by Dean Koontz
Sitting in the darkness in the back of the taxi, Conrad smiled. He seldom smiled these days. He hadn't laughed in a long, long time. He wasn't amused by those things that amused other people, only death, destruction, cruelty, and damnation—the dark handiwork of the god of evil, whom he worshipped—could bring a smile to his lips. Ever since he was twelve years old, he had been unable to obtain joy or satisfaction from innocent, wholesome pleasures.
Not since that night.
Christmas Eve.
Forty years ago . . .
The Straker family always decorated their house from top to bottom for the Christmas season. They had a tree as tall as the ceiling would allow. Every room was festooned with evergreen wreaths, nut wreaths, candles, Nativity scenes, tinsel, Christmas cards received from friends and relatives, and much more.
The year that Conrad turned twelve, his mother added a new piece to the family's enormous collection of holiday decorations. It was an all-glass oil lantern, the flame was reflected and refracted within the angled walls of the lamp, so that there were a hundred images of fire instead of just one, and the eye was amazed and dazzled.
Young Conrad was fascinated by the lantern but wasn't permitted to touch it because he might burn himself. He knew he could handle the lantern safely, but he couldn't convince his mother of that. So when everyone else was asleep, he crept downstairs, struck a match, lit the lantern—and accidentally knocked it over. Burning oil spilled across the living room floor. At first he was sure he could put the fire out by beating it with a sofa cushion, but just a minute later, when he realized his folly, it was too late.
He was the only one to escape unscathed. His mother died in the blaze. His three sisters died. His two brothers died. Papa didn't die, but he was scarred for life—his chest, his left arm, his neck, the left side of his face.
The loss of his family left Papa with mental and emotional scars every bit as horrendous as his physical injuries. He wasn't able to accept the idea that God, in whom Papa devoutly believed, would let such a tragic accident happen on Christmas Eve, of all nights. He refused to believe it had been accidental. He made up his mind that Conrad was evil and had set the fire on purpose.
From that day until Conrad finally ran away several years later, his life was hell. Papa constantly badgered and accused him. He was not allowed to forget what he had done. Papa reminded him of it a hundred times a day. Conrad breathed guilt and wallowed in self-hatred.
He had never been able to run away from his shame. It came back to him every night, in his dreams, even now that he was fifty-two years old. His nightmares were full of fire and screams and the scarred, twisted face-of his father.
When Ellen became pregnant, Conrad had been certain that, at last, God was giving him a chance to redeem himself. By raising a family, by giving his own children a wonderful life filled with love and happiness, perhaps he would be able to atone for the death of his mother, his sisters, and his brothers. Month by month, as Ellen became heavier with child, Conrad became increasingly sure that the baby was the beginning of his salvation.
Then Victor was born. Initially, for just a few hours, Conrad thought that God was heaping more punishment on him. Rather than give him a chance to atone for his sins, God seemed to be rubbing his face in them, telling him in no uncertain terms that he would never know grace and spiritual comfort.
After the first bitter shock had passed, Conrad began to see his mutant son in a different light. Victor hadn't come from Heaven. He had come from Hell. The baby was not a punishment from God, it was a great blessing from Satan. God had turned His back on Conrad Straker, but Satan had sent him a baby as a gesture of welcome.
That might have seemed like tortuous reasoning to a normal man, but to Conrad, desperate to find release from his guilt and shame, it made perfect sense. If the gates of Heaven were forever closed to him, he might as well face the gates of Hell with eagerness and accept his destiny without remorse. He longed to belong somewhere, anywhere, even in Hell. If the god of light and beauty would not give him absolution, then he would obtain it from the god of darkness and evil.
He read dozens of books about satanic religions, and he quickly discovered that Hell was not the place of brimstone and suffering that Christians said it was. Hell was a place, said the satanists, where sinners were rewarded for their sins, it was, in every respect, the place of their dreams. Best of all, in Hell there was no such thing as guilt. In Hell there was no shame.
