By the light of the moon

bless him, never played those
power games.
    For a while they rode in companionable silence, conserving a
flagon of fuel by traveling in the high-suction slipstream of a
speeding Peterbilt that, judging by the advertisement on its rear
doors, was hauling ice-cream treats to hungry snackers west of New
Mexico.
    When they came upon a town radiant with the signs of motels and
service stations, Jilly exited the interstate. She tanked up from a
self-serve pump at Union 76.
    Farther along the street, she bought dinner at a burger place. A
counter clerk as wholesome and cheerful as an idealized grandmother
in a Disney film, circa 1960, insisted on fixing a smiling-toad pin
to Jilly's blouse.
    The restaurant appeared sufficiently clean to serve as an
operating theater for a quadruple by-pass in the event that one of
the customers at last achieved multiple artery blockages while
consuming another double-patty cheeseburger. Of itself, however,
mere cleanliness wasn't enough to induce Jilly to eat at one of the
small Formica-topped tables under a glare of light intense enough
to cause genetic mutations.
    In the parking lot, in the Coupe DeVille, as Jilly ate a chicken
sandwich and French fries, she and Fred listened to her favorite
radio talk show, which focused on such things as UFO sightings,
evil extraterrestrials eager to breed with human women, Big Foot
(plus his recently sighted offspring, Little Big Foot), and time
travelers from the far future who had built the pyramids for
unknown malevolent purposes. This evening, the smoky-voiced host
– Parish Lantern – and his callers were exploring the
dire threat posed by brain leeches purported to be traveling to our
world from an alternate reality.
    None of the listeners who phoned the program had a word to say
about fascistic Islamic radicals determined to destroy civilization
in order to rule the world, which was a relief. After establishing
residence in the occipital lobe, a brain leech supposedly took
control of its human host, imprisoning the mind, using the body as
its own; these creatures were apparently slimy and nasty, but Jilly
was comforted as she listened to Parish and his audience discuss
them. Even if brain leeches were real, which she didn't believe for
a minute, at least she could understand them: their genetic
imperative to conquer other species, their parasitic nature. On the
other hand, human evil rarely, if ever, came with a simple
biological rationale.
    Fred lacked a brain that might serve as a leech condominium, so
he could enjoy the program without any qualms whatsoever regarding
his personal safety.
    Jilly expected to be refreshed by the dinner stop, but when she
finished eating, she was no less weary than when she had exited the
interstate. She'd been looking forward to an additional four-hour
drive across the desert to Phoenix, accompanied part of the way by
Parish Lantern's soothing paranoid fantasies. In her current logy
condition, however, she was a danger on the highway.
    Through the windshield, she saw a motel across the street. 'If
they don't allow pets,' she told Fred, 'I'll sneak you in.'

3
    High-speed jigsaw is a pastime best undertaken by an
individual who is suffering from subtle brain damage and who
consequently is afflicted by intense and uncontrollable spells of
obsession.
    Shepherd's tragic mental condition usually gave him a surprising
advantage whenever he turned his full attention to a picture
puzzle. He was currently reconstructing a complex image of an
ornate Shinto temple surrounded by cherry trees.
    Although he'd started this twenty-five-hundred-piece project
only shortly after he and Dylan checked into the motel, he had
already completed perhaps a third of it. With all four borders
locked in place, Shep worked diligently inward.
    The boy – Dylan thought of his brother as a boy, even
though Shep was twenty – sat at a desk, in the light of a
tubular brass lamp. His left arm was half raised, and his left hand
flapped continuously, as though he were waving at his reflection in
the mirror that hung above the desk; but in fact he shifted his
gaze only between the picture that he was assembling and the loose
pieces of the puzzle piled in the open box. Most likely, he didn't
realize that he was waving; and certainly, he couldn't control his
hand.
    Tics, rocking fits, and other bizarre repetitive motions were
symptoms of Shep's condition. Sometimes he could be as still as
cast bronze, as motionless as marble, forgetting even to