magical Calming Dust that crushed the water flat, made the sea as
smooth and ripple-free as a mirror. The ancient sea wanted to rise up,
swamp the boat, but the Calming Dust weighed it down, more than iron,
more than lead, weighed it down and kept it calm, defeated it. Deep in
the darkest and coldest canyons below its surface, the sea raged,
furious with Toby, wanting more than ever to kill him, drown him, bash
his body to pieces against shoreline rocks, wear him away with its
waters until he would be just sand. But it couldn't rise, couldn't
rise, all was calm on the surface, peaceful and calm, calm.
Perhaps because Toby was concentrating so intensely on keeping the
Giver under him, he lacked the strength to climb the entire hill,
though the snow was not piled dauntingly high on that windswept
ground.
Jack put down the fuel cans two-thirds of the way to the higher woods,
carried Toby to the stone house, gave Heather the keys, and returned
for the ten gallons of gasoline.
By the time Jack reached the fieldstone house again, :
464 DEAN
KOONTZ
Heather had opened the door. The rooms inside were dark. He hadn't
had time to discover the reason for the malfunctioning lights.
Nevertheless, now he knew why Paul Youngblood couldn't get power to the
house on Monday. The dweller within hadn't wanted them to enter.
The rooms were still dark because the windows were boarded over, and
there was no time to pry off the plywood that shielded the glass.
Fortunately, Heather had remembered the lack of power and come
prepared. From two pockets of her ski suit, she produced, instead of
bullets, a pair of flashlights.
It always seems to come down to this, Jack thought: going into a dark
place.
Basements, alleyways, abandoned houses, boiler rooms, crumbling
warehouses.
Even when a cop was chasing a perp on a bright day and the chase led
only outdoors, in the final confrontation, when you came face-to-face
with evil, it was always a dark place, as if the sun could not find
that one small patch of ground where you and your potential murderer
tested fate.
Toby walked into the house ahead of them, either unafraid of the gloom
or eager to do the deed.
Heather and Jack each took a flashlight and a can of gasoline, leaving
two cans just outside the front door.
Harlan Moffit brought up the rear with two cans. 'What're these
buggers like?
They all hairless and bigeyed like those geeks who kidnapped Whitley
Strieber?'
In the unfurnished and unlighted living room, Toby was standing in
front of a dark figure, and when their flashlight beams found what the
boy had found before
WINTER MOON 465
them, Harlan Moffit had his answer. Not hairless and big-eyed. Not
