Ticktock

by Dean Koontz

  The demon driver shifted gears, and the Peterbilt pulled into the street behind them. Its headlights swept across the rear window, across Tommy.

  Scootie whimpered again. He licked Tommy’s face, either to reassure him or to say goodbye.

  Facing front, wiping dog slobber off his cheek, Tommy said, “How can I be safe? It’s not dawn yet. The thing will see where we’ve gone.”

  “Can’t follow there,” his mother said.

  “I’m telling you, it’ll drive straight through the house,” he predicted.

  “No. Quy is one who made doll, called spirit from underworld, so it not allowed hurt her. Can’t enter house if Quy Trang Dai herself don’t make invitation.”

  “With all due respect, Mom, I don’t think we can count on demons being quite that polite.”

  “No, your mother’s probably right,” Del said. “The supernatural world operates on its own laws, rather like we operate under the laws of physics.”

  As the inside of the car grew bright again from the headlights behind, Tommy said, “If the damn thing drives the damn truck into the damn house and kills me, who do I complain to—Albert Einstein or the pope?”

  Del turned right into the driveway, and the car creaked-clanked-clanged, wobbled-rolled-rocked-heaved into the open, lighted garage. When she braked to a stop, the engine coughed and stalled. The rear axle snapped, and the back of the Jaguar crashed to the garage floor.

  Behind them the big door rolled down.

  Tommy’s mother climbed out of the car.

  When he followed her, he heard the shrill air brakes of the Peterbilt. Judging by the sound, the truck had pulled to the curb and stopped in front of the house.

  A slender birdlike Vietnamese woman, about the size of a twelve-year-old girl, with a face as sweet as butterscotch pudding, stood at the interior door between the garage and the house. She was wearing a pink jogging suit and athletic shoes.

  Mother Phan spoke to this woman briefly in Vietnamese, and then introduced her as Quy Trang Dai.

  Mrs. Dai appeared crestfallen when she faced Tommy. “So sorry about mistake. Terrible dumb mistake. Feel like stupid, worthless, ignorant old fool, want to throw myself in pit of river vipers, but have no pit here and no vipers either.” Her dark eyes welled with tears. “Want to throw myself in pit so bad.”

  “Well,” Del said to Tommy, “are you going to kill her?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Wimp.”

  Outside, the Peterbilt was still idling.

  Blinking back her tears, her expression toughening, Mrs. Dai turned to Del, looked her up and down, and said suspiciously, “Who you?”

  “A total stranger.”

  Mrs. Dai raised an eyebrow quizzically at Tommy. “Is true?”

  “True,” Tommy said.

  “Not dating?” asked Quy Trang Dai.

  “All I know about him is his name,” Del said.

  “And she doesn’t get that right half the time,” Tommy assured Mrs. Dai. He glanced at the big garage door, certain that the truck engine outside would suddenly rev…. “Listen, are we really safe here?”

  “Safe here. Safer in house but…” Mrs. Dai squinted at Del, as though reluctant to grant admittance to this obvious corrupter of Vietnamese male youth.

  To Tommy, Del said, “I think I could find some vipers if you’d be willing to dig a pit.”

  Mother Phan spoke to Quy Trang Dai in Vietnamese.

  The hairdresser witch lowered her eyes guiltily and nodded and finally sighed. “Okay. You come inside. But I keep clean house. Is dog broke?”

  “He wasn’t broken, but I had him fixed,” Del said. She winked at Tommy. “Couldn’t resist.”

  Mrs. Dai led them into the house, through the laundry room, kitchen, and dining room.

  Tommy noticed that the heels of her running shoes contained those light-emitting diodes that blinked in sequence from right to left, ostensibly a safety feature for the athletically minded who took their exercise at night, though the effect was footgear with a Vegas flair.

  In the living room, Mrs. Dai said, “We wait here for dawn. Evil spirit have to go at sunrise, all be fine.”

  The living room reflected the history of Vietnam as occupied territory: a mix of simple Chinese and French furniture with two contemporary American upholstered pieces. On the wall over the sofa was a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In a corner stood a Buddhist shrine; fresh fruit was arranged on the bright red altar, and sticks of incense, one lit, bristled from ceramic holders.

