Winter Moon

lowered his own quickly, as well. It would not have been like him to

dwell on such a horror. She liked to believe that, in spite of

anything he might

466 DEAN KOONTZ have to endure, he would always hold

fast to the optimism and love of life that made him special.

"This thing has gotta die," Harlan said coldly. He had lost his

natural ebullience. He was no longer Richard Dreyfuss excitedly

chasing his close encounter of the third kind. The most ominous

apocryphal fantasies of evil aliens that the cheap tabloids and science

fiction movies had to offer were not merely proved foolish by the

grotesquerie that stood in the caretaker's house, they were proved

naive as well, because their portrayals of extraterrestrial malevolence

were shabby fun-house spookery compared to the endlessly imaginative

abominations and tortures that a dark, cold universe held in store.

"Gotta die right now."

Toby walked away from Tommy Fernandez's body, into the shadows.

Heather followed him with her flashlight beam. "Honey?"

"No time," he said.

"Where are you going?"

They followed him to the back of the lightless house, through the

kitchen, into what might once have been a small laundry room but now

was a vault of dust and cobwebs. The desiccated carcass of a rat lay

in one corner, its slender tail curled in a question mark.

Toby pointed to a blotchy yellow door that no doubt had once been

white. "In the cellar," he said. "It's in the cellar."

Before going down to whatever awaited them, they put Falstaff in the

kitchen and closed the laundry-room door to keep him there.

WINTER MOON

467

He didn't like that.

As Jack opened the yellow door on perfect blackness, the frantic

scratching of the dog's claws filled the room behind them.

Following his dad down the swaybacked cellar stairs, Toby concentrated

intensely on that little green boat in his mind, which was really well

built, no leaks at all, unsinkable. Its decks were piled high with

bags and bags of silvery Calming Dust, enough to keep the surface of

the angry sea smooth and silent for a thousand years, no matter what it

wanted, no matter how much it raged and stormed in its deepest

canyons.

He sailed on and on across the waveless ocean, scattering his magical

powder, the sun above him, everything just the way he liked it, warm

and safe. The ancient sea showed him its own pictures on its glossy

black surface, images meant to scare him and make him forget to scatter

the dust-- his mother being eaten alive by rats, his father's head

split down the middle and nothing inside it but cockroaches, his own

body pierced by the tentacles of a Giver that was riding on his

back--but he looked away from them quickly, turned his face to the blue

sky instead, and wouldn't let his fear make a coward of him.

The cellar was one big room, with a broken-down furnace, a rusted water

heater--and the real Giver from which the other, smaller Givers had

detached.

It filled the back half of the room, all the way to the ceiling, bigger

than a couple of elephants.

It scared him.

That was okay.

468 DEAN KOONTZ

But don't run. Don't run.

It was a lot like the smaller versions, tentacles everywhere, but with

a hundred or more puckered mouths, no lips, just slits, and all of them

working slowly in its current calm state. He knew what it was saying

to him with those mouths. It wanted him. It wanted to rip him open,

take out his guts, stuff itself into him.

Toby started shaking, he tried very hard to make himself stop but

couldn't.

Little green boat. Plenty of Calming Dust. Putter along and scatter,

putter along and scatter.

As the beams of the flashlights moved over it, he could see gullets the

color of raw beef beyond those mouths. Clusters of red glands oozed

clear syrupy stuff. Here and there the thing had spines as sharp as

any on a cactus. There wasn't a top or bottom or front or back or head

to it, just everything at once, everywhere at once, all mixed up. All

over it, the working mouths were trying to tell him it wanted to push

tentacles in his ears, mix him up too, stir his brains, become him, use

him, because that's all he was, a thing to be used, that's all anything

was, just meat, just meat to be used.

Little green boat.

Plenty of Calming Dust.

Putter along and scatter, putter along and scatter.

o In the deep lair of the beast, with its monstrous hulk looming over

him, Jack splashed gasoline across the paralyzed python-like

appendages, across other more repulsive and baroque features, which he

dared not stare at if he ever hoped to sleep again.

WINTER MOON 469

He trembled to think that the only thing caging the demon was a small

boy and his vivid imagination.

Maybe, when all was said and done, the imagination was the most

powerful of all weapons. It was the imagination of the human race that

had allowed it to dream of a life beyond cold caves and of a possible

future in the stars.

He looked at Toby. So wan in the backsplash of the flashlight beams.

As if his small face had been carved of pure white marble. He must be

in emotional turmoil, half scared to death, yet he remained outwardly