Demon Child

by Dean Koontz

  Lightning shattered the velvet blackness.

  The rain refracted, for a split second, the unearthly brilliance.

  She shivered, but kept moving. Leona Brighton would not have condoned cowardly behavior.

  Be careful, Jenny. Be careful... the dead voices seemed to be telling her.

  She reached the stables a moment later and ran through the open arch into the musty, dry interior where a single electric bulb burned in the center of the narrow aisle. She was breathing very hard, and she took a moment to rest and wipe the beaded rain from her face.

  The place smelled of hay and grain, sweet and pleasant, especially on such a night as this.

  First, she went to the rifle case next to the second stall on the right, opened the plyboard door. There wasn't a gun there. There were no bullets in the drawer beneath it.

  Perhaps Walter had taken the weapon, though she doubted that. If he already had a pistol of his own, that would be sufficient. He had only asked Harold about guns in order to know whether Richard was armed. And Richard more than likely was...

  The two stallions were gone. Only Tulip was still in the barn. She swung her pretty head over the halfdoor of her stall and looked beseechingly at Jenny, as if she too wanted to go on this late-night excursion which occupied everyone else so suddenly. Or, conversely, perhaps that pleading expression meant that she did not want to be ridden in such foul weather. Whatever it meant, Jenny did not waste any more time in saddling the mare and slipping the reins and bit on her.

  Tulip snuffled.

  A deafening boom of thunder swept in from outside.

  Tulip whinnied and danced slightly onto her hind feet

  Jenny patted her shoulder and spoke softly, reassuringly. Tulip slowly calmed, and Jenny mounted her, took the reins, and urged the horse down the aisle and out the door of the stables.

  The horse started at the heavy rain which pummeled them, but came under the rein fairly easily. Jenny sat low, bent along the mare's neck, all but hugging her so that she could whisper reassurances if the thunder should again frighten the animal.

  And they were off.

  Tulip sensed her master's fear. She maintained a stiff, awkward gallop which was tainted with reluctance. Jenny might know where she was going, but she had no idea what she might find when she got there...

  * * *

  16

  Since Walter had ridden over the Brucker estate only once and had not explored it in detail on horseback as Jenny had, he would take the route to the limestone caves which he would remember having taken with the others during the previous Tuesday's wolf hunt. It was the longest way about. She felt that she had a very good chance of heading him off by as much as five minutes-even considering the several minutes he had gained on her by his earlier departure from the stables.

  She whipped the reins lightly, continually, spurring the horse on. She slapped at Tulip's sides and encouraged her mount to run faster.

  She did not worry about her nails. Not at all.

  Fortunately, the route she had in mind was not sprinkled with trees as was so much of the Brucker land. If it had been, she could not have maintained this furious pace. The clouds obscured the summer moon and placed the land under a heavy blanket of darkness that was all but impenetrable. She could see only a hundred or a hundred-and-fifty feet ahead. That gave her too little safety margin if a willow should loom up in their path.

  Tulip whuffed and snorted.

  Jenny snapped the reins again.

  She was almost two-thirds of the way to the sinkholes, certain of reaching them before Walter, when the sky split open under the prying wedge of a lightning bolt. A clap of horrendous thunder seemed to lift the earth and throw it down.

  Tulip bellowed.

  "Whoa!"

  The mare bucked, came to a full stop and leaped into the air, rising until she stood only on her hind feet; her great bulk was almost perpendicular to the earth.

  "No!" Jenny shouted.

  She hung on.

  A second explosion of thunder hammered across the open land while lightning spasmed through the clouds.

  Tulip came down-only to go up once more. This time, she was quicker and more violent than before, wrenching her broad shoulders. She snuffled and whinnied, tossed her proud head back and forth as her terror swelled beyond reasonable bounds.

  Jenny lost her grip.

