Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  with their mouths open. Some swallowed with such force that Sam could

  actually hear them. They were red-faced and perspiring, no doubt from

  jalapenio-spiced sauces, but not one offered a comment - 47 like, "Boy,

  this is hot," or "Pretty good grub," or even the most elementary

  conversational gambit to his companions.

  To the third of the customers who were happily jabbering away at one

  another and progressing through their meals at an ordinary pace, the

  almost fevered eating of the majority apparently went unnoticed. Bad

  table manners were not rare, of course; at least a quarter of the diners

  in any town would give Miss Manners a stroke if she dared to eat with

  them. Nevertheless, the gluttony of many of the customers in the Perez

  Family Restaurant seemed astonishing to Sam. He supposed that the

  polite diners were inured to the behavior of the other patrons because

  they had witnessed it so many times before.

  Could the cool sea air of the northern coast be that appetite enhancing?

  Did some peculiar ethnic background or fractured social history in

  Moonlight Cove mitigate against the universal development of commonly

  accepted Western table manners?

  What he saw in the Perez Family Restaurant seemed a puzzle for which any

  sociologist, desperately seeking a doctoral thesis subject, would be

  eager to find a solution. After a while, however, Sam had to turn his

  attention away from the more ravenous patrons because their behavior was

  killing his own appetite.

  Later, when he was figuring the tip and putting money on the table to

  cover his bill, he surveyed the crowd again, and this time realized that

  none of the heavy eaters was drinking beer, margaritas, or anything

  alcoholic. They had ice water or Cokes, and some were drinking milk,

  glass after glass, but every last man and woman of these gourmands

  seemed to be a teetotaler. He might not have noticed their temperance

  if he had not been a cop-and a good one-trained not only to observe but

  to think about what he observed.

  He remembered the scarcity of drinkers at Knight's Bridge tavern.

  What ethnic culture or religious group inculcated a disdain for alcohol

  while encouraging mannerlessness and gluttony?

  He could think of none.

  By the time Sam finished his beer and got up to leave, he was telling

  himself that he'd overreacted to a few crude people, that this queer

  fixation on food was limited to a handful of patrons and not as

  widespread as it seemed. After all, from his table in the back, he had

  not been able to see the entire room and every last one of the

  customers. But on his way out, he passed a table where three attractive

  and well-dressed young women were eating hungrily, none of them

  speaking, their eyes glazed; two of them had flecks of food on their

  chins, of which they seemed oblivious, and the third had so many

  com-chip crumbs sprinkled across the front of her royal-blue sweater

  that she appeared to be breading herself with the intention of going

  into the kitchen, climbing into an oven, and becoming food.

  He was glad to get out in the clean night air.

  Sweating both from the chili-spiced dishes and the heat in the

  restaurant, he had wanted to take his jacket off, but he had not been

  able to do so because of the gun he was packing in a shoulder holster.

  Now he relished the chilling fog that was being harried eastward by a

  gentle but steady breeze.

  Chrissie saw them enter the drainage channel, and for a moment she

  thought they were all going to clamber up the far side of it and off

  across the meadow in the direction she had been heading. Then one of

  them turned toward the mouth of the culvert. The figure approached the

  drain on all fours, in a few stealthy and sinuous strides. Though

  Chrissie could see nothing more of it than a shadowy shape, she had

  trouble believing that this thing was either one of her parents or the

  man called Tucker. But who else could it be?

  Entering the concrete tunnel, the predator peered forward into the

  gloom. Its eyes shone softly amber-green, not as bright here as in

  moonlight, dimmer than glow-in-the-dark paint, but vaguely radiant.

  Chrissie wondered how well it could see in absolute darkness. Surely its

  gaze could not penetrate eighty or a hundred feet of - 49 lightless pipe

  to the place where she crouched. Vision of that caliber would be

  SUPERNATURAL.

  it stared straight at her.

  Then again, who was to say that what she was dealing with here was not

  SUPERNATURAL? Perhaps her parents had become . . .

  werewolves.

  She was soaked in sour sweat. She hoped the stench of the dead animal

  would screen her body odor.

  Rising from all fours into a crouch, blocking most of the silvery

  moonlight at the drain entrance, the stalker slowly came forward.

  Its heavy breathing was amplified by the curved concrete walls of the

  culvert. Chrissie breathed shallowly through her open mouth lest she

  reveal her presence.

  Suddenly, only ten feet into the tunnel, the stalker spoke in a raspy,

  whispery voice and with such urgency that the words were almost run

  together in a single long string of syllables "Chrissie, you there, you,

  you? Come me, Chrissie, come me, come, want you, want, want, need, my

  Chrissie, my Chrissie.

