Darkfall

by Dean R. Koontz

  “Another death?”

  “Always another one.”

  “How?”

  “Cancer. I'd seen sudden death already. It was time for me to learn about slow death.”

  “How slow?”

  “Two years from the time the cancer was diagnosed until he finally succumbed to it. He wasted away, lost sixty pounds before the end, lost all his hair from the radium treatments. He looked and acted like an entirely different person during those last few weeks. It was a ghastly thing to watch.”

  “How old were you when you lost him?”

  “Eleven and a half.”

  “Then it was just you and your grandmother.”

  “For a few years. Then she died when I was fifteen.

  Her heart. Not real sudden. Not real slow, either. After that, I was made a ward of the court. I spent the next three years, until I was eighteen, in a series of foster homes. Four of them, in all. I never got close to any of my foster parents; I never allowed myself to get close. I kept asking to be transferred, see. Because by then, even as young as I was, I realized that loving people, depending on them, needing them, is just too dangerous. Love is just a way to set you up for a bad fall. It's the rug they pull out from under you at the very moment you finally decide that everything's going to be fine. We're all so ephemeral. So fragile. And life's so unpredictable.”

  “But that's no reason to insist on going it alone,” Jack said. “In fact, don't you see — that's the reason we must find people to love, people to share our lives with, to open our hearts and minds to, people to depend on, cherish, people who'll depend on us when they need to know they're not alone. Caring for your friends and family, knowing they care for you — that's what keeps our minds off the void that waits for all of us. By loving and letting ourselves be loved, we give meaning and importance to our lives; it's what keeps us from being just another species of the animal kingdom, grubbing for survival. At least for a short while, through love, we can forget about the goddamned darkness at the end of everything.”

  He was breathless when he finished — and astonished by what he had said, startled that such an understanding had been in him.

  She slipped an arm across his chest. She held him fast.

  She said, “You're right. A part of me knows that what you've said is true.”

  “Good.”

  “But there's another part of me that's afraid of letting myself love or be loved, ever again. The part that can't bear losing it all again. The part that thinks loneliness is preferable to that kind of loss and pain.”

  “But see, that's just it. Love given or love taken is never lost,” he said, holding her. “Once you've loved someone, the love is always there, even after they're gone. Love is the only thing that endures. Mountains are torn down, built up, torn down again over millions and millions of years. Seas dry up. Deserts give way to new seas. Time crumbles every building man erects. Great ideas are proven wrong and collapse as surely as castles and temples. But love is a force, an energy, a power. At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, I think love is like a ray of sunlight, traveling for all eternity through space, deeper and deeper into infinity; like that ray of light, it never ceases to exist. Love endures. It's a binding force in the universe, like the energy within a molecule is a binding force, as surely as gravity is a binding force. Without the cohesive energy in a molecule, without gravity, without love-chaos. We exist to love and be loved, because love seems to me to be the only thing that brings order and meaning and light to existence. It must be true. Because if it isn't true, what purpose do we serve? Because if it isn't true — God help us.”

  For minutes, they lay in silence, touching.

  Jack was exhausted by the flood of words and feelings that had rushed from him, almost without his volition.

  He desperately wanted Rebecca to be with him for the rest of his life. He dreaded losing her.

  But he said not more. The decision was hers.

  After a while she said, “For the first time in ages, I'm not so afraid of loving and losing; I’m more afraid of not loving at all.”

  Jackøs heart lifted.

  He said, “Don’t ever freeze me out again.”

  “It won’t be easy learning to open up.”

  “You can do it.”

  “I’m sure I’ll backslide occasionally, withdraw from you a little bit, now and then. You’ll have to be patient with me.”

  “I can be patient.”

  “God, don’t I know it! You’re the most infuriatingly patient man I’ve ever known.”

  “Infuriatingly.”

  “There’ve been times. At work, when I’ve been so incredibly bitchy, and I knew it, didn’t want to be but couldn’t seem to help myself. I wished, sometimes, you’d snap back at me, blow up at me. Bit when you finally responded, you were always so reasonable, so calm, so damned patient.”

  “You make me sound too saintly.”

  “Well, you’re a good man, Jack Dawson. A nice man. A damned nice man.”

  “Oh, I know, to you I seem perfect,” he said self-mockingly. “But believe it or not, even I, paragon that I am, even I have a few faults.”

  “No!” she said, pretending astonishment.

  “It’s true.”

  “Name one.”

  “I actually like to listen to Barry Manilow.”

  “No!”

  “Oh, I know his music’s slick, too smooth, a little plastic. But it sounds good, anyway. I like it. And another thing. I don’t like Alan Alda.”

  “Everyone likes Alan Alda!”

  “I think he’s a phony.”

  “You disgusting fiend!”

  “And I like peanut butter and onion sandwiches.”

  “Ach! Alan Alda wouldn't eat peanut butter and onion sandwiches.”

  “But I have one great virtue that more than makes up for all of those terrible faults,” he said.

  She grinned. “What's that?”

  “I love you.”

  This time, she didn't ask him to refrain from saying it.

  She kissed him.

  Her hands moved over him.

