Winter Moon

wouldn't have a chance to scream, crunch your skull up like hard candy, pick its teeth with your armbone, and all they'd find in the morning was a bloody scrap of pajamas and maybe a toe that the bear had overlooked. He was scaring himself.
        He checked the crack between the door and the jamb to be sure the deadbolt was actually in place. He could see the dull brass shine of it in there. Good. Safe.
        Of course, Falstaff had been afraid of the door above too, curious but afraid.
        He hadn't wanted to open it. Hadn't wanted to come down here, really.
        But nobody had been waiting for them on the steps. No bear, for sure.
        Maybe this was just a dog who spooked easy. "My dad's a hero," Toby whispered. Falstaff cocked his head. "He's a hero cop. He's not afraid of nothin', and I'm not afraid of nothin', either." The dog stared at him as if to say, Yeah? So what next? Toby looked again at the door in front of him. He could just open it a crack. Take a quick look. If a bear was on the porch, slam the door fast. "If I wanted to go out there and pet a bear, I would." Falstaff waited. "But it's late. I'm tired.
        If there's a bear out there, he'll just have to wait till tomorrow."
        Together, he and Falstaff climbed back to his room.
        Dirt was scattered on the stairs. He'd felt it under his bare feet on the way down, now he felt it going up. On the high landing, he stood on his right leg and brushed the bottom of his left foot, stood on his left foot and ushed off his right. Crossed the threshold. Closed the.-door. Locked it. Switched off the stair light. Falstaff was at the window, gazing out at the backyard, and Toby joined him.
        The snow was coming down so hard there would probably be nine feet of it by morning, maybe sixteen. The porch roof below was white. The ground was white everywhere, as far as he could see, but he couldn't see all that far because the snow was really coming down. He couldn't even see the woods. The caretaker's house was swallowed by whipping white clouds of snow. Incredible. The dog dropped to the floor and trotted away, but Toby watched the snow awhile longer.
        When he began to get sleepy, he turned and saw that Falstaff was sitting - in the bed, waiting for him. Toby slipped under the blankets, keeping the retriever on top of them. Letting the dog under the blankets was going one step too far. Infallible eight-year-old-boy instinct told him as much. If Mom or Dad found them like that-boy head on one pillow, dog head on the other pillow, covers pulled up to their chins-there would be big trouble.
        He reached for the draw cord to shut the drapes, so he and Falstaff could go to sleep on a train, crossing Alaska in the dead of winter to get to the gold rush country and stake a claim, after which they'd change Falstaffs name to White Fang. But as soon as the drapes began to close, the dog sprang to its feet on the mattress, ready to leap to the floor. "Okay, all right, pleez," Toby said, and he pulled the drapes wide open. The retriever settled beside him again, lying so he was facing the door at the head of the back stairs. "Dumb dog," Toby muttered from the edge of sleep. "Bears don't have door keys."
        In the darkness, when Heather slid against him, smelling faintly of soap from her hot bath, Jack knew he'd have to disappoint her. He wanted her, needed her, God knew, but he remained obsessed with his experience in the cemetery. As the memory grew rapidly less vivid, as it became increasingly difficult to recall the precise nature and intensity of the emotions that had been part of the encounter, he turned it over and over more desperately in his mind, examining it repeatedly from every angle, trying to squeeze sudden enlightenment from it before it became, like all memories, a dry and faded husk of the actual experience. The conversation with the thing that had spoken through Toby had been about death-cryptic, even inscrutable, but definitely about death. Nothing was as certain to dampen desire as brooding about death, graves, and the moldering bodies of old friends.
        At least, that's what he thought when she touched him, kissed him, and murmured endearments. Instead, to his surprise, he found that he was not only ready but rampant, not merely capable but full of more vigor than he'd known since long before the shooting back in LA.
        She was so giving yet demanding, alternately submissive and