Ticktock

by Dean Koontz

  “That’s for sure,” she agreed, but offered no explanation.

  Lamps glowed warmly in one of the downstairs rooms facing onto the courtyard. As Tommy followed Del to the front door, those windows went dark.

  “Wait,” he whispered urgently. “The lights.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Maybe the thing got here ahead of us.”

  “No, that’s just Scootie playing with me,” she assured him.

  “The dog can turn off the lights?”

  She giggled. “Wait’ll you see.” She unlocked the front door and, stepping into the foyer, said, “Lights on.”

  Responding to her vocal command, the overhead fixture and two sconces glowed.

  “If my cell phone wasn’t in the van,” she said, “I could’ve called ahead to the house computer and turned on any combination of lights, the spa, the music system, the TV. The place is totally automated. I also had the software customized so Scootie can turn the lights on in any room with just one bark and turn them off with two.”

  “And you could train him to do that?” Tommy asked, closing the door behind him and engaging the thumb-turn deadbolt.

  “Sure. Otherwise he never barks, so he can’t confuse the system. Poor thing, he’s here alone for hours at a time in the evening. He should be able to have it dark if he wants to nap—and light if he’s feeling lonely or spooked.”

  Tommy had expected the dog to be waiting at the door, but it was not in sight. “Where is he?”

  “Hiding,” she said, putting her purse on a foyer table with a black granite top. “He wants me to find him.”

  “A dog that plays hide-and-seek?”

  “Without hands, it’s too frustrating to play Scrabble.”

  Tommy’s wet shoes squished and squeaked on the honed-travertine floor. “We’re making a mess.”

  “It’s not Chernobyl.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’ll clean up.”

  At one end of the generous foyer, a door stood ajar. Del went to it, leaving wet shoe prints on the marble.

  “Is my naughty little furball in the powder room?” she asked in an annoyingly cute, coddling tone of voice. “Hmmmm? Is my bad boy hiding from his mommie? Is my bad boy hiding in the powder room?”

  She opened the door, manually switched on the lights, but the dog wasn’t there.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said, leading Tommy into the living room. “That was too easy. Though sometimes he knows easy works because it’s not what I’m expecting. Lights on.”

  The large travertine-floored living room was furnished with J. Robert Scott sofas and chairs upholstered in platinum and gold fabrics, blond-finished tables in exotic woods, and bronze Art Deco lamps in the form of nymphs holding luminous crystal balls. The enormous Persian carpet boasted such an intricate design and was so softly colored, as if exquisitely faded by time, that it must have been an antique.

  Del’s vocal command had switched on mood lighting that was low enough to minimize reflection on the glass wall and allow Tommy to see outside to the patio and the boat dock. He also had a glimpse of rain-dimmed harbor lights.

  Scootie was not in the living room. He wasn’t in the study or the dining room, either.

  Following Del through a swinging door, Tommy stepped into a large, stylish kitchen with clear-finished maple cabinets and black granite counter tops.

  “Oh, him not here, either,” Del said, cooing again as if talking to a baby. “Where could my Scootie-wootums be? Did him turn off the lights and quick-like-a-bunny run upstairs?”

  Tommy was riveted by a wall clock with a green neon rim. It was 1:44 in the morning. Time was running out, so the demon was sure to be seeking them with increasing fury.

  “Let’s find the damn dog and get out of here quick,” he said nervously.

  Pointing to a tall narrow section of cabinetry next to which Tommy was standing, Del said, “Get me the broom out of there, would you, please?”

  “Broom?”

  “It’s the broom closet.”

  Tommy opened the door.

  Squeezed into the broom closet was a huge midnight-black creature with teeth bared and fat pink tongue lolling, and Tommy bolted backward, slipped in his own wet shoe prints, and fell on his butt before he realized that it wasn’t the demon leering out at him. It was a dog, an enormous black Labrador.

  Del laughed delightedly and clapped her hands. “I knew you were in there, you naughty little furball!”

  Scootie grinned out at them.

