Strangers

possible. As he patiently lay waiting for sleep, he became increasingly intrigued by the subtle patterns made by the second-hand moonbeams that had been trapped in the frost; light splintered at every point where one ice crystal interfaced with another, each beam shattering into a hundred beams, a hundred more.
        "The moon," he whispered, surprised by his voice. "The moon."
        Gradually, Brendan realized that something uncanny was happening.
        At first he was merely fascinated by the harmonious interaction of frost and moonlight, but soon fascination evolved into a more intense attraction. He could not look away from the pearly window. It offered an indefinable promise, and he was drawn as a sailor by a siren's song. Before he knew what he intended, he had slipped one arm out from beneath the blankets and was reaching toward the window, though it was ten feet away and could not be touched from where he lay. The black silhouette of his spread-fingered hand was clearly defined against the niveous pane of glass that glowed softly beyond, and his futile straining was the essence of yearning. Brendan longed to be within the light, not the light that lived in the frost but that other golden light of his dreams.
        "The moon," he whispered, again surprised that he had spoken.
        His heartbeat accelerated. He began to tremble.
        Suddenly, upon the glass, the sugary-looking frost underwent an inexplicable change. As Brendan watched, the thin rime melted away from the edges of the pane, toward the center. In a few seconds, when the melting stopped, there remained only a perfect circle of ice, about ten inches in diameter, glowing eerily in the middle of an otherwise clear, dry, dark rectangle of glass.
        The moon.
        Brendan knew it was a sign, though he did not know from whom or what or where it came, nor did he understand it.
        On Christmas night, when he had stayed at his parents' house in Bridgeport, Brendan had apparently had a dream featuring the moon, for he had awakened his mother and father with his loud and panicky cries. But he could remember nothing of the dream. Since then, as far as he knew, none of his dreams had involved the moon, but were concerned exclusively with that mysterious place full of dazzling golden light, where he felt himself called toward some incredible revelation.
        Now, as he still reached with one hand toward the glimmering frost on the window, the vaguely phosphorescent time grew brighter, as if some peculiar chemical reaction was at work within the ice crystals. The moon-image changed from a milky hue to the crisper white of sun-dappled snow, then grew even brighter, until it was a scintillant circle of silver blazing on the glass.
        Heart pounding furiously, certain he was teetering on the edge of some astounding epiphany, Brendan continued to hold his hand toward the window, and he gasped in shock as a shaft of light leapt out from the frost-moon and fell across the bed. It was like the beam of a spotlight and every bit as brilliant. As he squinted into the glare, trying to see how such fierce incandescence could possibly originate from ordinary hoarfrost and glass, the light changed to pale red, to darker red, to crimson, to scarlet. Around him, the rumpled blankets shone like molten steel, and his outstretched hand appeared to be wet with blood.
        He was gripped by déjŕ vu, absolutely convinced that he had once really stood under a scarlet moon, bathed in its bloody glow.
        Although he wanted to understand how this strange red light related to the wondrous golden light of his dreams, although he still felt himself being called by something unknown that waited in that radiance, he was suddenly afraid. As the scarlet beams intensified, as his room became a caldron of heatless red fire and red shadows, his fear grew into terror of such power that it made him shake and sweat.
        He pulled his hand back, and the scarlet light rapidly faded to silver, and the silver dimmed as well, until the circle of frost on the window shone with only a natural reflection of the January moon.
        As darkness laid claim to his room once more, Brendan sat up and hastily switched on the lamp. Damp with sweat, as full of the night-shakes as any child frightened by fantasies of carnivorous goblins, he went to the window. The icy circle was still there, a moon image in the center of the otherwise unfrosted pane of