With a scrape and clatter, the tilted chair was removed from under the
knob.
She held the spray can in her right hand, down at her side and half
behind her, with her forefinger on top of the nozzle.
The door opened, and her father looked in at her.
Alex Foster. Chrissie tried to think of him as Alex Foster, not as her
father, just Alex Foster, but it was difficult to deny that in some ways
he was still her dad. Besides, "Alex Foster" was no more accurate than
"father" because he was someone altogether new.
His face was no longer warped with rage. He appeared more like himself
thick blond hair; a broad, pleasant face with bold features; a
smattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose. Nevertheless, she
could see a terrible difference in his eyes. He seemed to be filled
with a strange urgency, an edgy tension. Hungry. Yes, that was it
Daddy seemed hungry . . . consumed by hunger, frantic with hunger,
starving . . . but for something other than food. She did not
understand his hunger but she sensed - 17 it, a fierce need that
engendered a constant tension in his muscles, a need of such tremendous
power, so hot, that waves of it seemed to rise from him like steam from
boiling water.
He said, "Come out of there, Christine."
Chrissie let her shoulders sag, blinked as if repressing tears,
exaggerated the shivers that swept through her, and tried to look small,
frightened, defeated. Reluctantly she edged forward.
" Come on, come on," he said impatiently, motioning her out of the
pantry.
Chrissie stepped through the doorway and saw her mother, who was beside
and slightly behind Alex. Sharon was pretty auburn hair, green eyes-but
there was no softness or motherliness about her any more. She was hard
looking and changed and full of the same barely contained nervous energy
that filled her husband.
By the kitchen table stood a stranger in jeans and plaid hunting jacket
he was evidently the Tucker to whom her mother had spoken tall, lean,
all sharp edges and angles. His closecropped black hair bristled. His
dark eyes were set under a deep, bony brow; his sharply ridged nose was
like a stone wedge driven into the center of his face; his mouth was a
thin slash, and his jaws were as prominent as those of a predator that
preyed on small animals and snapped them in half with one bite. He was
holding a physician's black leather bag.
Her father reached for Chrissie as she came out of the pantry' and she
whipped up the can of WD-40, spraying him in the eyes from a distance of
less than two feet. Even as her father howled in pain and surprise,
Chrissie turned and sprayed her mother too, straight in the face.
Half-blinded, they fumbled for her, but she slipped away from them and
dashed across the kitchen.
Tucker was startled but managed to grab her by the arm.
She spun toward him and kicked him in the crotch.
He did not let go of her, but the strength went out of his big hands.
She tore herself away from him and sprinted into the downstairs hallway.
From the east, twilight drifted down on Moonlight Cove, as if it were a
mist not of water but of smoky purple light. When Sam Booker got out of
his car, the air was chilly; he was glad that he was wearing a wool
sweater under his corduroy sportcoat. As a photocell activated all the
streetlamps simultaneously, he strolled along Ocean Avenue, looking in
shop windows, getting a feel for the town.
He knew that Moonlight Cove was prosperous, that unemployment was
virtually nonexistent-thanks to New Wave Microtechnology, which had
headquartered there ten years ago-yet he saw signs of a faltering
economy. Taylor's Fine Gifts and Saenger's Jewelry had vacated their
shops; through their dusty, plate-glass windows, he saw bare shelves and
empty display cases and deep, still shadows. New Attitudes, a trendy
clothing store, was having a going-out-of-business sale, and judging by
the dearth of shoppers, their merchandise was moving sluggishly even at
fifty to seventy per,cent off the original prices.
By the time he had walked two blocks west, to the beach end of town,
crossed the street, and returned three blocks along the other side of
Ocean Avenue to Knight's Bridge tavern, twilight was swiftly waning. A
nacreous fog was moving in from the sea, and the air itself seemed
iridescent, shimmering delicately; a plum-colored haze lay over
everything, except where the streetlamps cast showers of mist-softened
yellow light, and above it all was a heavy darkness coming down.
A single moving car was in sight, three blocks away, and at the moment
Sam was the only pedestrian. The solitude combined with the queer light
of the dying day to give him the feeling that this was a ghost town,
inhabited only by the dead. As the gradually thickening fog seeped up
the hill from the Pacific - 19, it contributed to the illusion that all
of the surrounding shops were vacant, that they offered no wares other
than spider webs, silence, and dust.
You're a dour bastard, he told himself. Too grim by half.
Experience had made a pessimist of him. The traumatic course of his
life to date precluded grinning optimism.
