by Dean Koontz
We spread blankets on the sand, near the Explorer, and fired up a single Coleman lantern.
A large ship was stationed just beyond the mouth of the bay, north and west of us. Although the night shrouded it, and though the porthole lights were not sufficient to entirely define the vessel, I was sure that I had never seen anything quite like it in these parts. It made me uneasy, though not uneasy enough to go home and hide under my bed.
The waves were tasty, six to eight feet from trough to crest. The offshore flow was just strong enough to carve them into modest barrels, and in the moonlight, the foam glimmered like mermaids’ pearl necklaces.
Sasha and Bobby paddled out to the break line, and I took the first watch on shore, with Orson and Mungojerrie and two shotguns. Though the Mystery Train might not exist any longer, my mom’s clever retrovirus was still at work. Perhaps the promised vaccine and cure were on the way, but people in Moonlight Bay were still becoming. The coyotes couldn’t have crunched up the entire troop; a few Wyvern monkeys, at least, were out there somewhere, and not feeling kindly about us.
Using the first-aid kit that Sasha had brought, I gently cleaned Orson’s abraded pasterns with antiseptic and then coated the shallow cuts with Neosporin. The laceration on his left cushion, near his nose, was not as bad as it had first looked, but his ear was a mess. In the morning, I would have to try to get a vet to come to the house and give us an opinion about the possibility of repairing the broken cartilage.
Although the antiseptic must have stung, Orson never complained. He is a good dog and an even better person.
“I love you, bro,” I told him.
He licked my face.
I realized that, from time to time, I was looking left and right along the beach, half expecting monkeys but even more prepared for the sight of Johnny Randolph strolling toward me. Or Hodgson in his spacesuit, face churning with parasites. After reality had been so thoroughly cut to pieces, perhaps it could never again be stitched back together in the old, comfortable pattern. I couldn’t shake the feeling that, from now on, anything could happen.
I opened a beer for me and one for Orson. I poured his into a bowl and suggested he share some of it with Mungojerrie, but the cat took one taste and spat with disgust.
The night was mild, the sky was deep with stars, and the rumble of the point-break surf was like the beating of a mighty heart.
A shadow passed across the fat moon. It was only a hawk, not a gargoyle.
That creature with black leather wings and a whiplike tail had also been graced with two horns, cloven hooves, and a face that was hideous largely because it was human, too human to have been plugged into that otherwise grotesque form. I’m pretty sure drawings of such creatures can be found in books that date back as far as books have been printed, and under most if not all of those drawings, you will find the same caption: demon.
I decided not to think about that anymore.
After a while, Sasha came out of the surf, panting happily, and Orson panted back at her as though he thought she was trying to converse.
She dropped on the blanket beside me, and I opened a beer for her.
Bobby was still thrashing the night waves.
“See that ship out there?” she asked.
“Big.”
“We paddled a little farther out than we needed to. Got just a little closer look. It’s U.S. Navy.”
“Never saw a battleship anchored around here before.”
“Something’s up.”
“Something always is.”
A chill of premonition passed through me. Maybe a cure and a vaccine were forthcoming. Or maybe the big brains had decided the only way to cover up the fiasco at Wyvern and obscure the source of the retrovirus was to scrub the former base and all of Moonlight Bay off the map. Scrub it away with a thermonuclear brush that even viruses couldn’t survive. Might the wider public believe, if properly prepared, that any nuclear event obliterating Moonlight Bay was the work of terrorists?
I decided not to think about that anymore.
“Bobby and I are going to set a date,” I said. “Gotta get married now, you know.”
“Mandatory, once he said he loved you.”
“That’s the way we feel.”
“Who’s the bridesmaid?” she asked.
“Orson,” I said.
“We’re deep into gender confusion.”
“Want to be best man?” I asked.
“Sure, unless, when the time comes, I’m up to my ass in angry monkeys or something. Take some waves, Snowman.”
I got to my feet, picked up my board, said, “I’d leave Bobby standing at the altar in a minute, if I thought you’d marry me instead,” and headed for the surf.
She let me get about six steps before she shouted, “Was that a proposal?”
“Yes!” I shouted.
“Asshole!” she shouted.
“Is that an acceptance?” I called back to her as I waded into the sea.
“You don’t get off that easy. You owe me a lot of romancing.”
“So it was an acceptance?” I shouted.
“Yes!”
With surf foaming around my knees, I turned to look back at her as she stood there in the light of the Coleman lantern. If Kaha Huna, goddess of the surf, walked the earth, she was here this night, not in Waimea Bay, not living under the name Pia Klick.
