by Dean Koontz
Patch chopped at the jack-in-the-box’s arms with the rubber sword but to no avail.
“Going to pull you down into my box and close the lid, doggy,” said Jack Weasel to Butterscotch. “Going to pull you inside here with me, doggy, in here where it’s ever so dark and deep, deeper than you’d think, and I’m going to crunch you up with these big wooden teeth of mine.”
Amos was just about to jump down to the floor and rush Weasel, try to tilt him over, off his wheels. But then he heard a small, cruel voice from the front of the garage:
“Get them. Destroy them.”
Looking toward the voice, Amos saw the male marionette standing with his female companion and the robot just inside the open garage door. The bee was nowhere in sight.
Letting go of Butterscotch, Jack Weasel turned toward the tuxedo-clad marionette. In an eerie, worshipful tone, he said, “I found them, Rex. See? See? I found them for you. Isn’t that good, Rex? Didn’t I do good?”
Rex and his hideous companions were prepared for battle. The robot’s yellow eyes blazed brighter; it flexed its dangerous-looking metal hands. The female marionette raised a cigarette, the tip of which instantly changed from black to red-hot. Rex raised his fancy cane, and a sharp blade popped from the end of it. The terrible trio moved farther into the firehouse.
Rex looked directly at Amos and said, “You’re finished. Our time has come.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Amos said bravely.
But he thought: We’re doomed. We can’t chase these guys off as easily as we did the alley cats.
Barking erupted behind him.
For a moment Amos wondered how Butterscotch had acquired this new, louder, meaner voice. But when he turned, he saw that a real dog had come into the garage from the back room where, out of sight, the firemen were no doubt still playing cards.
The dog, a Dalmatian, seemed confused. It looked at the Oddkins where they perched on the fire truck, and it almost smiled, sensing that they were friendly types. But when it looked at Jack Weasel and at the other toys near the open garage door, it clearly sensed that they were no more friendly than a nest of rattlesnakes.
“Be a good dog,” Butterscotch said, “and make your mother proud of her pup. Chase off these nasty toys.”
Jack Weasel giggled and rolled toward the dog. “Back off, you stupid cur. We’ve already dealt with one of your kind tonight. Get in our way, and we’ll make sausages of you.”
Challenged, the black-spotted Dalmatian did not retreat but leaped straight at the jack-in-the-box.
Weasel was surprised, as if he expected creatures of good heart always to shiver and flee at the sight of his evil leer. With a thin squeal of fear, he spun away from the dog and raced for the open door.
There’s a lesson here, Amos thought as he watched the drama below him. Maybe bad toys become more dangerous when you run away from them than they are when you stand up to them. Hmmmmm.
As the angry dog pursued Weasel, Rex stepped forward, raising his stiletto-tipped cane.
The robot clanked a couple of steps forward, too, working its jagged mouth.
“Ashes?” one of the firemen called from the back room. “What are you barking at, Ashes?”
Ashes the Dalmatian skidded to a stop on the concrete floor. He hesitated, glanced at the door of the card room, then leaped at Weasel again, snarling and barking.
“Ashes!” the fireman called, and his voice was closer than before. He was coming out to the garage to see what had so excited the dog.
The two marionettes and the robot seemed to be having second thoughts about confronting the Dalmatian, and the approach of the fireman convinced them to retreat. The bad toys turned and vanished into the sleety night, with Jack Weasel and the firehouse dog close behind.
A tall, dark-haired fireman with a mustache entered the garage from the card room.
Amos at once pretended to be an ordinary stuffed animal, as lifeless as a cooked turnip. He hoped the other Oddkins would be wise enough to do the same.
The fireman hurried past them, taking no notice whatsoever that a collection of stuffed animals was perched on the fire truck. He also disappeared into the night, calling the Dalmatian’s name.
“Quickly!” Amos said. “Under the truck. Hide!”
The Oddkins jumped, climbed, and tumbled down. They scurried into the shadows beneath the big vehicle, where they gathered in a close circle in hopes of taking courage from one another.
“Those other toys,” Burl whispered. “You think they’re from the subcellar, like you were telling us, Gibbons?”