  “I knew you’d give Tommy a good scare,” she told the dog.

  “Yeah, just what I needed,” Tommy said, getting to his feet.

  Panting, Scootie came out of the closet. The space was so narrow and the dog so large that it was like a cork coming out of a wine bottle, and Tommy half expected to hear a pop.

  “How’d he get in there?” Tommy wondered.

  Tail wagging furiously, Scootie went directly to Del, and she dropped to her knees so she could pet him and scratch behind his ears. “Him miss mommie, did him? Hmmmmm? Was him lonely, my fuzzy-wuzzy baby, my cutie Scootie?”

  “He couldn’t step in there and turn around,” Tommy said. “Not enough room.”

  “He probably backed into it,” Del said, hugging Scootie.

  “Dogs don’t back into things any more than motorcycles do. Besides, how did he get the door shut after he was in there?”

  “It falls shut on its own,” Del said.

  Indeed, the broom-closet door had slowly closed after the Labrador had squeezed out of confinement into the kitchen.

  “Okay, but how did he open it in the first place?” Tommy persisted.

  “Pawed it open. He’s clever.”

  “Why did you teach him this?”

  “Teach him what?”

  “To play hide-and-seek.”

  “Didn’t teach him. He’s always liked to do it.”

  “It’s weird.”

  Del puckered her lips and made kissing sounds. The dog took the cue and began to lick her face.

  “That’s disgusting,” Tommy said.

  Giggling, Del said, “His mouth is cleaner than yours.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  As if quoting from a medical journal, she pulled back from the Labrador and said, “The chemical composition of a dog’s saliva makes its mouth a hostile environment for the spectrum of bacteria that are harmful to people.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true.” To Scootie, she said, “He’s just jealous, because he wants to lick my face.”

  Nonplussed, blushing, Tommy looked at the wall clock. “Okay, we have the dog, so let’s get out of here.”

  Rising to her feet, heading out of the kitchen with the dog at her heels, Del said, “A waitress’s uniform isn’t suitable gear for a girl on the lam. Give me five minutes to change clothes, get into jeans and a sweater, and then we can split.”

  “No, listen, the longer we stay in one place, the quicker it’s going to find us.”

  In a train—woman, dog, and man—they crossed the dining room as Del said, “Relax, Tommy. There’s always enough time if you think there is.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Whatever you expect is what will be, so simply change your expectations.”

  “I don’t know what that means, either.”

  “It means what it means,” she said, enigmatic once more.

  In the living room, he said, “Damn it, wait a minute!”

  Del turned to look at him.

  The dog turned to look at him.

  Tommy sighed, gave up. “Okay, change your clothes. But hurry.”

  To the dog, Del said, “You stay here and get acquainted with Tuong Tommy.” Then she went into the foyer and up the stairs.

  Scootie cocked his head, studying Tommy as if he were a strange and amusing form of life never seen before.

  “Your mouth is not cleaner than mine,” Tommy said.

  Scootie pricked one e
ar.

  “You heard me,” Tommy said.

  He crossed the living room to the large glass sliding doors and gazed out toward the harbor. Most of the houses on the far shore were dark. Where dock and landscape lamps glowed, attenuated reflections of gold and red and silver light glimmered hundreds of feet across the black water.

  After a few seconds, Tommy became aware of being watched—not by someone outside, but by someone inside.

  He turned and saw the dog hiding behind the sofa, only its head revealed, observing him.

  “I see you,” Tommy said.

  Scootie pulled his head back, out of sight.

  Along one wall was a handsome entertainment center and library unit made from a wood with which Tommy was unfamiliar. He went to have a closer look, and he discovered that the beautiful grain was like rippled ribbons that appeared to undulate as he shifted his head from one side to the other.

  He heard noises behind him and knew that Scootie was on the move, but he refused to be distracted from his examination of the entertainment center. The depth of the glossy lacquer finish was remarkable.

  From elsewhere in the room came the sound of a fart.

  “Bad dog,” he said.

