by Dean Koontz
After all, there were those theologians who argued that the devil, being a fallen angel and therefore inherently good, was not evil in any degree but merely different from God.
He suddenly remembered something that he had read in college, a line from Samuel Butler, a favorite of his: An apology for the devil—it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case. God has written all the books.
The night smelled of damp earth.
The moon watched.
At last he pried the lid off the small casket.
Inside was a zippered sack. Hesitantly, he stretched out on the ground beside the grave, reached down into it, and put his hands on the bag. He played a macabre game of blindman’s buff, exploring the contours of the thing within, and gradually convinced himself that it was the corpse of a dog about the size of a full-grown golden retriever.
All right. This was enough. Here was the proof he had needed. God knows why he had thought he needed it, but here it was. He had felt that he was being . . . commanded to discover the truth; he had not been driven only by curiosity, but by an obsessive compulsion that seemed to come from outside of him, a motivating urge that some might have said was the hand of God pushing him along, but which he preferred not to analyze or define. The past few weeks had been shaped by that urge, by an inner voice compelling him to make a journey to the pet cemetery. At last he had succumbed, had committed himself to this silly scheme, and what he had found was not proof of a hellborn plot but, instead, merely evidence of his own foolishness. Although there was no one in the pet cemetery to see him, he flushed with embarrassment. Brandy had not come back from the grave. Chewbacca was an altogether different dog. It had been stupid to suspect otherwise. This was sufficient evidence of Joey’s innocence; there was no point in opening the bag and forcing himself to confront the disgusting remains.
He wondered what he would have done if the grave had been empty. Would he then have had to kill the boy, destroy the Antichrist, save the world from Armageddon? What utter balderdash. He could not have done any such thing, not even if God had appeared to him in flowing white robes, with a beard of fire, and with the death order written on tablets of stone. His own parents had been child beaters, child abusers, and he the victim. That was the one crime that most outraged him—a crime against a child. Even if the grave had been empty, even if that emptiness had convinced him that Spivey was right about Joey, Charlie could not have gone after the boy. He could not outdo his own sick parents by killing a child. For a while, maybe, he would be able to live with the deed because he would feel sure that Joey was more than just a little boy, was in fact an evil being. But as time went on, doubts would arise. He would begin to think that he had imagined the inexplicable behavior of the bats, and the empty grave would have less significance, and all the other signs and portents would seem to have been self-delusion. He would begin to tell himself that Joey wasn’t demonic, only gifted, not possessed of supernatural powers but merely psychic abilities. He would inevitably determine that he had killed nothing evil, that he had destroyed a special but altogether innocent child. And then, at least for him, Hell on earth would be reality, anyway.
He lay facedown on the cool, damp ground.
He stared into the dog’s grave.
The canvas-wrapped lump was framed by the pale pine boards. It was a perfectly black bundle that might have contained anything, but which his hands told him contained a dog, so there was no need to open it, no need whatsoever.
The tab of the bag’s zipper was caught in a moonbeam. Its silvery glint was like a single, cold, staring eye.
Even if he opened the bag and found only rocks, or even if he found something worse, something unimaginably horrible that was proof positive of Joey’s sulphurous origins, he could not act as God’s avenger. What allegiance did he owe to a god who allowed so much suffering in the world to begin with? What of his own suffering as a child, the terrible loneliness and the beatings and the constant fear he had endured? Where had God been then? Could life be all that much worse just because there had been a change in the divine monarchy?
He remembered Denton Boothe’s mechanical coin bank: There is No Justice in a Jackass Universe.
Maybe a change would bring justice.
But, of course, he did not believe the world was ruled by either God or the devil, anyway. He did not believe in divine monarchies.
Which made his presence here even more ridiculous.
The zipper tab glinted.
He rolled onto his back so he’d be unable to see the zipper shine.
He got to his feet, picked up the coffin lid. He would put it in place and fill in the grave and go home and be sensible about this situation.