“Well,” Skippy said, “they sure weren’t the kind Santa Claus would put under a tree!”
“Definitely from the subcellar,” Gibbons said. “Products of the previous owner, the one before Uncle Isaac. Charon toys.”
“With them after us,” Patch said, “getting to Mrs. Shannon’s toy shop is really going to be an adventure.”
“Don’t sound so pleased,” Skippy said, frowning. “You may be a swashbuckler, but I’m not. I’m just a Funny Bunny, and I’m never going to get my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame if those characters get their hands on me. Why, they look more dangerous than a pack of movie-studio accountants.”
“What’s that mean?” Butterscotch asked.
Skippy shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard someone say that on TV, and it got a laugh.”
“Sssshhh,” Amos warned. “Someone’s coming.”
The mustachioed fireman returned with the Dalmatian. Melting sleet dripped off both of them. The man pushed a button to roll down the garage door.
Oh, no, thought Amos. How do we get out of here now?
“Whatever got you so excited, Ashes?” The fireman stooped to stroke and pat the dog. “Never heard you bark so mean before. You going to behave yourself?”
The Dalmatian curled up on the floor, put its head on its paws, and whined softly, as if in apology.
When the fireman returned to his card game, Ashes rose, padded to the fire engine, and peered at where the Oddkins had gathered in the gloom. He chuffed in a friendly fashion and smiled at them. “Good dog,” Butterscotch said. “A credit to your litter and to your mother’s name.” The Dalmatian seemed to understand her. He got on his belly, wriggled beneath the truck, and poked his nose at each of the six Oddkins, sniffing them in turn.
“What if he decides we’re good to eat?” Skippy asked.
“Ashes is a nice dog,” Butterscotch said impatiently.
“He won’t eat me,” Burl said confidently as he endured the dog’s snuffling inspection. “Dogs don’t eat elephants … at least not very often … I think.”
“But real dogs eat rabbits,” Skippy said.
“They also like a taste of cat now and then,” Patch said as the Dalmatian’s attention turned to him.
“This is foolish talk,” Amos said.
“Easy for you to keep cool,” Skippy said. “Dogs don’t eat bears, any more than they eat elephants.”
“It would be stupid for a dog to eat an elephant,” Burl said uneasily. “It would surely get indigestion from the tusks.”
“I’m certain Ashes is a vegetarian,” Amos said, trying to allay his friends’ fear.
“Besides,” Gibbons said, “no dog I ever heard of would eat an animal made out of cloth, bits of leather, and cotton stuffing.”
“He’s a nice dog,” Butterscotch repeated, and she put one paw on the Dalmatian’s much larger paw as he sniffed at her.
Amos was the last to receive the dog’s inspection. As he was being sniffed at, he said, “Listen, pooch, we must get out of here and be on our way. There’s very important business we’ve got to attend to before dawn. Can you show us a way out? Hmmmm? Do you know a way out of here now that the big door’s been closed?”
Skippy said, “There’s something you need to know, Amos.”
“What?”
“Real dogs can’t talk.”
“I already know that,” Amos said. “But maybe he can und
erstand. He seems to understand the fireman, so maybe he’ll understand me. Can you show us a way out, fella? Hmmmm? Can you help us get out of here and on our way?”
Ashes stared into Amos’s eyes for a long moment, then wriggled from beneath the fire truck and padded across the garage. He stopped and looked back at them as if to ask why they were not following him.
“Come on,” Amos said. “Let’s see where he’s going.”
Ashes led them out of the garage, along a hallway, to the firehouse’s rear door. The bottom half of the door was fitted with a hinged panel big enough to allow the dog passage. The Dalmatian squeezed through, and the Oddkins followed him into a fenced yard behind the firehouse.
The dead winter grass glistened with a thin coat of ice from the storm. Sleet ticked off every surface and was slowly but surely draping a cold, transparent curtain over the chain link fence that enclosed the property.
Ashes led them to a dark, back corner of the lot, under a leafless oak. There, he set to digging industriously at the half-frozen earth, tearing up clumps of dirt until he had excavated a passageway under the fence.