  The sound repeated.

  Finally Tommy turned.

  Scootie was sitting on his hindquarters in one of the armchairs, staring at Tommy, both ears pricked, holding a large rubber hotdog in his mouth. When he bit down on the toy, it made that sound again. Perhaps the rubber hotdog had once produced a squeak or a whistle, but now only a repulsive flatulence issued from it.

  Checking his watch, Tommy said, “Come on, Del.”

  Then he went to an armchair that directly faced that in which the dog sat, with only the coffee table between them. The chair was upholstered in leather, in a sealskin shade, so he didn’t think his damp jeans would harm it.

  He and Scootie stared at each other. The Labrador’s eyes were dark and soulful.

  “You’re a strange dog,” Tommy said.

  Scootie bit the hotdog again, producing the blatty noise.

  “That’s annoying.”

  Scootie chomped on the toy.

  “Don’t.”

  Another faux fart.

  “I’m warning you.”

  Again the dog bit the toy, again, and a third time.

  “Don’t make me take it away from you,” Tommy said.

  Scootie dropped the hotdog on the floor and barked twice.

  The room was plunged into darkness, and Tommy was startled out of his chair before he remembered that two closely spaced barks was the signal that told the computer to switch off the lights.

  Even as Tommy was bolting to his feet, Scootie was coming across the coffee table in the dark. The dog leaped, and Tommy was carried backward into the leather armchair.

  The dog was all over him, chuffing in a friendly way, licking his face affectionately, licking his hands when he raised them to cover his face.

  “Stop, damn it, stop, get off me.”

  Scootie scrambled off Tommy’s lap, onto the floor—but seized the heel of his right shoe and began to worry at it, trying to gain possession of it.

  Not wanting to kick at the mutt, afraid of hurting it, Tommy reached down, trying to get hold of its burly head.

  The Rockport suddenly slipped off his foot.

  “Ah, shit.”

  He heard Scootie hustling away through the darkness with the shoe.

  Getting to his feet, Tommy said, “Lights!” The room remained dark, and then he remembered the complete command. “Lights on!”

  Scootie was gone.

  From the study, adjacent to the living room, came a single bark, and light appeared beyond the open door.

  “They’re both crazy,” Tommy muttered as he went around the coffee table and picked up the rubber hotdog from beside the second armchair.

  Scootie appeared in the study doorway, without the shoe. When he saw that he’d been seen, he retreated.

  Limping across the living room to the study, Tommy said, “Maybe the dog wasn’t always crazy. Maybe she made it crazy, the same way she’ll make me crazy sooner or later.”

  When he entered the study, he found the dog standing on the bleached-cherry desk. The mutt looked like an absurdly oversized decorative accessory.

  “Where’s my shoe?”

  Scootie cocked his head as if to say, What shoe?

  Holding up the toy hotdog, Tommy said, “I’ll take this outside and throw it in the harbor.”

  With his soulful eyes focused intently on the toy, Scootie whined.

  “It’s late, I’m tired, my Corvette blew up, some damn thing is after me, so I’m in no mood for games.”

  Scootie merely whined again.

  Tommy circled the desk, searching for his shoe.

  Atop the desk, Scootie turned, following him with interest.

  “If I find it without your help,” Tommy warned, “then I won’t give the hotdog back.”

  “Find what?” Del asked from the doorway.

  She had changed into blue jeans and a cranberry-red turtleneck sweater, and she was holding two big guns.

  “What the hell are those?” Tommy asked.

  Hefting the weapon in her right hand, she said, “This is a short-barreled, pump-action, pistol-grip, 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun. Excellent home-defense weapon.” She raised the gun in her left hand. “This beauty is a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum pistol, Israeli-made. It’s a real door-buster. A couple of rounds from this baby will stop a charging bull.”

  “You run into a lot of charging bulls?”

  “Or the equivalent.”

  “No, seriously, why do you keep heavy artillery like that?”

  “I told you before—I lead an eventful life.”