Orson stood beside her, sweeping his tail back and forth, obviously looking forward to being a bridesmaid. But then his tail abruptly stopped wagging. He trotted closer to the water, raised his head, sniffed the air, and gazed at the warship anchored outside the mouth of the bay. I could see nothing different about the vessel, but some change evidently had drawn Orson’s attention—and concern.
The waves, however, were too choice to resist. Carpe diem. Carpe noctem. Carpe aestus—seize the surf.
The night sea rolled in from far Tortuga, from Tahiti, from Bora Bora, from the Marquesas, from a thousand sundrenched places where I will never walk, where high tropical skies burn a blue that I will never see, but all the light I need is here, with those I love, who shine.
About the Author
DEAN KOONTZ, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives with his wife, Gerda, and the enduring spirit of their golden retriever, Trixie, in southern California.
Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:
Dean Koontz
P.O. Box 9529
Newport Beach, CA 92658
Also by DEAN KOONTZ
The Good Guy • Brother Odd • The Husband • Forever Odd • Velocity • Life Expectancy • The Taking • Odd Thomas • The Face • By the Light of the Moon • One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye • False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing • Mr. Murder • Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire • The Bad Place • Midnight • Lightning • Watchers • Strangers • Twilight Eyes • Darkfall • Phantoms • Whispers • The Mask • The Vision • The Face of Fear • Night Chills • Shattered • The Voice of the Night • The Servants of Twilight • The House of Thunder • The Key to Midnight • The Eyes of Darkness • Shadowfires • Winter Moon • The Door to December • Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound • Strange Highways • Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock • The Funhouse • Demon Seed
DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN
Book One: Prodigal Son • with Kevin J. Anderson
Book Two: City of Night • with Ed Gorman
On the heels of his critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Fear Nothing and Seize the Night, Dean Koontz stuns readers with a deeply sinister and endlessly surprising tale of a rare and terrifying phobia: autophobia—fear of oneself.
DEAN KOONTZ
FALSE MEMORY
Available now, wherever Bantam Books are sold.
Turn the page for a special advance preview of False Memory, the new novel from Dean Koontz, acclaimed by Rolling Stone as “America’s most popular suspense novelist,” with, as People put it
, “the power to scare the daylights out of us.”
Autophobia is a real personality disorder. The term is used to describe three different conditions: 1) fear of being alone; 2) fear of being egotistical; 3) fear of oneself. The third is the rarest of these conditions.
1
On that Tuesday in January, when her life changed forever, Martine Rhodes woke with a headache, developed a sour stomach after washing down two aspirin with grapefruit juice, guaranteed herself an epic bad-hair day by mistakenly using Dustin’s shampoo instead of her own, broke a fingernail, burnt her toast, discovered ants swarming through the cabinet under the kitchen sink, eradicated the pests by firing a spray can of insecticide as ferociously as Sigourney Weaver wielded a flamethrower in one of those old extraterrestrial-bug movies, cleaned up the resultant carnage with paper towels, hummed Bach’s Requiem as she solemnly consigned the tiny bodies to the trash can, and took a telephone call from her mother, Sabrina, who still prayed for the collapse of Martie’s marriage three years after the wedding. Throughout, she remained upbeat—even enthusiastic—about the day ahead, because from her late father, Robert “Smilin’ Bob” Woodhouse, she had inherited an optimistic nature, formidable coping skills, and a deep love of life in addition to blue eyes, ink-black hair, and ugly toes.
Thanks, Daddy.
After convincing her ever hopeful mother that the Rhodes marriage remained happy, Martie slipped into a leather jacket and took her golden retriever, Valet, on his morning walk. Step by step, her headache faded.
Along the whetstone of clear eastern sky, the sun sharpened scalpels of light. Out of the west, however, a cool onshore breeze pushed malignant masses of dark clouds.
The dog regarded the heavens with concern, sniffed the air warily, and pricked his pendant ears at the hiss-clatter of palm fronds stirred by the wind. Clearly, Valet knew a storm was coming.
He was a gentle, playful dog. Loud noises frightened him, however, as though he had been a soldier in a former life and was haunted by memories of battlefields blasted by cannon fire.
Fortunately for him, rotten weather in southern California was seldom accompanied by thunder. Usually, rain fell unannounced, hissing on the streets, whispering through the foliage, and these were sounds that even Valet found soothing.
Most mornings, Martie walked the dog for an hour, along the narrow tree-lined streets of Corona Del Mar, but she had a special obligation every Tuesday and Friday that limited their excursion to fifteen minutes on those days. Valet seemed to have a calendar in his furry head, because on their Tuesday and Friday expeditions, he never dawdled, finishing his toilet close to home.
