Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  Loman got into his cruiser and switched on the engine. The compact

  video-display lit at once, a soft green. The computer link was mounted

  on the console between the front seats. It began to flash, indicating

  that HQ had a message for him-one that they chose not to broadcast on

  the more easily intercepted police-band radio.

  Though he had been working with microwave-linked mobile computers for a

  few years, he was still sometimes surprised upon first getting into a

  cruiser and seeing the VDT light up. In major cities like Los Angeles,

  for the better part of the past decade, most patrol cars had been

  equipped with computer links to central police data banks, but such

  electronic wonders were still rare in smaller cities and unheard of in

  jurisdictions as comparatively minuscule as Moonlight Cove. His

  department boasted state-of-the-art technology not because the town's

  treasury was overflowing but because New Wave-a leader in mobile

  microwave-linked data systems, among other things-had equipped his

  office and cars with their in-development hardware and software,

  updating the system constantly, using the Moonlight Cove police force as

  something of a proving ground for every advancement that they hoped

  ultimately to integrate into their line of products.

  That was one of the many ways Thomas Shaddack had insinuated himself

  into the power structure of the community even before he had reached for

  total power through the Moonhawk Project. At the time Loman had been

  thick headed enough to think New Wave's largesse was a blessing. Now he

  knew better.

  From his mobile VDT, Loman could access the central computer in the

  department's headquarters on Jacobi Street, one block south of Ocean

  Avenue, to obtain any information in the data banks or to "speak" with

  the on-duty dispatcher who could communicate with him almost as easily

  by computer as by police-band radio. Furthermore, he could sit

  comfortably in his car and, through the HQ computer, reach out to the

  Department of Motor Vehicles computer in Sacramento to get a make on a

  license plate, or the Department of Prisons data banks in the same city

  to call up information on a particular felon, or any other computer tied

  in to the nationwide law-enforcement electronic network.

  He adjusted his holster because he was sitting on his revolver.

  Using the keyboard under the display terminal, he entered his ID number,

  accessing the system.

  The days when all fact-gathering required police legwork had begun to

  pass in the mid-eighties. Now only TV cops like Hunter were forced to

  rush hither and yon to turn up the smallest details because that was

  more dramatic than a depiction of the high-tech reality. In time,

  Watkins thought, the gumshoe might be in danger of becoming the gunbutt,

  with his ass parked for hours in front of either a mobile VDT or one on

  a desk at HQ.

  The computer accepted his number. The VDT stopped flashing.

  Of course, if all the people of the world were New People, and if the

  problem of the regressives were solved, ultimately there would be no

  more crime and no need of policemen. Some criminals were spawned by

  social injustice, but all men would be equal in the new world that was

  coming, as equal as one machine to another, with the same goals and

  desires, with no competitive or conflicting needs. Most criminals were

  genetic detectives, their sociopathic behavior virtually encoded in

  their chromosomes; however, except for the regressive element among

  them, the New People would be in perfect genetic repair. That was

  Shaddack's vision, anyway.

  Sometimes Loman Watkins wondered where free will fit into the plan.

  Maybe it didn't. Sometimes he didn't seem to care if it fit in or not.

  At other times his inability to care . . . well, it scared the hell

  out of him.

  Lines of words began to appear from left to right on the screen, one

  line at a time, in soft green letters on the dark background FOR LOMAN

  WATKINS SOURCE Shaddack JACK TUCKER HAS NOT REPORTED IN FROM THE FOSTER

  place. NO ONE ANSWERS RHONE THERE. URGENT THAT SITUATION E3E

  CLARIFIED. AWAIT YOUR report.

  Shaddack had direct entry to the police-department computer from his own

  computer in his house out on the north point of the cove. He could

  leave messages for Watkins or any of the other men, and no one could

  call them up except the intended recipient.

  The screen went blank.

  Loman Watkins popped the hand brake, put the patrol car in gear, and set

  out for Foster Stables, though the place was actually 101 outside the

  city limits and beyond his bailiwick. He no longer cared about such

  things as jurisdictional boundaries and legal procedures. He was still

  a cop only because it was the role he had to play until all of the town

  had undergone the Change. None of the old rules applied to him any more

  because he was a New Man. Such disregard for the law would have

  appalled him only a few months ago, but now his arrogance and his

  disdain for the rules of the Old People's society did not move him in

  the least.

  Most of the time nothing moved him any more. Day by day, hour by hour,

  he was less emotional.

