The Servants of Twilight

by Dean Koontz

  “And keep a gun at your side?”

  “Of course. Even though I won’t need it. I really won’t, you know. So let’s get you tucked in.”

  When she was under the covers, he kissed her goodnight and backed out of the room, leaving her door ajar.

  In the gallery, he looked at his watch and was startled to see how late it was. Could they have been making love for almost two hours? No. Surely not. There had been something frighteningly, deliciously animalistic about their coupling; they had indulged with an abandon and an intensity that stole the meaning from time, but he had never thought of himself as a rampaging stud, and he could not believe that he had performed so insatiably for so long. Yet his watch had never run fast before; surely it couldn’t have gained an extra hour or more in just the past thirty minutes.

  He realized he was standing there, alone, outside her bedroom door, grinning like the Cheshire cat, full of selfsatisfaction.

  He built up the fire downstairs, carried a sleeping bag to the gallery and unrolled it, switched off the landing light, and slipped into the bedroll. He listened to the storm raging outside, but not for long. Sleep came like a great dark tide.

  In the dream, he was tucking Joey into bed, straightening the covers, fluffing the boy’s pillow, and Joey wanted to give him a goodnight kiss, and Charlie leaned over, but the boy’s lips were hard and cold on his cheek, and when he looked down he saw the boy no longer had a face but just a bare skull with two staring eyes that seemed horribly out of place in that otherwise calcimine countenance. Charlie hadn’t felt lips against his cheek but a fleshless mouth, cold teeth. He recoiled in terror. Joey threw back the covers and sat up in bed. He was a normal little boy in every respect except for having only a skull instead of a complete head. The skull’s protuberant eyes fixed on Charlie, and the boy’s small hands began unbuttoning his Space Raiders pajamas, and when his shallow little chest was revealed it began to split open, and Charlie tried to turn and run but couldn’t, couldn’t close his eyes either, couldn’t look away, could only watch as the child’s chest cracked apart and from it streamed a horde of red-eyed rats like the one in the battery room, ten and then a hundred and then a thousand rats, until the boy had emptied himself and had collapsed into a pile of skin, like a deflated balloon, and then the rats surged forward toward Charlie—

  —and he woke, sweating, gasping, a scream frozen in his throat. Something was holding him down, constraining his arms and legs, and for a moment he thought it was rats, that they had followed him out of the dream, and he thrashed in panic until he realized he was in a zippered sleeping bag. He found the zipper, pulled the bag open, freed himself, and crawled until he came to a wall in the darkness, sat with his back to it, listening to his thunderous heartbeat, waiting for it to subside.

  When at last he had control of himself, he went into Joey’s room, just to reassure himself. The boy was sleeping peacefully. Chewbacca raised his furry head and yawned.

  Charlie looked at his watch, saw that he had slept about four hours. Dawn was nearing.

  He returned to the gallery.

  He couldn’t stop shaking.

  He went downstairs and made some coffee.

  He tried not to think about the dream, but he couldn’t help it. He had never before had such a vivid nightmare, and the shattering power of it led him to believe that it had been less a dream than a clairvoyant experience, a foreshadowing of events to come. Not that rats were going to burst out of Joey. Of course not. The dream had been symbolic. But what it meant was that Joey was going to die. Not wanting to believe it, devastated by the very idea that he would fail to protect the boy, he was nevertheless unable to dismiss it as only a dream; he knew; he felt it in his bones: Joey was going to die. Maybe they were all going to die.

  And now he understood why he and Christine had made love with such intensity, with such abandon and fiercely animalistic need. Deep down, they both had known that time was running out; subconsciously, they had felt death approaching, and they had tried to deny it in that most ancient and fundamental of life-affirming rituals, the ceremony of flesh, the dance done lying down.

  He got up from the table, left his half-finished coffee, and went to the front door. He wiped at the frosted glass until he could look out at the snow-covered porch. He couldn’t see much of anything, just a few whirling flakes and darkness. The worst of the storm had passed. And Spivey was out there. Somewhere. That’s what the dream had meant.

  55

  By dawn the storm had passed.

  Christine and Joey were up early. The boy was not as ebullient as he had been last night. In fact he was sinking back into gloom and perhaps despair, but he helped his mother and Charlie make breakfast, and he ate well.

  After breakfast, Charlie suited up and went outside, alone, to sight-in the rifle that he had purchased yesterday in Sacramento.

  More than a foot of new snow had fallen during the night. The drifts that sloped against the cabin were considerably higher than they had been yesterday, and a couple of first-floor windows were drifted over. The boughs of the evergreens dropped lower under the weight of the new snow, and the world was so silent it seemed like a vast graveyard.

  The day was cold, gray, bleak. At the moment no wind blew.

  He had fashioned a target out of a square of cardboard and two lengths of twine. He tied the target around the trunk of a Douglas Fir that stood a few yards downhill from the windmill, then backed off twenty-five yards and stretched out on his belly in the snow. Using one of the rolled-up sleeping bags as a makeshift bench rest, he aimed for the center of the target and fired three rounds, pausing between each to make sure the crosshairs were still lined up on the bull’s-eye.