Tendrils of fog slipped around his legs. At the far edge of the
darkening sea, the pallid sun was half extinguished. Sam shivered and
went into the tavern to get a drink.
of the three other customers, none was in a noticeably upbeat mood. In
one of the black vinyl booths off to the left, a middleaged man and
woman were leaning toward each other, speaking in low voices. A
gray-faced guy at the bar was hunched over his glass of draft beer,
holding it in both hands, scowling as if he had just seen a bug swimming
in the brew.
In keeping with its name, Knight's Bridge reeked ersatz British
atmosphere. A different coat of arms, each no doubt copied from some
official heraldic reference book, had been carved from wood and
hand-painted and inset in the back of every barstool. A suit of armor
stood in one corner. Fox-hunting scenes hung on the walls.
Sam slid onto a stool eight down from the gray-faced man. The bartender
hurried to him, wiping a clean cotton rag over the already immaculate,
highly polished oak counter.
"Yes, sir, what'll it be?" He was a round man from every aspect a small
round potbelly; meaty forearms with a thick thatching of black hair; a
chubby face; a mouth too small to be in harmony with his other features;
a puggish nose that ended in a round little ball; eyes round enough to
give him a perpetual look of surprise.
"You have Guinness?" Sam asked.
"It's a fundamental of a real pub, I'd say. If we didn't have Guinness
. . . why, we might as well convert to a tea shop."
His was a mellifluous voice; every word he spoke sounded as smooth and
round as he looked. He seemed unusually eager to please.
"Would you like it cold or just slightly chilled? I keep it both ways."
"Very slightly chilled."
"Good man!" When he returned with a Guinness and a glass, the ba
rtender
said, "Name's Burt Peckham. I own the joint."
Carefully pouring the stout down the side of the glass to ensure the
smallest possible head, Sam said, "Sam Booker. Nice place, Burt. Thanks.
Maybe you could spread the word. I try to keep it cozy and well
stocked, and we used to have quite a crowd, but lately it seems like
most of the town either joined a temperance movement or started brewing
their own in their basements, one or the other."
"Well, it's a Monday night."
"These last couple months, it's not been unusual to be half empty even
on a Saturday night, which never used to happen."
Burt Peckham's round face dimpled with worry. He slowly polished the
bar while he talked.
"What it is-I think maybe this health kick Californians have been on for
so long has finally just gone too far. They're all staying home, doing
aerobics in front of the VCR, eating wheat germ and egg whites or
whatever the hell it is they eat, drinking nothing but bottled water and
fruit juice and titmouse milk. Listen, a tipple or two a day is good
for you.
" Sam drank some of the Guinness, sighed with satisfaction, and said,
"This sure tastes as if it ought to be good for you."
"It is. Helps your circulation. Keeps your bowels in shape. Ministers
ought to be touting its virtues each Sunday, not preaching against it.
All things in moderation-and that includes a couple of brews a day."
Perhaps realizing that he was polishing the bar a bit obsessively, he
hung the rag on a hook and stood with his arms folded across his chest.
"You just passing through, Sam? Actually," Sam lied, "I'm taking a long
trip up the coast from L.A. to the Oregon line, loafing along, looking
for a quiet place to semi-retire.
"
"Retire? You kidding?"
"Semi-retire. But you're only, what, forty, forty-one?
"Forty-two. What are you-a bank robber?"
"Stockbroker. Made some good investments over the years. Now I think I
can drop out of the rat race and get by well enough just managing my own
portfolio. I want to settle down where it's quiet, no smog, no crime.
I've had it with L. A.
- 21 "People really make money in stocks?" Peckham asked.
"I thought it was about as good an investment as a craps table in Reno.
Wasn't everybody wiped out when the market blew up a couple years ago?"
"It's a mug's game for the little guy, but you can do all right if
you're a broker and if you don't get swept up in the euphoria of a bull
market. No market goes up forever or down forever; you just have to
guess right about when to start swimming against the current.
"
"Retiring at forty-two," Peckham said wonderingly- "And when I got into
the bar business, I thought I was set for life. Told my wife-in good
times, people drink to celebrate, in bad times they drink to forget, so
there's no better business than a tavern. Now look." He indicated the
nearly empty room with a sweeping gesture of his right hand.
"I'd have done better selling condoms in a monastery."
"Get me another Guinness?" Sam asked.
"Hey, maybe this place will turn around yet!"
When Peckham returned with the second bottle of stout, Sam said,
"Moonlight Cove might be what I've been looking for. I guess I'll stay
a few days, get the feel of it. Can you recommend a motel?"