  Mrs. Dai sat in an oversize black chinoiserie chair with a padded seat covered in gold-and-white brocade. The chair was so large that the diminutive pink-clad woman appeared even more childlike than ever; her twinkling shoes didn’t quite reach the floor.

  Taking off her plastic rain scarf but not her coat, Mother Phan settled into a bergère-style chair and sat with her purse on her lap.

  Tommy and Del perched on the edge of the sofa, and Scootie sat on the floor in front of them, looking curiously from Mother Phan to Mrs. Dai to Mother Phan again.

  Outside, the Peterbilt engine still idled.

  Tommy could see part of the truck, all of its running lights aglow, through one of the windows that flanked the front door, but he couldn’t see the driver’s cab or the Samaritan-thing.

  Consulting her wristwatch, Mrs. Dai said, “Twenty-two minutes till dawn, then no one have to worry, everyone happy”—with a wary glance at Mother Phan—“no one angry with friends any more. Anyone like tea?”

  Everyone politely declined tea.

  “No trouble to make,” said Mrs. Dai.

  Again, everyone politely declined.

  After a brief silence, Del said, “So you were born and raised along the Xan River.”

  Mrs. Dai brightened. “Oh, is such beautiful land. You been there?”

  “No,” Del said, “though I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” Mrs. Dai rhapsodized, clapping her small hands together. “Jungle so green and dark, air heavy as steam and full of smell of growing things, can hardly breathe for stink of growing things, so many flowers and snakes, all red-gold mist in morning, purple mist at twilight, leeches thick and long as hotdogs.”

  Tommy muttered, “Lovely, lovely, with all the resurrected dead men slaving in the rice paddies.”

  “Excuse please?” said Mrs. Dai.

  Glowering at Tommy, his mother said, “Be respectful.”

  When Tommy declined to repeat himself, Del said, “Mrs. Dai, when you were a girl, did you ever notice anything strange in the skies over the Xan River?”

  “Strange?”

  “Strange objects.”

  “In skies?”

  “Disc-shaped craft, perhaps.”

  Perplexed, Mrs. Dai said, “Dishes in sky?”

  Tommy thought he heard something outside. It might have been a truck door closing.

  Changing tack slightly, Del said, “In the village where you were raised, Mrs. Dai, were there any legends of short humanoid creatures living in the jungle?”

  “Short what?” asked Mrs. Dai.

  “About four feet tall, gray skin, bulbous heads, enormous eyes, really mesmerizing eyes.”

  Quy Trang Dai looked at Mother Phan for help.

  “She crazy person,” Mother Phan explained.

  “Eerie lights in the night,” Del said, “pulsating lights with an irresistible attraction? Anything like that along the banks of the Xan?”

  “Very dark in jungle at night. Very dark in village at night. No electricity.”

  “In your childhood,” Del probed, “do you remember any periods of missing time, unexplained blackouts, fugue states?”

  Nonplussed, Mrs. Dai could only say, “Everyone sure not like nice hot cup of tea?”

  No doubt talking to herself but appearing to address Scootie, Del said, “Sure as hell, this Xan River is a primary locus of evil extraterrestrial influence.”

  Heavy footsteps thudded across the f
ront porch.

  Tommy tensed, waited, and when a knock came at the door, he stood bolt upright from the sofa.

  “Don’t answer door,” Mrs. Dai advised.

  “Yeah,” Del said, “it might be that damn aggressive Amway saleswoman.”

  Scootie crept warily to the front door. He sniffed along the threshold, caught a scent he didn’t like, whimpered, and hurried back to Del’s side.

  The knocking sounded again, louder and more insistent than before.

  Raising her voice, Mrs. Dai said, “You can’t come in.”

  Immediately, the demon pounded again, so hard that the door shook and the lock bolt rattled against the striker plate.

  “Go away,” said Mrs. Dai. To Tommy, she said, “Only eighteen minutes, then everyone happy.”

  Mother Phan said, “Sit down, Tuong. You just making everyone nervous.”

  Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off the front door—until movement at one of the flanking windows drew his attention. The serpent-eyed fat man peered in at them.

  “We don’t even have a gun,” Tommy worried.

  “Don’t need gun,” Mother Phan said. “Got Quy Trang Dai. Sit down and be patient.”