As soon as he accepted Satan as his savior, Conrad knew that he had made the right decision. The nightly dreams of fire and pain did not stop, however, he found a greater measure of peace and more contentment in his daily life than he had known since before that fateful Christmas Eve, and for the first time in memory, his life had meaning. He was on earth to do the devil's work, and if the devil could offer him self-respect, he was prepared to labor long and hard for the cause of the Antichrist.
When Ellen killed Victor, Conrad knew she was doing God's work, and he was furious. He almost killed her. But he realized that he might be imprisoned or executed for murdering her, and that would keep him from fulfilling the role that Satan had written for him. It occurred to him that if he got married again, Satan might send him another sign, another demonic child who would grow up to be the scourge of the earth.
Conrad married Zena, and in time Zena bore him Gunther. She was the devil's Mary, but she didn't realize it. Conrad never told her the truth. Conrad saw himself as Joseph to the Antichrist, father and protector. Zena thought the child was just a freak, and although she didn't feel comfortable with it, she accepted it with the equanimity with which carnies always accepted freaks.
But Gunther wasn't merely a freak.
He was more than that. Much more.
He was holy.
He was the coming. The dark coming.
As the taxicab sped toward the fairgrounds, Conrad looked out at the quiet, suburban houses and wondered if even one person out there realized they were living in the last days of God's world. He wondered if even one of them sensed that Satan's child was on earth and had recently reached his brutal maturity.
Gunther was just beginning his reign of terror. A thousand years of darkness would descend.
Oh, yes, Gunther was much more than just a freak.
If he were merely a freak, that would mean that Conrad was wrong in everything that he had done during the past twenty-five years. It would mean more than that, it would mean that Conrad was not just wrong but stark, raving mad.
So Gunther was more than a freak. Gunther was that legendary dark beast slouching toward Bethlehem.
Gunther was the destruction of the world.
Gunther was the herald of a new Dark Age.
Gunther was the Antichrist.
He had to be. For Conrad's sake, he had to be.
11
FOR JOEY, the week prior to the county fair crept by like a snail. He was eager to become a carny and leave Royal City behind forever, but it seemed to him that the time for his escape would come only after his mother had murdered him in his bed.
There wasn't anyone around to help make the time pass more quickly. He avoided Mama, of course. Daddy was, as always, preoccupied with his law practice and his railroad models. Tommy Culp, Joey's best friend from school, was away on vacation with his family.
Even Amy was hardly ever around these days. She worked at The Dive every day but Sunday. And during the past week she had been out every night, dating some guy named Buzz. Joey didn't know what Buzz's last name was. Maybe it was Saw.
Joey hadn't intended to go to the fairgrounds until Saturday, the last day, so that no one would figure out where he had gone until the carnival was far, far away in another state. But by the time Monday, June 30, rolled around, he was so keyed up that he couldn't keep his resolve. He told his mother he was going to the library, but he got on his bicycle and pedaled two miles to the county fairgrounds. He still wasn't going to run away from home until Saturday. But Monday was the
day that the carnival set up, and he figured he ought to learn how that was done if he was ever going to be a carny himself.
For two hours he wandered around the midway, keeping out from underfoot but getting a good look at everything, fascinated by the speed with which the Ferris wheel and the other rides took shape. A couple of carnies, big men with lots of muscles and lots of funny tattoos, kidded him, and he joked right back at them, and everyone he met seemed to be just swell.
By the time he reached the site on which the funhouse was being erected, they were hoisting a giant clown's face to the top of the structure. One of the workers was a man in a Frankenstein mask, and that made Joey giggle. One of the others was an albino, he glanced at Joey, pinning him with colorless, rainwater eyes as cold as winter windows.
Those eyes were the first things in the carnival that Joey didn't like. They seemed to look straight through him, and he half-remembered an old story about a woman whose eyes turned men to stone.
