Demon Child

by Dean Koontz

  Demon Child

  by

  Dean Koontz

  * * *

  COLD WELCOME

  "What exactly was the curse?" asked Jenny. Her hands were so cold that they looked like white porcelain. '

  Her aunt spoke slowly. "Sarah pledged that every generation of the Brucker family would contain a child haunted-a child possessed. This child would seek the wolfbane, would howl at the full moon, and find a craving for blood."

  "A werewolf? That's... silly." But she did not feel much like laughing.

  "That night Sarah's father died... strangely. He grabbed at his own neck, as if struggling against someone... or something... invisible. He drew his own blood... but he died."

  Jenny's eyes strayed to the red volumes of demonic lore. Was this really the answer to Freya's strange spells? Impossible though it seemed... could the child really be a werewolf?

  * * *

  LANCER BOOKS NEW YORK

  A LANCER BOOK

  DEMON CHILD

  Copvright Š 1971 by Deanna Dwyer

  All rigjts reserved

  Printed In Canada.

  * * *

  DEDICATION: To Ann, Oracle, Dan, Leonard, Ely and K. B.

  * * *

  LANCER BOOKS, INC. • 1560 BROADWAY

  NEW YORK, N.Y. 10036

  * * *

  1

  The sky was low and gray as masses of thick clouds scudded southward, pulling cold air down from the north as they went. Jenny huddled against the chill as she entered the quiet graveyard where it seemed ten degrees colder yet. That was her imagination, of course. Still, she hunched her shoulders and walked faster.

  She stopped before three similar tombstones, one of which had only recently been set before an unsodded grave. In the entire cemetery, she was the only mourner. She was thankful for that, for she preferred to be alone. Turning her eyes to the stones, she read the names cut in them: Lee Brighton, Sandra Brighton and Leona Pitt Brighton. Her father, mother and paternal grandmother. As always, reading the names together, she found it difficult to believe they were all gone and that she was alone without even a brother or sister to share the burdens she carried. She wiped at the tears in her eyes.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw someone. When she turned to look, there was no one there. But when she directed her gaze back to the stones, she saw him again, a large man, gray and indistinct, approaching her. She turned to stare at him.

  He was gone. The cemetery was empty, but for the fog and the tombstones.

  Suddenly, she could hear ghostly footsteps on the flagstone walk.

  Run, Jenny! the voices of her dead loved ones cried. Run, run! Look how suddenly and unexpectedly we died.

  A drunken driver ran a red light, killing Lee and Sandra in an instant. Grandmother Brighton died in seconds of a stroke.

  Now you must run or the unexpected, the unknown, will catch you too!

  She looked all around but still could not see anyone. Softly, the echo of footsteps grew closer.

  "Who is it?" she asked.

  The dead voices only answered, Run!

  The footsteps were almost on top of her now. Any moment, a hand would reach out and touch her, a cold, wet hand.

  "Who's there?" she asked again.

  Its the unknown, the dead told her. You can never anticipate what it will do, when it will take you. All you can do is run, Jenny. Hurry!

  She turned away from the stones and ran, her heels clicking on the walk. Despite the sounds of her own flight, the heavy panic in her harsh breathing, she could hear the gentle footsteps following her. She ran faster, dashed through the iron gates of the cemetery entrance.

  To her right, a car horn blared. She looked up in time to see the automobile rushing the last few feet toward her! Behind the windshield, the driver's face was a mask of terror. She threw up her hand for what little protection that would bring her, and-

  There was a screech of brakes and a loud rattling noise which woke her from her troubled sleep.

  She looked out of the bus window at the terminal, at the concrete veranda and the old wooden benches. For a moment, she was not able to remember where she was. The nightmare had seemed so real that the real world now seemed like a dream by comparison.

  Around her, people struggled to their feet, took bags down from the overhead luggage racks and made their way up the aisle toward the door, joking with one another about the incredible heat.

  Even as she got a better grasp on things, her fear remained. Just as in the dream, she was running, though not from some invisible, faceless force. At least she didn't think she was running from anything but loneliness. Her nerves quieted somewhat by the time the bus was nearly deserted; she picked up her purse and went outside.

  The bus driver, seeing she had no one to handle her two large suitcases for her, took them just inside the terminal door. In moments, everyone had been picked up by friends and relatives, leaving the terminal in a sleepy malaise again. Richard Brucker should have been waiting for her. She hoped that nothing was wrong. She waited for him inside the air-conditioned old terminal, by a front window where she could command a complete view of the parking lot.

  Dark clouds were shoving across the bright sky, as black as onyx, low and rain-filled. Such severe heat and humidity all day could only result in thunderstorms by evening. At least that was the general feeling on the bus where the air-conditioning had malfunctioned and the passengers had grown talkative hi order to make the leaden minutes pass more swiftly.

  Jagged, yellow lightning cracked down the backdrop of the clouds, followed almost instantly by hard, loud thunder that sounded like nothing so much as cannons, dozens of cannons firing simultaneously.

  Jenny leaped back from the window, frightened by the violent display. She back-stepped a bit, even though there was no serious threat to her.

