Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages

by Dean Koontz

  “Haven’t seen him either.”

  “I’ll bet they’re sneaking up on us.”

  “Maybe,” Amos said.

  “And in disguise,” Skippy said uneasily.

  “What disguise?”

  “Who knows. Could be disguised as anything, anyone …”

  Burl trotted up with a tin of Belgian butter cookies.

  “Could be disguised as Burl!” Skippy said, stepping back from the elephant in fear.

  Burl said, “Huh?”

  Skippy said, “Who are you?”

  Burl looked puzzled. “I’m me.”

  “Are you really?” Skippy asked suspiciously.

  Blinking at Amos, Burl said, “Maybe Skippy’s smarts were in his tail. He seems dumber now that Rex cut it off.”

  Looking aghast at Amos, Skippy said, “How can I be sure that even you are really who you seem to be?”

  “And how can we be sure that you’re really Skippy?” Amos asked.

  Burl stared at them a moment, then shrugged. “Somehow, both Skippy and you must’ve got dumber when Rex cut his tail off.” He looked down the escalator at Gear. “He’s a stubborn hunk of scrap iron, isn’t he?” Burl threw the tin of butter cookies at the robot.

  Gear crouched, hiding behind a riser as much as possible. The cookie tin bounced off the top of his head, but he rose immediately, unscathed, his yellow eyes glowing as brightly as ever.

  Amos grabbed another toaster and threw it, and Patch tossed two small jars of caviar, which broke and splattered Gear with bits of glass and fish eggs. Gibbons threw jars of gourmet ice-cream topping—chocolate fudge, caramel, brandy rum sauce—and Burl heaved down two more tins of cookies, one of which burst open. Butterscotch used her nose to roll a couple of vases down the escalator, adding to the litter of broken glass. Though casting suspicious looks at each of his friends, fearing one of them was Rex in disguise, Skippy joined in the barrage, throwing a cheese grater, a potato peeler, two canisters of teabags, and a pair of brass candlesticks.

  The escalator was a mess. It oozed and dripped a disgusting variety of foodstuffs out of which poked metal and glass debris of all sizes and shapes.

  But Gear was still climbing upward. He had been hit a couple of times, but nothing had seriously damaged him.

  “Time for the heavy artillery,” Amos said. “Come on.”

  He led the other Oddkins to a wheeled tea cart that was stacked with English china. By joining forces, they were able to move the heavy cart to the head of the escalator and tip it over the edge.

  Below, the robot looked up at the approaching avalanche and said, “Bad for Gear.”

  Then the tea cart and dishes hit the robot and carried him all the way to the bottom of the escalator, where he was pinned under the rubble and so badly broken that the yellow light in his eyes flickered and went out.

  18.

  VICTOR BODKINS HEARD SIRENS in the distance and figured the cops were coming in answer to the department store alarms. He ran along the north side of the building and turned the corner into an alleyway behind it.

  He was aware that Jagg was following, slowed by the suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills, but he did not care. The only thing he cared about right now was finding those toys.

  As he sloshed through the icy puddles in the alley, a fire door in the back of the department store opened forty feet ahead of him. Several stuffed-toy animals toppled out into the night. They had been standing on one another’s shoulders in order to reach the release bar that operated the door, and when the door gave way they had pitched outward. Those toward the top of the balancing act fell the farthest, splashing onto the puddled pavement.

  The bear and the elephant, evidently having formed the base of the pyramid, stumbled out with the rabbit balanced precariously on their shoulders.

  “Eeep!” the rabbit cried.

  The bear and the elephant nearly fell over the old Dickensian creature, who had fallen out ahead of them.

  Wobbling atop the bear’s and the elephant’s shoulders, the rabbit again cried, “Eeep!”

  The bear and the elephant staggered to the left.

  “Eeep!”

  They staggered to the right.

  “Eeep!”

  They nearly fell over the dog and then actually did fall over the cavalier cat.

  “Eeeeeeeeep!”

  Pitched off the shoulders of his companions, the rabbit landed face down in a sleet-skinned puddle, and came up spluttering. “You guys would never have made it in vaudeville!”