“I told you he was a nice dog,” Butterscotch said. “And smart too. Very smart.”
Ashes panted happily.
Frowning at the Dalmatian, Amos said, “Funny … but I have the oddest feeling that Uncle Isaac is close right now. Very close indeed.”
The Dalmatian blinked at him and smiled even more broadly.
“Let’s go,” Skippy said, “before those nasty toys find us.”
The rabbit slipped under the fence, followed by Butterscotch, Gibbons, Patch, and Burl. Beyond was an icy alleyway.
Amos went last of all. Then he paused to look back into the Dalmatian’s eyes one last time. He was searching for some indication that Isaac Bodkins’s spirit had temporarily settled in this firehouse mascot.
Peering back through the fence at the Dalmatian, who chose not to follow them, Burl said, “Ummm … listen, I’m sorry for thinking you might want to munch on us.”
“Me too,” said Skippy, appearing at Burl’s side. “Someday, when I’m a famous Funny Bunny, if you can work up a trick or two, I’ll be glad to give you a job on my TV show.”
“Come on,” Amos said. “I get the feeling that those bad toys are close by and closing in.”
The Oddkins hurried together along the dark alleyway. Every time that Amos looked back, the Dalmatian was still at the fence, watching after them.
4
TOO MUCH ADVENTURE
1.
A PARK FULL OF many trees and grassy lawns lay at the center of the city. Amos was drawn to that quiet place, and somehow he knew that he must lead the Oddkins through that open land in order to get to Mrs. Shannon’s toy shop.
“Not as nice as the veldt,” Burl said, looking around at the park as they passed through it, “but nice enough.”
Sleet was still falling. Ice encased the bare black branches of the trees. Each blade of winter-brown grass was frozen stiff. The walkways were slippery in places, and the black iron lampposts were beginning to grow transparent beards of ice.
After repeatedly falling down and after struggling against the forceful wind, the Oddkins paused to rest under a long, narrow, roofed pavilion that sheltered a section of the walkway. There, the sleet could not reach them, though the wind still puffed through the open walls.
Behind the pavilion was a very high fence of sturdy iron bars. Beyond the fence, in the shadows, was a large barnlike structure, almost hidden by the night and the falling sleet. Amos noticed the place but did not give it special attention.
The Oddkins were partially cloaked in ice. They began taking it off in pieces, as if they were a group of small, furry knights stripping off their armor.
Skippy said, “I don’t understand why the new magic toymaker couldn’t have lived next door to Uncle Isaac Bodkins. It would have been a lot more convenient.”
“This is a noble quest,” Gibbons said. “Everyone knows that noble quests must always be difficult.”
“Why must they always be difficult?” Amos asked.
Gibbons thought about that a moment, then put one finger beside his long snout. “Perhaps because any job that’s too easy is not worthwhile. Perhaps hard work, challenging work, the kind of work that tests us and demands the best of us, is the most valuable.”
“Why?” Amos asked.
“Well … because hard work and difficult challenges teach us not to give up easily. They teach us that accomplishing things in life requires dedication, sweat, and patience.”
“We Oddkins have dedication and patience,” Butterscotch said, “but none of us can sweat.”
“And a good thing too!” Patch said. “Just imagine what a mess I’d be if, aside from being soaked and dirty and torn, I was also stinking of sweat.” He shuddered.
“Eeep,” Skippy said.
Busy cracking ice off his stubby legs, Amos did not glance up at the rabbit. “What did you say, Skippy?”
“Eeep.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Eeep, eeep,” Skippy said.
“Eeep,” Butterscotch said.
“Double eeep,” Patch said.
Even Gibbons said, “Eeep!”
Frowning, Amos finally stopped picking ice off his legs and turned to see what they were talking about.
Apparently there was a zoo in the park. A real, live elephant stood at the high iron fence behind the covered walkway, evidently having come out of the unlighted barnlike structure that Amos had noticed earlier.
It was not only the hugest creature Amos had ever seen but far bigger than he had ever imagined an elephant could be. Each of its ears was as large as an army tent. Its tusks were the size of small trees. From Amos’s point of view, the creature’s rippled trunk looked like a very long, grand staircase leading up to its mammoth brow.
