Winter Moon

thumb my nose at the devil himself..So what's wrong up there with your family?"
        "Trapped," Jack said cryptically.
        "In snow, you mean?"
        "Yes."
        "Nothing steep enough around here for an avalanche."
        "Not an avalanche," Jack confirmed.
        They reached the hill and headed for the turn past the lower woods.
        The house should be in view any second.
        "Trapped in the snow?" Harlan said, worrying at it. He didn't look away from his work, but he frowned as if he would have liked to meet Jack's eyes.
        The house came into view. Almost hidden by sheeting snow but vaguely visible.
        Their new house. New life. New future. On fire.
        Earlier, at the computer, when he'd been mentally linked to the Giver but not completely in its power, Toby had gotten to know it, feeling around in its mind, being nosy, letting its thoughts slide into him while he kept saying "no" to it, and little by little he had learned about it. One of the things he learned was that it had never encountered any species that could get inside its mind the way it could force itself into the minds of other creatures, so it wasn't even aware of Toby in there, didn't feel him, thought it was all one-way communication. Hard to explain. That was the best he could do. Just sliding around in its mind, looking at things, terrible things, not a good place but dark and frightening. He hadn't thought of it as a brave thing to do, only what must be done, what Captain Kirk or Mr.
        Spock or Luke Skywalker or any of those guys would have done in his place or when meeting a new and hostile intelligent species out on the galactic rim. They'd have taken any advantage, added to their knowledge in any way they could.
        So did he.
        No big deal.
        Now, when the noise coming out of the radio urged him to open the door-just open the door and let it in, let it in, accept the pleasure and the peace, let it in-he did as it wanted, though he didn't let it enter all the way, not half as far as he entered into it. As at the computer this morning, he was now between complete freedom and enslavement, walking the brink of a chasm, careful not to let his presence be known until he was ready to strike.
        While the Giver was rushing into his mind, confident of overwhelming it, Toby turned the tables..He imagined that his own mind was a colossal weight, a billion trillion tons, even heavier than that, more than the weight of all the planets in the solar system combined, and even a zillion times heavier than that, pressing down on the mind of the Giver, so much weight, crushing it, flattening it into a thin pancake and holding it there, so it could think fast and furiously but could not act on its thoughts.
        The thing let go of Heather's ankle. All of its sinuous and agitated appendages retracted and curled into one another, and it went still, like a massive ball of glistening intestines, four feet in diameter.
        The other one lost control of the burning corpse with which it was entwined.
        Parasite and dead host collapsed in a heap and were also motionless.
        Heather stood in stunned disbelief, unable to understand what had happened.
        Smoke churned into the room.
        Toby had opened the dead bolt and the stairhead door. Tugging at her, he said, "Quick, Mom."
        Beyond confusion, in a state of utter baffflement, she followed her son and the dog into the back stairwell and pulled the door shut, cutting off the smoke before it reached them.
        Toby hurried down the stairs, the dog at his heels, and Heather plunged after him as he followed the curving wall out of sight.
        "Honey, wait!"
        "No time," he called back to her.
        "Toby!"
        She was terrified about descending the stairs so recklessly, not knowing what might be ahead, assuming another of those things had to be somewhere near at hand. Three graves had been disturbed at the cemetery.
        In the vestibule at the bottom, the door to the back porch was still nailed shut. The door in the kitchen was wide open, and Toby was waiting for her with the dog.
        She would have thought her heart couldn't have beat any faster or slammed any harder than it did on the way down those stairs, but when she saw Toby's face, her pulse quickened and each lub-dub was so forceful that it sent a throb of dull pain across her breast.
        If he had been pale