Winter Moon

doorway. In fact, he hesitated to call it a doorway, but he finally

used that term because he knew, on a deep level beyond language and

logic, that a doorway was precisely what it had been. If he died--face

it, if he was killed--before he could obtain proof of these bizarre

goings-on, he hoped that whoever read his account would be impressed by

its cool, calm style and would not disregard it as the ravings of a

demented old man. He became so involved in his writing that he worked

through the lunch hour and well into the afternoon before pausing to

prepare a bite to eat. Because he'd skipped breakfast too, he had

quite an appetite. He sliced a cold chicken breast left over from

dinner the previous night, and he built a couple of tall sandwiches

with cheese, tomato, lettuce, and mustard.

Sandwiches and beer were the perfect meal because that was something he

could eat while still composing in the yellow legal tablet.

By twilight, he had brought the story up to date. He finished with: I

don't expect to see the doorway again because I suspect it has already

served its purpose. Something has come through it. I wish I knew what

that something was.

Or perhaps I don't.

CHAPTER NINE.

A sound woke Heather. A soft thunk, then a brief scraping, the source

unidentifiable. She sat straight up in bed, instantly alert.

The night was silent again.

She looked at the clock. Ten minutes past two in the morning.

A few months ago, she would have attributed her apprehension to some

frightening an unremembered dream, and she would have rolled over and

gone back to sleep.

Not any more.

She had fallen asleep atop the covers. Now she didn't have to

disentangle herself from the blankets before getting out of bed.

For weeks, she had been sleeping in sweat-suits instead of her usual

T-shirt and panties. Even in pyjamas, she would have felt too

vulnerable. Sweats were comfortable enough in bed, and she was dressed

for trouble if something happened in the middle of the night.

Like now.

In spite of the continued silence, she picked up the gun from the

nightstand.

It was a Korth .38 revolver, 120 made in Germany by Waffenfabrik Korth

and perhaps the finest handgun in the world, with tolerances unmatched

by any other maker.

The revolver was one of the weapons she had purchased since the day

Jack had been shot, with the consultation of Alma Bryson. She'd spent

hours with it on the police firing range. When she picked it up, it

felt like a natural extension of her hand.

The size of her arsenal now exceeded Alma's, which sometimes amazed

her. More amazing still: she worried that she was not well enough

armed for every eventuality.

New laws were soon going into effect, making it more difficult to

purchase firearms. She was going to have to weigh the wisdom of

spending more of their limited income on defenses they might never need

against the possibility that even her worst-case scenarios would prove

to be too optimistic.

Once, she would have regarded her current state of mind as a clear-cut

case of paranoia. Times had changed. What once had been paranoia was

now sober realism.

She didn't like to think about that. It depressed her.

When the night remained suspiciously quiet, she crossed the bedroom to

the hall door. She didn't need to turn on any lights. During the past

few months, she had spent so many nights restlessly walking through the

house that she could now move from room to room in the darkness as

swiftly and silently as a cat.

On the wall just inside the bedroom, there was a panel for the alarm

system she'd had installed a week after the events at Arkadian's

service station. In luminous green letters, the lighted digital

monitor strip informed her that all was secure.

It was a perimeter alarm, involving magnetic contacts at every exterior

door and window, so she could be confident the noise that awakened her

hadn't been made by an intruder already in the premises. Otherwise, a

siren would have sounded and a microchip recording of an authoritarian

male voice would have announced: You have violated a protected

dwelling. Police have been called.

Leave at once.

Barefoot, she stepped into the dark second-floor hallway and moved

along to Toby's room. Every evening she made sure both his and her

doors were open, so she would hear him if he called to her.

For a few seconds she stood by her son's bed, listening to his soft

snoring.

The boy shape beneath the covers was barely visible in the weak ambient

light that passed from the city night through the narrow slats of the

Levolor blinds. He was dead to the world and couldn't have been the

source of the sound that had interrupted her dreams.

Heather returned to the hall. She crept to the stairs and went down to

the first floor.

In the cramped den and then in the living room, she eased from window

to window, checking outside for anything suspicious. The quiet street

looked so peaceful that it might have been located in a small

Midwestern town instead of Los Angeles. No one was up to foul play on

the front lawn. No one skulking along the north side of the house,

either.