Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  trouble seeing how intimately flesh and machine had joined.

  Fear was the only emotion Dora had felt in weeks. She thought she had

  known it in all its shades and degrees. But now it fell over her with

  greater force, darker and more intense, than anything she had

  experienced before.

  A glistening probe erupted from the wall to Dora's right, le was more

  metallic than not, yet it dripped what appeared to b* yellowish mucus.

  The thing shot straight to one of the secretaries and bloodlessly

  pierced the back of her head. From the top one of the other women's

  heads, another probe erupted, r( like a snake to the music of a

  charmer's flute, hesitated, then with tremendous speed snapped to the

  ceiling, piercing t4 acoustic tile without disturbing it, and vanished

  toward the room above.

  Dora sensed that all of the computers and people of Nev Wave had somehow

  linked into a single entity and that the building 379 itself was swiftly

  being incorporated into it. She wanted to but couldn't move-maybe

  because she knew any escape attempt would prove futile.

  A moment later they plugged her into the network.

  Soldonna was carefully taping up a sign on the wall behind the front

  desk at the Moonlight Cove Town Library. It was part of Fascinating

  Fiction Week, a campaign to get kids to read more fiction.

  She was the assistant librarian, but on Tuesdays, when her boss, Cora

  Danker, was off, Betsy worked alone. She liked Cora, but Betsy also

  liked being by herself. Cora was a talker, filling every free minute

  with gossip or her boring observations on the characters and plots of

  her favorite TV programs. Betsy, a lifelong bibliophile obsessed with

  books, would have been delighted to talk endlessly about what she'd

  read, but Cora, though head librarian, hardly read at all.

  Betsy tore a fourth piece of Scotch tape off the dispenser and fixed the

  last corner of the poster to the wall. She stepped back to admire her

  work.

  She had made the poster herself. She was proud of her modest artistic

  talent. In the drawing, a boy and a girl were holding books and staring

  bug-eyed at the open pages before them. Their hair was standing on end.

  The girl's eyebrows appeared to have jumped off her face, as had the

  boy's ears. Above them was the legend BOOKS ARE PORTABLE FUNHOUSES,

  FILLED WITH THRILLS AND SURPRISES.

  From back in the stacks at the other end of the library came a curious

  sound-a grunt, a choking cough, and then what might have been a snarl.

  Next came the unmistakable clatter of a row of books falling from a

  shelf to the floor.

  The only person in the library, other than Betsy, was Dale Foy, a

  retiree who'd been a cashier at Lucky's supermarket until three years

  ago when he'd turned sixty-five. He was always searching for thriller

  writers he had never read before and complaining that none of them was

  as good as the really old-time tale-spinners, by which he meant John

  Buchan rather than Robert Louis Stevenson.

  Betsy suddenly had the terrible feeling that Mr. Foy had suffered a

  heart attack in one of the aisles, that she had heard him

  gurgling for help, and that he had pulled the books to the floor when

  he'd grabbed at a shelf. In her mind she could see him writhing in

  agony, unable to breathe, his face turning blue an( his eyes bulging, a

  bloody foam bubbling at his lips. . . .

  Years of heavy reading had stropped Betsy's imagination until it was as

  sharp as a straight razor made from fine German steel She hurried around

  the desk and along the head of the aisles looking into each of the

  narrow corridors, which were flanked by nine-foot-high shelves.

  "Mr. Foy? Mr. Foy, are you alright?

  " In the last aisle she found the fallen books but no sign of Dale Foy.

  Puzzled, she turned to go back the way she had come, and there was Foy

  behind her. But changed. And even Betsy So donna's sharp imagination

  could not have conceived of the thing that Foy had become-or of the

  things that he was about to do to her. The next few minutes were as

  filled with surprises as a hundred books she had ever read, though there

  was not a happy) ending.

  Because of the dark storm clouds that clotted the sky, an dead twilight

  crept over Moonlight Cove, and the entire town seemed to be celebrating

  Fascinating Fiction Week at the library. The dying day was, for many,

  filled with thrills and surprises, just like a funhouse in the most

  macabre carnival that had ever pitched its tents.

  Sam swept the beam of the flashlight around the attic. It had a

  rough board floor but no light fixture. Nothing was stored there except

  dust, spider webs, and a multitude of dead, dry bees that had built

  nests in the rafters during the summer and had died - 381 due to the

  work of an exterminator or at the end of their satisfied, he returned to

  the trapdoor and went backward down - wooden rungs, into the closet of

  Harry's third-floor bedroom. They had removed many of the hanging

  clothes to be able to open the trap and draw down the collapsible

  ladder.

