Tick Tock

by Dean Koontz

  Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off the front door—until movement at one of the flanking windows drew his attention. The serpent-eyed fat man peered in at them.

  “We don’t even have a gun,” Tommy worried.

  “Don’t need gun,” Mother Phan said. “Got Quy Trang Dai. Sit down and be patient.”

  The Samaritan-thing walked to the window on the other side of the front door and peered hungrily at Tommy through that pane. It rapped one knuckle against the glass.

  To Del, Tommy repeated, “We don’t have a gun.”

  “We’ve got Mrs. Dai,” Del said. “You can always pick her up by the ankles and use her as a club.”

  Quy Trang Dai wagged one finger at the Samaritan-thing and said, “I made you, and I tell you go away, so now you go.”

  The demon turned from the window. Its footsteps thudded across the porch and down the front steps.

  “There,” said Mother Phan, “now sit down, Tuong, and behave.”

  Trembling, Tommy sat on the sofa. “It really went away?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Dai. “It going all around house now to see did I forget and leave door or window open.”

  Tommy bolted up again. “Is there a chance you did?”

  “No. I not fool.”

  “You already made one big mistake,” Tommy reminded her.

  “Tuong!” Mother Phan gasped, appalled by his rudeness.

  “Well,” Tommy said, “she did. She made one hell of a mistake, so why not another?”

  Pouting, Mrs. Dai said, “One mistake, I have to apologize rest of my life?”

  Feeling as if his skull might explode from the pressure of his anxiety, Tommy put his hands to his head. “This is nuts. This can’t be happening.”

  “It happening,” Mrs. Dai said.

  “It’s got to be a nightmare.”

  To the other women, Del said, “He’s just not prepared for this. He doesn’t watch The X-Files.”

  “You not watch X-Files?” Mrs. Dai asked, astonished.

  Shaking her head with dismay, Mother Phan said, “Probably watch junk detective show instead of good educational program.”

  From elsewhere in the house came the sounds of the Samaritan-thing rapping on windows and testing doorknobs.

  Scootie cuddled against Del, and she petted and soothed him.

  Mrs. Dai said, “Some rain we have, huh?”

  “So early in season too,” said Mother Phan.

  “Remind me of jungle rain, so heavy.”

  “We need rain after drought last year.”

  “Sure no drought this year.”

  Del said, “Mrs. Dai, in your village in Vietnam, did farmers ever find crop circles, inexplicable depressed patterns in their fields? Or large circular depressions where something might have landed in the rice paddies?”

  Leaning forward in her chair, Mother Phan said to Mrs. Dai, “Tuong not want to believe demon rapping window in front of his face, want to think it just bad dream, but then he believe Big Foot real.”

  “Big Foot?” Mrs. Dai said, and pressed one hand to her lips to stifle a giggle.

  The Samaritan-thing stomped up the steps onto the front porch once more. It appeared at the window to the left of the door, eyes fierce and radiant.

  Mrs. Dai consulted her wristwatch. “Looking good.”

  Tommy stood rigid, quivering.

  To Mother Phan, Mrs. Dai said, “So sorry about Mai.”

  “Break mother’s heart,” said Tommy’s mother.

  “She live to regret,” said Mrs. Dai.

  “I try so hard to teach her right.”

  “She weak, magician clever.”

  “Tuong make bad example for sister,” said Mother Phan.

  “My heart ache for you,” Mrs. Dai said.

  Virtually vibrating with tension, Tommy said, “Can we talk about this later, if there is a later?”

  From the beast at the window came the piercing, ululant shriek that seemed more like an electronic voice than an animal one.

  Getting up from her chinoiserie chair, Mrs. Dai turned to the window, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Stop that, you bad thing. You wake neighbors.”

  The creature fell silent, but it glared at Mrs. Dai almost as hatefully as it had glared at Tommy.