  " That bizarre, frantic voice gave rise in Chrissie's mind to a

  terrifying image of a creature that was part lizard, part wolf, part

  human, part something unidentifiable. Yet she suspected that its actual

  appearance was even worse than anything she could imagine.

  "Help you, want help you, help, now, come me, come, come. You there,

  there, you there?"

  The worst thing about the voice was that, in spite of its cold hoarse

  note and whispery tone, in spite of its alienness, it was familiar.

  Chrissie recognized it as her mother's. Changed, yes, but her mother's

  voice just the same.

  Chrissie's stomach was cramped with fear, but she was filled with

  another pain, too, that for a moment she could not identify. Then she

  realized that she ached with loss; she missed her mother, wanted her

  mother back, her real mother. If she'd had one of those ornate silver

  crucifixes like they always used in the fright films, she probably would

  have revealed herself, advanced on this hateful thing, and demanded that

  it surrender possession of her mother. A crucifix probably would not

  work because nothing in real life was as easy as in the movies; besides,

  whatever had happened to her parents was far stranger than vampires and

  werewolves and demons jumped up from hell. But if she'd had a crucifix,

  she would have tried it anyway.

  "Death, death, smell death, stink, death . . .

  " The mother-thing quickly advanced into the tunnel until it came to the

  place where Chrissie had stepped in a slippery, putrefying mass. The

  brightness of the shining eyes was directly related to the nearness of

  moonlight, for now they dimmed. Then the creature lowered its gaze to

  the dead animal on the culvert floor.

  From beyond the m
outh of the drain came the sound of something

  descending into the ditch. Footfalls and the clatter of stones were

  followed by another voice, equally as fearsome as that of the others the

  stalker now hunched over the dead animal. Calling into the pipe, it

  said, "She there, there, she? Whatfound, what, what?"

  ". . . raccoon .

  "What, what it, what?

  "Dead raccoon, rotten, maggots, maggots, " the first one said.

  Chrissie was stricken by the macabre fear that she had left a

  tennis-shoe imprint in the rotting muck of the dead raccoon.

  "Chrissie ?

  " the second asked as it ventured into the culvert Tucker's voice.

  Evidently her father was searching for her across the meadow or in the

  next section of the forest Both stalkers were fidgeting constantly.

  Chrissie could hear them scraping-claws?-against the concrete floor of

  the pipe. Both sounded panicky, too. No, not panicky, really, because

  no fear was audible in their voices. Frantic. Frenzied. It was as if

  an engine in each of them was racing faster, faster, almost out of

  control.

  "Chrissie there, she there, she?

  " Tucker asked.

  The mother-thing raised its gaze from the dead raccoon and peered

  straight at Chrissie through the lightless tunnel.

  You can't see me, Chrissie thought-prayed. I'm invisible.

  The radiance of the stalker's eyes had faded to twin spots of finished

  silver.

  Chrissie held her breath.

  'Tucker said, "Got to eat, eat, want eat.

  The creature that had been her mother said, "Find girl, girl, find her

  first, then eat, then.

  " They sounded as if they were wild animals magically gifted with crude

  speech.

  - 51 "Now, now, burning it up, eat now, now, burning, " Tucker said

  urgently, insistently.

  Chrissie was shaking so badly that she was half afraid they would hear

  the shudders that rattled her.

  Tucker said, "Burning it up, little animals in meadow, hear them, smell

  them, track, eat, eat, now.

  Chrissie held her breath.

  ,Nothing here, " the mother-thing said.

  "Only maggots, stink, go, eat, then find her, eat, eat, then find her,

  go.

  " Both stalkers retreated from the culvert and vanished.

  Chrissie dared to breathe.

  After waiting a minute to be sure they were really gone, she turned and

  troll-walked deeper into the upsloping culvert, blindly feeling the

  walls as she went, hunting a side passage. She must have gone two

  hundred yards before she found what she wanted a tributary drain, half

  the size of the main line. She slid into it, feetfirst and on her back,

  then squirmed onto her belly and faced out toward the bigger tunnel.

  That was where she would spend the night. If they returned to the

  culvert to see if they could detect her scent in the cleaner air beyond

  the decomposing raccoon, she would be out of the downdraught that swept

  the main line, and they might not smell her. into She was heartened

  because their failure to probe deeper the culvert was proof that they

  were not possessed of SUPERNATURAL powers, neither all-seeing nor

  all-knowing. They were abnormally strong and quick, strange and

  terrifying, but they could make mistakes too. She began to think that

  when daylight came she had a fifty-fifty chance of getting out of the

  woods and finding help before she was caught.

