back at her and almost returned to her side. e didn't want to leave her there alone. She was his mom. He hadn't seen all of the Giver, only the tangle of tentacles squirming around the edge of the front door, but he knew it was more than she could handle.

It was more than he could handle too, so he had to forget about doing anything, didn't dare think about it. He knew what had to be done, but he was too scared to do it, which was all right, because even heroes were afraid, because only insane people were never ever scared. And right now he knew he sure wasn't insane, not even a little bit, because he was scared bad, so bad he felt like he had to pee. This thing was like the Terminator and the Predator and the alien from Alien and the shark from Jaws and the velociraptors from Jurassic Park and a bunch of other monsters rolled into one- but he was just a kid. Maybe he was a hero too, like his dad said, even if he didn't feel like a hero, which he didn't, not one bit, but if he was a hero, he couldn't do what he knew he should do.

He reached the end of the hall, where Falstaff stood trembling and whining.

"Come on, fella," Toby said.

He pushed past the dog into his bedroom, where the lamps were already bright because he and Mom had turned on just about every lamp in the house before Dad left, though it was daytime.

"Get out of the hall, Falstaff. Mom wants us out of the hall. Come on!"

The first thing he noticed, when he turned away from the dog, was that the door to the back stairs stood open. It should have been locked.

They were making a fortress here. Dad had nailed shut the lower door, but this one should also be locked. Toby ran to it, pushed it shut, engaged the dead bolt, and felt better.

At the doorway, Falstaff had still not entered the room. He had stopped whining.

He was growling.

Jack at the ranch entrance. Pausing only a moment to recover from the first and most arduous leg of the journey.

Instead of soft flakes, the snow was coming down in sharp-edged crystals, almost like grains of salt. The wind drove it hard enough to.sting his exposed forehead.

A road crew had been by at least once, because a four-foot-high wall of plowed snow blocked the end of the driveway. He clambered over it, onto the two-lane.

Flame flared off the match head.

For an instant Heather expected the fumes to explode, but they weren't sufficiently concentrated to be combustible.

The parasite and its dead host climbed another step, apparently oblivious of the danger-or certain that there was none.

Heather stepped back, out of the flash zone, tossed the match.

Continuing to back up until she bumped into the hallway wall, watching the flame flutter in an arc toward the stairwell, she had a seizure of manic thoughts that elicited an almost compulsive bark of mad laughter, a single dark bray that came dangerously close to ending in a thick sob: Burning down my own house, welcome to Montana, beautiful scenery and walking dead men and things from other worlds, and here we go, flame falling, may you.burn in hell, burning down my own house, wouldn't have to do that in Los Angeles, other people will do it for you there.

WHOOSH!

The gasoline-soaked carpet exploded into flames that leaped all the way to the ceiling. The fire didn't spread through the stairwell, it was simply everywhere at once. Instantaneously the walls and railings were as fully involved as the treads and risers.

A stinging wave of heat hit Heather, forcing her to squint. She should at once have moved farther away from the blaze because the air was nearly hot enough to blister her skin, but she had to see what happened to the Giver.

The staircase was an inferno. No human being could have survived in it longer than a few seconds.

In that swarming incandescence, the dead man and the living beast were a single dark mass, rising another step. And another. No screams or shrieks of pain accompanied its ascent, only the roar and crackle of the fierce fire, which was now lapping out of the stairwell and into the upstairs hallway.

As Toby locked the stairhead door and turned from it, and as Falstaff growled from the threshold of the other door, orange-red light flashed through the hall behind the dog. His growl spiraled into a yelp of surprise. Following the flash were flickering figures of light that danced on the walls out there: reflections of fire.

Toby knew that his mom had set the alien on fire- she was tough, she was smart-and a current of hope thrilled through him.

Then he noticed the second wrong thing about the bedroom. The drapes.were closed over his recessed bed.

He had left them open, drawn back to both sides of the niche. He only closed them at night or when he was playing a game. He had opened them this morning, and he'd had no time for games since he'd gotten up.

The air had a bad smell. He hadn't noticed it right away because his heart was pounding and he was breathing through his mouth.

He moved toward the bed. One step, two.

The closer he drew to the sleeping alcove, the worse the smell became.

It was like the odor on the back stairs the first day they'd seen the house, but a lot worse.

He stopped a few steps from the bed. He told himself he was a hero.

It was okay for heroes to be afraid, but even when they were afraid, they had to do something.

At the open door, Falstaff was just about going crazy.

Blacktop was visible in a few small patches, revealed by the flaying wind, but most of the roadway was covered by two inches of fresh powder. Numerous drifts had formed against the snow walls thrown up by the plow.

Judging by the available signs, Jack figured the crew had made a circuit through this neighborhood about two hours ago, certainly no more recently than an hour and a half. They were overdue to make another pass.

He turned east and hurried toward the Youngblood spread, hopeful of encountering a highway-maintenance crew before he had gone far.

Whether they were equipped with a big road grader or a salt-spreading truck with a plow on the front-or both-they would have microwave communications with their dispatcher. If he could persuade them that his story was not just the raving of a lunatic, he might be able to convince them to take him back to the house to get Heather and Toby out of there.

Might be able to persuade them? Hell, he had a shotgun. For sure, he'd convince them. They'd plow the half-mile driveway clean as a nun's conscience to the front door of Quartermass Ranch, smiles on their faces from start to finish, as jolly as Snow White's short protectors, singing "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go" if that's what he wanted them to do.

Impossible as it seemed, the creature on the stairs appeared even more grotesque and frightful in the obscuring embrace of fire, with smoke seething from it, than it had been when she'd had a clear look at its every feature… Yet another step it rose. Silently, silently. Then another. It ascended out of the conflagration with all the panache of His Satanic Majesty on a day trip out of hell.