  The Samaritan-thing walked to the window on the other side of the front door and peered hungrily at Tommy through that pane. It rapped one knuckle against the glass.

  To Del, Tommy repeated, “We don’t have a gun.”

  “We’ve got Mrs. Dai,” Del said. “You can always pick her up by the ankles and use her as a club.”

  Quy Trang Dai wagged one finger at the Samaritan-thing and said, “I made you, and I tell you go away, so now you go.”

  The demon turned from the window. Its footsteps thudded across the porch and down the front steps.

  “There,” said Mother Phan, “now sit down, Tuong, and behave.”

  Trembling, Tommy sat on the sofa. “It really went away?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Dai. “It going all around house now to see did I forget and leave door or window open.”

  Tommy bolted up again. “Is there a chance you did?”

  “No. I not fool.”

  “You already made one big mistake,” Tommy reminded her.

  “Tuong!” Mother Phan gasped, appalled by his rudeness.

  “Well,” Tommy said, “she did. She made one hell of a mistake, so why not another?”

  Pouting, Mrs. Dai said, “One mistake, I have to apologize rest of my life?”

  Feeling as if his skull might explode from the pressure of his anxiety, Tommy put his hands to his head. “This is nuts. This can’t be happening.”

  “It happening,” Mrs. Dai said.

  “It’s got to be a nightmare.”

  To the other women, Del said, “He’s just not prepared for this. He doesn’t watch The X-Files.”

  “You not watch X-Files?” Mrs. Dai asked, astonished.

  Shaking her head with dismay, Mother Phan said, “Probably watch junk detective show instead of good educational program.”

  From elsewhere in the house came the sounds of the Samaritan-thing rapping on windows and testing doorknobs.

  Scootie cuddled against Del, and she petted and soothed him.

  Mrs. Dai said, “Some rain we have, huh?”

  “So early in season too,” said Mother Phan.

  “Remind me of jungle rain, so heavy.”

  “We need rain after drought last year.”

  “Sure no drought this year.”

  Del said, “Mrs. Dai, in your village in Vietnam, did farmers ever find crop circles, inexplicable depressed patterns in their fields? Or large circular depressions where something might have landed in the rice paddies?”

  Leaning forward in her chair, Mother Phan said to Mrs. Dai, “Tuong not want to believe demon rapping window in front of his face, want to think it just bad dream, but then he believe Big Foot real.”

  “Big Foot?” Mrs. Dai said, and pressed one hand to her lips to stifle a giggle.

  The Samaritan-thing stomped up the steps onto the front porch once more. It appeared at the window to the left of the door, eyes fierce and radiant.

  Mrs. Dai consulted her wristwatch. “Looking good.”

  Tommy stood rigid, quivering.

  To Mother Phan, Mrs. Dai said, “So sorry about Mai.”

  “Break mother’s heart,” said Tommy’s mother.

  “She live to regret,” said Mrs. Dai.

  “I try so hard to teach her right.”

  “She weak, magician clever.”

  “Tuong make bad example for sister,” said Mother Phan.

  “My heart ache for you,” Mrs. Dai said.

  Virtually vibrating with tension, Tommy said, “Can we talk about this later, if there is a later?”

  From the beast at the window came the piercing, ululant shriek that seemed more like an electronic voice than an animal one.

  Getting up from her chinoiserie chair, Mrs. Dai turned to the window, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Stop that, you bad thing. You wake neighbors.”

  The creature fell silent, but it glared at Mrs. Dai almost as hatefully as it had glared at Tommy.

  Abruptly the fat man’s moon-round face split up the middle from chin to hairline, as it had when the creature had clambered over the bow railing of the yacht in Newport Harbor. The halves of its countenance peeled apart, green eyes now bulging on the sides of its skull, and out of the gash in the center of its face lashed a score of whip-thin, segmented black tendrils that writhed around a sucking hole crammed with gnashing teeth. As the beast pressed its face to the window, the tendrils slithered frenziedly across the glass.

  “You not scare me,” Mrs. Dai said disdainfully. “Zip up face and go away.”

  The writhing tendrils withdrew into the skull, and the torn visage re-knit into the face of the fat man—although with the green eyes of the demon.

