Winter Moon

cold, squeezed in a dark place, hurting."
        "Shut it off, shut it down!" Heather demanded. Jack looked up at her.
        She was glaring, all right, red in the face, as furious as she was frightened. Praying that she would be patient, he said, "We can shut the computer off, but we can't keep this thing out that way. Think about it, Heather. It can get to us by routes through dreams, through the TV. Apparently even while we're awake, somehow. Toby was awake yesterday when it got to him."
        "I let it in," the boy said. Jack hesitated to ask the question that was, perhaps, the most critical of all. "Toby, listen… when it's in you… does it have to be actually in you? Physically? A part of it inside you somewhere?"
        Something in the brain that would show up in a dissection. Or attached to the spine. The kind of thing for which Eduardo had wanted Travis Potter to look.
        "No," the boy said. "No seed… no egg… no slug… nothing that it is."
        "No." That was good, very good, thank God and all the angels, that was very good. Because if something was implanted, how did you get it out of your child, how did you free him, how could you cut open his brain and tear it out? Toby said, "Only thoughts. Nothing in you but thoughts."
        "You mean, like it uses telepathic control?"."Yeah." How suddenly the impossible could seem inevitable.
        Telepathic control. Something from beyond, hostile and strange, able to control other species telepathically. right out of a science fiction movie, yet it felt real and true. "And now it wants in again?"
        Heather asked Toby. "Yes."
        "But you won't let it in?" she asked. "No." Jack said, "You can really keep it out?"
        "Yes." They had hope. They weren't finished yet. Jack said, "Why did it leave you yesterday?"
        "Pushed it."
        "You pushed it out?"
        "Yeah. Pushed it. Hates me."
        "For pushing it out?"
        "Yeah." His voice sank to a whisper. "But it's… it..
        . it hates… hates everything."
        "Why?" With a fury of scarlet and orange swirling across his face and flashing in his eyes, the boy still whispered: "Because… that's what it is."
        "It's hate?"
        "That's what it does."
        "But why?"
        "That's what it is."
        "Why?" Jack repeated patiently. "Because it knows."
        "Knows what?"
        "Nothing matters."
        "It knows… that nothing matters?"
        "Yes."
        "What does that mean?"
        "Nothing means." Dizzied by the only half-coherent exchange, Jack said, "I don't understand." Ikl still lower whisper: "Everything can be underd, but nothing can be understood." I want to understand it." everything can be understood, but nothing can be stood." Hether's hands were still fisted, but now she pressed to her eyes, as if she.couldn't bear to look at him in this half-trance any longer. Nothing can be understood," Toby murmured again. frustrated, Jack said, "But it understands us." No." What doesn't it understand about us?" Lots of things. Mainly… we resist."
        "Resist?"
        "We resist it."
        "And that's new to it?"
        "Yeah. Never before."
        "Everything else lets it in," Heather said. Toby nodded. "Except people." Chalk one up for human beings, Jack thought.
        Good old Homo sapiens, bullheaded to the last. We're just not happy-go-lucky enough to let the puppetmaster jerk us around any way it wants, too uptight, too damned stuborn to love being slaves.
        "Oh," Toby said quietly, more to himself than to hem or to the entity controlling the computer. "I see."
        "What do you see?" Jack asked. Interesting."
        "What's interesting?"
        "The how." Jack looked at Heather, but she didn't seem to be tracking the enigmatic conversation any better than he was. "It senses," Toby said. "Toby?"
        "Let's not talk about this," the boy said, glancing away from the screen for a moment to give Jack what seemed to be an imploring or warning look. "Talk about what?"
        "Forget it," Toby said, gazing at the monitor again.
        "Forget what?"
        "I better be good. Here, listen, it wants to know." Then, with a voice as muffled as a sigh in a handkerchief, forcing Jack to lean closer, Toby seemed to change the subject: "What were they doing down there?" Jack said, "You mean in the graveyard?"
        "Yeah."
        "You know."
        "But it doesn't. It