  Except for fear, which his new elevated state of consciousness still

  allowed fear because it was a survival mechanism, useful in a way that

  love and joy and hope and affection were not. He was afraid right now,

  in fact. Afraid of the regressives. Afraid that the Moonhawk Project

  would somehow be revealed to the outside world and be crushed-and him

  with it. Afraid of his only master, Shaddack. Sometimes, in fleeting

  bleak moments, he was afraid of himself, too, and of the new world

  coming.

  Moose dozed in a corner of the unlighted bedroom. He chuted in his

  sleep, perhaps chasing bushy-tailed rabbits in a dream although, being

  the good service dog that he was, even in his dreams he probably ran

  errands for his master.

  Belted in his stool at the window, Harry leaned to the eyepiece of the

  telescope and studied the back of Callan's Funeral Home over on Juniper

  Lane, where the hearse had just pulled into the service drive. He

  watched Victor Callan and the mortician's assistant, Ned Ryedock, as

  they used a wheeled gurney to transfer a body from the black Cadillac

  hearse into the embalming and cremation wing. Zippered inside a

  half-collapsed, black plastic body bag, the corpse was so small that it

  must have been that of a child. Then they closed the door behind them,

  and Harry could see no more.

  Sometimes they left the blinds raised at the two high, narrow windows,

  and from his elevated position Harry was able to peer down into that

  room, to the tilted and guttered table on which the dead were embalmed

  and prepared for viewing. On those occasions he could see much more

  than he wanted to see. Tonight, however, the blinds were lowered all

  the way to the windowsills.

  He gradually shifted his field of vision southward along the

  fog-swaddled alley that served Callan's and ran between Conquistador and

&
nbsp; Juniper. He was not looking for anything in particular, just slowly

  scanning, when he saw a pair of grotesque figures. They were swift and

  dark, sprinting along the alley and into the large vacant lot adjacent

  to the funeral home, running neither on all fours nor erect, though

  closer to the former than the latter.

  Boogeymen.

  Harry's heart began to race.

  He'd seen their like before, three times in the past four weeks, though

  the first time he had not believed what he had seen. They had been so

  shadowy and strange, so briefly glimpsed, that they seemed like phantoms

  of the imagination; therefore he named them Boogeymen.

  They were quicker than cats. They slipped through his field of vision

  and vanished into the dark, vacant lot before he could overcome his

  surprise and follow them.

  Now he searched that property end to end, back to front, seeking them in

  the three- to four-foot grass. Bushes offered concealment too. Wild

  holly and a couple of clumps of chaparral snagged and held the fog as if

  it were cotton.

  He found them. Two hunched forms. Man-size. Only slightly less black

  than the night. Featureless. They crouched together in the dry grass

  in the middle of the lot, just to the north of the immense fir that

  spread its branches (all high ones) like a canopy over half the

  property.

  Trembling, Harry pulled in even tighter on that section of the lot and

  adjusted the focus. The Boogeymen's outlines sharpened. Their bodies

  grew paler in contrast to the night around - 103 them. He still could

  not see any details of them because of the darkness and eddying mist.

  Although it was quite expensive and tricky to obtain, he wished that

  through his military contacts he had acquired a TeleTron, which was a

  new version of the Star Tron night-vision device that had been used by

  most armed services for years. A Star Tron took available

  light-moonlight, starlight, meager electric light if any, the vague

  natural radiance of certain minerals in soil and rocks-and amplified it

  eighty-five thousand times. With that single-lens gadget, an

  impenetrable nightscape was transformed into a dim twilight or even

  late-afternoon grayness. The Tele-Tron employed the same technology as

  the Star Tron, but it was designed to be fitted to a telescope.

  Ordinarily, available light was sufficient to Harry's purposes, and most

  of the time he was looking through windows into well-lighted rooms; but

  to study the quick and furtive Boogeymen, he needed some high-tech

  assistance.

  The shadowy figures looked west toward Juniper Lane, then north toward

  Callan's, then south toward the house that, with the funeral home,

  flanked that open piece of land. Their heads turned with a quick, fluid

  movement that made Harry think of cats, although they were definitely

  not feline.

  One of them glanced back to the east. Because the telescope put Harry

  right in the lot with the Boogeymen, he saw the thing's eyes-soft gold,

  palely radiant. He had never seen their eyes before. He shivered, but

  not just because they were so uncanny. Something was familiar about

  those eyes, something that reached deeper than Harry's conscious or

  subconscious mind to stir dim recognition, activating primitive racial

  memories carried in his genes.

  He was suddenly cold to the marrow and overcome by fear more intense

  than anything he had known since Nam.

  Dozing, Moose was attuned nonetheless to his master's mood. The

  Labrador got up, shook himself as if to cast off sleep, and came to the

  stool. He made a low, mewling, inquisitive sound.

