Winter Moon

"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."