"There's only one left. Never been much of a tourist town. No one here
really wanted that, I guess. Up until this summer, we had four motels.
Now three are out of business. I don't know . . . even as pretty as
it is, maybe this burg is dying. As far as I can see, we aren't losing
population but . . . dammit, we're losing something." He snatched up
the bar rag again and began to polish the oak.
"Anyway, try Cove Lodge on Cypress Lane. That's the last cross street
on ocean Avenue; it runs along the bluff, so you'll probably have a room
with an ocean view. Clean, quiet place At the end of the downstairs
hall, Chrissie Foster threw open the front door. She raced across the
wide porch and down the steps, stumbled, regained her balance, turned
right, and fled across the yard, past a blue Honda that evidently
belonged to Tucker, heading for the stables. The hard slap of her
tennis shoes seemed to boom like cannon fire through the swiftly fading
twilight. She wished that she could run silently-and faster. Even if
her parents and Tucker didn't reach the front porch until she was
swallowed by shadows, they would still be able to hear where she was
going.
Most of the sky was a burnt-out black, though a deep red glow marked the
western horizon, as if all the light of the October day had been boiled
down to that intense crimson essence, which had settled at the bottom of
the celestial cauldron. Wispy fog crept in from the nearby sea, and
Chrissie hoped it would swiftly thicken, dense as pudding, because she
was going to need more cover.
She reached the first of the two long stables and rolled aside the big
door. The familiar and not unpleasant aroma-straw, hay, feed grain,
horseflesh, liniment, saddle leather, and dry manure-wafted over her.
She snapped the night-light switch, and three low-wattage bulbs winked
on, bright enough to dimly illuminate the building without disturbing
the occupants. Ten generously proportioned stalls flanked each side of
the dirt-floored main aisle, and curious horses peered out at her above
several of the half-size doors. A few belonged to Chrissie's parents,
but most were being boarded for people who lived in and around Moonlight
Cove. The horses snuffled and snorted, and one whinnied softly, as - 23
Chrissie ran past them to the last box on the left, where a dapple-gray
mare named Godiva was in residence.
Access to the stalls also could he had from outside the building,
although in this cool season the exterior Dutch-style doors were kept
bolted both top and bottom to prevent heat escaping from the barn.
Godiva was a gentle mare and particularly amicable with Chrissie, but
she was skittish about being approached in the dark; she might rear or
bolt if surprised by the opening of her exterior stall door at this
hour. Because Chrissie could not afford to lose even a few seconds in
calming her mount, she had to reach the mare from inside the stable.
Godiva was ready for her. The mare shook her head, tossing the thick
and lustrous white mane for which she had been named, and blew air
through her nostrils in greeting.
Glancing back toward the stable entrance, expecting to see Tucker and
her parents storm in at any moment, Chrissie unlatched the half-door.
Godiva came out into the aisle between the rows of stalls.
"Be a lady, Godiva. Oh, please be sweet for me."
She could not take time to saddle the mare or slip a bit between her
teeth. With a hand against Godiva's flank, she guided her mount past
the tack room and feed shed that occupied the last quarter of the barn,
startling a mouse that scurried across her path into a shadowy corner.
She rolled open the door at that end, and cool air swept in.<
br />
Without a stirrup to give her a leg up, Chrissie was too small to mount
Godiva.
A blacksmith's shoeing stool stood in the corner by the tack room.
Keeping a hand against Godiva to gentle her, Chrissie hooked the stool
with one foot and pulled it to the horse's side.
Behind her, from the other end of the barn, Tucker shouted, "Here she
is! The stable!" He ran toward her.
The stool did not give her much height and was no substitute for a
stirrup.
She could hear Tucker's pounding footsteps, close, closer, but she
didn't look at him.
He cried, "I got her!"
Chrissie grabbed Godiva's magnificent white mane, threw herself against
the big horse and up, up, swinging her leg high, scrabbling desperately
against the mare's side, pulling hard on the mane. it must have hurt
Godiva, but the old girl was stoic. She didn't rear or whinny in pain,
as if some equine instinct told her that this little girl's life
depended on equanimity. Then Chrissie was on Godiva's back, tilting
precariously but aboard, holding tight with her knees, one hand full of
mane, and she slapped the horse's side.
"Go!"
Tucker reached her as she shouted that single word, grabbed at her leg,
snared her jeans. His deep-set eyes were wild with anger; his nostrils
flared, and his thin lips pulled back from his teeth. She kicked him
under the chin, and he lost his grip on her.
Dean Koontz - (1989) Page 3