He shivered, turned away from the albino, and walked toward a place in the middle of the midway, where they were putting up the Octopus, one of his favorite rides. He had taken only a few steps when someone called to him.
“Hey, there!”
He kept walking, even though he knew it was himself the man was calling to.
“Hey, son! Wait a minute.”
Sighing, expecting to be thrown off the midway, Joey looked back and saw a man jumping down from the front platform of the funhouse. The stranger was tall and lean, maybe ten years older than Joey's father. He had coal-black hair, except at the temples, where it was pure white. His eyes were so blue that they reminded Joey of the gas flames on the kitchen stove at home.
As the man approached he said, “You aren't with the carnival, are you, son?”
“No,” Joey admitted glumly. “But I'm not getting in anyone's way. I'm really not. Someday . . . maybe . . . I'd like to work in the carnival. I just want to see how things are done. If you'll let me stay and watch for a while—”
“Whoa, whoa,” the stranger said. He stopped in front of the boy and stooped down. “You think I'm going to throw you out?”
“Aren't you?”
“My heavens, no!”
“Oh,” Joey said.
“I could tell you weren't just a gawker,” the man said. “I could see you were a young man with a genuine interest in the carnival way of life.”
“You could?”
“Oh, yes. It just shines through,” the stranger said.
“Do you think I could be . . . a carny someday?” Joey asked.
You? Oh, sure. You've got the stuff,” the stranger said. “You could be a carny or just about anything you wanted. That's why I called out to you. I could see the right stuff shining in you. I sure could. Even from up there on the platform.”
Well . . . gee,” Joey said, embarrassed.
“Here,” the stranger said. “Let me give you these.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew two rectangles of thin, pink cardboard.
“What are those?” Joey asked.
“Two free passes to the fairgrounds.”
“You're kidding.”
“Do I look like I'm kidding?”
“Why give them to me?”
“I told you,” the stranger said. “You have the right stuff. As the carnies say, you're with it and for it. Whenever I see someone who's with it and for it, someone who's a carny at heart, I always give them a couple of free passes. Come any night and bring a friend. Or maybe your brother. Do you have a brother?”
“No,” Joey said.
“A sister?”
“Yeah.”
“What's her name?”
“Amy.”
“What's your name?”
“Joey.”
“Joey what?”
“Joey Alan Harper.”
“My name's Conrad. I'll have to sign the back of the passes.” He produced a ballpoint pen from another pocket and signed his two names with a flourish that Joey admired. Then he handed over the free passes.
“Thanks a lot,” Joey said, beaming. “This is terrific!”
“Enjoy yourself,” the stranger said, grinning. He had very white teeth. “Maybe someday you will be a carny, and you'll hand out free passes to people who are obviously with it and for it.”
“Uh . . . how old do you have to be?” Joey asked.
“To be a carny?”
“Yeah.”
“Any age, just about.”
“Could a kid join up if he was just ten?”
“He could easy enough, if he was an orphan,” Conrad said. “Or if his parents just didn't care about him at all. But if he had a family who gave a hoot, they'd come looking for him, and they'd take him home.”
“Wouldn't you . . . you carnival people . . . wouldn't you hide the kid?” Joey asked. “If the worst thing in the world for him was to be taken home, wouldn't you hide him when his folks came looking?”
“Oh, couldn't do that,” the man said. “Against the law. But if nobody cared about him, if nobody wanted him, the carnival would take him in. It always has, and it always will. What about you? I'll bet your folks care about you a lot.”
“Not a lot,” Joey said.
“Sure. I'll bet they care a whole bunch. What about your mother?”
“No,” Joey said.
“Oh, I'll bet she cares a lot. I'll bet she's really proud of a handsome, intelligent boy like you.”
Joey blushed.
“Do you get your good looks from your mother?” Conrad asked.
“Well . . . yeah . . . I look more like her than like my dad.”
“Those dark eyes, that dark hair?”
