Dean Koontz - (1989)

by Midnight(Lit)

  up the slack when she him, to avoid tripping on it, then paying it out

  again - 397 a couple of feet. Behind her, Tessa was doing the same

  Chrissie felt the subtle tug of the rope on her belt.

  The channel was heading toward a culvert half a block downhill.

  It went underground at Conquistador and stayed submerged not just

  through the intersection but for two entire blocks, appearing again at

  Roshmore way.

  glancing up, past Sam at the mouth of the pipe, she saw. It was round,

  concrete rather than stone.

  It was larger than the rectangular channel, about five feet in diameter

  no doubt so workmen could get into it easily and clean it when it became

  choked with debris. However, neither the length or the size of the

  culvert made her uneasy; it was the blackness of it that prickled the

  nape of her neck, for it was darker even than the essence of night at

  the bottom of the drainage channel itself-absolutely, absolutely black,

  and it seemed as if they were marching into the gaping mouth of some

  historic behemoth.

  A car cruised by slowly on Bergenwood, another on Conr. Their

  headlights were refracted by the incoming bankof the night itself seemed

  to glow, but little of that queer luminousity reached down into the

  watercourse, and none of it gott into the mouth of the tunnel .

  Sam Crossed the threshold of that tunnel and, within disappeared

  entirely from sight, Chrissie followed with hesitation, although not

  without trepidation. They proceded at a slower pace, for the floor of

  the culvert was not steeply sloped but curved, as well, and even more

  treacherous than the stone drainage channel.

  Sam had a flashlight, but Chrissie knew he didn't want to use it so

  close to the end of the tunnel. The backwash of the beam would be

  visible from outside and draw the attention of one of the creatureS.

  liven was as utterly lightless as the inside of a whale's NOt that she

  knew what a whale's belly was like, inside, doubted it was equipped with

  a lamp or even a Donald duck night-light, like the one she'd had when

  she was years r, The whale's belly image seemed fitting because she had

  the creepy feeling that the pipe was really a stomach and the rushing

  water was digestive juice, and that already her tennis shoes and the

  legs of her jeans were dissolving in the corrosive flood.

  Then she fell. Her feet slipped on something, perhaps a fungus that was

  growing on the floor and attached so tightly to the concrete that the

  runoff had not torn it away. She let go of the line and windmilled her

  arms, trying to keep her balance, she went down with a tremendous

  splash, and instantly felt herself borne away by the water.

  She had enough presence of mind not to scream. As it would draw one of

  the search teams-or worse.

  Gasping for breath, spluttering as water slopped into her mouth, she

  collided with Sam's legs, knocking him off balance She felt him falling.

  She wondered how long they'd all lie, dead and decomposing, at the

  bottom of the long vertical drain, at the foot of the bluff, before

  their bloated, purple remains were found.

  In the tomb-perfect darkness, Tessa heard the girl fall, and immediately

  halted, planting her legs as wide and firmly as she could on that sloped

  and curved floor, keeping both hands on the security line. Within a

  second that rope pulled taut as Chrissie was swept away by the water.

  Sam grunted, and Tessa realized that the girl had been catapaulted into

  him. Slack developed on the line for an instant, but went taut again,

  pulling her forward, which she took to mean that Sam was staggering

  ahead, trying to stay on his fee, the girl pressing against his lower

  legs and threatening to push them out from under him. If Sam had been

  brought down, and seized by tumultuous currents, the line would not have

  been merely taut; the drag would have been great enough to pull Tessa

  off her feet.

  - 399 She heard a lot of splashing ahead. A soft curse from Sam.

  The water was creeping higher. At first she thought she was imagining

  it, but then she realized the torrent had risen to above her knees.

  The damned darkness was the worst of it, not being able to see anything,

  virtually blind, unable to be sure what was hapening. suddenly she was

  jerked forward again. TWo, three-oh, a dozen steps.

  it fall!

  stumbling, almost losing her balance, realizing that they were on the

  edge of disaster, Tessa leaned backward on the line, using utness to

  steady herself instead of rushing forward with the hope of developing

  slack again. She hoped to God she didn't t too much and get yanked off

  her feet.

  me swayed. The line pulled hard at her waist. Without slack loop

  through her hands, she was unable to take most of the . with her arms.