  Abruptly the fat man’s moon-round face split up the middle from chin to hairline, as it had when the creature had clambered over the bow railing of the yacht in Newport Harbor. The halves of its countenance peeled apart, green eyes now bulging on the sides of its skull, and out of the gash in the center of its face lashed a score of whip-thin, segmented black tendrils that writhed around a sucking hole crammed with gnashing teeth. As the beast pressed its face to the window, the tendrils slithered frenziedly across the glass.

  “You not scare me,” Mrs. Dai said disdainfully. “Zip up face and go away.”

  The writhing tendrils withdrew into the skull, and the torn visage re-knit into the face of the fat man—although with the green eyes of the demon.

  “You see,” Mother Phan said, still sitting complacently with her purse in her lap and her hands on the purse. “Don’t need gun when have Quy Trang Dai.”

  “Impressive,” Del agreed.

  At the window, its frustration palpable, the Samaritan-thing issued a pleading, needful mewl.

  Mrs. Dai took three steps toward the window, lights flashing across the heels of her shoes, and waved at the beast with the backs of her hands. “Shoo,” she said impatiently. “Shoo, shoo.”

  This was more than the Samaritan-thing could tolerate, and it smashed one fat fist through the window.

  As shattered glass cascaded into the living room, Mrs. Dai backed up three steps, bumping against the chinoiserie chair, and said, “This not good.”

  “This not good?” Tommy half shouted. “What do you mean this not good?”

  Rising from the sofa, Del said, “I think she means we turned down the last cup of tea we’re ever going to have a chance to drink.”

  Mother Phan got up from the bergère. She spoke to Quy Trang Dai in rapid Vietnamese.

  Keeping her eyes on the demon at the broken window, Mrs. Dai answered in Vietnamese.

  Looking distressed at last, Mother Phan said, “Oh, boy.”

  The tone in which his mother spoke those two words was like an icy finger drawn down his spine.

  At the window, the Samaritan-thing at first seemed shocked by its own boldness. This was, after all, the sacred domain of the hairdresser witch who had summoned it from Hell—or from wherever Xan River magicians summoned such creatures. It peered in amazement at the few jagged fragments of glass that still prickled from the window frame, no doubt wondering why it had not instantly been cast back to the sulfurous chambers of the underworld.

  Mrs. Dai checked her wristwatch.

  Tommy consulted his as well.

  Ticktock.

  Half snarling, half whining nervously, the Samaritan-thing climbed through the broken window into the living room.

  “Better stand together,” said Mrs. Dai.

  Tommy, Del, and Scootie moved out from behind the coffee table, joining his mother and Mrs. Dai in a tight grouping.

  The serpent-eyed fat man no longer wore the hooded raincoat. The fire from the yacht should have burned away all its clothes, but curiously had only singed them, as though its imperviousness to fire extended somewhat to the garments it wore. The black wingtip shoes were badly scuffed and caked with mud. The filthy and rumpled trousers, the equally disheveled and bullet-torn shirt and vest and suit jacket, the acrid smell of smoke that seeped from the creature, combined with its gardenia-white skin and inhuman eyes, gave it all the charm of a walking corpse.

  For half a minute or more, the demon stood in indecision and evident uneasiness, perhaps waiting to be punished for violating the sanctity of Mrs. Dai’s house.

  Ticktock.

  Then it shook itself. Its plump hands curled into fists, relaxed, curled into fists. It licked its lips with a fat pink tongu
e—and it shrieked at them.

  The deadline is dawn.

  Beyond the windows the sky was still dark—though perhaps more charcoal gray than black.

  Ticktock.

  Mrs. Dai startled Tommy by raising her left hand to her mouth and savagely biting the meatiest part of her palm, below her thumb, drawing blood. She smacked her bloody hand against his forehead, like a faith healer knocking illness out of a penitent sufferer.

  When Tommy started to wipe the blood away, Mrs. Dai said, “No, leave. I safe from demon because I summon into rag doll. Can’t harm me. If you smell like me, smell like my blood, it can’t know who you really are, think you me, then not harm you, either.”