  She felt one foot tear loose of the stirrup. Frantically, she wrenched her other foot free as well, lest she be trapped by it and dragged over the rugged terrain. She felt herself slipping off the saddle and could not manage to maintain a hold on the horn. She went over Tulip's flank and came down hard against the earth, the wind knocked out of her, pain flashing for a moment in her left thigh.

  Somehow, she managed to roll in order to avoid the viciously stamping hooves that tore up the sod only inches from her head. Dirt and grass sprayed over her as Tulip punished the earth for what the sky had done to her.

  Then there was no more lightning or thunder. There was only a very black sky and the hissing curtain of the rain.

  Tulip galloped ahead, still frightened and searching for shelter, though some of her temper seemed to have improved. Two hundred feet ahead, she ambled to a halt and looked around, perplexed, as if she could not remember what she had been running from. She whinnied loudly, shook her head, flopping her mane from side to side. Then she examined the earth and began chewing at the long, fresh sprouts of grass.

  Carefully, Jenny got to her feet. She gasped for breath until the pain in her stomach was gone, then straightened up. She tested the sore spot on her thigh and decided that nothing had been broken. She walked about in a circle, swinging her arms, flexing her legs until circulation had returned everywhere and until she no longer felt the pain very much.

  Don't mount the horse again, the voice warned her.

  But she had to.

  It could have killed you.

  But Richard might kill Walter before she could get there. And though Tulip was an unknown factor now, and though Jenny always tried to avoid the unknown, she had to go on. Walter was the post, the haven, the fixed point against which the unknown and the unexpected had no power. Without him, she would be cast back into a world of chaos and continuous fear.

  She walked forward, speaking softly and sweetly to the mare. She smiled and felt foolish coaxing a horse as she might a child, but she did her best to make the animal feel at ease with her. She had to recover Tulip no matter what the cost.

  The mare watched her out of wide, white-rimmed eyes. The beast had a mouthful of grass and was slowly, methodically, grinding it down. Her lower jaw moved sideways against her upper in a comical sort of way.

  Jenny did not feel like laughing, however. She approached warily, praying there would be no more violent displays of nature to spook the mare. She continued to talk, meaningless phrases, all spoken in a tone of reassurance and warmth. Every minute that passed like this, Walter was closer to a confrontation with Richard Brucker.

  When Jenny was within fifteen feet of her, the mare turned and trotted a dozen yards farther along, watched the girl a moment, then bent her head to the task of pulling up more grass and grinding it with her large, square teeth.

  Jenny was angry, but kept her temper under wraps. A show of fury would only serve to scare the horse away again. She continued her approach, talking softly, quietly, softly, quietly...

  This time, Tulip remained still, watching.

  She touched the mare's neck. The horse shuddered but did not pull away. For a full minute, Jenny continued petting her and nuzzling her, digging fingers behind the animal's ears and scratching there.

  Slyly, she worked her way to the mounting side, stroked the animal's flanks, then carefully climbed into the saddle.

  Tulip made no move to throw her off.

  She gathered up the reins, pulled the horse around and set off in the direction of the sinkholes. She continued murmuring to the horse and soothing it lest another clap of thunder should
undo her again.

  The last leg of the journey was through a forested area where they were forced to maintain a less strenuous pace. At least, Jenny thought, the heavy canopy of elms would cut down on the sound of thunder and would all but eliminate the bright lightning.

  As they covered this last quarter of a mile, she had time to think, and she thought-of course-about Walter Hobarth. She realized that, while he had been giving her hints, these past couple weeks, that he was more than a little interested in her, she had done nothing to show him that the affection was reciprocal. She had gone to her room each night, adding up the debits and the credits of the day, wishing against reason that he would come to feel about her as she felt about him -but she had done nothing to show him that she felt the way she did! How stupid!