  The Winchester Model 100 was fitted with a 3-power telescope sight which brought the target right up to him. He was firing 180-grain soft-point bullets, and he saw each of them hit home.

  The shots cracked the morning stillness all across the mountain and echoed back from distant valleys.

  He got up, went to the target, and measured the point of average impact, which was the center point of the three hits. Then he measured the distance from the point of impact to the point of aim (which was the bull’s-eye where he had lined up the crosshairs), and that figure told him how much adjustment the scope required. The rifle was pulling low and to the right. He corrected the elevation dial first, then the windage dial, then sprawled in the snow again and fired another group of three. This time he was gratified to see that every shot found the center of the target.

  Because a bullet does not travel in a straight line but in a curving trajectory, it twice crosses the line of sight—once as it is rising and once as it is falling. With the rifle and ammunition he was using, Charlie could figure that any round he fired would first cross the line of sight at about twenty-five yards, then rise until it was about two and a half inches high of the mark at one hundred yards, then fall and cross the line of sight a second time at about two hundred yards. Therefore, the Winchester was now sighted-in for two hundred yards.

  He didn’t want to have to kill anyone.

  He hoped killing wouldn’t be necessary.

  But now he was ready.

  Christine and Charlie put on their snowshoes and backpacks and went down the mountain to the lower meadow to finish unloading the Jeep.

  Charlie was carrying the rifle, slung over one shoulder.

  She said, “You’re not expecting trouble?”

  “No. But what’s the use of having the gun if I don’t always keep it close by?”

  She felt better about leaving Joey alone this morning than she had last night, but she still wasn’t happy about it. His high spirits had been short-lived. He was withdrawing again, retreating into his own inner world, and this change was even more frightening than it had been the last time it happened because, after his recovery yesterday evening, she had thought he was permanently back with them. If he withdrew into silence and despair again, perhaps he would slip even deeper than before,
and perhaps this time he would not come out again. It was possible for a once perfectly normal, outgoing child to become autistic, cutting off most or all interaction with the real world. She’d read about such cases, but she’d never worried about it as much as she worried about diseases and accidents because Joey had always been such an open, joyous, communicative child. Autism had been something that could happen to other people’s children, never to her extroverted little boy. But now . . . This morning he spoke little. He didn’t smile at all. She wanted to stay with him every minute, hug him a lot, but she remembered that being left alone for a while last evening had convinced him that the witch must not be near, after all. Being left to his own resources this morning might have that same salutary effect again.

  Christine didn’t glance back as she and Charlie headed downhill, away from the cabin. If Joey was watching from a window, he might interpret a look back as an indication that she was afraid for him, and her own fear would then feed his.

  Her breath took frosty form and wreathed her head. The air was bitterly cold, but because there was no wind, they didn’t need to wear ski masks.

  As first she and Charlie didn’t speak, just walked, finding their way through the new soft snow, sinking in now and then in spite of the showshoes, searching for a firmer crust, squinting because the glare of the snow was fatiguing to the eyes even under a sunless sky like this one. However, as they reached the woods at the base of the meadow, Charlie said, “Uh . . . about last night—”

  “Me first,” she said quickly, speaking softly because the air was so still that a whisper carried as well as a shout. “I’ve been sort of . . . well, a little embarrassed all morning.”

  “About what happened last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sorry it happened?”

  “No, no.”

  “Good. Because I’m sure not sorry.”

  She said, “I just want you to know . . . that the way I was last night . . . so eager . . . so aggressive . . . so . . .”

  “Passionate?”

  “It was more than passion, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d say.”

  “My God, I was like . . . an animal or something. I couldn’t get enough of you.”

  “It was great for my ego,” he said, grinning.

  “I didn’t know your ego was deflated.”

  “Wasn’t. But I never thought of myself as God’s gift to women, either.”

  “But after last night you do, huh?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Twenty yards into the woods, they stopped and looked at each other and kissed gently.

  She said, “I just want you to understand that I’ve never been like that before.”

  He feigned surprise and disappointment. “You mean you’re not sex crazy?”

  “Only with you.”

  “That’s because I’m God’s gift to women, I guess.”

  She didn’t smile. “Charlie, this is important to me—that you understand. Last night . . . I don’t know what got into me.”

  “I got into you.”

  “Be serious. Please. I don’t want you to think I’ve been like that with other men. I haven’t. Not ever. I did things with you last night that I’ve never done before. I didn’t even know I could do them. I was really like a wild animal. I mean . . . I’m no prude but—”

  “Listen,” he said, “if you were an animal last night, then I was a beast. It’s not like me to completely surrender control of myself like that, and it certainly isn’t like me to be that . . . well, demanding . . . rough. But I’m not embarrassed by the way I was, and you shouldn’t be, either. We’ve got something special, something unique, and that’s why we both felt able to let go the way we did. At times it was maybe crude—but it was also pretty terrific, wasn’t it?”

  “God, yes.”

