By the Light of the Moon

32

Abundant slabs of shadow and a few shards of pale light unfolded through the receding motel bedroom, and one split second before Dylan recognized the new room that fell into place around him, he smelled the lingering savor of a cinnamon-pecan-raisin cake baked according to his mother's cherished recipe, its delicious aroma unmistakable.

Shep, Jilly, and Dylan himself arrived unscathed, but the killer in the polo shirt didn't have a ticket to ride, after all. Not even the echo of his shouted O'Conner! followed them out of Arizona.

In spite of the comforting aroma and the gladdening absence of a door-busting assassin, Dylan enjoyed no sense of relief. Something was wrong. He couldn't at once identify the source of his current uneasiness, but he felt it too strongly to discount it as bad nerves.

The gloom in the kitchen of their California house was relieved only slightly by a soft butterscotch-yellow light seeping across the threshold of the open door to the dining room, and even less by the illuminated clock set into the belly of a smiling ceramic pig that hung on the wall to the right of the sink. On the counter under the clock, revealed by that timely light, a sheet-cake pan containing the fresh cinnamon-pecan-raisin delight cooled on a wire rack.

Vonetta Beesley – their once-a-week Harley-riding housekeeper – sometimes cooked for them, using their late mother's best recipes. But as they weren't scheduled to return from their art-festival tour until late October, she must have prepared this treat for herself.

Following the momentary disorientation of being folded, Dylan realized why a sense of wrongness could not be dispelled. They had departed eastern Arizona, which lay in the Mountain time zone, before one o'clock Saturday afternoon. In California, in the Pacific time zone, the day should have waned one hour less than it had back in Holbrook. Shortly before one o'clock in Holbrook translated to shortly before noon on the shores of the Pacific, yet the black of night pressed at the kitchen windows.

Darkness at noon?

'Where are we?' Jilly whispered.

'Home,' Dylan said.

He consulted the luminous hands of his wristwatch, which he had set to Mountain time days ago, before the arts festival in Tucson. The watch showed four minutes till one o'clock, about what he had expected and surely correct.

Here in the land of the golden poppy and the redwood tree, the time ought to be four minutes till noon, not four till midnight.

'Why's it dark?' Jilly asked.

In the belly of the pig, the illuminated clock showed 9:26.

During the previous trips via folding, either no time elapsed in transit – or at most a few seconds. Dylan had not been aware of any significant period of time passing on this occasion, either.

If they truly had arrived at 9:26 in the evening, Vonetta should have left hours ago. She worked from nine o'clock until five. If she had gone, however, she would have taken the cake with her.

Likewise, she wouldn't have forgotten to turn off the light in the dining room. Vonetta Beesley had always been as reliable as the atomic clock at Greenwich, by which all the nations of the world set their timepieces.

The house stood in a funereal condition, hung with cerements of silence, draped in shrouds of stillness.

The wrongness involved something more than the darkness peering in at the windows, involved the house itself and something within the house. He could hear no evil breathing, no demon on the prowl, but he sensed that nothing here was right.

Jilly must have been alarmed by the same queer perception. She stood precisely on the spot where she had been unfolded, as though afraid to move, and her body language was so clearly written that her tension could easily be read even in these shadows.

The quality of light issuing from the dining room wasn't as it should be. The chandelier over the table, which Dylan couldn't see from this angle, was controlled by a switch with a dimming feature, but even at this low level of brightness, the glow had far too rich a butterscotch color and too moody an aspect to have been thrown off by the brass-and-crystal fixture. Besides, the light didn't originate from chandelier height; the ceiling in the next room was troweled in shadow, and the light appeared to fall to the floor from a point not far above the top of the table.

'Shep, buddy, what's happening here?' Dylan whispered.

Having been promised cake, Shep might have been expected to go directly to the cinnamon glory cooling in a pan under the clock, for it was his nature to be single-minded in all things, and not least of all in the matter of cake. Instead, he took one step toward the door to the dining room, hesitated, and said, 'Shep is brave,' although he sounded more fearful than Dylan had ever before heard him.

Dylan wanted to avoid venturing deeper into the house until he gained a better sense of their situation. He needed a good weapon, as well. The knife drawer offered a trove of wicked cutlery; but he'd had enough of knives lately. He longed for a baseball bat.

'Shep is brave,' Shep said, with even a greater tremor in his voice and with less confidence than before. Yet his head was raised to face the dining-room door rather than the floor at his feet, and as though defying an inner counsel that always advised him to retreat from any challenge, he shuffled forward.

Dylan quickly moved to his brother's side and placed one hand on his shoulder, intending to restrain him, but Shep shrugged it off and continued slowly but determinedly toward the dining room.

Jilly looked to Dylan for guidance. Her dark eyes shone with reflected clock light.

In a stubborn mood, Shep could be an inspiration for any mule; and Dylan detected here an infrequently seen but familiar obstinacy that experience had taught him could not be dealt with easily and certainly not quietly. Shep would do in this matter what he wanted to do, leaving Dylan no option but to follow him warily.

He surveyed the shadowy kitchen for a weapon but saw nothing immediately at hand.

At the threshold, in the burnt-ocher light, Shepherd hesitated, but only briefly, before stepping out of the kitchen. He turned left to face the dining-room table.

When Dylan and Jilly entered the dining room behind Shepherd, they found a boy sitting at the table. He appeared to be ten years old.

The boy did not look up at them, but remained focused on the large basket filled with adorable golden-retriever puppies, which lay before him. Much of the basket was complete, but many of the puppies lacked portions of their bodies and heads. The boy's hands flew, flew from the box of loose puzzle pieces to empty areas of the picture that waited to be filled.

Jilly might not have recognized the young puzzle worker, but Dylan knew him well. The boy was Shepherd O'Conner.