  You are a big girl now, she chided herself. You kept a stiff upper lip when mom and dad died seven years ago. You handled grandma's funeral all by yourself, settled the old woman's estate without much help. You've worked your way through college, and you're twenty-one years old. Now stop being frightened by a little old flash of lightning!

  Where on earth was her cousin? Richard Brucker was fifteen minutes late already. She wondered if he might have had an accident, for she thought of the rain-slicked pavement on which her mother and father had died. She felt guilty for even nourishing the start of impatience.

  Just then, the storm broke over the terminal. Lightning struck down, seemed to smash into the surface of the parking lot, as if attracted by the aerials of the cars parked there.

  Impulsively, Jenny turned away from the glass.

  Rain hissed across the concrete veranda, driven by stiff gusts of wind. It darkened the veranda floor, spattered on the windows. It sounded like someone whispering a warning to her, over and over.

  She left her two suitcases where the driver had put them, crossed the terminal building to the far wall where a waitress wiped the top of a small lunch counter. She took a stool and ordered a cup of coffee.

  "Looks like it finally broke," the waitress said.

  "Do you think it'll last all day?"

  "Supposed to go on all night too!" The waitress put the coffee down. "Want a doughnut with that?"

  "No thank you."

  "Moving in or visiting?" the waitress asked. She did not seem to be a busybody, just friendly.

  "Visiting," Jenny said. "I graduated from college last week. I used to live with my grandmother, but she passed on two months ago. I have an aunt here who wants to have me until my first teaching job starts in the fall."

  "A teacher!" the waitress said. "I never was any good with books myself. That's why I'm just a waitress. Right now, though, I wish I was home in bed with a
book. This place gets spooky when there ain't many people about."

  Jenny looked at the open-beam ceiling, dark and mysterious, at the dim corners where old, hooded lights didn't cast much cheer. "I sure wouldn't want to work here!" She sipped her coffee. "But I guess you meet a good many different types of people."

  The waitress nodded. "Some you'd like to know, others you'd give anything never to see again." She looked over Jenny's shoulder toward the front doors. "And here comes one I could do without. He's from that house where poor little Freya lives. If there's a curse, then he's the cause of it." Her voice fell as the man drew nearer the counter. "Half the child's troubles, if you ask me, stem from this one. No good at all; too quiet and too dark and too unwilling to talk with anyone."

  Jenny looked at the man who, a moment later, stepped up to the counter. He was tall and slim, with very large hands that moved rapidly. They pressed at his lapels, searched his pockets, flicked at dirt on the countertop. He was a handsome man, scholarly in appearance except for his black, curly hair which he wore full and rather long. It was this last detail which kept her from recognizing him immediately. When he smiled at her, she saw that it was Richard.

  "Hello, Jenny," he said.

  She got up and hugged him. He had been four years her senior when her parents died, and, in the midst of sympathetic adults, he had been the only one to whom she could communicate her grief. His own mother had died when Richard was two years old. And though he had been too young to remember it, he had learned the loneliness of the world in the years after. When she had needed consolation, it was Richard who, clumsily but earnestly, had given it to her.

  The waitress moved off, disapproving, scowling at them when she thought they could not see.

  "We can talk more in the car," Richard said, hefting her suitcases. "After that, we have the whole summer."

  At the front door, she said, "You'll get drenched!"

  "Don't worry about me. Pull your coat over your head and run for it. I left both doors slightly ajar, so you can get in quickly. It's the maroon Corvette there. Ready?"

  Lightning snapped across the low clouds, making the darkening afternoon momentarily brighter. Jenny jumped as the clap of thunder rattled the windows.

  "Lightning always strikes the highest object in the area," Richard said, sensing her fright. "I'm a good foot taller than you."

  "Don't say that!" she snapped, gripping his arm.

  He had meant it as a joke, was surprised she took him so earnestly. "The car's only a dozen yards away. No trouble. Now?"

  "Now," she said, resigned to it.

  He shouldered open the door, lead her onto the veranda. Richard ran into the downpour. A moment later, her coat pulled over her head, slightly hunched to make herself a smaller target, she ran too.

  The pavement lighted with a reflection of a wide, jagged run of lightning.

  She almost slipped and fell on the slick macadam, regained her balance only by the sheerest luck. She found the passenger's door, opened it and slid into the small, low-slung sportscar.

  Again, yellow light shattered the even black glaze of the sky, but she felt safe from it now. She had heard that the four tires of an automobile grounded it in a storm. She was careful, though, not to touch any of the metal fixtures. She still remembered the nightmare she had had on the bus. That was an omen of some kind.

  Richard was soaked by the time he had the luggage in the compartment behind the seat and had slipped behind the wheel.

  "I feel awful, putting you through this," Jenny said. She took a clean handkerchief out of her purse and wiped his face and neck.

  "Why?" he asked, grinning broadly. "Were you the one who made it rain?"

  She made a face at him. "Here," she said, "let me dry your hair," When he bent toward her, she toweled it until her handkerchief was sopping.

  "Don't worry," he said, "I'm as healthy as a horse- as two horses!" He started the car, raced the engine once or twice, then drove away.