  He remembered how easily she had dismissed the damage to her van earlier in the evening: It comes with the territory.

  And when he had worried about the rain ruining the upholstery, she had shrugged and said, There’s frequently damage…I’ve learned to roll with it.

  Tommy sensed a satori, a sudden profound insight, looming like a tidal wave, and he waited breathlessly for it to wash over him. This woman was not what she appeared to be. He had thought of her as a waitress, but had discovered she was an artist. Then he had thought of her as a struggling artist who worked as a waitress to pay the rent, but she lived in a multimillion-dollar house. Her eccentricities and her habit of peppering her conversation with cryptic babble and non sequiturs had convinced him that she had a few screws loose in the cranium, but now he suspected that the worst mistake he could make with her would be to write her off as a flake. There were depths to her that he was only beginning to perceive—and swimming in those depths were some strange fish that would surprise him more than anything that he had seen to date.

  He recalled another fragment of their conversation, and it seemed to have new import: Reality is perception. Perceptions change. Reality is fluid. So if by “reality” you mean reliably tangible objects and immutable events, then there’s no such thing…. I’ll explain someday when we have more time.

  He sensed that every screwball statement she made was not, in fact, half as screwball as it seemed. Even in her most airheaded statements, an elusive truth was lurking. If he could just step back from her, put aside the conception of her that he had already formed, he would see her entirely differently from the way that he saw her now. He thought of those drawings by M. C. Escher, which played with perspective and with the viewer’s expectations, so a scene might appear to be only a drift of lazily falling leaves until, suddenly, one saw it anew as a school of fast-swimming fish. Within the first picture was hidden another. Within Del Payne was hidden a different person—someone with a secret—who was cloaked by the ditsy image that she projected.

  The satori, tidal wave of revelation, loomed, loomed, loomed—and then began to recede without bringing him understanding. He had strained too hard. Sometimes enlightenment came only when it wasn’t sought or welcomed.

>   Del stood in the doorway between the study and the living room, a gun in each hand, meeting Tommy’s gaze so directly that he half suspected she knew what he was thinking.

  Frowning, he said, “Who are you, Del Payne?”

  “Who is any of us?” she countered.

  “Don’t start that again.”

  “Don’t start what?”

  “That inscrutable crap.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’re you doing with Scootie’s rubber hotdog?”

  Tommy glared at the Labrador on the desk. “He took my shoe.”

  In an admonishing tone, she said to the dog, “Scootie?”

  The mutt met her eyes almost defiantly, but then he lowered his head and whined.

  “Bad Scootie,” she said. “Give Tommy his shoe.”

  Scootie studied Tommy, then chuffed dismissively.

  “Give Tommy his shoe,” Del repeated firmly.

  Finally the dog jumped down from the desk, padded to a potted palm in one corner of the room, poked his head behind the celadon pot, and returned with the athletic shoe in his mouth. He dropped it on the floor at Tommy’s feet.

  When Tommy bent down to pick up his shoe, the dog put one paw on it—and stared at the rubber hotdog.

  Tommy put the hotdog on the floor.

  The dog looked at the hotdog and then at Tommy’s hand, which was only a few inches away from the toy.

  Tommy withdrew his hand.

  The Labrador picked up the hotdog with his mouth—and only then lifted his paw off the shoe. He padded into the living room, biting on the toy to produce the farting sound.

  Staring thoughtfully after Scootie, Tommy said, “Where did you get that mutt?”

  “At the pound.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “What’s not to believe?”

  From the living room came a veritable symphony of rubber-hotdog flatulence.

  “I think you got him from a circus.”

  “He’s clever,” she agreed.

  “Where did you really get him?”

  “At a pet store.”

  “I don’t believe that, either.”

  “Put on your shoe,” she said, “and let’s get out of here.”

  He hobbled to a chair. “Something’s strange about that dog.”

  “Well, if you must know,” Del said flippantly, “I’m a witch, and he’s my familiar, an ancient supernatural entity who helps me make magic.”