By the light of the moon

do... you'll search them out, and you'll
go to the police with them. I wish this... this unpleasantness
weren't necessary.'
    In a fit of useless fury, Dylan swung his clenched fist at
Proctor – and saw it pass, with an ink-black comet's tail,
through the bastard's face, without eliciting so much as a
flinch.
    'I'd have preferred your assistance,' Proctor said, 'but I can
conduct the search myself. I'd have had to kill you either way.
This is a vicious, wicked thing I'm doing, a terrible thing, and if
there were a Hell, I'd deserve eternal pain, eternal torture.'
    'Don't hurt my son.' Blair O'Conner spoke calmly, refusing to
beg or cower before her murderer, aware that she couldn't humiliate
herself enough to win his mercy, making her argument for Shepherd's
life in a level voice, with logic instead of emotion. 'He's
autistic. He doesn't know who you are. He couldn't be a witness
against you even if he knew your name. He can barely
communicate.'
    Sluggish with dread, Dylan backed away from Proctor, toward his
mother, desperately assuring himself that somehow he would have
more influence on the trajectory of the bullet if he was nearer to
her.
    Proctor said, 'I know about Shepherd. What a burden he must've
been all these years.'
    'He's never been a burden,' Blair O'Conner said in a voice as
tight as a garroting wire. 'You don't know anything.'
    'I'm unscrupulous and brutal when I need to be, but I'm not
needlessly cruel.' Proctor glanced at ten-year-old Shepherd. 'He's
no threat to me.'
    'Oh, my God,' Dylan's mother said, for she had been standing
with her back to Shepherd and had not realized until now that he'd
abandoned his puzzle and that he waited just this side of the
doorway to the dining room. 'Don't. Don't do it in front of the
boy. Don't make him watch... this .'
    'He won't be shattered, Mrs. O'Conner. It'll roll right off him,
don't you think?'
    'No. Nothing rolls off him. He's not you.'
    'After all, he's got the emotional capacity of – what?
– a toad?' Proctor asked, disproving his contention that he
was never needlessly cruel.
    'He's gentle,' Blair said. 'He's sweet. So special.' These words
were not aimed at Proctor. They were a good-bye to her afflicted
son. 'In his own way, he sparkles.'
    'As much sparkle as mud,' Proctor said ruefully, as though he
possessed the emotional capacity to be saddened by Shep's
condition. 'But I promise you this – when I've achieved what
I know I surely will achieve one day, when I stand in the company
of Nobel laureates and dine with kings, I won't forget your damaged
boy. My work will make it possible to transform him from a toad
into an intellectual titan.'
    'You pompous ass,' Blair O'Conner said bitterly. 'You're no
scientist. You're a monster. Science shines light into darkness.
But you are the darkness. Monster. You do your work by the
light of the moon.'
    Almost as though watching from a distance, Dylan saw himself
raise one arm, saw himself hold up one hand as if to stop not just
the bullet but also the merciless march of time.
    The crack! of the shot was louder than he had expected it
to be, as loud as Heaven splitting open to bring forth judgment on
the Day.

35
    Perhaps he imagined that he felt the bullet passing
through him, but when he turned in horror toward his beloved
mother, he could have described in intimate detail the shape,
texture, weight, and heat of the round that killed her. And he felt
bullet-punched, pierced, not when the slug hissed through him, but
when he saw her falling, and saw her face clenched in shock, in
pain.
    Dylan knelt before her, desperate with the need to hold her, to
comfort his mother in her last seconds of life, but here in her
time, he had less substance than a ghost of a ghost.
    From where she lay, she gazed directly through Dylan
toward ten-year-old Shep. Fifteen feet away, the boy stood
slump-shouldered, his head half bowed. Though he didn't approach
his mother, he met her gaze with a rare directness.
    By the look of him, this younger Shep either didn't understand
fully what he had just seen or understood too well and was in
shock. He stood motionless. He said nothing, nor did he cry.
    Over near Blair's favorite armchair, Jilly embraced the older
Shepherd, who did not shrink from the hug as usually he would have
done. She kept him turned away from the sight of his mother, but
she regarded Dylan with an anguish and a sympathy that proved she
had ceased to be a stranger and had become, in less than
twenty-four hours,