By the light of the moon

course the panes remained intact.
    Recognizing that Jilly was distracted as in past clairvoyant
episodes, Dylan said, 'Hey, are you all right?'
    Most likely these were not the windows in her vision. She'd been
receiving images of the bloodbath in the church since the previous
evening, and that event had not yet transpired. She had no reason
to believe that this other violent incident would occur here rather
than elsewhere or sooner rather than later.
    Dylan approached her. 'What's wrong?'
    'I'm not sure.'
    She glanced at the clock, the grinning pig.
    She knew the porcine smile hadn't changed in the least. The lips
were fixed in their expression under the ceramic glaze. The smile
remained as benign as she'd first seen it less than half an hour
ago, ten years in the past. Nevertheless, a malevolent energy
seethed off the pig, off the clock.
    'Jilly?'
    In fact not just the pig but the entire kitchen seemed to be
alive with an evil presence, as though a dark spirit had come upon
them and, unable to manifest itself in the traditional ectoplasmic
apparition, took residence in the furnishings and in the surfaces
of the room itself. Every edge of every counter appeared to gleam
with a lacerating sharpness.
    Shepherd opened the refrigerator door again, and peering into
it, he said, 'Cold. We're all cold.'
    The black glass oven doors watched, watched like hooded
eyes.
    Dark bottles in a wine rack seemed to have Molotov
potential.
    Flesh crawled, fine hairs quivered, a chill settled on the nape
of her neck when she imagined the steel teeth gnashing silently in
the throat of the garbage disposal.
    No. Absurd. No spirit possessed the room. She didn't need an
exorcist.
    Her sense of alarm – actually a presentiment of death, she
realized – was so powerful and growing so rapidly that she
desperately needed to discover a cause for it. She superstitiously
projected her fear onto inanimate objects – pig clock, oven
doors, garbage-disposal blades – when the real threat lay
elsewhere.
    'We're all cold,' said Shep at the open refrigerator.
    This time, Jilly heard those three words differently from the
way she had heard them before. She remembered Shepherd's talent for
reeling off synonyms, and now she realized that they might have the
same meaning as We're all dead . Cold as a corpse. Cold as
the grave. Cold and dead.
    'Let's get out of here now, fast,' she urged.
    Dylan said, 'I've got to get the money in the lockbox.'
    'Forget the money. We'll die trying to get the money.'
    'That's what you see?'
    'That's what I know .'
    'Okay, all right.'
    'Let's fold, let's go, hurry! '
    'We're all cold ,' said Shep.

37
    Tick-tock, pig clock. Gleaming little eyes squinting
out of folds of pink fat. That knowing leer.
    Forget the damn clock. The pig clock isn't a threat.
Focus.
    Dylan returned to his brother, closed the refrigerator door for
the third time, and drew Shep toward Jilly. 'We've got to go,
buddy.'
    'Where's all the ice?' Shep asked, deeper into this obsession
than Jilly had seen him in any other. 'Where's all the ice?'
    'What ice?' Dylan asked.
    This clairvoyance, this foreshadowing talent was still new to
Jilly, as frightening as it was new, as unwanted as it was
new, and she had not been channeling it properly.
    'Where's all the ice?' Shepherd persisted.
    'We don't need ice,' Dylan told him. 'Buddy, you're starting to
scare me here. Don't freeze up on me.'
    'Where's all the ice?'
    'Shep, be with me now. Listen to me, hear me, stay with me.'
    By struggling to identify the cause of her alarm, letting her
suspicion hop from object to object, place to place, she had not
been allowing the alarm to direct the compass needle of her
intuition. She needed to relax, to trust this strange precognition
and let it show her precisely what to fear.
    'Where's all the ice?'
    'Forget about the ice. We don't need ice, buddy. We need to get
out of here, all right?'
    'Nothing but ice.'
    Inevitably, Jilly's attention was drawn toward the windows, and
the deep backyard beyond the windows. The green grass, the garage,
the golden meadow behind the garage.
    'Nothing but ice.'
    Dylan said, 'He's fixated on this ice thing.'
    'Get him off it.'
    'Nothing but ice,' said Shepherd. 'Where's all the ice?'
    'You know Shep by now. There's no getting him off it until he wants to get off. The thing keeps... ricocheting around in
his head. And this seems worse than usual.'
    'Sweetie,' she said, her gaze riveted on the windows, 'we have
to fold. We can get you some