  Victor Bodkins stared at the small creatures with surprise, wonder, and delight.

  They suddenly noticed him and froze.

  After a moment the bear said, “Well, at least it’s the same adult.”

  Before Victor could even try to figure what that meant, he saw the tuxedo-clad marionette leap out from behind a garbage dumpster and slash at the elephant with a sword-tipped cane. The elephant’s trunk was lopped off.

  “No!” the bear cried, and with great courage he charged the marionette.

  The bee plummeted straight out of the sky and hit the bear so hard that they both went tumbling backward. The bee’s stinger was enormous and sharp, and it pierced the teddy bear’s chest, poking out of the middle of poor bruin’s back, completely skewering him. Wriggling, the bee pulled free of his victim and zoomed up into the night again.

  During the bee’s attack, the marionette had been moving in. As the bear began to sit up, the marionette pounced on him. The blade flickered in the dim light of the alley’s nearest security lamp. Cotton stuffings were torn from the bear and were thrown all over the pavement.

  “No!” the trunkless, one-eared elephant cried.

  The cat and the rabbit threw themselves at the marionette, but the evil puppet pitched them away with supernatural strength and cut the bear again.

  The dog leaped upon the marionette and tried to sink her soft teeth into its hard neck.

  It heaved free of her.

  Then all five of the bear’s companions joined the fray. Their small angry voices filled the alleyway in spite of the growing clamor of police sirens.

  Victor rushed forward, hoping to separate the combatants and restrain the marionette.

  The bee swooped down and hovered in front of Victor’s face. Its long, wickedly sharp stinger pointed at his eyes. “Ssssstay out of thissss.”

  Victor halted. He was confused and frightened. But he was neither so confused nor so frightened that he was unable to act. Seeing the lid of a trash can lying at his feet, he bent and picked it up and swung it at the bee in one swift, smooth movement.

  CLANG!

  The bee was thrown into the wall of the building. It struck hard and fell to the pavement.

  Before it could pop up and fly away, Victor stamped on it once, twice, again and again, until he felt it crack into pieces under his shoe.

  Turning to the Oddkins again, he saw that the elephant and the cat were using another trash-can lid as a shield and were driving the marionette backward, away from the savaged teddy bear. Behind the marionette, the old-looking Oddkin, the rabbit, and the dog had worked a manhole cover out of its spot in the pavement. They were evidently hoping that the marionette could be tricked into stepping backward into the hole.

  But the marionette turned, saw the trap, and laughed nastily.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be that easy to dispose of, you soft-bellied fools.

  I’ll rip the stuffing out of all of you, and that will be the end.”

  “No,” Victor said. He ran forward and kicked the marionette straight into the manhole. It fell down into the storm drain with a furious cry of rage.

  Victor slid the iron cover into place, trapping the malevolent creature below.

  The Oddkins had gathered around the damaged teddy bear. They were sobbing. Victor had never before heard such a sad, sorry sound.

  The sirens were nearer but still a couple of blocks away. In the city’s icy streets, even the police could not travel as f
ast as they wanted.

  Nick Jagg had come halfway along the alley with his suitcase full of money. “Victor …”

  Victor ignored him. He joined the Oddkins, kneeling beside the teddy bear.

  The ravaged bruin lay on his back, arms spread. His eyes were glassy buttons, and he looked as if he had never been alive. Most of the cotton stuffing had been torn out of him, leaving only the sagging, furry material that served as his skin.

  “Amos,” the elephant said. “Oh, Amos, Amos, please sit up and speak to us.”

  “Please,” Skippy said. “Amos, please lead us.”

  But the bear did not move or speak.

  “He’s lost too much stuffing,” Butterscotch said. “Poor, dear, noble Amos is gone.”

  Looking at each of the five living animals in turn, Victor said, “I don’t know what you are or what you’ve set out to do tonight. I don’t understand how you could be alive or how this bear, once having lived, could be dead. But wherever you need to go, I’ll take you. Whatever you need, I’ll get it for you. I want to help you. I think you are my Uncle Isaac’s children, and I want to do anything I can for you. Please let me help.”

