Winter Moon. By: Dean R. Koontz

accumulated in the past sixteen hours.

Harlan raised the angled plow a few inches to allow the speed. “We

don’t need to scoop off everything down to bare dirt and maybe risk

jamming up on a big bump in the road.” The top three quarters of the

snow cover plumed to the side.

“How can you tell where the lane is?” Jack worried, because the

rolling mantle of white blurred definitions.

“Been here before. Then there’s instinct.”

“Instinct?”

“Plowman’s instinct.”

“We won’t get stuck?”

“These tires? This engine?”

Harlan was proud of his machine, and it really was churning along,

rumbling through the untouched snow as if carving its way through

little more than air.

“Never get stuck, not with me driving. Take this baby through hell if

I had to, plow away the melting brimstone and thumb my nose at the

devil himself.

So what’s wrong up there with your family?”

“Trapped,” Jack said cryptically.

“In snow, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing steep enough around here for an avalanche.”

“Not an avalanche,” Jack confirmed.

They reached the hill and headed for the turn past the lower woods.

The house should be in view any second.

“Trapped in the snow?” Harlan said, worrying at it. He didn’t look

away from his work, but he frowned as if he would have liked to meet

Jack’s eyes.

The house came into view. Almost hidden by sheeting snow but vaguely

visible.

Their new house. New life. New future. On fire.

Earlier, at the computer, when he’d been mentally linked to the Giver

but not completely in its power, Toby had gotten to know it, feeling

around in its mind, being nosy, letting its thoughts slide into him

while he kept saying “no” to it, and little by little he had learned

about it. One of the things he learned was that it had never

encountered any species that could get inside its mind the way it could

force itself into the minds of other creatures, so it wasn’t even aware

of Toby in there, didn’t feel him, thought it was all one-way

communication. Hard to explain. That was the best he could do. Just

sliding around in its mind, looking at things, terrible things, not a

good place but dark and frightening. He hadn’t thought of it as a

brave thing to do, only what must be done, what Captain Kirk or Mr.

Spock or Luke Skywalker or any of those guys would have done in his

place or when meeting a new and hostile intelligent species out on the

galactic rim. They’d have taken any advantage, added to their

knowledge in any way they could.

So did he.

No big deal.

Now, when the noise coming out of the radio urged him to open the

door–just open the door and let it in, let it in, accept the pleasure

and the peace, let it in–he did as it wanted, though he didn’t let it

enter all the way, not half as far as he entered into it. As at the

computer this morning, he was now between complete freedom and

enslavement, walking the brink of a chasm, careful not to let his

presence be known until he was ready to strike.

While the Giver was rushing into his mind, confident of overwhelming

it, Toby turned the tables.

He imagined that his own mind was a colossal weight, a billion trillion

tons, even heavier than that, more than the weight of all the planets

in the solar system combined, and even a zillion times heavier than

that, pressing down on the mind of the Giver, so much weight, crushing

it, flattening it into a thin pancake and holding it there, so it could

think fast and furiously but could not act on its thoughts.

The thing let go of Heather’s ankle. All of its sinuous and agitated

appendages retracted and curled into one another, and it went still,

like a massive ball of glistening intestines, four feet in diameter.

The other one lost control of the burning corpse with which it was

entwined.

Parasite and dead host collapsed in a heap and were also motionless.

Heather stood in stunned disbelief, unable to understand what had

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