Winter Moon

rocked her: If it didn't understand the concept of death, that must mean it couldn't die, couldn't be killed. In which case guns were useless against it.
        Still, it waited, hesitated. Maybe what Toby had learned about it was all a lie, and maybe it was as vulnerable as they were or more so, even fragile.
        Wishful thinking. It was all she had.
        She was not quite to the midpoint of the hall. Two more steps would put her there, between the archways to the dining and living rooms.
        But she was far enough from the back door to have a chance of obliterating the creature if it erupted into the house with unnatural speed and power. She stopped, put the gasoline can on the floor beside the newel post, and clutched the Uzi in both hands again.."Mom?"
        "Sssshhhh."
        "What're we gonna do?" he pleaded.
        "Sssshhhh. Let me think."
        Aspects of the intruder were obviously snakelike, although she couldn't know if that was the nature of only its appendages or of its entire body. Most snakes could move fast-or coil and spring substantial distances with deadly accuracy.
        The back door remained ajar. Unmoving. Wisps of snow followed drafts through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, into the house, spinning and glittering across the tile floor.
        Whether or not the thing on the back porch was fast, it was undeniably big.
        She'd sensed its considerable size when she'd had only the most fleeting glimpse of it slipping away from the window. Bigger than she was.
        "Come on," she muttered, her attention riveted on the back door. "Come on, if you're never afraid, come on."
        Both she and Toby cried out in surprise when, in the living room, the television switched on, with the volume turned all the way up.
        Frenetic, bouncy music. Cartoon music. A screech of brakes, a crash and clatter, with comic accompaniment on a flute. Then the voice of a frustrated Elmer Fudd booming through the house:
        "OOOHHH, I HATE THAT WABBIT!"
        Heather kept her attention on the back door, beyond the hall and kitchen, altogether about fifty feet away.
        So loud each word vibrated the windows, Bugs Bunny said: "EH, WHAT'S UP, DOC" And then a sound of something bouncing:
        BOING, BOINC, BOING, BOING, BOING. "STOP THAT, STOP THAT, YOU CWAZY WABBIT!"
        Falstaff ran into the living room, barking at the TV, and then scurried into the hall again, looking past Heather to where he, too, knew the real enemy still waited.
        The back door.
        Snow sifting through the narrow opening.
        In the living room, the television program fell silent in the middle of a long comical trombone crescendo that, even under the circumstances, brought to mind a vivid image of Elmer Fudd sliding haplessly and inexorably toward one doom or another. Quiet. Just the keening wind.outside.
        One second. Two. Three.
        Then the TV blared again, but not with Bugs and Elmer. It spewed forth the same weird waves of unmelodic music that had issued from the radio in the kitchen.
        To Toby, she said sharply, "Resist it!"
        Back door. Snowflakes spiraling through the crack.
        Come on, come on.
        Keeping her eyes on the back door, at the far side of the lighted kitchen, she said, "Don't listen to it, honey, just tell it to go away, say no to it. No, no, no to it."
        The tuneless music, alternately irritating and soothing, pushed her with what seemed like real physical force when the volume rose, pulled on her when the volume ebbed, pushed and pulled, until she realized that she was swaying as Toby had swayed in the kitchen when under the spell of the radio.
        In one of the quieter passages, she heard a murmur Toby's voice. She couldn't catch the words.
        She looked at him. He had that dazed expression. Transported. He was moving his lips. He might have been saying "yes, yes," but she couldn't tell for sure.
        Kitchen door. Still ajar two inches, no more, as it had been.
        Something still waiting out there on the porch.
        She knew it.
        The boy whispered to his unseen seducer, soft urgent words that might have been the first faltering steps of acquiescence or total surrender.
        "Shit!" she said.
        She backed up two steps, turned toward the livingroom arch on her left, and opened fire on the television. A brief burst, six or eight rounds, tore