  Tessa, Chrissie, Harry, and Moose were waiting for him just outside the

  closet door, in the steadily darkening bedroom.

  Sam said, "Yeah, it'll do.

  " - -I haven't been up there since before the war," Harry said.

  "A little dirty, a few spiders, but you'll be safe. If you're not at

  the end of their list, if they do come for you early, they'll find the

  house empty, and they'll never think of the attic. Because how could a

  man with two bad legs and one bad arm drag himSelf up there?"

  Sam was not sure that he believed what he was saying. But for his own

  peace of mind as well as Harry's, he wanted to believe.

  "Can I take Moose up there with me?"

  "Take that handgun you mentioned," Tessa said, "but not Moose.

  Well-behaved as he is, he might bark at just the wrong moment.

  "

  "Will Moose be safe down here . . . when they come?"

  Chrissie wondered.

  "I'm sure he will be," Sam said.

  "They don't want dogs.

  Only people."

  "We better get you up there, Harry," Tessa said.

  "It's twenty Past five. We've got to be out of here soon."

  The bedroom was filling with shadows almost as rapidly as a Ous filling

  with blood-dark wine.

  THE NIGHT BELONGS TO THEM Montgomery told me that's the Law. became

  oddly weakened about nightfall; that then the animal was at its

  strongest; a spirit of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk they

  would dare things they never seemed to dream about by day.

  -H. G. WELLS, The Island of Dr. Moreau The scrub-covered hills that

  surrounded the abandoned Icarus colony coyotes gophers and field mice

  and rabbits and a few foxes .=tumbled out of their burrows and shivered

  in the rain, listen. In the two nearest stands of pine, sweet gum, and

  autumn birch, one just to the south and one immediately east of the old

  colony, squirrels and raccoons stood to attention.

  The birds were the first to respond. In spite of the rain, they flew

  from their sheltered nests in the
trees, in the dilapidated old barn,

  and in the crumbling eaves of the main building itself. Cowing and

  screeching, they spiraled into the sky, darted and ramped, then streaked

  directly to the house. Starlings, wrens, owls, and hawks all came in

  shrill and flapping profusely". Some flew against the walls, as if

  struck blind, battening constantly until they broke their necks, or

  until they snapped their wings and fell to the ground where they

  fluttered and flapped until they were exhausted or had perished. Others,

  equally frenzied, found open doorways and windows through which they

  entered without damaging themselves.

  Though wildlife within a two-hundred-yard radius had heard the call,

  only the nearer animals responded obediently. Rabbits hopped, squirrels

  scurried, coyotes loped, foxes dashed, and raccoons waddled in that

  curious way of theirs, through wet grass rain-bent weeds and mud, toward

  the source of the siren song. Some were predators and some, by nature,

  were timid creatures, but they moved side by side without conflict. It

  might have been a scene from an animated Disney film-the neighborly and

  harmonious folk of field and forest responding to the sweet guitar Or

  harmonica music of some elderly black man who, when they gathered around

  him, would tell them stories of magic and adventure- But there was no

  kindly, tale-spinning Negro where they were going, and the music that

  drew them was cold, and without melody.

  While Sam struggled to lift Harry up the ladder and into the attic,

  Tessa and Chrissie took the wheelchair to the basement garage. It was a

  heavy-duty motorized model, not a light colapsible chair, and would not

  fit through the trap. Tessa Chrissie parked it just inside the big

  garage door, so it looked as if Harry had gotten this far in his chair

  and had left the house, perhaps in a friend's car.

  "You think they'll fall for it?" Chrissie asked worriedly.

  "There's a chance," Tessa said.

  "Maybe they'll even think Harry left town yesterday before the

  roadblocks went up."

  Tessa agreed, but she knew-and suspected Chrissie knew that the chance

  of the ruse working was slim. If Sam and Harry really had been as

  confident in the attic trick as they pretended they would have wanted

  Chrissie to be tucked up there, instead of sent out into the

  storm-lashed, nightmare world of Moonlight Cove.

  They rode the elevator back to the third floor, where Sam was just

  folding the ladder and pushing the trapdoor into place. Moose watched

  him curiously.

  "Five forty-two," Tessa said, checking her watch.

  Sam snatched up the closet pole, which he'd had to remove to pull down

  the trap, and he reinserted it into its braces.

  They put the clothes back."

  Shirts and slacks, still on hangers, had been transferred to the bed.

  Working together, passing the garments like amateur firemen relaying

  pails of water, they quickly restored the closet to its former

  appearance.

  - 387 Tessa noticed that traces of fresh blood were soaking through the

  baandage on Sam's right wrist. His wounds were pulling exertion.