“Yeah,” Joey said. “Like Mama's.”
“You know,” Conrad said, “I knew someone once who looked quite a bit like you.”
“Who?” Joey asked.
“A very nice lady.”
“I don't look like a lady!” Joey said.
“No, no,” Conrad said quickly. “Of course you don't. But you have her dark eyes and hair. And there's something in the lines of your face . . . You know, it's just possible she could have a boy your age now. Yes. Yes, it's quite possible. Wouldn't that be something—if you were the son of my long-lost friend?” He leaned closer to Joey. The whites of his eyes were yellowish. There was dandruff on his shoulders. A single breadcrumb was stuck in his mustache. His voice became even heartier than before when he said, “What is your mother's name?”
Suddenly Joey saw something in the stranger's eyes that he liked even less than what he had seen in the albino's eyes. He stared into those two crystalline blue dots, and it seemed to him that the man's friendliness was an act. Like on that TV show, “The Rockford Files,” the way Jim Rockford, the private detective, could be so charming and so friendly, but he was just putting it on in order to get some vital information out of a stranger without the stranger knowing that he was being pumped. All of a sudden Joey felt that this guy was putting on the charm just like Jim Rockford did. Joey felt as if he were being pumped for information. Except that under his phony friendliness, Jim Rockford really was a nice guy. But underneath Conrad's smile, there wasn't a nice guy at all. Deep down in his blue eyes there wasn't anything warm or friendly, there was just. . . darkness.
“Joey?”
“Huh?”
“I asked you what your mother's name is.”
“Leona",” Joey lied, without really understanding why he must not tell the truth. He sensed that telling the truth right now would be the worst thing he could ever do in his whole life. Leon” was Tommy Culp's mother.
Conrad stared hard at him.
Joey wanted to look away but couldn't.
“Leona"?” Conrad asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well . . . maybe my friend changed her name. She never did like the one she was born with. Your mother might still be her. About how old would you say your mother is?”
Twenty-nine,” Joey said quickly, remembering that Tommy Culp's
mother had recently had a twenty-ninth birthday party at which, according to Tommy, all the guests had gotten pissed.
“Twenty-nine?” Conrad asked. “You're sure?”
“I know exactly,” Joey said, “because Mama's birthday is one day before my sister's, so we always get two parties close together every year. This last time my sister was eight, and my mother was twenty-nine.” He was surprised that he could lie so easily and smoothly. Usually he was a lousy liar, he couldn't fool anyone. But now he was different. Now it was almost as if someone older and wiser were speaking through him.
He didn't know why he was so positive that he had to lie to this man. Mama couldn't be the woman that Conrad was looking for. Mama wouldn't ever have been friends with a carny, she thought they were all dirty and crooked. Yet Joey lied to Conrad, and he had the feeling that someone else was guiding his tongue, someone who was looking out for him, someone like . . . God. Of course that was a dumb thought. To please God, you always had to tell the truth. Why would God take control of you just to make you lie?
The carny's blue eyes softened, and the tension went out of his voice when Joey said his mother was twenty-nine. “Well,” the carny said, “I guess your mother couldn't be my old friend. The woman I'm thinking of would have to be around forty-five.”
They looked at each other for a moment, the boy just standing there and the man stooping down, and finally Joey said, “Well . . . thanks a lot for the free passes.”
“Sure, sure,” the man said, standing up, obviously no longer the least bit interested in the boy. “Enjoy them, son.” He turned and walked back to the funhouse.
Joey went across the midway to watch the workers erect the Octopus.
Later, the encounter with the blue-eyed carny seemed almost like a dream. The two pink passes—with the name Conrad Straker neatly written on the backs of them, below the printed words, “this pass authorized by"—were the only things that kept the incident real and solid in Joey's memory. He remembered being afraid of the stranger and lying to him, but he couldn't recapture the gut feeling that had made him so certain that lies were necessary, and he felt somewhat ashamed of himself for not telling the truth.