This morning, only one block from their house, on the grassy sward between the sidewalk and the curb, the pooch made water while in a discreet squat. He had been trained not to lift a leg, and he was, in any event, too shy to do so.
Half a block farther, he was preparing to conclude the second half of his morning business when a passing garbage truck backfired, startling him. He huddled behind a queen palm, peering cautiously around one side of the tree bole and then around the other, convinced that the terrifying vehicle would reappear.
“No problem,” Martie assured him. “The big bad truck is gone. Everything’s fine. This is now a safe-to-poop zone.”
Valet was unconvinced. He remained wary.
Martie was blessed with Smilin’ Bob’s patience, too, especially when dealing with Valet, whom she loved almost as much as she might have loved a child if she’d had one. He was sweet-tempered and beautiful: light gold, with gold and white feathering on his legs, soft snow-white flags on his butt, and a lush tail.
Of course, when the dog was in a doing-business squat, like now, Martie never looked at him, because he was as self-conscious as a nun in a topless bar. While waiting, she softly sang Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” which always relaxed the pooch.
As she began the second verse, a sudden chill climbed the ladder of her spine, causing her to fall silent. She was not a woman given to premonitions, but as the icy quiver ascended to the back of her neck, she was overcome by a sense of impending danger.
Turning, she half expected to see an approaching assailant or a hurtling car. Instead, she was alone on this quiet residential street.
Nothing rushed toward her with lethal purpose. The only moving things were those harried by the wind. Trees and shrubs shivered. A few crisp brown leaves skittered along the pavement. Garlands of tinsel and Christmas lights, from the recent holiday, rustled and rattled under the eaves of a nearby house.
Still uneasy, but feeling foolish, Martie let out the breath that she’d been holding. When the exhalation whistled between her teeth, she realized that her jaws were clenched.
She was probably still spooked from the dream that awakened her after midnight, the same one she’d had on a few other recent nights. The man made of dead, rotting leaves. Whirling, raging.
Then her gaze dropped to her elongated shadow, which stretched across the close-cropped grass, draped the curb, and folded onto the cracked concrete pavement. Inexplicably, her uneasiness swelled into alarm.
She took one step backward, then a second, and of course her shadow moved with her. Only as she retreated a third step did she realize that this very silhouette was what frightened her.
Ridiculous. More absurd than her dream. Yet something in her shadow was not right: a jagged distortion, a menacing quality.
Her heart knocked as hard as a fist on a door.
In the severe angle of the morning sun, the houses and trees cast distorted images, too, but she saw nothing fearsome in their stretched and buckled shadows—only in her own.
She recognized the absurdity of her fear, but this awareness did not diminish her anxiety. Terror courted her, and she stood hand-in-hand with panic.
The shadow seemed to throb with the thick slow beat of its own heart. Staring at it, she was overcome with dread.
Martie closed her eyes and tried to get control of herself.
For a moment, she felt so light that the wind seemed strong enough to sweep her up and carry her inland, with the relentlessly advancing clouds, toward the steadily shrinking band of cold blue sky. As she drew a series of deep breaths, however, weight gradually returned to her.
When she dared to look again at her shadow, she no longer sensed anything unusual about it. She let out a sigh of relief.
Her heart continued to pound, powered not by irrational terror anymore, but by an understandable concern as to the cause of this peculiar episode. She’d never previously experienced such a thing.
Head cocked quizzically, Valet was staring at her.
She had dropped his leash.
Her hands were damp with sweat. She blotted her palms on her blue jeans.
When she realized that the dog had finished his toilet, Martie slipped her right hand into a plastic pet-cleanup bag, using it as a glove. Being a good neighbor, she neatly collected Valet’s gift, turned the bright blue bag inside out, twisted it shut, and tied a double knot in the neck.
The retriever watched her sheepishly.
“If you ever doubt my love, baby boy,” Martie said, “remember I do this every day.”
Valet looked grateful. Or perhaps only relieved.
Performance of this familiar, humble task restored her mental balance. The little blue bag and its warm contents anchored her to reality. The weird incident remained troubling, intriguing, but it no longer frightened her.
DEAN KOONTZ
FALSE MEMORY
Available Now
Fear for your mind.
ODD THOMAS
by DEAN KOONTZ
On sale now,
wherever Bantam
Books are sold.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and plot are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, companies, or events is purely coincidental.
This edition contains the complete text of the
original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
SEIZE THE NIGHT
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published January 1999
Bantam paperback edition / December 1999
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by Dean Koontz
Cover art copyright © 1999 by Tom Hallman
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-31410
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.
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