  She said, “Make love to me again.”

  XII

  Ordinarily, no matter how late Davey was allowed to stay up, Penny was permitted one more hour than he was. Being the last to bed was her just due, by virtue of her four-year age advantage over him. She always fought valiantly and tenaciously at the first sign of any attempt to deny her this precious and inalienable right. Tonight, however, at nine o'clock, when Aunt Faye suggested that Davey brush his teeth and hit the sack, Penny feigned sleepiness and said that she, too, was ready to call it a night.

  She couldn't leave Davey alone in a dark bedroom where the goblins might creep up on him. She would have to stay awake, watching over him, until their father arrived. Then she would tell Daddy all about the goblins and hope that he would at least hear her out before he sent for the men with the straitjackets.

  She and Davey had come to the Jamisons' without overnight bags, but they had no difficulty getting ready for bed. Because they occasionally stayed with Faye and Keith when their father had to work late, they kept spare toothbrushes and pajamas here. And in the guest bedroom closet, there were fresh changes of clothes for them, so they wouldn't have to wear the same thing tomorrow that they'd worn today. In ten minutes, they were comfortably nestled in the twin beds, under the covers.

  Aunt Faye wished them sweet dreams, turned out the light, and closed the door.

  The darkness was thick, smothering.

  Penny fought off an attack of claustrophobia.

  Davey was silent awhile. Then: “Penny?”

  “Huh?”

  “You there?”

  “Who do you think just said 'huh?”

  “Where's Dad?”

  “Working late.”

  “I mean… really.”

  “Really working late.”

  “What if he's been hurt?”

  “He hasn't.”

 
“What if he got shot?”

  “He didn't. They'd have told us if he'd been shot. They'd probably even take us to the hospital to see him.”

  “No, they wouldn't, either. They try to protect kids from bad news like that.”

  “Will you stop worrying, for God's sake? Dad's all right. If he'd been shot or anything, Aunt Faye and Uncle Keith would know all about it.”

  “But maybe they do know.”

  “We'd know if they knew.”

  “How?”

  “They'd show it, even if they were trying hard not to.”

  “How would they show it?”

  “They'd have treated us different. They'd have acted strange.”

  “They always act strange.”

  “I mean strange in a different sort of way. They'd have been especially nice to us. They'd have pampered us because they'd have felt sorry for us. And do you think Aunt Faye would have criticized Daddy all evening, the way she did, if she'd known he was shot and in a hospital somewhere?

  “Well… no. I guess you're right. Not even Aunt Faye would do that.”

  They were silent.

  Penny lay with her head propped up on the pillow, listening.

  Nothing to be heard. Just the wind outside. Far off, the grumble of a snowplow.

  She looked at the window, a rectangle of vague snowy luminosity.

  Would the goblins come through the window?

  The door?

  Maybe they'd come out of a crack in the baseboard, come in the form of smoke and then solidify when they had completely seeped into the room. Vampires did that sort of thing. She'd seen it happen in an old Dracula movie.

  Or maybe they'd come out of the closet.

  She looked toward the darkest end of the room, where the closet was. She couldn't see it; only blackness.

  Maybe there was a magical, invisible tunnel at the back of the closet, a tunnel that only goblins could see and use.

  That was ridiculous. Or was it? The very idea of goblins was ridiculous, too; yet they were out there; she'd seen them.

  Davey's breathing became deep and slow and rhythmic. He was asleep.

  Penny envied him. She knew she'd never sleep again.

  Time passed. Slowly.

  Her gaze moved around and around the dark room. The window. The door. The closet. The window.

  She didn't know where the goblins would come from, but she knew, without doubt, that they would come.

  XIII

  Lavelle sat in his dark bedroom.

  The additional assassins had risen out of the pit and had crept off into the night, into the storm-lashed city. Soon, both of the Dawson children would be slaughtered, reduced to nothing more than bloody mounds of dead meat.

  That thought pleased and excited Lavelle. It even gave him an erection.

  The rituals had drained him. Not physically or mentally. He felt alert, fresh, strong. But his Bocor's power had been depleted, and it was time to replenish it. At the moment, he was a Bocor in name only; drained like this, he was really just a man — and he didn't like being just a man.

  Embraced by the darkness, he reached upward with his mind, up through the ceiling, through the roof of the house, through the snow-filled air, up toward the rivers of evil energy that flowed across the great city. He carefully avoided those currents of benign energy that also surged through the night, for they were of no use whatsoever to him; indeed, they posed a danger to him. He tapped into the darkest, foulest of those ethereal waters and let them pour down into him, until his own reservoirs were full once more.

  In minutes he was reborn. Now he was more than a man. Less than a god, yes. But much, much more than just a man.

  He had one more act of sorcery to perform this night, and he was happily anticipating it. He was going to humble Jack Dawson. At last he was going to make Dawson understand how awesome was the power of a masterful Bocor. Then, when Dawson's children were exterminated, the detective would understand how foolish he had been to put them at such risk, to defy a Bocor. He would see how easily he could have saved them — simply by swallowing his pride and walking away from the investigation. Then it would be clear to the detective that he, himself, had signed his own children's death warrants, and that terrible realization would shatter him.