  Fortunately, this evening when he had been ready to leave the house to follow Richard to the limestone caves, her natural reticence had broken down and she had hugged him. She had been afraid that he was not going to return, and that fear had forced her feelings into the open. Thank God for that much! If she had not hugged him, she would not have felt that pistol in his pocket, and she would never have realized that something unpleasant was going to happen before the night ended.

  They broke out of the trees in the next moment and felt the renewed lash of the rain which had been momentarily softened by the branches of the elms. Ahead was the nightmarish landscape of the sinkholes. Only a few scrub brush and locust trees managed to root and survive in the forbidding terrain. Even they were unhealthy looking, scraggly, their twisted limbs like grasping claws, undecorated by any form of blossom and with a low leaf yield. Masses of smooth, round limestone thrust up in pillars and domes. At other places, the land fell abruptly away into black caverns. There was little grass, and what there was of it was gray-green and wiry.

  A good fifty yards to her left, a stallion was tethered to the low limb of an elm tree which edged the barren land. She did not know whether it was the horse that Richard had ridden or whether Walt had already arrived. But, seeing no other horse about, she preferred to think that she had somehow still managed to arrive before the doctor, though that seemed impossible after the long delay when Tulip had thrown her.

  She dismounted and tied Tulip's reins to the trunk of a young tree nearby, then walked forward into the foreboding limestone miasma ahead. She had gone only a hundred feet when Richard appeared around the bulk of a gray stone pedestal some ten feet wide and eight high.

  "Jenny?" he asked, stopping to look at her more closely.

  Her heart beat faster. She could not see a rifle, but she knew he might have disposed of it if he had already used it.

  "Where's Walter?" she asked.

  "Haven't seen him."

  "You're sure?"

  "I assure you," he said, "I'd remember if I saw him or not." His tone was sarcastic. Then he took command of the situation away from her. "Just what are you doing out there?" he asked.

  For a moment, she did not answer. She could not answer, for her fear was great enough to interfere with the quickness of her wits.

  In a moment, he closed the space between them and stood before her, the rain running from his pale face, droplets of water beaded on the dark lashes above his dark eyes.

  "You shouldn't be out on a night like this. Did anyone come with you?"

  "No," she said. "Why are you here?"

  Perhaps it was the gloomy atmosphere of the storm or the positively hellish landscape in which they stood.

  Perhaps it was his eyes, seeming to glint from within, boring at her, demanding. Perhaps the accident with Tulip had affected her more than she had realized, had undermined her self-control. Whatever she felt, it drove her to say things to him which she had dared not say earlier, even in the warmth and relative safety of the mansion.

  "I don't trust you," she said.

  "What?"

  "I don't think anyone should trust you. I think you or someone you hired is behind these things. I think it was you or someone you hired who killed Lee Symington." There! The worst was out. If he was going to try to protect himself now, she would have to try to run.

  "You're crazy!" he said. "I had a solid alibi. You heard the police say so themselves!"

  "An alibi can be built beforehand," she said. "Who were you talking to on the telephone that day I overheard you? Who was the killer you were talking about? The person on the other end of that line-or you yourself, Richard?"

  "So this is why you've been acting so strangely!"

  She backed a step. "I think I have reason to act strangely, if that's what you want to call caution. I don't think it's the least bit strange to be wary of you, Richard."

  He laughed. He actually broke out laughing!

  It was worse, in a way, to see his face crinkle in mirth than to see rage and hatred there. She had been expecting the former, counting on it, in fact. This was completely unexpected. But, then, Richard exemplified the unexpected, the abrupt and the unknown. Could he possibly be mad? Why else would he react to such accusations with laughter?

  "Stop it!" she said.

  He continued to laugh, though he was not laughing as hard now. He wiped tears off his cheeks. Some of his color had returned to the deathly pallor of his cheeks.

  "Please, Richard," she said.

  "I can explain all those things," he told her. "I can explain them easily. You told me before that you overheard me on the telephone and saw me sneaking to the stables. But I never once thought you'd jump to the conclusion that I was the villain in all of this!"