  The pressure of water against the back of her legs was growing.

  her feet skidded.

  the videotape fast-forwarded through an editing machine, strange

  thoughts flew through her mind, scores of them in a few seconds, all

  unbidden, and some of them surprised her. She thought about living,

  surviving, about not wanting to die, and that wasn't so surprising, but

  then she thought about Chrissie, not wanting to fail the girl, and in

  her mind she saw a fled image of her and Chrissie together, in a cozy

  house someWhere, living as mother and daughter, and she was surprised at

  how much she wanted that, which seemed wrong because Chrissie's parents

  were not dead, as far as anyone knew, might not even be hopelessly

  changed, because the conversion -whatever it was-just might be

  reversible. Chrissie's family might be put back together again. Tessa

  couldn't see a picture in her mind. It didn't seem as much a

  possibility as she He together. But it might happen. Then she thought

  of ever having a chance to make love to him, and that her, because

  although he was sort of attractive, she truly realized she was drawn to

  him in any romantic way. Of -fis grit in the face of spiritual despair

  was appealing, and strictly serious four-reasons-for-living shtick made

  him an intriguing challenge. Could she give him a fifth? Or supplant

  Goldie Hawn as the fourth? But until she found herself tottering on the

  brink of a watery death, she didn't realize how very much he had

  attracted her in such a short time.

  Her feet skidded again. Beneath the surging water, the no, was much

  more slippery than it had been in the stone channel as if moss grew on

  the concrete. Tessa tried to dig in her heels. Sam cursed under his

  breath. Chrissie made a coughing choking sound.

  The depth of water in the center of the tunnel had risen about eighteen

  or twenty inches.

  A moment later the line jerked hard, then went completely slack.

  The rope had snapped. Sam and Chrissie had been swept down into the

  tunnel.

  The gurgle-slosh-slap of gushing water echoed off the wall and echoes of

  the echoes overlaid previous echoes, and Tessa's heart was pounding so

  loud she could hear it, but still she should have heard their cries,

  too, as they were carried away. Yet for one
awful moment they were

  silent.

  Then Chrissie coughed again. Only a few feet away.

  A flashlight snapped on. Sam was hooding most of the light with his

  hand.

  Chrissie was sideways in the passage, pressed up out of the worst of the

  flow, her back and the palms of both hands braced against the side of

  the tunnel.

  Sam stood with his feet planted wide apart. Water churned and foamed

  around his legs. He had gotten turned around. He was facing uphill

  now.

  The rope hadn't snapped, after all; the tension had been released

  because both Sam and Chrissie had regained their equilibrium.

  "You all right?" Sam whispered to the girl.

  She wrinkled her face in distaste, spat once, twice, and said, "Yuch."

  Looking at Tessa, Sam said, "Okay?"

  She couldn't speak. A rock-hard lump had formed in her throat. She

  swallowed a few times, blinked. A delayed wave of relief passed through

  her, reducing the almost unbearable pressure in her chest, and at last

  she said, "Okay. Yeah. ka believed when they got to the end of the

  culvert without 1. He stood for a moment, just outside the lower mouth

  n, happily looking up at the sky. Because of the thick fog He couldn't

  actually see the sky, but that was a technicality; he felt relieved to

  good to be out in the open air again, if still knee muddy water.

  They were virtually in a river now. Either the rain was falling in the

  hills, at the far east end of town, or some break in the system had

  collapsed. The level had swiftly risen t midthigh on pas Sam and nearly

  to Chrissie's waist, and it tugged and poured from the conduit at their

  back with impressive force. Keeping their footing in those cataracts

  was getting more difficult by the second.

  Sam turned, reached for the girl, drew her close, and said, I'm going to

  hold tight to your arm from here on."

  She nodded.

  The night was grave-deep, and even inches from her face,he could see

  only a shadowy impression of her features. When he looked up at Tessa,

  who stood a few feet behind the girl, she was not more than a black

  shape and might not have been Tessa at all.

  holding 9 fast to the girl, he turned and looked again at the He block

  ahead of them, this new section of stone water tunnel had extended for

  two blocks before pouring the waters forth into another one-block length

  of open drainage channel Just as Harry had remembered from the days when

  he was a kid and, against every admonition of his parents, had played in

  the drainage system. Thank God for disobedient children She nodded,

  still gagging on the dirty water she had swallowed ahead.

  the water course fed into another concrete culvert. That pipe, according

  to Harry, terminated at the mouth of the long vertical at the west end

  of town. Supposedly, in the last ten feet of sloping line, a row of

  sturdy, vertical iron bars was set inches apart and extended floor to

  ceiling, creating a barrier through which only water and smaller objects

  could pass.

  There was virtually no chance of being carried all the way in

  two-hundred-foot drop.

  But Sam didn't want to risk it. There must be no more fan After being

  washed to the end and crashing against the safety barrier, if they were

  not suffering from myriad broken bones, and they were able to get to

  their feet and move, climbing back through that long culvert, on a steep

  slope, against the onrushing flow of the water, was not an ordeal he was

  willing to contemplate let alone endure.