  Although they weren't mortal injuries, they hurt a lot, and anything

  that weakened or distracted him during the ordeal ahead decreased their

  chances of success.

  At the door, Sam said, "God, I hate to leave him there.

  thirty-six, " Tessa reminded him. She pulled on a leatherjacket, and

  while Chrissie slipped into a too-large but waterproof blue nylon

  windbreaker that belonged to Harry, Sam reloaded his revolver. He had

  used up all the rounds in his pockets while at the Coltranes'. But

  Harry owned a .45 revolver and a .38 pistol, both of which he had taken

  with him into the attic, and he had a box of ammunition for each, so Sam

  had taken a score or so of the .38 cartridges.

  holstering the gun, he went to the telescope and studied the - terrane

  that lay west and south toward Central School.

  "Still lots of cops off-duty," he reported.

  -"Patrols?" Tessa asked.

  "But also lots of rain. And fog's coming in faster, thicker."

  Thanks to the storm, an early twilight was upon them and day was fading.

  Although some bleak light still burned above the churning clouds, night

  might as well have fallen, for cloaks of gloom lay over the wet and

  huddled town.

  "Five fifty," Tessa said.

  Chrissie said, "If Mr. Talbot's at the top of their list, they could be

  here any minute."

  Turning from the telescope, Sam said, "All right. Let's go."

  Tessa and Chrissie followed him out of the bedroom. They took the

  stairs down to the first floor.

  Moose used the elevator.

  Shaddack was a child tonight.

  Circling repeatedly through Moonlight Cove, from the sea the the hills,

  from Holliwell Road on the north to Paddock Lane on the south, he could

  not remember ever having been in a better mood. He altered the patterns

  of his patrol, largely to be sure that eventually he would cover every

  block of every street in town; the sight of each house and every citizen

  on foot in the storm affected him in a way they never had previously,

  because soon they would be his to do with as he pleased.

  He was filled with excitement and anticipation, the likes of which he

  had not felt since Christmas Eve when he was a young boy. Moonlight

  Cove was a huge toy, and in a few hours, when midnight struck, when this

  dark evening ticked over into the hole( he would be able to have so much

  fun with his marvelous toy. He would indulge in games which he had long

  wanted to but which he had denied himself. Henceforth, no urge or

  desire would be denied, for despite the bloodiness or outrageousness of

  whatever game he chose, there would be no referees, no authorities, to

  penalize him.

  And like a child sneaking into a closet to filch coins from his father's

  coat to buy ice cream, he was so completely transformed by contemplation

  of the rewards that he had virtually forgotten there was a potential for

  disaster. Minute by minute, the threat of the regressives faded from

  his awareness. He did not entirely forget about Loman Watkins, but he

  no longer was able to remember exactly why he had spent the day hiding

  from the police chief in the garage at the Parkins house.

  More than thirty years of unrelenting self-control, stamina and

  undeviating application of his mental and physical resources, beginning

  with the day he had murdered his - parents and 389 Runningdeer, thirty

  years of repressing his needs and desires, sublimating them in his work,

  had at last led him to the brink of his dream's realization. He could

  not doubt. To question his mission or worry about its outcome would be

  to doubt his sacred destiny and insult the great spirits who had

  fashioned him. He was now incapable of even seeing a downside; he

  turned his

  mind away from any incipient thought of disaster.

  He sensed the great spirits in the storm.

  He sensed them moving secretly through his town.

  They were there to witness and approve his ascension to the throne of />
  destiny.

  He had eaten no cactus candy since the day he had killed his mother,

  father, and the Indian, but over the years he had been subject to vivid

  flashbacks. They came upon him unexpectedly.

  one moment he would be in this world, and the next instant he would be

  in that other place, the eerie world parallel to this one, where the

  cactus candy had always conveyed him, a reality in which colors were

  simultaneously more vivid and more subtle, where every object seemed to

  have more angles and dimensions than in the ordinary world, where he

  seemed to be strangely weightless-buoyant as a helium-filled balloon-and

  where the voices of spirits spoke to him- The flashbacks had been

  frequent during the year following the murders, striking him about twice

  a week, then had gradually declined in number-though not in

  intensity-through his teenage years. Those dreamy, fugue-like spells,

  which usually lasted an hour or two but could occasionally last half a

  day, were responsible in part for his reputation, with family and

  teachers, of being a somewhat detached child. They all had sympathy for

  him, naturally, because they assumed that whatever detachment he

  displayed was a result of the shattering trauma that he had endured.

  Now, cruising in his van, he was phasing slowly into that Cactus-candy

  condition. This flashback was unexpected, too, but it didn't snap upon