  Through the telescope Harry glimpsed the nightmare face of one of the

  Boogeymen. He had no more than the briefest flash of it, at most two

  seconds, and the malformed visage was limned only by an ethereal spray

  of moonlight, so he saw little; in fact the inadequate lunar glow did

  less to reveal the thing than to deepen the mystery of it.

  But he was gripped by it, stunned, frozen.

  Moose issued an interrogatory "Woof?"

  For an instant, unable to look up from the eyepiece if his life had

  depended on it, Harry stared at an apelike countenance, though it was

  leaner and uglier and more fierce and infinitely stranger than the face

  of an ape. He was reminded, as well, of wolves, and in the gloom the

  thing even seemed to have something of a reptilian aspect. He thought

  he saw the enameled gleam of wickedly sharp teeth, gaping jaws. But the

  light was poor, and he could not be certain how much of what he saw was

  a trick of shadow or a distortion of fog. Part of this hideous vision

  had to be attributed to his fevered imagination. A man with a pair of

  useless legs and one dead arm had to have a vivid imagination if he was

  to make the most of life.

  As suddenly as the Boogeyman looked toward him, it looked away. At the

  same time both creatures moved with an animal fluidity and quickness

  that startled Harry. They were nearly the size of big jungle cats and

  as fast. He turned the scope to follow them, and they virtually flew

  through the darkness, south across the vacant lot, disappearing over a

  split-rail fence into the backyard of the Claymore house, up and gone

  with such alacrity that he could not hold them in his field of view.

  He continued to search for them, as far as the junior-senior high school

  on Roshmore, but he found only night and fog and the familiar buildings

  of his neighborhood. The Boogeymen had vanished as abruptly as they

  always did in a small boy's bedroom the moment the lights were turned

  on.

  At last he lifted his head from the eyepiece and slumped back in his

  stool.

  Moose immediately stood up with his forepaws on the edge of the stool,

  begging to be petted, as if he had seen what his master had seen and

  needed to be reassured that malign spirits did not actually run loose in

  the world.

  With his good right hand, which at first trembled violently, Harry

  stroked the Labrador's head. In a while the petting calmed him almost

  as much as it calmed the dog.

  If the FBI eventually responded to the letter he had sent over a week

  ago, he did not know if he would tell them about the - 105 Boogeymen. He

  would tell them everything else he had seen, and a lot of it might be

  useful to them. But this . . . On the one hand, he was sure that the

  beasts he had glimpsed so fleetingly on three occasions-four now-were

  somehow related to all the other curious events of recent weeks. They

  were a different magnitude of strangeness, however, and in speaking of

  them he might appear addled, even crazed, causing the Bureau agents to

  discount everything else he said.

  Am I addled? he wondered as he petted Moose. Am I crazed?

  After twenty years of confinement to a wheelchair, housebound, living

  vicariously through his telescope and binoculars, perhaps he had become

  so desperate to be more involved with the world and so starved for

  excitement that he had evolved an elaborate fantasy of conspiracy and

  the uncanny, putting himself at the center of
it as The One Man Who

  Knew, convinced that his delusions were real. But that was highly

  unlikely. The war had left his body pathetically damaged and weak, but

  his mind was as strong and clear as it had ever been, perhaps even

  tempered and made stronger by adversity. That, not madness, was his

  curse.

  "Boogeymen," he said to Moose. The dog chuted.

  "What next? Will I look up at the moon some night and see the

  silhouette of a witch on a broomstick?"

  Chrissie came out of the woods by Pyramid Rock, which once had

  inspired her fantasies of inch-high Egyptians. She looked west toward

  the house and Foster Stables, where lights now wore rainbow-hued halos

  in the fog. For a moment she entertained the idea of going back for

  Godiva or another horse. Maybe she could even slip into the house to

  grab a jacket. But she decided that she would be less conspicuous and

  safer on foot. Besides, she was not as dumb as movie heroines who

  repeatedly returned to the Bad House, knowing the Bad Thing was likely

  to find them there. She turned east-northeast and headed up through the

  meadow toward the county road.

  Exhibiting her usual cleverness (she thought, as if reading a line from

  an adventure novel), Chrissie wisely turned away from the cursed house

  and set off into the night, wondering if she would ever again see that

  place of her youth or find solace in the arms of her now alienated

  family.

  Tall, autumn-dry grass lashed at her legs, as she angled out toward the

  middle of the field. Instead of staying near the tree line, she wanted

  to be in the open in case something leaped at her from the forest. She

  didn't think she could outrun them once they spotted her, not even if