  XIV

  Penny sat straight up in bed and almost shouted for Aunt Faye.

  She had heard something. A strange, shrill cry. It wasn't human. Faint. Far away. Maybe in another apartment, several floors farther down in the building. The cry seemed to have come to her through the heating ducts.

  She waited tensely. A minute. Two minutes. Three.

  The cry wasn't repeated. There were no other unnatural sounds, either.

  But she knew what she had heard and what it meant. They were coming for her and Davey. They were on their way now. Soon, they would be here.

  XV

  This time, their love-making was slow, lazy, achingly tender, filled with much nuzzling and wordless murmuring and soft-soft stroking. A series of dreamy sensations: a feeling of floating, a feeling of being composed only of sunlight and other energy, an exhilaratingly weightless tumbling, tumbling. This time, it was not so much an act of sex as it was an act of emotional bonding, a spiritual pledge made with the flesh. And when, at last, Jack spurted deep within her velvet recesses, he felt as if he were fusing with her, melting into her, becoming one with her., and he sensed that she felt the same thing.

  “That was wonderful.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Better than a peanut butter and onion sandwich?”

  “Almost.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Hey, peanut butter and onion sandwiches are pretty darned terrific, you know!”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I'm glad,” she said.

  That was an improvement.

  She still couldn't bring herself to say she loved him, too. But he wasn't particularly bothered by that. He knew she did.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressing.

  She was standing on the other side of the bed, slipping into her blue robe.

  Both of them were startled by a sudden violent movement. A framed poster from a Jasper Johns art exhibition tore loose of its mountings and flew off the wall. It was a large poster, three-and-a-half-feet-by-two-and-a half-feet, framed behind glass. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment, vibrating, and then it struck the floor at the foot of the bed with a tremendous crash.

  “What the hell!” Jack said.

  “What could've done that?” Rebecca said.

  The sliding closet door flew open with a bang, slammed shut, flew open again.

  The six-drawer highboy tipped away from the wall, toppled toward Jack, and he jumped out of the way, and the big piece of furniture hit the floor with the sound of a bomb explosion.

  Rebecca backed against the wall and stood there, rigid and wide-eyed, her hands fisted at her sides.

  The air was cold. Wind whirled through the room. Not just a draft, but a wind almost as powerful as the one that whipped through the city streets, outside. Yet there was nowhere that a cold wind could have gained admission; the door and the window were closed tight.

  And now, at the window, it seemed as if invisible hands grabbed the drapes and tore them loose of the rod from which they were hung. The drapes dropped in a heap, and then the rod itself was torn out of the wall and thrown aside.

  Drawers slid all the way out of the nightstands and fell onto the floor, spilling their contents.

  Several strips of wallpaper began to peel off the walls, starting at the top and going down.

  Jack turned this way and that, frightened, confused, not sure what he should do.

  The dresser mirror cracked in a spiderweb pattern.

  The unseen presence stripped the blanket from the bed and pitched it onto the toppled highboy.

  “Stop it!” Rebecca shouted at the empty air. “Stop it!”

  The unseen intruder did not obey.


  The top sheet was pulled from the bed. It whirled into the air, as if it had been granted life and the ability to fly; it floated off into a corner of the room, where it collapsed, lifeless again.

  The fitted bottom sheet popped loose at two corners.

  Jack grabbed it.

  The other two corners came loose, as well.

  Jack tried to hold on to the sheet. It was a feeble and pointless effort to resist whatever power was wrecking the room, but it was the only thing he could think to do, and he simply had to do something. The sheet was quickly wrenched out of his hands with such force that he was thrown off balance. He stumbled and fell to his knees.

  On a wheeled TV stand in the corner, the portable television set snapped on of its own accord, the volume booming. A fat woman was dancing the cha-cha with a cat, and a thunderous chorus was singing the praises of Purina Cat Chow.

  Jack scrambled to his feet.

  The mattress cover was skinned off the bed, lifted into the air, rolled into a ball, and thrown at Rebecca.

  On the TV, George Plimpton was shouting like a baboon about the virtues of Intellivision.

  The mattress was bare now. The quilted sheath dimpled; a rent appeared in it. The fabric tore right down the middle, from top to bottom, and stuffing erupted along with a few uncoiling springs that rose like cobras to an unheard music.

  More wallpaper peeled down.

  On the TV, a barker for the American Beef Council was shouting about the benefits of eating meat, while an unseen chef carved a bloody roast on camera.

  The closet door slammed so hard that it jumped partially out of its track and rattled back and forth.

  The TV screen imploded. Simultaneously with the sound of breaking glass, there was a brief flash of light within the guts of the set, and then a little smoke.

  Silence.

  Stillness.

  Jack glanced at Rebecca.

  She looked bewildered. And terrified.

  The telephone rang.

  The instant Jack heard it, he knew who was calling. He snatched up the receiver, held it to his ear, said nothing.

  “You're panting like a dog, Detective Dawson,” Lavelle said. “Excited? Evidently, my little demonstration thrilled you.”