  As the Samaritan-thing approached, Mrs. Dai smeared her blood on Del’s forehead, on Mother Phan’s forehead, and after hesitating only briefly, on Scootie’s head as well.

  “Be still,” she instructed them in an urgent whisper. “Be still, be quiet.”

  Grumbling, hissing, the creature approached to within a foot of the group. Its fetid breath was repulsive, reeking of dead burnt flesh and curdled milk and rancid onions—as though, in another life, it had eaten hundreds of cheeseburgers and had been plagued with indigestion even in Hell.

  With a wet crackling sound, the plump white hands metamorphosed into serrated pincers designed for efficient slashing and rending.

  When the radiant green eyes fixed on Tommy’s eyes, they seemed to look through him, as if the beast were reading his identity on the bar code of his soul.

  Tommy remained still. Silent.

  The demon sniffed him, not as a snorting pig might revel in the delicious stink of its slops, but as a master viniculturist with an exquisitely sensitive nose might seek to isolate and identify each of the many delicate aromas rising from a glassful of fine Bordeaux.

  Hissing, the beast turned to sniff Del, lingering more briefly than it had with Tommy.

  Then Mrs. Dai.

  Then Mother Phan.

  When the creature bent down to sniff Scootie, the Labrador returned the compliment.

  Apparently puzzled by finding the scent of the sorceress on all of them, the demon circled the group, grumbling, mumbling to itself in some strange language.

  As one, without having to discuss it, Tommy and the three women and the dog shuffled in a circle to keep their blood-smeared faces toward the Samaritan-thing as it prowled for prey.

  When they had shuffled all the way around and were back where they had started, the creature focused on Tommy once more. It leaned closer, until their faces were only three inches apart, and it sniffed. Sniffed. Sniffed. With a disgusting squishy sound, the fat man’s nose broadened and darkened into a scaly reptilian snout with wide, pug nostrils. It breathed in slowly and deeply, held its breath, exhaled, breathed in even more slowly and deeply than before.

  The serpent-eyed thing opened its mouth and shrieked at Tommy, but though his heart raced faster, Tommy neither flinched nor cried out.

  At last the demon exhaled its pent-up inhalation, bathing Tommy’s face in a gale of foul breath that made him want to spew up the coffee and pastries that he had eaten during the stop at The Great Pile.

  The beast shuffled to the bergère, where Tommy’s mother had been sitting, and knocked her purse to the floor. It settled down in the chair and folded its killing pincers in its lap—and after a moment they metamorphosed into the fat man’s hands once more.

  Tommy was afraid that his mother would leave the group, pick up her purse, and smack the demon over the head with it. But with uncharacteristic timidity, she remained still and quiet, as Mrs. Dai had instructed.

  The hulking Samaritan-thing smacked its lips. It sighed wearily.

  The radiant green eyes changed into the ordinary brown eyes of the murdered Samaritan.

  The demon looked at its wristwatch.

  Ticktock.

  Yawning, it blinked at the group standing before it.

  The beast bent forward in the bergère, seized its right foot with both hands, and brought the foot to its face in a display of impossible double-jointedness. Its mouth cracked open from ear to ear, like the mouth of a crocodile, and it began to stuff its foot and then its heavy leg into its maw.

  Tommy glanced at the windows.

  Pale pink light spread like a dim blush on the face of the eastern sky.

  As if it were not a solid creature but an elaborate origami sculpture, the demon continued to fold itself into itself, growing smaller and smaller still—until, with a shimmer that hid the how of the final transformation, it became only a rag doll once more, exactly as it had been when Tommy had found it on his doorstep, a limp-limbed figure of white cotton, with all the black stitches intact.

  Pointing at the pink sky beyond the windows, Mrs. Dai said, “Going to be nice day.”

  NINE

  With paper towels and tap water, they had cleaned the blood off their foreheads.

  The two Vietnamese women sat at the kitchen table.

