Winter Moon

euphemisms. He was crazy, imagining the whole conversation as well as the inhuman presence. Either way, what he said didn't matter.
        "They're dead."
        "What is dead?"
        "They are. These three people buried here."
        "What is dead?"
        "Lifeless."
        "What is lifeless?"
        "Without life."
        "What is life?"
        "The opposite of death."
        "What is death?"
        Desperately, Jack said, "Empty, hollow, rotting."
        "Bodies are."
        "Not forever."
        "Bodies are."
        "Nothing lasts forever."
        "Everything lasts."."Nothing."
        "Everything becomes."
        "Becomes what?" Jack asked.
        He was now beyond giving answers himself, was full of his own questions.
        "Everything becomes," the Toby-thing repeated.
        "Becomes what?"
        "Me. Everything becomes me."
        Jack wondered what in the hell he was talking to and whether he was making more sense to it than it was making to him. He began to doubt that he was even awake. Maybe he'd taken a nap. If he wasn't insane, perhaps he was asleep.
        Snoring in the armchair in the study, a book in his lap.
        Maybe Heather had never come to tell him Toby was in the cemetery, in which case all he had to do was wake up.
        The breeze felt real. Not like a dream wind. Cold, piercing. And it had picked up enough speed to give it a voice. Whispering in the grass, soughing in the trees along the edge of the higher woods, keening softly, softly.
        The Toby-thing said, "Suspended."
        "What?"
        "Different sleep."
        Jack glanced at the graves. "No."
        "Waiting."
        "No."
        "Puppets waiting."
        "No. Dead."
        "Tell me their secret."
        "Dead."
        "The secret."
        "They're just dead."
        "Tell me."."There's nothing to tell."
        The boy's expression was still calm, but his face was flushed. The arteries were throbbing visibly in his temples, as if his blood pressure had soared off the scale.
        "Tell me!"
        Jack was shaking uncontrollably, increasingly frightened by the cryptic nature of their exchanges, worried that he understood even less of the situation than he thought he did and that his ignorance might lead him to say the wrong thing and somehow put Toby into even greater danger than he already was.
        "Tell me!"
        Overwhelmed by fear and confusion and frustration, Jack grabbed Toby by the shoulders, stared into his strange eyes.
        "Who are you?"
        No answer.
        "What's happened to my Toby?"
        After a long silence: "What's the matter, Dad?"
        Jack's scalp prickled. Being called
        "Dad" by this thing, this hateful intruder, was the worst affront yet.
        "Dad?"
        "Stop it."
        "Daddy, what's wrong?"
        But he wasn't Toby. No way. His voice still didn't have its natural inflections, his face was slack, and his eyes were wrong.
        "Dad, what're you doing?"
        The thing in possession of Toby apparently hadn't realized that its masquerade had come undone. Until now it had thought that Jack believed he was speaking with his son. The parasite was struggling to improve its performance.
        "Dad, what did I do? Are you mad at me? I didn't do anything, Dad, really I didn't."
        "What are you?" Jack demanded.
        Tears slid from the boy's eyes. But the nebulous something was behind the tears, an arrogant puppetmaster confident of its ability to deceive.."Where's Toby? You sonofabitch, whatever the hell you are, give him back to me."
        Jack's hair fell across his eyes. Sweat glazed his face. To anyone coming upon them just then, his extreme fear would appear to be dementia. Maybe it was. Either he was talking to a malevolent spirit that had taken control of his son or he was insane. Which made more sense?
        "Give him to me I want him back!"
        "Dad, you're scaring me," the Toby-thing said, trying to tear loose of him.
        "You're not my son."
        "Dad, please!"
        "Stop it! Don't pretend with me-you're not fooling me, for Christ's sake!"
        It wrenched free, turned, stumbled to Tommys headstone, and leaned against the granite.
        Toppled onto all fours by the force with which the boy broke away from him, Jack said fiercely, "Let him go!"
        The boy squealed, jumped as if surprised, and spun to