He hesitated.
Damn.
Cursing his own compulsion, he put the lid down. He reached into the grave, instead, and heaved out the bag. He ran the zipper the length of the sack, and it made an insectlike sound.
He was shaking.
He peeled back the burial cloth.
He switched on his flashlight, gasped.
What the hell—?
With a trembling hand, he directed the flashlight beam at the small headstone and, in the quaverous light, read the inscription again, then threw the light on the contents of the bag once more. For a moment he did not know what to make of his discovery, but gradually the mists of confusion cleared, and he turned away from the grave, away from the decomposing corpse that produced a vile stench, and he stifled the urge to be thoroughly sick.
When the nausea subsided, he began to shake, but with laughter rather than fear. He stood there in the still of the night, on a knoll in a pet cemetery, a grown man who had been in the fanciful grip of a childish superstition, feeling like the butt of a cosmic joke, a good joke, one that tickled the hell out of him even though it made him feel like a prime jackass. The dog in Brandy’s grave was an Irish setter, not a golden retriever, not Brandy at all, which meant the people in charge of this place had screwed up royally, had buried Brandy in the wrong grave and had unknowingly planted the setter in this hole. One canvas-wrapped dog is like another, and the undertaker’s mix-up seemed not only understandable but inevitable. If the mortician was careless or if, more likely, he nipped at the bottle now and then, the odds were high that a lot of dogs in the graveyard were buried under the wrong markers. After all, burying the family dog was not exactly as serious a matter as burying Grandma or Aunt Emma; the precautions were not quite as meticulous. Not quite! To locate Brandy’s true resting place, he would have to track down the identity of the setter and rob a second grave, and as he looked out at the hundreds upon hundreds of low markers, he knew it was an impossible task. Besides, it did not matter. The pet mortician’s screwup was like a dash of cold water in the face; it brought Charlie to his senses. He suddenly saw himself as a parody of the hero in one of those old E.C. Horror Comics, haunting a cemetery in pursuit of . . . Of what? Dracula Dog? He laughed so hard that he had to sit down before he fell down.
They said the Lord worked in mysterious ways, so maybe the devil worked in mysterious ways, too, but Charlie simply could not believe that the devil was so mysterious, so subtle, so elaborately devious, so downright silly as to muddy the trail to Brandy’s grave by causing a mix-up in a pet cemetery’s mortuary. A devil like that might try to buy a man’s soul by offering him a fortune in baseball trading cards, and such a demon was not to be taken seriously.
How and why had he taken this so seriously? Had Grace Spivey’s religious mania been like a contagion? Had he picked up a mild case of end-of-the-world fever?
His laughter had a purging effect, and by the time it had run its course, he felt better than he had in weeks.
He used the blade of the shovel to push the dead dog and the canvas bag back into the grave. He threw the lid of the coffin on top of it, shoveled the hole full of dirt, tamped it down, wiped the shovel blade clean in the grass, and returned to his car.
He had not found what he expected, and pe
rhaps he had not even found the truth, but he had more or less found what he had hoped to find—a way out, an acceptable answer, something he could live with, absolution.
Early May in Las Vegas was a pleasant time, with the fierce heat of summer still to come, but with the chill winter nights gone for another year. The warm dry air blew away whatever memories still lingered of the nightmare chase in the High Sierras.
On the first Wednesday morning of the month, Charlie and Christine were to be married in a gloriously gaudy, hilariously tasteless nonsectarian wedding chapel next door to a casino, which vastly amused both of them. They did not see their wedding as a solemn occasion, but as the beginning of a joyous adventure that was best begun with laughter, rather than with pomp and circumstance. Besides, once they made up their minds to marry, they were suddenly in a frenzy to get it done, and no place but Vegas, with its liberal marriage laws, could meet their timetable.