  All of his life he had felt he'd failed people. Though he been only

  seven when his mother had died in the accident, he had always been eaten

  by guilt related to her death, as if he should have been able to save

  her in spite of his tender age and in of having been pinned in the

  wreckage of the car with her. Lab Sam had never been able to please his

  drunken, mean, son-of-a-bitch of a father-and had suffered grievously

  for his failure. Like Harry, he felt that he had failed the people of

  nam, though the decision to abandon them had been made by authorities

  who far outranked him and with whom he could have had no influence.

  Neither of the Bureau agents who had died with him had died because of

  him, yet he felt he had failed them too. He had failed Karen, somehow,

  though people told him he was mad to think that he had any

  responsibility for her cancer it was just that he couldn't help thinking

  that if he'd loved her more, loved her harder, she would have found the

  will to pull through. God knew, he had failed him Chrissie squeezed his

  hand.

  He returned the squeeze.

  She seemed so small.

  Earlier in the day, gathered in Harry's kitchen, they'd had a

  conversation about responsibility. Now, suddenly, him real 4if - 403

  could never be excessive. He had never imagined that the key insights

  of his life would come to him while he was standing nearly waist-deep in

  muddy water in a drainage channel on the run from enemies both human and

  inhuman, but that was where he received it. He realized that his

  problem was the alacrity with which he shouldered responsibility or the

  weight of it that he was willing to carry. No, hell no, the problem was

  that he had allowed his sense of responsibility to affect his ability to

  cope with failure. All men failed from time to time, and often the

  fault lay not in the man himself but the role of fate. When he failed,

  he had to learn not only to go on but to enjoy going on. Failure could

  not be allowed to rob him of the very pleasure of life. Such a turning

  away from life was blasphemous, if you believed in God-and just plain

  stupid if you didn't. It was like saying, "Men fail, but I shouldn't

  because I'm more than just a man, I'm somewhere up there between the

  angels and God." He saw why he had lost Scott too he had lost his own

  love of life, his sense of fun, and he ceased to be able to share

  anything meaningful with the boy-or to halt Scott's own descent into

  nihilism when it had begun.

  Al the moment, if he had tried to count his reasons for living, it would

  have had more than four items. It would have had hundreds. Thousands.

  All of this understanding came to him in an instant, while he was

  holding Chrissie's hand, as if the flow of time had been stretched by

  some quirk of relativity. He realized that if he failed to save the

  girl or Tessa, but got out of this mess himself, he would nevertheless

  have to rejoice at his own salvation and get on with life. Although

  their situation was dark and their hope gone, his spirits soared, and he

  almost laughed aloud. The living nightmare they were enduring in

  Moonlight Cove had profoundly shaken him, revealing important truths to

  him, truths which were simple and should have been easy to see during

  his Years of torment, but which he received gratefully in spite of their

  simplicity and his own previous thickheadedness. Maybe the truth was

  always simple when you found it.

  that his sense of responsibility was so highly developed that-, .. Y"h,

  okay, maybe he could go on now even i
f he failed in bordered on

  obsession, but he still agreed with what Harry was saying"possibilities

  to others, even if he lost Chrissie and Tessa*Oo shit, he wasn't going

  to lose them. Damned if he was.

  said A man's commitment to others, especially to friends 3 Damned if he

  was.

  He held Chrissie's hand and cautiously edged along the stone channel,

  grateful for the comparative unevenness of that pavement and the

  moss-free traction it provided. The water was deep enough to give him a

  slight buoyant feeling, which walking" he dragged his feet along the

  bottom.

  In less than a minute they reached a set of iron rungs mortars into the

  masonry of the channel wall. Tessa moved in, and for a while they all

  just hung there, gripping iron, grateful for the solid feel of it and

  the anchor it provided.

  A couple of minutes later, when the rain abruptly slacked Sam was ready

  to move again. Being careful not to - step on Tessa's and Chrissie's

  hands, he climbed a couple of rungs and looked out at the street.

  Nothing moved but the fog.

  This section of open watercourse flanked Moonlight Co Central School.

  The athletic field was just a few feet from git and, sitting beyond that

  open space, barely visible in the darkness and mist, was the school

  itself, illuminated only by a couple of dim security lamps.

  The property was encircled by a nine-foot-high chain fence. But Sam

  wasn't daunted by that. Fences always had gates. - 405 -room CIO set,

  pull down the trap, open the folding stairs, and c his head up to look