  “You see,” Mother Phan said, still sitting complacently with her purse in her lap and her hands on the purse. “Don’t need gun when have Quy Trang Dai.”

  “Impressive,” Del agreed.

  At the window, its frustration palpable, the Samaritan-thing issued a pleading, needful mewl.

  Mrs. Dai took three steps toward the window, lights flashing across the heels of her shoes, and waved at the beast with the backs of her hands. “Shoo,” she said impatiently. “Shoo, shoo.”

  This was more than the Samaritan-thing could tolerate, and it smashed one fat fist through the window.

  As shattered glass cascaded into the living room, Mrs. Dai backed up three steps, bumping against the chinoiserie chair, and said, “This not good.”

  “This not good?” Tommy half shouted. “What do you mean this not good?”

  Rising from the sofa, Del said, “I think she means we turned down the last cup of tea we’re ever going to have a chance to drink.”

  Mother Phan got up from the bergère. She spoke to Quy Trang Dai in rapid Vietnamese.

  Keeping her eyes on the demon at the broken window, Mrs. Dai answered in Vietnamese.

  Looking distressed at last, Mother Phan said, “Oh, boy.”

  The tone in which his mother spoke those two words was like an icy finger drawn down his spine.

  At the window, the Samaritan-thing at first seemed shocked by its own boldness. This was, after all, the sacred domain of the hairdresser witch who had summoned it from Hell—or from wherever Xan River magicians summoned such creatures. It peered in amazement at the few jagged fragments of glass that still prickled from the window frame, no doubt wondering why it had not instantly been cast back to the sulfurous chambers of the underworld.

  Mrs. Dai checked her wristwatch.

  Tommy consulted his as well.

  Ticktock.

  Half snarling, half whining nervously, the Samaritan-thing climbed through the broken window into the living room.

  “Better stand together,” said Mrs. Dai.

  Tommy, Del, and Scootie moved out from behind the coffee table, joining his mother
and Mrs. Dai in a tight grouping.

  The serpent-eyed fat man no longer wore the hooded raincoat. The fire from the yacht should have burned away all its clothes, but curiously had only singed them, as though its imperviousness to fire extended somewhat to the garments it wore. The black wingtip shoes were badly scuffed and caked with mud. The filthy and rumpled trousers, the equally disheveled and bullet-torn shirt and vest and suit jacket, the acrid smell of smoke that seeped from the creature, combined with its gardenia-white skin and inhuman eyes, gave it all the charm of a walking corpse.

  For half a minute or more, the demon stood in indecision and evident uneasiness, perhaps waiting to be punished for violating the sanctity of Mrs. Dai’s house.

  Ticktock.

  Then it shook itself. Its plump hands curled into fists, relaxed, curled into fists. It licked its lips with a fat pink tongue—and it shrieked at them.

  The deadline is dawn.

  Beyond the windows the sky was still dark—though perhaps more charcoal gray than black.

  Ticktock.

  Mrs. Dai startled Tommy by raising her left hand to her mouth and savagely biting the meatiest part of her palm, below her thumb, drawing blood. She smacked her bloody hand against his forehead, like a faith healer knocking illness out of a penitent sufferer.

  When Tommy started to wipe the blood away, Mrs. Dai said, “No, leave. I safe from demon because I summon into rag doll. Can’t harm me. If you smell like me, smell like my blood, it can’t know who you really are, think you me, then not harm you, either.”

  As the Samaritan-thing approached, Mrs. Dai smeared her blood on Del’s forehead, on Mother Phan’s forehead, and after hesitating only briefly, on Scootie’s head as well.

  “Be still,” she instructed them in an urgent whisper. “Be still, be quiet.”

  Grumbling, hissing, the creature approached to within a foot of the group. Its fetid breath was repulsive, reeking of dead burnt flesh and curdled milk and rancid onions—as though, in another life, it had eaten hundreds of cheeseburgers and had been plagued with indigestion even in Hell.

  With a wet crackling sound, the plump white hands metamorphosed into serrated pincers designed for efficient slashing and rending.

  When the radiant green eyes fixed on Tommy’s eyes, they seemed to look through him, as if the beast were reading his identity on the bar code of his soul.