  After applying a healing poultice that the hairdresser-witch kept in the refrigerator, Mother Phan taped a gauze pad to Mrs. Dai’s bitten hand. “You sure not hurt?”

  “Fine, fine,” said Quy Trang Dai. “Heal fast, no problem.”

  The rag doll lay on the table.

  Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off it. “What’s in the damn thing?”

  “Now?” Mrs. Dai said. “Mostly just sand. Some river mud. Snake blood. Some other things better you not know.”

  “I want to destroy it.”

  “Can’t hurt you now. Anyway, taking apart is my job,” said Mrs. Dai. “Have to do according to rules or magic won’t be undone.”

  “Then take it apart right now.”

  “Have to wait till noon, sun high, night on other side of world, and then magic be undone.”

  “That’s only logical,” Del said.

  Getting up from the table, Mrs. Dai said, “Ready for tea now?”

  “I want to see it dismembered, everything inside cast to the wind,” Tommy said.

  “Can’t watch,” said Mrs. Dai as she took a teakettle from one of the cabinets. “Magic must be done by sorceress alone, no other eyes to see.”

  “Who says?”

  “Dead ancestors of River Xan set rules, not me.”

  “Sit down, Tuong, stop worry, have tea,” said Mother Phan. “You make Mrs. Dai think you not trust her.”

  Taking Tommy by the arm, Del said, “Could I see you a minute?”

  She led him out of the kitchen into the dining room, and Scootie followed them.

  Speaking in a whisper, she said, “Don’t drink the tea.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe there’s more than one way to make a stray son return to the fold.”

  “What way?”

  “A potion, a combination of exotic herbs, a pinch of river mud—who knows?” Del whispered.

  Tommy looked back through the open door. In the kitchen, his mother was putting out cookies and slices of cake while Mrs. Dai brewed the tea.

  “Maybe,” whispered Del, “Mrs. Dai was too enthusiastic about bringing you to your senses and back into the family. Maybe she started out with the drastic approach, the doll, when a nice cup of the right tea would have made more sense.”

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Dai was putting cups and saucers on the table. The devil doll still lay there, watching the preparations with its cross-stitched eyes.

  Tommy stepped into the kitchen and said, “Mom, I think we’d better go now.”

  Looking up from the cake that she was slicing, Mother Phan said, “Have tea and nibble first, then go.”

  “No, I want to go now.”

  “Don’t be rude, Tuong. While we have tea and nibble, I call your father. By time we done, he stop by, take us home before he go work at bakery.”

  “Del and I are leaving now,” he insisted.

  “No car,” she reminded him. “This crazy woman’s car just trash in garage.”

  “The Peterbilt’s parked out there at the
curb. The engine’s still idling.”

  Mother Phan frowned. “Truck stolen.”

  “We’ll return it,” Tommy said.

  “What about trash car in garage?” Mrs. Dai asked.

  “Mummingford will send someone for it,” said Del.

  “Who?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Tommy and Del and Scootie went into the living room, where the glass from the broken window crunched and clinked underfoot.

  Mrs. Dai and Mother Phan followed them.

  As Tommy unlocked and opened the front door, his mother said, “When I see you again?”

  “Soon,” he promised, following Del and Scootie onto the porch.

  “Come to dinner tonight. We have com tay cam, your favorite.”

  “That sounds good. Mmmmm, I can’t wait.”

  Mrs. Dai and Mother Phan stepped onto the porch as well, and the hairdresser said, “Miss Payne, what day your birthday?”

  “Christmas Eve.”

  “Is true?”

  Descending the porch steps, Del said, “October thirty-first.”

  “Which true?” Mrs. Dai asked a little too eagerly.

  “July fourth,” said Del. And to Tommy, sotto voce, she said, “They always need a birthday to cast the spell.”

  Moving onto the front steps as Del reached the walkway, Mrs. Dai said, “You have beautiful hair, Miss Payne. I enjoy doing such beautiful hair.”

  “So you can get a lock of it?” Del wondered as she continued to walk toward