  In the lights outside of the Perez Family Restaurant, Sam Booker checked

  his watch. Only 7 10.

  He went for a walk along Ocean Avenue, building up the courage to call

  Scott in Los Angeles. The prospect of that conversation with his son

  soon preoccupied him and drove all thoughts of the mannerless,

  gluttonous diners out of his mind.

  At 730, he stopped at a telephone booth near a Shell service station at

  the corner of Juniper Lane and Ocean Avenue. He used his credit card to

  make a long-distance call to his house in Sherman Oaks.

  At sixteen Scott thought he was mature enough to be home alone when his

  father was away on an assignment. Sam did not entirely agree and

  preferred that the boy stay with his Aunt Edna. But Scott won his way

  by making life pure hell for Edna, so Sam was reluctant to put her

  through that ordeal.

  He had repeatedly drilled the boy in safety procedures-keep all doors

  and windows locked; know where the fire extinguishers are; know how to

  get out of the house from any room in an earthquake or other

  emergency-and had taught him how to use a handgun. In Sam's judgment

  Scott was still too immature to be home alone for days at a time; but at

  least the boy was well prepared for every contingency.

  The number rang nine times. Sam was about to hang up, guiltily relieved

  that he'd failed to get through, when Scott finally answered.

  "Hello. It's me, Scott. Dad."

  "Y?"

  Heavy-metal rock was playing at high volume in the background. He was

  probably in his room, his stereo cranked up so loud that the windows

  shook.

  - 53 Sam said, "Could you turn the music down?"

  "I can hear you," Scott mumbled.

  "Maybe so, but I'm having trouble hearing you."

  " I don't have anything to say, anyway."

  "Please turn it down," Sam said, with emphasis on the "Please."

  Scott dropped the receiver, which clattered on his nightstand. The sharp

  sound hurt Sam's ear. The boy lowered the volume on the stereo but only

  slightly. He picked up the phone and said, " Yeah?

  "

  " How're you doing?"

  "Okay."

  "Everything all right there?"

  "Why shouldn't it be?"

  "I just asked."

  Sullenly "If you called to see if I'm having a party, don't worry. I'm

  not."

  Sam counted to three, giving himself time to keep his voice under

  control. Thickening fog swirled past the glass-walled phone booth. "How

  was school today?"

  "You think I didn't go?"

  "I know you went."

  "You don't trust me."

  "I trust you," Sam lied.

  "You think I didn't go."

  "Did you?"

  ,Yeah. So how was it?"

  "Ridiculous. The same old shit."

  "Scott, please, you know I've asked you not to use that kind of language

  when you're talking to me," Sam said, realizing that he was being forced

  into a confrontation against his will.

  "So sorry. Same old poop," Scott said in such a way that he might have

  been referring either to the day at school or to Sam.

  "It's pretty country up here," Sam said.

  The boy did not reply.

  "Wooded hillsides slope right down to the ocean."

  "So?"

  Following the advice of the family counselor whom he and Scott had been

  seeing both together and separately, Sam clenched his teeth, counted to

  three again, and tried another approach. "Did you have dinner yet?"

  "Yeah.

  "Do your homework?"

  "Don't have any."

  Sam hesitated, then decided to let it pass. The counselor, Dr.

  Adamski, would have been proud of such tolerance and cool self-control.

  Beyond the phone
booth, the Shell station's lights acquired multiple

  halos, and the town faded into the slowly congealing mist. At last Sam

  said, "What're you doing this evening?"

  "I was listening to music."

  Sometimes it seemed to Sam that the music was part of what had turned

  the boy sour. That pounding, frenetic, unmelodic heavy-metal rock was a

  collection of monotonous chords and even more monotonous atonal rims, so

  soul-less and mind-numbing that it might have been the music produced by

  a civilization of intelligent machines long after man had passed from

  the face of the earth. After a while Scott had lost interest in most

  heavy-metal bands and switched allegiance to U2, but their simplistic

  social consciousness was no match for nihilism. Soon he grew interested

  in heavy-metal again, but the second time around he focused on black

  metal, those bands espousing-or using dramatic trappings of-satanism; he

  became increasingly selfinvolved, antisocial, and somber. On more than

  one occasion, Sam had considered confiscating the kid's record

  collection, smashing it to bits, and disposing of it, but that seemed an

  absurd overreaction. After all, Sam himself had been sixteen when the