  “Take the money, you stupid fool,” Jagg said, suddenly looming over them. He was a tall, shadowy, menacing figure. He had put the suitcase on the pavement. Now he popped the latches and opened the lid. Sleet tapped on the tightly banded hundred-dollar bills. “Take the money and go. You’re up against powerful forces, the forces of Darkness, and there’s no way you can win. Take the money.”

  “You were on the side of those … those other toys?” Victor asked.

  “They and I serve the same master,” Jagg said. “And our master will eat you alive if you don’t get out of my way.”

  “The Devil doesn’t scare me,” Victor said. “Until tonight, I didn’t even believe in him!”

  The elephant, cat, and rabbit were lifting the bear off the puddled pavement. “We’ve got to get him to Mrs. Shannon,” said the elephant. “Maybe she can make him live again.”

  “The police will be here in a minute,” Jagg said. “The toys will have to pretend to be just toys then, and the cops will think you stole them from the department store. They won’t let you go to Mrs. Shannon’s or anywhere else.”

  Victor kicked the suitcase, overturning it and spilling hundred-dollar bills across the pavement. “And what will the police have to say about all this money? Can you explain where you got it, Mr. Jagg? Do you think they’ll let you go anywhere, either?”

  Fear shone in Jagg’s vicious eyes, which usually had room for no emotion but hatred. Victor suspected that the man had spent time in prison before and did not want to return.

  “I’ll kill you, Bodkins.”

  “Go ahead. Try,” Victor said, standing up to him. “The police will arrive just in time to find you crouched over my body.”

  Jagg hesitated. He made a thin, unhappy sound, then hurriedly began gathering up all the scattered money, trying to return it to the suitcase before the cops arrived.

  Victor stooped in front of the Oddkins and said, “Climb aboard, little ones. We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

  The cat and the rabbit scrambled onto Victor’s shoulders and held on tight to his suit jacket. The elderly creature sat with his legs around Victor’s neck; with his gloved hands he gripped Victor’s rain-soaked hair. Victor put the elephant under one arm and the dog under the other, then tenderly picked up the lifeless, sagging teddy bear.

  “Do you know the way to Mrs. Shannon’s toy shop?” the rabbit asked anxiously.

  “Oh, that Mrs. Shannon!” Victor said. “Yes, of course, she has been selling Isaac’s toys for years. I think I’ve passed her shop a few times. It’s in the neighborhood.”

  With the police sirens no more than a block away, Victor left Nick Jagg with the soggy stacks of money. He ran very fast along the alley, even faster than the wind which tried unsuccessfully to catch him.

  19.

  THE UTILITY COMPANY RAN its electrical lines through the city’s storm drains. One of their junction boxes was shorting, throwing bright, colorful sparks onto the stone walkway beside the water channel.

  Rex’s tuxedo was so wet that the sparks were extinguished when they struck him. He was in no danger of being set afire.

  In fact the thing that concerned him was not the sparks but what the sparks revealed. In that flickering light a pack of large, vicious-looking rats blocked the way ahead. Their silvery whiskers bristled. Their white teeth gleamed. Their red eyes glinted with reflections of the sparks.

  Rex knew that rats would have no desire whatsoever to eat a wooden marionette. But for a moment he was nevertheless afraid of them.

  Then he realized that those filthy vermin were not threatening him but almost seemed to be bowing to him, as if they were servants. They were utterly silent and exhibited none of the frenzied behavior of ordinary rats.

  “Ah,” Rex said. “I’ll bet my master sent you. Did he not? You come from the Dark One.”

  The rat at the head of the pack rose onto its hind feet, and Rex was not surprised when it spoke. Its voice was small but so shrill that it made Rex wince, a high-pitched yet harsh voice: “We were sent by He Who Rules Below. Your master, our master, and the Master of All Evil. He wishes you to join him, and we will show you the way.”

  “Lead on,” Rex said.

  The rats swarmed around him, and he accompanied them away from the sparking junction box, down the sloping storm drain, into ever deeper darkness.