  "The waitress didn't think much of you," Jenny said to start a conversation beyond mere pleasantries. besides, she was curious to know why the waitress seemed to fear a gentle man like Richard Brucker.

  "Catherine? Really? I've noticed that she treats me cooly these days, though I haven't bothered to find out why." He drove off the main highway onto a secondary, less well-paved road where Dutch elms grew on both sides and formed a canopy above them, making the way even darker. "What'd she say?"

  "That you were responsible for some curse over a girl named Freya."

  Richard smiled, leaned forward and turned on the headlights. If lightning still cracked above, it did not penetrate these lush branches.

  "You haven't been involved in some public scandal, have you?" she asked, teasing him.

  "Not woman troubles," he said. "In this town, anything can make a scandal. Rural life is charming, except for its lack of privacy. In small towns, everyone's business becomes public. Freya is my cousin, from my father's side of the family. She's seven years old, has a twin brother, Frank, and she's presently having what I call psychiatric problems. Cora calls it a family curse."

  Jenny had been surprised the first time she had heard Richard refer to his mother by her Christian name, even though she understood it was a custom among some of the very wealthy. Still, it seemed to lack respect. "A curse?"

  "Psychiatric problems," he corrected. He sighed as if weary with the story. "The twins came from a broken home. Lena Brucker, my father's sister, married a good-for-nothing who eventually ran off with half her money. She drinks too much, likes the jet-set life too well. When Cora found that Lena planned on boarding the two seven-year-olds in separate schools, she asked Lena to leave them here. Lena didn't care one way or the other, as long as she had her freedom. That was a year ago; they've been with us since."

  "Aunt Cora didn't say you had guests!" Jenny said. "I don't want to inconvenience anyone."

  Richard laughed. "Jenny, sweets, the Brucker estate mansion has eighteen bedrooms."

  "Eighteen!"

  "Our ancestors were fond of parties that lasted whole weekends, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas. People came from all over. These days, we're all too hurried to have such a leisurely celebration."

  "You still haven't told me about the curse," she reminded him. "Excuse me-about the psychiatric problems."

  Ahead of them, a great road construction truck, smeared with mud, jounced into view around a curve in the road. It was traveling at better than sixty miles an hour. Richard had barely enough time to climb part of the steep bank alongside the road as the mammoth vehicle roared by, rattling and banging as each ripple in the macadam carried the length of it.

  "What a fool way to drive!" Jenny said. She was remembering the nightmare, all the nightmares she had had since Grandmother Brighton had died. If Richard's reflexes had been just a hair less sharp, or if the truck had been moving the slightest bit faster, they both might be badly hurt or dead.

  Richard grumbled. "Foolish, but average for that lot."

  "They use this road frequently?"

  He backed off the embankment and drove ahead once more. "Ever since the superhighway construction began, fairly near the edge of Brucker property."

  "All that dirt and noise," Jenny said. Then she remembered that Aunt Cora would surely have a maid.

  "It's not so bad," Richard said. "The house sits well into the estate, away from the construction. It's the real-estate speculators and their constant offers for our land that drive us crazy."

  They turned onto a narrower, better paved road, stopped before an iron gate that said: BRUCKER ESTATE. PRIVATE, KEEP OUT. Richard tapped the car's horn in a rhythm Jenny didn't catch. The gates swung open, let them by, closed behind them.

  She would have been delighted with such gadgetry if the iron gates had not reminded her of iron cemetery gates.

  They passed neatly kept stables and riding rings fenced with white-washed boards. A small lake lay to the right, a coppice of pine trees by i
ts far shore. Under the trees were picnic tables and children's swings. In the rain and fog, the swings looked like the skeletons of long-dead creatures.

  "The house," Richard said as they rounded a small knoll.

  The house had three floors plus a half attic whose windows were set in a black slate roof. Two wings formed an L with a courtyard and fountain in the nook of the arms. The stone cherubs in the fountain were not spouting any water at the moment.

  Richard parked before the front steps, a leisurely flight of eight, wide marble risers that ended on a granite stoop before tall, oaken main doors. Almost before the sound of the engine died, a rather elderly man in a raincoat came out of those doors. He was shielded by a black umbrella and was carrying a second umbrella which he gave Richard. He rushed around to Jenny's door, opened it and helped her under the protection of his own bumbershoot.

  He was about sixty, lean and wizened with white hair and deep, blue eyes. "I'm Harold, the manservant. You must be Jenny, for you have the Brighton beauty, dark hair and eyes. Will you come with me out of this dreadful weather?"

  "Yes!" she gasped as thunder rumbled in the ever-lowering clouds and the rain seemed to fall twice as fast as it had. Her feet were soaked, and her legs were splattered with mud and water.

  As they stepped onto the first of the marble stairs, someone moaned nearby, loud and prolonged, as if in some terrible sort of agony. It was not exactly the cry of a human being. It was too deep and too loud for that, touched with something that spoke of the supernatural.

  "What is that?" she asked.

  Abruptly, the moan rose to a shrill, wild shriek that cut off without reason in the middle of a note.

  Jenny shivered. She could see no one about who could have made the weird call.