  "What other conclusion was there?" she asked. She felt foolish now, though still wary. What on earth did he mean?

  "And I made stupid assumptions too," he said, no longer laughing, but smiling at her as he had that first day when he had picked her up at the terminal. "I thought you were mixed up with whoever's behind all this. I thought you were part of it. What other reason would you have for eavesdropping on my phone conversation-or for watching me from your window when I was trying to sneak to the stable?"

  "That was accidental."

  "But listening to me on the phone wasn't."

  "By then I thought you were mixed up in something," she said, trying to justify herself, though she couldn't see why she should have to. He still had to explain himself!

  "The only thing I'm mixed up in is an effort to preserve this land and the house which has been in my family for more than one and a quarter centuries. I don't want it all leveled to serve as a complex of restaurants and motels and gas stations for some lousy super-highway interchange!"

  She said nothing. She felt as if the earth had heaved up beneath her. The old feeling of instability returned, as bad as it had been before she had ever met Walter Hobarth and gained solace from the sweet reason of his carefully applied logic.

  "Do you want me to explain away all these things you saw and heard?" Richard asked. His gentle, concerned manner was there again. He was the Richard she had not seen in more than two weeks.

  "Yes," she said quietly.

  Behind them, the horses whinnied.

  Richard looked stunned.

  Jenny turned to see what he was staring at.

  Walter Hobarth stood at the edge of the trees, seventy feet away. He held a pistol in his right hand, and he appeared ready to use it. Slung carelessly under his other arm was the rifle he had taken from the stables. Yet, it was neither of these formidable weapons which electrified Jenny, nailed her down with terror. It was, instead, the huge wolf that sat docilely by Walt's side which filled her with dread.

  Its eyes were yellow-red and gleamed brightly. It watched Richard and her with morbid fascination, gauging the strength of its potential victims.

  Walter Hobarth patted the wolfs head with his gun hand, then stood erect again and laughed. It was a much nastier laugh than Richard's...

  * * *

  17

  Fool, fool, fool! she cried silently. She had been such a fool, directing her affection toward the wrong person, turning with sus
picion on the only one who was innocent of any wrongdoing. And what made it all worse was that Hobarth had used her, had played on her sympathies with a calculated ruthlessness. Fool, fool! She was so angry she wanted nothing more than to scream and kick and bite and tear at things with her hands.

  Yet, despite this inwardly directed fury, despite the certainty of her blindness and of Walter's guilt, she did not want to believe that she had been so misled. Surely Walter couldn't be responsible for all this. Surely he could not cold-bloodedly murder a man, as he had Lee Symington. He was gentle and sweet and so very, very reasonable!

  "You," Richard said. He was unable to believe it himself, as dumbfounded as Jenny was.

  "Looks that way," Hobarth said. "But I thought you were beginning to suspect me, Richard. I'm disappointed that you were so completely fooled. Of course, that says a lot for my acting abilities. And I thank you for the indirect compliment."

  "It's your wolf?"

  "Not a wolf," Hobarth said. He was pointing the pistol at them now, though the beast at his feet was enough to keep them from fleeing.

  "But it is the killer," Richard said.

  "Oh, yes, of course it is. But it's only part wolf, a very small part-and mostly German shepherd. It makes a fine combination that submits well to the proper training."

  "Training to kill?" Richard asked. He had pulled Jenny to his side where he could thrust her behind him if necessary. She had come meekly, still confused by this abrupt alteration in circumstances.

  "What else would the United States Army want with such an animal?" Hobarth asked.

  "Army?"

  "I was in Vietnam," Hobarth said. "Eighteen months." He reached down and patted the dog's head. He was not finished speaking yet. He clearly enjoyed telling them everything they wanted to know. And that could only mean that he never expected them to be able to pass on the information to anyone else. Their only chance was that his egotism, his need to inform them about how clever he had been, would give them time to trip him up somehow.