They came into Vegas the night before and took a small suite at Bally’s Grand, and within a few hours the city seemed to be sending them omens that indicated a happy future together. On their way to dinner, Christine put four quarters into a slot machine, and although it was the first time she had ever played one, she pulled off a thousand-dollar jackpot. Later, they played a little blackjack, and they won nearly another thousand apiece. In the morning, exiting the coffee shop after a superb breakfast, Joey found a silver dollar that someone had dropped, and as far as he was concerned his good fortune far exceeded that of his mother and Charlie: “A whole dollar!”
They had brought Joey with them because Christine could not bear to leave him. Their recent ordeal, the near loss of the boy, still weighed heavily on her, and when he was out of her sight for more than a couple of hours, she grew nervous. “In time,” she told Charlie, “I’ll be able to relax a bit more. But not yet. In time, we’ll be able to go away together by ourselves, just the two of us, and leave Joey with Val. I promise. But not yet. Not quite yet. So if you want to marry me, you’re going to have to take my son along on the honeymoon. How’s that for romance?”
Charlie didn’t mind. He liked the boy. Joey was a good companion, well-behaved, inquisitive, bright, and affectionate.
Joey served as best man at the ceremony and was delighted with his role. He guarded the ring with stern-faced solemnity and, at the proper moment, gave it to Charlie with a grin so wide and warm it threatened to melt the gold in which the diamond was set.
When it was official, when they had left the chapel to the recorded strains of Wayne Newton singing “Joy to the World,” they decided to forgo the complimentary limousine and walk back to the hotel. The day was warm, blue, clear (but for a few scattered white clouds), and beautiful, even with the honky-tonk of Las Vegas Boulevard crowding close on both sides.
“What about the wedding lunch?” Joey demanded as they walked.
“You just had breakfast two hours ago,” Charlie said.
“I’m a growin’ boy.”
“True.”
“What sounds like a good wedding lunch to you?” Christine asked.
Joey thought about that for a few steps, then said, “Big Macs and Baskin-Robbins!”
“You know what happens to you when you eat too many Big Macs?” Christine said.
“What?” the boy asked.
“You grow up to look like Ronald McDonald.”
“That’s right,” Charlie said. “Big red nose, funny orange hair, and big red lips.”
Joey giggled. “Gee, I wish Chewbacca was here.”
“I’m sure Val’s taking good care of him, honey.”
“Yeah, but he’s missing all the jokes.”
They strolled along the sidewalk, Joey between them, and even at this hour a few of the big signs and marquees were flashing.
“Will I grow up with big funny clown’s feet, too?” Joey asked.
“Absolutely,” Charlie said. “Size twenty-eight.”
“Which will make it impossible to drive a car,” Christine said.
“Or dance,” Charlie said.
“I don’t want to dance,” Joey said. “I don’t like girls.”
“Oh, in a few years, you’ll like them,” Christine said.
Joey frowned. “That’s what Chewbacca says, but I just don’t believe it.”
“Oh, so Chewbacca talks, does he?” Christine teased.
“Well . . .”
“And he’s an authority on girls, yet!”
“Well, okay, if you want to make a big deal of it,” Joey said, “I gotta admit I just pretend he talks.”
Charlie laughed and winked at his new wife over their son’s head.
Joey said, “Hey, if I eat too many Big Macs, will I grow up with big funny clown hands, too?”
“Yep,” Charlie said. “So you won’t be able to tie your own shoes.”
“Or pick your nose,” Christine said.
“I don’t pick my nose anyway,” the boy said indignantly. “You know what Val told me about picking my nose?”
“No. What did Val tell you?” Christine asked, and Charlie could see she was a little afraid of the answer because the boy was always learning the wrong kind of language from Val.
Joey squinted in the desert sun, as if struggling to remember exactly what Val had said. Then: “She told me the only people who pick their noses are bums, Looney Tunes, IRS agents, and her ex-husband.”
Charlie and Christine glanced at each other and laughed. It was so good to laugh.
