Winter Moon

curiously, then went to the trashed Game Boy and sniffed it as if

trying to determine why it had elicited such fury from her.

Beyond the window, nothing had changed. A winddriven avalanche of snow

obscured the day almost as thoroughly as a fog rolling off the Pacific

could obscure the streets of a California beach town.

She looked at Toby. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Don't let it in."

"I don't want to."

"Then don't. Be tough. You can do it."

On the counter under the microwave, the radio powered up of its own

accord, as if it incorporated an alarm clock set to provide five

minutes of music prior to a wake-up buzzer. It was a big

multiple-spectrum receiver, the size of two giant-economy-size boxes of

cereal, and it pulled in six bands, including domestic AM and FM,

however, it was not a clock and could not be programmed to switch

itself on at a preselected time. Yet the dial glowed with green light,

and strange music issued from the speakers.

The chains of notes and overlapping rhythms were not music, actually,

just the essence of music in the sense that a pile of lumber and screws

amounted to the essence of a cabinet. She could identify a symphony of

instruments--flutes, oboes, clarinets, horns of all kinds, violins,

timpani, snare drums--but there was no melody, no identifiable cohesive

structure, merely a sense of structure too subtle to quite hear, waves

of sound that were sometimes pleasant and sometimes jarringly

discordant, now loud, now soft, ebbing and flowing.

"Maybe," Toby said.

Heather's attention had been on the radio. With surprise, she turned

to her son.

Toby had gotten off his chair. He was standing by the table, staring

across the room at the radio, swaying like a slender reed in a breeze

only he could feel. His eyes were glazed. "Well ... yeah, maybe ...

maybe ..."

The unmelodious tapestry of sound coming from the radio was the aural

equivalent of the ever-changing masses of color that she had seen

swarming across the television, computer, and Game Boy screens: a

language that evidently spoke directly to the subconscious.

She could feel the hypnotic pull of it herself, although it exerted

only a small fraction of the influence on her that it did on Toby.

Toby was the vulnerable one. Children were always the easiest prey,

natural victims in a cruel world.

"... I'd like that ... nice ... pretty," the boy said dreamily, and

then he sighed.

If he said "yes," if he opened the inner door, he might not be able to

evict the thing this time. He might be lost forever.

"No!" Heather said.

Seizing the radio cord, she tore the plug out of the wall socket hard

enough to bend the prongs. Orange sparks spurted from the outlet,

showered across the counter tile.

Though unplugged, the radio continued to produce the mesmerizing waves

of sound.

She stared at it, aghast and uncomprehending.

Toby remained entranced, speaking to the unseen presence, as he might

have spoken to an imaginary playmate. "Can I? Hmmm? Can I . . .

will you . . . will you?"

The damn thing was more relentless than the drug dealers in the city,

who did their come-on shtick for kids at schoolyard fences, on street

corners, in videogame parlors, outside movie theaters, at the malls,

wherever they could find a venue, indefatigable, as hard to eradicate

as body lice.

Batteries. Of course. The radio operated off either direct or

alternating current.

"... maybe ... maybe ..."

She dropped the Uzi on the counter, grabbed the radio, popped open the

plastic cover on the back, and tore out the two rechargeable

batteries.

She threw them into the sink, where they rattled like dice against the

backboard of a craps table. The siren song from the radio had stopped

before Toby acquiesced, so Heather had won that roll. Toby's mental

freedom had been on the come line, but she had thrown a seven, won the

bet. He was safe for the moment.

"Toby? Toby, look at me."

He obeyed. He was no longer swaying, his eyes were clear, and he

seemed to be back in touch with reality.

Falstaff barked, and Heather thought he was agitated by all the noise,

perhaps by the stark fear he sensed in her, but then she saw that his

attention was on the window above the sink. He rapped out hard,

vicious, warning barks meant to scare off an adversary.

She spun around in time to see something on the porch slip away to the

left of the window. It was dark and tall. She glimpsed it out of the

corner of her eye, but it was too quick for her to see what it was.

The doorknob rattled.

The radio had been a diversion.

As Heather snatched the Micro Uzi off the counter, the retriever

charged past her and positioned himself in front of the pots and pans

and dishes stacked against the back door. He barked ferociously at the

brass knob, which turned back and forth, back and forth.

Heather grabbed Toby by the shoulder, pushed him toward the hall

door.

"Into the hall, but stay close behind me quick!"

The matches were already in her jacket pocket. She snared the nearest

of the five-gallon cans of gasoline by its handle. She could take only

one because she wasn't about to put down the Uzi.