  “I’m sure the Dark One wishes to give me a new squad of toys to battle the Oddkins.”

  “Is that what you think?” asked the leader of the rats.

  “Oh, yes. My first team failed me, you know.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes, yes,” Rex said. “Weasel, Gear, Lizzie, and Stinger—none of them had enough hatred in him to get the job done. None of them was strong enough or nasty enough to be of any real help to me. I had to try to do it all myself.”

  “How hard that must have been for you,” said the rat.

  They were walking in total darkness now, heading down, down, down. Even though he possessed excellent night vision, Rex could not see where he was going. He allowed himself to be guided by the pressure of the rats’ bodies at his sides and behind him.

  “My master will want to give me the best soldiers this time, the most ferocious demons to assist me,” Rex said.

  “I’m afraid that’s not the case,” said the rat. “Your master believes you have failed.”

  “But I haven’t!” Rex cried. “My troops failed me. If I had been given better assistants—”

  “The Master feels we have lost,” said the rat, “and that the new toymaker will be Mrs. Shannon rather than Nick Jagg. So he wants you to be brought before him.”

  Suddenly, for the first time in his existence, Rex was afraid. “Not … no … wait …”

  “We must not hesitate. Our master awaits us.”

  “But I destroyed the bear. I cut the magic life out of the bear!”

  “But only the bear. You stopped only one of six.”

  The rats carried him onward and down, down. …

  After a long while, Rex dared to ask, “What will my master do to me?”

  “Oh,” said the rat, “he won’t tear you limb from limb or set fire to you and reduce you to ashes. Nothing like that. He just wants you beside him forever.”

  “But … that would be an honor!” Rex said happily. “To be at the Dark One’s side, his companion. An honor indeed! So the Dark One must realize that even if I failed at this task, I am still a most valuable creation. He must realize that I am wonderfully evil and eager to serve him, for otherwise he would not want me always close at hand.”

  “Close at claw,” the rat corrected.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well,” the rat said as they continued downward in blackness, “I’m afraid it’s a bit different than you picture it. The Master wants you at his
side, yes, but from now on you’ll always have strings attached to your head and limbs.”

  “Strings!” Rex said, shocked. “But I am independent. I am not like other marionettes. I am without strings. I do what I want and go where I want.”

  “No more. You will be unable to make even the slightest movement except when the Master pulls on your strings. You will be forced to do anything he wishes, regardless of how humiliating and humbling the task. You will be totally controlled. You will never again lead but will always be led. You will be forever dangled in front of those who approach the Dark One’s throne and will be used as an example of what happens to those who fail to do the Master’s bidding. And all those who see you will be sickened by your condition, for you will have no pride, no dignity, no respect, and there will be no hope of ever being released from your suffering.”

  Rex tried to turn and run.

  The rats seized him, held him, and carried him down into the deep, dark, stinking depths of the earth.

  20.

  IN THE ALLEYWAY BEHIND the department store, one policeman held a gun on Nick Jagg while the other officer opened the suitcase.

  The revolving red beacon on top of the squad car made the falling sleet look like drops of frozen blood. It cast waves of crimson light across the bundles of cash in the suitcase.

  Squinting up at Jagg suspiciously, the officer said, “Where did all of this money come from?”

  “It’s mine,” Jagg said nervously.

  “But where did you get it? Did you steal it from the department store?”

  “No! If you check, you’ll find they’re missing no money. Their safe is intact.”

  “Then where did you get it? Are you rich? What line of work are you in?” Jagg said nothing more. Soon, when they ran a computer check on him, they would learn that he had been released from prison only that morning. They would learn that his worldly possessions at that time had consisted only of the clothes on his back and one hundred dollars. They would insist on knowing where he had gotten all this cash. He could not tell them that the Devil had given it to him. He could not tell them anything that would make sense. Finally, they would find an unsolved theft and convince themselves that Jagg had been the thief and that the money in the suitcase was criminally obtained. For the next few weeks or months, he would sit in a city jail, unable to post bail, and eventually he would be tried, convicted, and returned to prison.