by Dean Koontz
the trigger again, both rounds into the troll’s brain. That was surely enough, had to be enough, but you never knew with magic, never knew in this pre-millennium cotillion, these wild ‘90s, so he squeezed the trigger again. The skull was coming apart like chunks of rind from a cantaloupe hit with a hammer, and still Harry pulled the trigger, and a fifth time, until there was a terrible spreading mess on the floor and no more rounds in the revolver, the hammer snapping against expended casings with a dry click, click, click, click, click.
2
Connie had stripped off the burning jacket and stamped out the fire by the time Harry realized his gun was empty, climbed off the dead troll, and managed to reach her. It was amazing she’d been able to act fast enough to avoid going up like a torch, because shedding the jacket had been complicated by the fact that her left wrist was broken. She’d suffered a minor burn on the left arm, as well, but nothing serious.
“He’s dead,” Harry said, as if it needed saying, and then he put his arms around her, held her as tightly as he could without touching her injuries.
She returned his hug fiercely, one-armed, and they stood that way for a while, unable to talk, until the dog came sniffing around. He was lame, holding his right rear leg off the floor, but he seemed otherwise all right.
Harry realized that Woofer had not, after all, been the cause of a disaster. In fact, if he hadn’t plunged down those stairs and knocked Ticktock ass over teakettle, thereby preserving the surprise of Connie’s and Harry’s presence in the house for just a few vital additional seconds, they would be dead on the floor, the golem-master alive and grinning.
A shiver of superstitious dread swept through Harry. He had to let go of Connie and return to the body, look at it again, just to be sure Ticktock was dead.
3
They built houses better in the 1940s, with thick walls and lots of insulation, which might have explained why none of the neighbors responded to the gunfire and why no oncoming sirens wailed in the fogbound night.
Suddenly, however, Connie wondered if, in his last moment of life, Ticktock had thrown the world into another Pause, exempting only his own house, figuring to disable them and then kill them at his leisure. And if he had died with the world stopped, would it ever start up again? Or would she and Harry and the dog wander through it alone, among millions of once-living mannequins?
She raced to the kitchen door and through it to the night outside. A breeze, cool on her face, ruffling her hair. Fog swirling, not suspended like a cloud of glitter in an acrylic paperweight. The rumble of waves on the shore below. Beautiful, beautiful sounds of a world alive.
4
They were police officers with a sense of duty and justice, but they were not foolish enough to follow prescribed procedures in the aftermath of this one. No way could they call it in to the local authorities and explain the true circumstances. Dead, Bryan Drackman was just a twenty-year-old man, and there was nothing about him to prove that he’d possessed astonishing powers. To tell the truth would be a ticket to institutionalization.
The jars of eyes, however, floating blindly on the shelves in Ticktock’s bedroom, and the mirrored strangeness of his house would be evidence enough that they had crossed paths with a homicidal psychopath, even if no one ever produced the bodies from which he had removed the eyes. They were able to provide one body, anyway, to support a charge of brutal murder: Ricky Estefan down in Dana Point, eyeless, with snakes and tarantulas.
“Somehow,” Connie said, as they stood in the pantry staring at the shelves laden with cash, “we’ve got to concoct a story to cover everything, all the holes and weirdnesses, the reason why we broke procedures on this case. We can’t just close the door and walk away because too many people at Pacific View know we were there tonight, talking to his mother, seeking his address.”
“Story?” he said blearily. “Dear God in Heaven, what kind of story?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wincing from the pain in her wrist. “That’s up to you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’ve always liked fairy tales. Make one up. It has to cover the burning of your house, Ricky Estefan, and this. At least that much.” He was still gaping at her when she pointed to all the piles of cash. “This is only going to complicate the story. Let’s just simplify things by getting it out of here.”
“I don’t want his money,” Harry said.
“Neither do I. Not a dollar of it. But we’ll never know who it was stolen from, so it’ll only go to the government, the same damn government that’s given us this pre-millennium cotillion, and I can’t tolerate the idea of giving it more to waste. Besides, we both know a few people who could sure use it, don’t we?”
“God, they’re still waiting in the van,” he said.
“Let’s bag this cash and take it out to them. Then Janet can drive them away in the van, with the dog, so they don’t get wrapped up in it. Meanwhile, you’ll be putting together a story, and by the time they’re gone, we’ll be ready to call in.”
“Connie, I can’t possibly—”
“Better start thinking,” she said, pulling a plastic garbage bag from a box of them on one shelf.
“But this is crazier than—”
“Not much time,” she said warningly, opening the bag with her one good hand.
“All right, all right,” he said exasperatedly.
“Can’t wait to hear it,” she said, scooping bundles of currency into the first open bag as he opened a second. “It should be highly entertaining.”
5
Good day, good day, good. Sun shining, breeze blowing through his fur, interesting bugs busy in the grass, interesting smells on people’s shoes from faraway interesting places, and no cats.
Everyone there, all together. Ever since this morning early, Janet doing delicious-smelling things in the food room of the people place, the people and dog place, their place. Sammy in his garden, cutting tomatoes off vines, pulling carrots out of the ground— interesting, must’ve buried them in the ground like bones—and then bringing them into the food room for Janet to do delicious things. Then Sammy washing off the stones that people put down over part of the grass behind their place. Washing stones with the hose, yes yes yes yes yes, the hose, splattering water, cool and tasty, everyone laughing, dodging, yes yes yes yes. And Danny there, helping to put the cloth on the table that stands on the stones, arrange the chairs, plates and things. Janet, Danny, Sammy. He knows their names now because they have been together long enough for him to know them, Janet and Danny and Sammy, all together at the Janet-and-Danny-and-Sammy-and-Woofer place.
He remembers being Prince, sort of, and Max because of the cat who peed in his water, and he remembers Fella from everyone for so long, but now he answers only to Woofer.
The others come, too, driving up in their car, and he knows their names almost as well because they’re around so much, visiting so much. Harry, Connie, and Ellie, Ellie who is Danny’s size, all of them coming over to visit from the Harry-and-Connie-and-Ellie-and-Toto place.
Toto. Good dog, good dog, good. Friend.
He takes Toto straight to the garden, where they aren’t allowed to dig—bad dogs if they dig, bad dogs, bad—to show him where the carrots were buried like bones. Sniff sniff sniff sniff. More of them buried here. Interesting. But don’t dig.
Playing with Toto and Danny and Ellie, running and chasing and jumping and rolling in the grass, rolling.
Good day. The best. The best.
Then food. Food! Bringing it out of the people food room and piling it up on the table that stands on the stones in the shade of the trees. Sniff sniff sniff sniff, ham, chicken, potato salad, mustard, cheese, cheese is good, sticks to the teeth but is good, and more, much more food, up there on the table.
Don’t jump up. Be good. Be a good dog. Good dogs get more scraps, usually not just scraps, whole big pieces of things, yes yes yes yes yes.
Cricket jumps. Cricket! Chase, chase, get it, get it, get it, got to
have it, Toto too, leaping, jumping, this way, that way, this way, cricket….
Oh, wait, yes, the food. Back to the table. Sit. Chest puffed out. Head cocked. Tail wagging. They love that. Lick your chops, give them the hint.
Here it comes. What what what what? Ham. A piece of ham to start. Good, good, good, gone. A delicious start, a very good start.
Such a good day, a day like he always knew would come, one of lots of good days, one after another, for a long time now, because it happened, it really happened, he went around that one more corner, looked in that one more strange new place, and he found the wonderful thing, the wonderful thing that he always knew was out there waiting for him. The wonderful thing, the wonderful thing, which is this place and this time and these people. And here comes a slice of chicken, thick and juicy!