  They kissed again, but it was a brief kiss interrupted by a distant growling-buzzing.

  Charlie cocked his head, listening.

  The sound grew louder.

  “Plane?” she said, looking up at the narrow band of sky above the tree-flanked lane.

  “Snowmobiles,” Charlie said. “There was a time when the mountains were always quiet, serene. Not anymore. Those damned snowmobiles are everywhere, like fleas on a cat.”

  The roar of engines grew louder.

  “They wouldn’t come up this far?” she asked worriedly.

  “Might.”

  “Sounds like they’re almost on top of us.”

  “Probably still pretty far off. Sound is deceptive up here; it carries a long way.”

  “But if we do run into some snowmobilers—”

  “We’ll say we’re renting the cabin. My name’s . . . Bob . . . mmm . . . Henderson. You’re Jane Henderson. We live in Seattle. Up here to do some cross-country skiing and just get away from it all. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Don’t mention Joey.”

  She nodded.

  They started downhill again.

  The sound of snowmobile engines grew louder, louder—and then cut out one at a time, until there was once again only the deep enveloping silence of the mountains and the soft crunch and squeak of snowshoes in the snow.

  When they reached the next break in the tree line, at the top of the lower meadow, they saw four snowmobiles and eight or ten people gathered around the Jeep, almost three hundred yards below. They were too far away for Christine to see what they looked like, or even whether they were men or women; they were just small, dark figures against the dazzling whiteness of the snowfield. The station wagon was half buried in drifted snow, but the strangers were busily cleaning it off, trying the doors.

  Christine heard faint voices but couldn’t understand the words. The sound of breaking glass clinked through the crisp cold air, and she realized these were not ordinary snowmobile enthusiasts.

  Charlie pulled her backward, into the darkness beneath the trees, off to the left of the trail, and both of them nearly fell because snowshoes were not designed for dodging and running. They stood under a gigantic hemlock. Its spreading branches began about seven feet above the ground, casting shadows and shedding needles on the thin skin of snow that covered the earth beneath it. Charlie leaned against the enormous trunk of the tree and peered around it, past a couple of other hemlocks, between a few knobcone pines, toward the meadow and the Jeep. He unsnapped the binocular case that was clipped to his belt, took out the binoculars.

  “Who are they?” Christine asked as she watched Charlie focus the glasses. Certain that she already knew the answer to her question but not wanting to believe it, not having the strength to believe it. “Not just a group of people who like winter sports; that’s for sure. They wouldn’t go around busting the windows out of abandoned vehicles.”

  “Maybe it’s a bunch of kids,” he said, still focusing. “Just out looking for a little trouble.”

  “Nobody goes out in deep snow, comes this far up a mountain, just looking for trouble,” she said.

  Charlie took two steps away from the hemlock, held the binoculars with both hands, peering downhill. At last he said, “I recognize one of them. The big guy who came into her office at the rectory, just as Henry and I were leaving. She called him Kyle.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  The mountain wasn’t a haven, after all, but a dead end. A trap.

  Suddenly the loneliness of the snow-blasted slopes and forests made their retreat to the cabin appear short-sighted, foolish. It seemed like such a good idea to get away from people, where they would not be spotted, but they had also removed themselves from all chance of help, from everyone who might have come to their assistance if they were attacked. Here, in these cold high places, they could be slaughtered and buried, and no one but their murderers would ever know what had happened to them.

  “Do you see . . . her?” Christine asked.

  “Spivey? I think . . . yeah . . . the only one still sitting in a snowmobile. I’m sure that’s her.”


  “But how could they find us?”

  “Somebody who knew I was part owner of the cabin. Somebody remembered it and told Spivey’s people.”

  “Henry Rankin?”

  “Maybe. Very few people know about this place.”

  “But still . . . so quickly!”

  Charlie said, “Six . . . seven . . . nine of them. No. Ten. Ten of them.”

  We’re going to die, she thought. And for the first time since leaving the convent, since losing her religion, she wished that she had not turned entirely away from the Church. Suddenly, by comparison with the insanity of Spivey’s cult beliefs, the ancient and compassionate doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church were immeasurably appealing and comforting, and she wished she could turn to them now without feeling like a hypocrite, wished she could beg God for help and ask the Blessed Virgin for her divine intercession. But you couldn’t just reject the Church, put it entirely out of your life—then go running back when you needed it, and expect to be embraced without first making penance. God required your faith in the good times as well as the bad. If she died at the hands of Spivey’s fanatics, she would do so without making a final confession to a priest, without the last rites or a proper burial in consecrated ground, and she was surprised that those things mattered to her and seemed important after all these years during which she had discounted their value.

  Charlie put the binoculars back into the case, snapped it shut. He unslung the rifle from his shoulder.

  He said, “You head back to the cabin. Fast as you can. Stay in the trees until you reach the bend in the trail. After that they can’t see you from the lower meadow. Get Joey suited up. Pack some food in your knapsack. Do whatever you can to get ready.”

  “You’re staying here? Why?”

  “To kill a few of them,” he said.