Winter Moon

that had stuck to the lenses. His eyes stung as they sometimes did

when an opthalmologist put drops in them to dilate the pupils prior to

an examination.

Without the shades, he might already have been snowblind.

He was sick of the taste and smell of wet wool, which flavored the air

he drew through his mouth and scented every inhalation when he breathed

through his nose. The vapor he exhaled had thoroughly saturated the

fabric, and the condensation had frozen. With one hand he massaged the

makeshift muffler, cracking the thin, brittle ice and crumbling the

thicker layer of compacted snow, he sloughed it all away so he could

breathe more easily than he'd been able to breathe for the past two or

three hundred yards.

Though he found it difficult to believe that the Giver didn't know he

had left the house, he had reached the edge of the ranch without being

assaulted. A considerable trek remained ahead, but the greatest danger

of attack would have been in the territory he had already covered

without incident.

Maybe the puppetmaster was not as omniscient as it either pretended or

seemed to be.

A distended and ominous shadow, as tortured as that of a fright figure

in a fun house, rose along the landing wall: the puppetmaster and its

decomposing marionette laboring stiffly but doggedly toward the top of

the first flight of stairs. As the thing ascended, it no doubt

absorbed the fragments of strange flesh that bullets had torn from it,

but it didn't pause to do so.

Although the thing was not fast, it was too fast for Heather's taste,

too fast by half. It seemed to be racing up the damned stairs.

In spite of her shaky hands, she finally unscrewed the stubborn cap on

the spout of the fuel can. Held the container by its handle. Used her

other hand to tip the bottom. A pale gush of gasoline arced out of the

spout. She swung the can left and right, saturating the carpet along

the width of the steps, letting the stream splash down the entire top

flight.

On the first step below the landing, the Giver appeared in the wake of

its shadow, a demented construct of filth and slithering sinuosities.

Heather hastily capped the gasoline can. She carried it a short

distance along the hall, set it out of the way, and returned to the

stairs.

The Giver had reached the landing. It turned to face the second

flight.

Heather fumbled in the jacket pocket where she thought she had stowed

the matches, found spare ammo for both the Uzi and the Korth, no

matches. She tried another zipper, groped in the pocket--more

cartridges, no matches, no matches.

On the landing, the dead man raised his head to stare at her, which

meant the Giver was staring too, with eyes she couldn't see.

Could it smell the gasoline? Did it understand that gasoline was

flammable? It was intelligent. Vastly so, apparently. Did it grasp

the potential for its own destruction?

A third pocket. More bullets. She was a walking ammo dump, for God's

sake.

One of the cadaver's eyes was still obscured by a thin yellowish

cataract, gazing between lids that were sewn half shut.

The air reeked of gasoline. Heather had difficulty drawing a clear

breath, she was wheezing. The Giver didn't seem to mind, and the

corpse wasn't breathing.

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