Amos said, “Eeep.”
“We’re perfectly safe,” Gibbons said. “I’m quite sure we are. Yes, yes. Quite sure. Those iron bars will hold him back.”
“Looks to me like he could snap those bars in a minute,” said Patch.
“In a second,” Butterscotch said.
“And then squish us,” Skippy said. “That’s what elephants like to do. Squish things. Squish-squish. We’ve learned that from Burl.”
Wide-eyed with astonishment, Burl moved slowly toward the bars. “He doesn’t want to squish anyone. He’s friendly.”
Amos stared up into the giant’s small, curious eye, which was surrounded by wrinkles and bright with what might have been ancient wisdom. He decided that Burl was right. This was a friendly fellow.
But Skippy was not as easily convinced. “Friendly? How can you possibly tell?”
“Because … I’m like him,” Burl said. “We’re brothers, he and I. We share the long, proud history of our kind.”
The real elephant swayed slightly from side to side and rolled its enormous head, as if agreeing with Burl.
“I’ll bet he once lived out on the veldt,” Burl said, his voice trembling with awe. “Lived under the stars, roaming the plains, with his mate at his side—we mate for life, you know—and with his herd following respectfully behind him. Oh, look at him, how huge and magnificent he is, how beautiful and noble!”
The elephant’s enormous trunk snaked through two of the bars and curled toward little Burl.
Burl stepped forward and touched his own small trunk to the tip of his real-life cousin’s much greater nose. They stood very still, staring at each other, trunk to trunk in special communion.
No longer afraid, Amos and the other Oddkins gathered around Burl, staring in tingly amazement at the zoo elephant.
Butterscotch said, “Seeing this creature, I think I feel some of the wonder and magic that people must feel when they accidentally get a good glimpse of a living Oddkin.”
Amos knew what Butterscotch meant. He said, “God’s world is full of magic, isn’t it? Not just the secret kind of magic of whic
h we’re a part, but the simple magic of everyday life—magic things like flowers, fancily woven spider webs, and like this magnificent elephant.”
“It’s a shame,” Gibbons said, “but most people take everyday magic for granted and fail to notice it. And in some ways, it’s more spectacular than the hidden magic of things like living toys.”
“Burl,” Patch said, putting one paw on his friend’s shoulder, “if I had the power to make it happen, I would transform you into an elephant as real and big as this one and send you to the veldt to fulfill your dreams. I see now why you’d long for such a life.”
Skippy put one paw on Burl’s other shoulder and said, “I’ll make no more jokes about your hose nose or about your ears.”
“Thank you, Skippy,” Burl said softly.
“But I’ll still snap your suspenders now and then,” Skippy said. “And I’ll still make mouse jokes.”
“Fair enough,” Burl said.
After a moment of silence during which they all stared up at the proud giant, Amos said, “I’m reminded of a poem by Rupert Toon—”
Even the elephant seemed to join in the groaning.
2.
THE BLACK BUS ROCKETED through the stormy night. Its progress was not even slightly hindered by the treacherously slick highway.
By the time they crossed the city limits, the snow-pale driver, dressed all in black, had not said one word to Nick Jagg. Once in a while he raised his ice-gray eyes to a mirror that gave him a view of the interior of the bus. In that mirror he studied Jagg for so long that it seemed he could not be in control of the vehicle. But he never spoke.
Sometimes Jagg returned the driver’s strange stare, but mostly he just turned his head to the side and looked out at the silvery sleet whipping through the darkness.
As they crossed the city limits, a peculiar change occurred in that bus window in front of Jagg’s face. His own vague reflection rippled, shimmered, and vanished. It was replaced by another face: smoky, sullen red eyes; a twisted mouth filled with exceedingly sharp teeth; the other features, though shadowy and indistinct, were clearly not human. It was the same face he had seen in the bathroom mirror at the bus station. “Not long now,” the Dark One said. “Soon your destiny will be fulfilled. Soon you will buy the toy factory, and you will be the new toymaker.” Jagg smiled.