Joey said, “Hey, if you guys wanta be, you know . . . ummm . . . alone . . . then you can leave me in the hotel playroom. I don’t mind. It looks great in there. They got all kinds of neat games and stuff. Hey, maybe you guys want to play some more cards or them slot machines where Mom made money last night.”
“I think we’ll probably quit gambling while we’re ahead, honey.”
“Oh,” the boy said, “I think you should play, Mom! You’ll win, I bet. You’ll win a lot more. Really. I know you will. I just know you will.”
The sun came out from behind one of the scattered white clouds, and its light fell full-strength across the pavement, sparkled on the chrome and glass of the passing cars, made the plush hotels and casinos look brighter and cleaner than they really were, and made the air itself shimmer fantastically.
It ended in sunshine, not on a dark and stormy night.
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NEW AFTERWORD
by DEAN KOONTZ
This book was the fourth of five novels that I wrote under the pen name Leigh Nichols. Adopting a pseudonym is not as much fun as being Superman and fooling the world with your patently transparent Clark Kent persona. It’s not as much fun as being the Great Imposter, Ferdinand Demara (played by Tony Curtis in the movie), and performing a successful surgery without any medical knowledge. It’s not even as much fun as pretending to be a prostitute in order to dupe employees of ACORN into facilitating felonies on camera; though, being a master of disguise (which you probably didn’t know about me), I’m sure I could pass for an alluring young woman of the night if I really put my mind to it—and if the night was dark enough.
The truth is that writing under a pen name is no fun at all, and I am reminded of that admonition “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.” This old saying, which is derived from Matthew 5:15–16 (New Revised Standard Version), makes perfect sense in its original version, as spoken by Christ to His disciples: “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works. . . .” As often happens when someone picks up a red pencil to abridge Aristotle or Christ or any enlightened source, the meaning is obscured. (The descendants of those long-ago red-pencilers no doubt work now as abridgers of novels for audiobooks.) Back when I was young and dumber and writing under pen names, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel” made no sense to me. A bushel of what? Shucked corn? Wheat? Chaf
f? Was it all right to hide your light under one but not the other, or was hiding your light under a bushel of anything the wrong way to go? A bushel is a bit more than thirty-five liters by volume. Although I have always been reasonably trim, there is no way even back then that I could conceal myself beneath a bushel of anything. I would require five or six—maybe seven—bushels under which to secret my 155 pounds. And what of someone as large as the late film director Orson Welles? He would have needed at least four score and seven bushels in which to conceal himself, though perhaps he is an inappropriate example, considering that he never showed an inclination to hide his light.
And back then, as I toiled under pen names and pondered that confusing folksy version of Matthew 5:15, I wondered: Once you have concealed yourself under a great mound of one grain or another, then what? You know if there’s a horse or cow or a huge waddling hog in the area, it’s going to come directly to your concealing mound and stick in its dripping snout, whereupon there is a risk that you will feel the famished beast unintentionally munching not on the grain but instead on certain delicate and private parts of your anatomy. And what about rats? Even if you wanted to hide your light and possessed a thousand bushels, your corny cloister is soon going to be crawling with rats that are probably infested with plague-bearing fleas.
Not remembering the source of the abridged folk saying, I nevertheless figured out that it might be admonishing me not to hide my light under a bushel basket, an empty basket, which eliminated the grain and, with it, the swine and vermin that would quickly turn such a hiding place into a kind of hell. But, as in so many human affairs, there was still the problem of volume. Anyone but the smallest child would find it quite impossible to conceal himself under such a small basket. I further supposed that the word “bushel” might not be meant to be taken literally, that the warning was against hiding under any basket. I could understand that part. If you crafted a giant basket under which to hide yourself, you would only call attention to yourself if you were balancing a huge hog on your head while twirling a pair of flaming batons. Everyone, not just the naturally curious but also the least inquisitive of dolts among us, would cry out, “Look at the humongous basket turned upside down! Let’s see what’s under it!”